The Sporkful

Dan Pashman

3x James Beard Award winner. Named one of TIME's 100 Best Podcasts Of All Time. We obsess about food to learn more about people. It's not for foodies, it's for eaters. Hosted by Dan Pashman, inventor of the viral pasta shape cascatelli.

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312 episodes
Updated Friday

Episodes312

Newest first

January 2 · 25 min
Cold Case: Office Fridge Food Theft Edition (Reheat)
It’s Elkhart, Indiana, 2001. Two inches of Heather Coleman's turkey club disappear from her office fridge. The thief is nowhere to be found. And Heather’s life will never be the same. In this tribute to the hit podcast Serial, we investigate the shocking true story of an office fridge food theft.
Dec 29, 2025 · 33 min
Stanley Tucci Always Keeps A Martini Kit On Set
Stanley Tucci nearly broke the internet in 2021 when he made a Negroni on Instagram. But long before that, the award-winning actor built his career around his love of food. He created the iconic food film Big Night, he’s written best-selling cookbooks, and now he eats his way through Italy on the show Tucci In Italy.
Dec 26, 2025 · 34 min
A Hip Hop Track Inspired Bryant Terry To Go Vegan (Reheat)
“So often when we talk about veganism, we don't imagine Black people,” says Bryant Terry, the James Beard Award-winning cookbook author, chef, and educator. But Bryant sees veganism as deeply rooted in Black communities and traditions. And, he points out, veganism is growing faster among Black Americans than among any other group.
Dec 22, 2025 · 43 min
New Year's Food Resolutions 2026
What foods do Sporkful listeners resolve to eat more of in the new year, and why? And what’s Dan’s New Year’s food resolution for 2026? All is revealed in our annual year-end spectacular.
Dec 19, 2025 · 21 min
Elevating Airplane Food To New Heights (Reheat)
This episode is chock full of strategies for making your way in one of the world's most barren food wastelands. We cover both the airport and airplane, short domestic flights and long haul international flights, snacks, entrees, and more. We'll tell you how to mix your cocktail, how to use your pretzels to improve your other food, how to get served first, and how to end up with enough beverages to get you to your destination.
Dec 15, 2025 · 47 min
How Do You Steal A Truckload Of Tequila? (Salad Spinner Year In Review)
From a moisturizer made of beef fat, to bartenders hating on Gen Z, to tariffs, a lot happened this year. (How do you get away with stealing 100,000 eggs and a truckload of Guy Fieri’s tequila?) We cover the biggest and strangest food stories of 2025 in our Salad Spinner Year in Review!
Dec 12, 2025 · 31 min
Patti LaBelle Says She Cooks Better Than She Sings (Reheat)
Patti LaBelle is not just a music icon, she’s also a food icon. She’s written best-selling cookbooks, hosted a food TV show, and even cooked for Elton John, The Rolling Stones, and Prince. She talks with Dan about touring the segregated South in the ‘60s, the viral video that made her sweet potato pie a Walmart sensation, and the one recipe in her cookbook that’s perfect for women going through menopause.
Dec 8, 2025 · 34 min
Samin Nosrat’s Success Looked Different Behind Closed Doors
It’s been eight years since Samin Nosrat published her smash-hit cookbook, Salt Fat Acid Heat. She says her whole adult life was on a trajectory toward that book. But in the aftermath of its success, Samin ended up in a dark place, struggling to understand why achieving her goals didn’t fix her problems.
Dec 5, 2025 · 36 min
Can We Go Viral On TikTok? (Reheat)
TikTok is the wild west of the food media world. It’s less professionalized than Instagram and YouTube, and it holds the promise of virality from the very first time you post. So we wondered: What actually makes a food TikTok go viral?
Dec 1, 2025 · 38 min
Seed Oils Are The Latest Battle In The Cooking Fat Wars
In America, the cooking fat you use — lard, butter, shortening, oil — has long been a signifier of health, virtue, and class. What is it about fat that gets us so riled up? Reporter Adwoa Gyimah-Brempong looks at four battles over cooking fats in America over the last 150 years, starting with lard vs. Crisco, all the way to our current panic over seed oils.
Nov 28, 2025 · 33 min
What Should Be The Last Cheese On Earth? (Reheat)
This week we’re reheating two call-in episodes from 2015. First: Two Sporkful listeners call in to debate the best way to make enchiladas: flat (lasagna style) or rolled. Can Dan's advice restore peace and save Enchilada Party Night? Next up: Adam and Jonathan in L.A. call in to debate a dystopian future with only one cheese and to explain why cheddar is like Hugh Grant.
Nov 24, 2025 · 32 min
