Radio

  • Author Michael Pollan, who wrote The Omnivore’s Dilemma, is making a case against what he calls “eating scientifically.” Michael Pollan: There is so much biochemistry on display in the supermarket today, it’s kind of wild. I mean, where else in your life do you use so much biochemistry? He’s talking about breakdown of foods into…

  • Food Fight

    Radio

    BROOKE GLADSTONE: For decades, the consumption of news has complicated our consumption of – food. Nowadays, what we buy to eat is determined by shifting health studies. Carbs are good for you. No, they’re bad. Fats make you fat. No, they don’t. And food labels only increase our confusion. Michael Pollan, journalist and professor of…

  • “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” That’s the advice journalist and author Michael Pollan offers in his new book, In Defense of Food. “That’s it. That is the short answer to the supposedly incredibly complicated and confusing question of what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy,” Pollan tells Steve Inskeep.…

  • In his new book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, journalist and writer Michael Pollan argues that many Americans suffer from a national eating disorder based on super-sized, corn-fed diets. Listen to the interview here.

  • 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…

  • 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

    Radio

    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.

  • 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…

  • 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

    Radio

    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…

  • 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,…

  • Listen to the broadcast BOB EDWARDS, host: Henry David Thoreau wrote, ‘It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.’ That’s particularly true. The apple’s history in the United States where a passion for sweetness has transformed this simple fruit. In the second part of her conversation…