Proof

Few drinks have gone through the ringer the way Chartreuse has. Since the 1700s, a silent group of monks in the Southeast of France have produced and protected this elixir-turned-liqueur through evictions, natural disasters, and other trials and tribulations of history. Today, Chartreuse is a crucial ingredient that helped spur the modern craft cocktail movement. Proof's managing producer and self...

The smell of certain foods imprint themselves in our brains and can transport us to different places and our past. One scent in particular--the smell of za'atar--brought two Palestinian women together through social media. Nadia Tommalieh and Lulu Abura instantly shared a bond over their love for the herb and the spice blend that reminds them of their homeland. Reporter Haley Gray reports. Take ou...

On a cold night in January 2017, five comedians gathered around a table in the back of a cramped restaurant in New York’s Greenwich Village called the Olive Tree Cafe. The comedian weren't scheduled to perform at the downstairs Comedy Cellar that night, but they had come to hang out at a place they called home: a family dinner around the most important table in American stand-up comedy. This resta...

June Pinks. Candy Stripes. Leather Britches, and Fall Roses. These are the names of just a few apple varieties that have been lost to time. But one man, Tom Brown, is on a mission to find them—and especially one variety called the Junaluska—before it’s too late. Will Tom Brown succeed? Claire Donnelly reports. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https:/...

Pineapple cakes. Pork-wrapped pineapple. Pineapple bento boxes, and beef pineapple noodle soup. Reporter Kai McNamee started seeing the spiky fruit everywhere—at restaurants, at convenience stores and at bakeries—after China banned pineapple imports from Taiwan earlier this year. A pineapple-related hashtag also took social media by storm. So what was the #FreedomPineapple campaign all about? Kai...

Ethereal, contained, and rife with ingredients like cottage cheese, whipped cream, and fruit. The Jello salad was a mainstay of many American households throughout the 1950s and the '60s. They were a feast for the eyes, with mixed results about whether they were a feast for the stomach. Still, housewives made them, until a shift happened that upended the way women--and men--thought about cooking....

This season, we're back with a new lineup, and a new host, Kevin Pang! We kick off the season with a story about gelatin and the heyday of Jell-O. We ride along an apple hunter’s journey in search of a lost apple variety. We look at the place--and the food--that’s nurtured some of the best comedians in America, and how a drink made by a silent group of monks has survived over centuries, against al...

In the town of Yamanaka in Western Japan, wild boars are a threat to local farming. With the extinction of natural predators, the boars run rampant, leaving hunters like Sakura Yoshida to patrol the area. This pits boars against humans, but Sakura approaches the boars with veneration and a deep understanding of the ecosystem they both inhabit. In this episode of Proof, author Hannah Kirshner takes...

Our five senses--sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell--can feel intrinsically linked to who we are. But when aspiring chef Molly Birnbaum lost her sense of smell in a traumatic accident, she resolved to get it back through smell training and learning how our olfactory systems are connected to the brain. In this episode of Proof, Editor-In-Chief of ATK Kids Molly Birnbaum, walks us through her jou...

Hospitality and and serving others were at the heart of Damián Diaz and Othón Nolasco's bar consulting business in Los Angeles. When the pandemic hit, the duo noticed that undocumented workers, who serve as vital back of house staff at restaurants and bars, weren't eligible or able to get the help that they needed. The two decided to start a nonprofit organization and called it No Us Without You....

Baloney is one of the most well-known--and divisive--meat products in the United States. Many synonymize it with "fake" or "synthetic," but there are some who defend the maligned meat to its core. What makes this iconic American food so controversial, and how did it fall from its former glory? In this episode of Proof, Reporter Rebecca Rosman travels to Bologna, Italy to trace the origins of the c...

Tortillas, tortilla chips, and tamales—these are all foods that are easy to enjoy but not as easy to make from scratch. There's a process called nixtamalization that occurs, which unlocks nutrients from corn and makes it ready to use in the foods we love. Nixtamalization is a crucial step, yet it's not well-known. It's a testament to the ingenuity of Indigenous science, which has been subject to e...