What’s It Like To Cook With A Brain Injury?
How does a traumatic brain injury affect the way you cook and eat? Filmmaker Cheryl Green, who has a brain injury, satirizes her own experiences in the kitchen in a short video called “Cooking With Brain Injury.”
Nov 21, 2025 · 25 min
Hosting Thanksgiving With Amy Sedaris (Reheat)
Amy Sedaris offers advice on dealing with family members who are drunk or confrontational at the holidays. Plus, Robert Krulwich (formerly of Radiolab) on the time a turkey fell in love with his wife.
Nov 17, 2025 · 35 min
The Last Meal Roy Wood Jr. Made For His Father
Roy Wood Jr. has long used humor to discuss topical issues and get at deeper truths. As a correspondent for The Daily Show, and now as the host of Have I Got News For You on CNN, he brings his own unique sensibility to political comedy. In his new memoir, The Man Of Many Fathers, he goes deep on his complicated relationship with his father, and the role food played in crucial moments of his childhood.
Nov 14, 2025 · 51 min
In The Test Kitchen With Dan Souza & Lisa McManus
Today we’re bringing you a conversation Dan had on the new podcast In the Test Kitchen, from America’s Test Kitchen. Hosts Dan Souza and Lisa McManus welcomed Dan into their Boston studio to dive deep into the world of pasta design, exploring what makes a perfect noodle and how texture, sauce-holding power, and mouthfeel come together in the ultimate bite. Plus, the ITTK hosts get into gear testing, and they offer Dan a “Ror-snack” test.
Nov 10, 2025 · 44 min
What Is Colorado Style Pizza?
We all know the classic regional pizza styles: New York, Chicago, Detroit. But Colorado? If you haven’t heard of that one, you’re not alone. Paul Karolyi, a reporter and executive producer of City Cast Denver, spent six years trying to uncover the story of how Colorado style pizza was invented, and why more people don’t know about it.
Nov 7, 2025 · 32 min
Phil Rosenthal Has A Menu Strategy (Reheat)
Wherever Phil Rosenthal goes, he wants to eat — which explains the name of his Netflix show, Somebody Feed Phil. He travels the world with wide eyes, an empty stomach, and a bottomless supply of delight at the people and food he encounters. And before Somebody Feed Phil and his new podcast Naked Lunch, Phil created the hit sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond, which used food as a key source of tension between the characters.
Nov 3, 2025 · 32 min
How Did Tony Shalhoub Learn To Play A Chef On Screen?
Tony Shalhoub is an actor whose roles skew towards the quirky and neurotic — and his characters’ quirks often come out through food. In the classic 1996 film Big Night, Tony plays an uncompromising Italian chef whose Jersey Shore restaurant is on the brink of failure. In the TV show Monk, he plays a detective with OCD who has many strong opinions about how he wants his food.
Oct 31, 2025 · 25 min
A Comprehensive Candy Treatise For Halloween (Reheat)
This week we're talking about a number of key candy issues with special guests in time for Halloween. You'll hear from a Colorado-based Eater whose highly comprehensive candy treatise is on our blog and a candy blogger who has a Kit Kat eating technique that is bound to cause sustained widespread controversy or at the very least an significant uptick in chocolate-smeared fingers.
Oct 27, 2025 · 34 min
What Makes Dorie Greenspan’s Recipes So Good?
Ask folks in the world of food and cookbooks, “Who writes the best recipes?” and you’ll hear one name more than any other: Dorie Greenspan. "Dorie does rock solid recipes," says Chandra Ram, who judges the prestigious IACP Cookbook Awards. So what's Dorie doing that makes her recipes better than others?

The Sporkful

Cold Case: Office Fridge Food Theft Edition (Reheat)

Stanley Tucci Always Keeps A Martini Kit On Set

A Hip Hop Track Inspired Bryant Terry To Go Vegan (Reheat)

New Year's Food Resolutions 2026

Elevating Airplane Food To New Heights (Reheat)

How Do You Steal A Truckload Of Tequila? (Salad Spinner Year In Review)

Patti LaBelle Says She Cooks Better Than She Sings (Reheat)

Samin Nosrat’s Success Looked Different Behind Closed Doors

Can We Go Viral On TikTok? (Reheat)

Seed Oils Are The Latest Battle In The Cooking Fat Wars

What Should Be The Last Cheese On Earth? (Reheat)

What’s It Like To Cook With A Brain Injury?

Hosting Thanksgiving With Amy Sedaris (Reheat)

The Last Meal Roy Wood Jr. Made For His Father

In The Test Kitchen With Dan Souza & Lisa McManus

What Is Colorado Style Pizza?

Phil Rosenthal Has A Menu Strategy (Reheat)

How Did Tony Shalhoub Learn To Play A Chef On Screen?

A Comprehensive Candy Treatise For Halloween (Reheat)

What Makes Dorie Greenspan’s Recipes So Good?