A Curious Appetite with Dr Alessandra Pino

How do you photograph a city that never stands still? In this episode of A Curious Appetite , I am joined by photographer and author Niki Gorick , whose work has documented London's hidden ceremonies, docklands, working communities, and riverside traditions for more than twenty-five years. Beginning with her early fascination for storytelling and inspired by photographers including Henri Carti...

In this episode of  A Curious Appetite , I am joined by Gothic scholar, educator, and founder of Romancing the Gothic,  Dr Sam Hirst , to explore the remarkable travel journal  Summer Rambles in 1825  by the musician and traveller  William Linley . Drawing on Sam's work transcribing and annotating the manuscript at Newstead Abbey, we journey through Regency England in the company of one of its...

What happens when history itself becomes a magic trick? In this episode of  A Curious Appetite , I am joined by writer, director, and Artistic Director of Pither Productions, Nina Atesh, to discuss  In League with the Devil , her fascinating new play inspired by the extraordinary life of Erik Jan Hanussen: illusionist, clairvoyant, celebrity showman, fraudster, political opportunist, and one of th...

What kind of job requires you to carry knives, toothpicks, pastry brushes, chopping boards, glycerine spray, and sometimes half a kitchen in the back of your car? Food styling. In this episode of A Curious Appetite with Dr Alessandra Pino, I’m joined by Dorothy Barrick, known as Dot, a food stylist and home economist whose work brings food to life on screen in ways that are often invisible, but ab...

This episode was not sponsored by Greggs. But it begins with a sausage roll! I’m joined by Richard Crampton-Platt (you might know him as @thegreedydick). We talk about chicken rolls and why they disappoint. Raw chicken sushi and what “safe” really means. Why Britain trusts takeaways and Italy doesn’t. Food delivery and what it reveals about how we live. The myth of pizza margherita. Carbonara, cre...

In this episode, I speak with chef and writer Emiliano Amore, who writes  Britalian  on Substack, about migration, identity, adaptation, and what he beautifully calls “the liminal larder” that space between cultures where Branston pickle meets pecorino, cheddar finds its way into lasagna, and food becomes a language of belonging. Born in Rome and now based in England, his work emerges directly fro...

A is for Apple is back with a brand new season. I’m delighted to share that Season C has officially begun. Hosted by me Dr Alessandra Pino, alongside Sam Bilton and Dr Neil Buttery, the podcast returns with more curious ingredients, unexpected histories, and playful explorations of food through the alphabet. https://podcasts.apple.com/it/podcast/s3e1-c-is-for-carbonado-carrot-cabinet-pudding/id174...

What do we eat around death? What has food meant at funerals in the past? And why does something as small as a biscuit carry so much emotional and symbolic weight? In this episode of A Curious Appetite , I’m joined by death historian Dr Dan O’Brien to explore funerary food, mourning rituals, and the deeply human ways food helps us navigate loss. Dan’s research focuses on the undertaking trade in e...

For this episode of A Curious Appetite , I speak with food writer Mallika Basu about curry, food culture, migration, and the loaded question of authenticity. Mallika recently came to speak with my California university students at the London campus, and I still remember how their minds were blown by the way she explained complex histories of migration, empire, and identity through food. She has an...

Today’s guest is the brilliant Stephen Volk, screenwriter behind Ghostwatch , Afterlife , Gothic , The Guardian , and one of my favourite supernatural films, The Awakening (2011). In this episode we talk about séances as the perfect storytelling device, Dickens’s “The Portrait-Painter’s Story,” which inspired a story of Stephen’s own, belief and doubt as the engine of ghost stories, and the uncann...

Gothic food, horror, and the culture of consumption. Hosted by Dr Alessandra Pino, this podcast explores how food shapes literature, history, migration, and the Gothic imagination. Moving between archive and kitchen, theory and lived experience, it considers appetite as a force that structures identity, memory, and power. Each episode invites listeners to rethink what it means to consume- and to b...