Interviews of Interviews
Dinner: An Author Considers the Source
Journalist Michael Pollan’s new book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, follows industrial food, organic food, and food that consumers procure or hunt for themselves, from the source to the dinner plate. It also examines the importance of corn in all of our food products. Pollan is a professor of science and environmental journalism at University of California
A consuming interest: Pollan puts his mouth where his research is
UC Berkeley journalism professor and author Michael Pollan sat down with me, and a cup of tea, at the long dining table in the home his family rents in Oakland’s Rockridge neighborhood to talk about a few ideas from his latest book, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals.” Q: How does “The
We Are What We Eat
On the long trip from the soil to our mouths, a trip of 1,500 miles on average, the food we eat often passes through places most of us will never see. Michael Pollan has spent much of the last five years visiting these places on our behalf. “Industrial food,” as Pollan defines it, “is food
Diet Fads and American Eating
LINDA WERTHEIMER, host: This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I’m Linda Wertheimer. Coming up, the skinny on Luciano Pavarotti. But first, Michael Pollan is an author. He’s written about food, gardening, the environment, building his own small house in the woods. That book is called “A Place of My Own.” He’s now turned his
Factory Farming
A new report finds high levels of PCB contamination in farmed salmon, at a time when American consumption of the fish is growing rapidly. Factory farming keeps the U.S. meat and fish supply cheap and plentiful, but at what cost? Join NPR’s Neal Conan and his guests. Listen to the interview here.
Q & A: A Conversation with Michael Pollan
“The first time I opened Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation, I was dining alone at the Palm, trying to enjoy a rib-eye steak cooked medium rare.” The Palm is a restaurant known for its beef, the sentence is the opening of an article in the New York Times Magazine, and the author, Michael Pollan, is now
Overabundance of corn and its effect on the economy
ALEX CHADWICK, host: As you sit down to Thanksgiving dinner, consider for a moment the side dishes. One of the items that may be there can do more than provide nourishment. It can also affect public health, the economy, even national politics. Corn is the subject of this report from DAY TO DAY’s Mike Pesca
Writers on Gardening
Planting, nurturing, toiling, rooting, blooming, culling and crafting are all literary metaphors borrowed from the age old obsession with plants and flowers. In this hour of Talk of the Nation, Neal Conan talks with some award winning writers who are also master gardeners and discover the pleasure of borrowing from one vocation to grow the
My Summer in a Garden
BOB EDWARDS, host: Early last month, MORNING EDITION began a series called The Armchair Gardener, a winter distraction for listeners unable to dig in the dirt. The first installment followed three zealous plant lovers through the gardening section of a bookstore. Today an all but forgotten author who helped invent American garden writing. Here’s NPR’s
Michael Pollan discusses his new book, The Botany of Desire
What do sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control have to do with plants? Well…everything according to Michael Pollan, the author of the best selling The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World. In this hour of Science Friday, we’ll take a look at the way people and plants–including apples and marijuana–interact with each other,