For many of us, food and family are an intertwined bridge of our identity. We can trace so many things about ourselves and personalities to our family members and the meals we’ve shared. There are the dedicated feeders of the family, the thankful eaters, and the confusing neithers--they neither eat nor feed. Writer Ahmed Ali Akbar was a neither. At an early age, he didn’t eat or prepare much of hi...

The Food Timeline has been a valuable resource for food professionals and laypeople alike. The website chronicles the origins of everything from emmer grain (which, dates back to 17,000 BC), to the modern-day cake pop. Most impressively, the Food Timeline was the creation of one single individual: Lynne Olver. In 2015, however, the future of the Food Timeline suddenly becomes uncertain. In this ep...

Canned foods are an essential part of our pantries. From pasta sauce, to pumpkin puree, to corn and beans, these ready-to-open options give cooking more ease. That is exactly what Nicolas Appert wanted when he invented the airtight art of food preservation. During the 19th century, this French chef identified ways to hold nature’s greatest gifts in bottles year-round. Yet, after this transformativ...

Who was the man who helped revolutionize the way we eat? What does it mean to be an ambassador of a food culture and a pickiy eater at the same time? Why is a boar hunter in Japan conflicted? Tune in to find out on Season 7 of Proof beginning April 22. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. Learn more about yo...

Dan Pashman is on a mission to make--and sell--a new pasta shape. Our friends at The Sporkful have a new five part series on Dan's journey (and in this episode, find out why he hates Spaghetti). You can find the rest of the series in The Sporkful feed wherever you listen to podcasts. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-s...

Our friends a Transmitter Media have a body-positive and unapologetically food-positive show that is about breaking up with diet culture. Host Virgie Tovar talks to amazing ‘rebel eaters’ who will change the way you think about food and your body. Their second season just launched and features great conversations with guests like Francis Lam from The Splendid Table, as well as fascinating stories...

Nichols Electronics has a monopoly on the ice cream truck music box market. When you hear the familiar sound of ice cream truck music ringing through your neighborhood, chances are extremely high that it’s coming from a box that Mark and Beth Nichols created. For decades, they’ve been in the business of evoking nostalgia and happy memories. Until recently, when it was revealed that one of the most...

When you see “not from concentrate” on a carton of OJ, you might assume it’s healthier than other brands. But actually, that’s a relic of a decades-long juice brand battle and deceptive marketing that sold customers the promise of a "balanced breakfast." In fact, the behemoths behind orange juice popularity have constantly shape-shifted and reinvented themselves in order to bring our favorite brea...

The color blue doesn’t really occur naturally in food. Think about it: when was the last time you ate something blue? Maybe a piece of candy or an ice pop that was “blue raspberry” flavored. Food marketing teams have steered their companies away from blue labels and blue colored foods (except in a few cases), often citing studies on the psychology of color and perception of taste. But one popular...

Our friends at This Old House have a new podcast "Ask This Old House". The show features home enthusiasts around the country, who ask questions about the toughest projects in their homes. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When Cecilia Hae-Jin Lee and her family moved to America from Korea in the 1980s, they were immersed in a whole new world. New schools, friends, jobs, and new food. None was more remarkable than the salad bar at Sizzler, with its small yellow cubed pieces of cheese and Thousand Island dressing. In this memoir, Cecilia and her siblings recall their first few years in the US, and how food shaped the...

Hervé Garnier owns a small vineyard in the tiny French town of Beaumont making wine from hybrid Franco-American grape varieties. But this fruity, floral, rich red wine he makes… is illegal. According to outdated French and EU law, the wine made from these hybrid vines is dangerous, that it induces madness. But they also claim the wine just doesn’t taste good enough to be sanctioned as “French Wine...

Modern personal injury lawsuits are now considered frivolous, at best. But 66 years before the infamous spilled McDonald’s coffee, May Donoghue drank a ginger beer in Paisley, Scotland and changed personal injury law forever. May, a humble shopkeeper, discovered a snail in her drink and decided to sue. No such lawsuit had ever been won before. She was slandered in the press, and criticized in cour...