Your Last Meal with Rachel Belle

Welcome to Your Last Meal’s most romantic episode! Audie Cornish (CNN reporter and host of CNN’s The Assignment podcast) says her last meal is less about what she’s eating and everything about who she’s eating it with. Audie's last meal is a love letter to her husband, who has been wooeing her with his cooking since their first date, and for the first time ever she talks about him in an interview!...

Comedian and actor David Cross is best known for his roles as Tobias Fünke on Arrested Development and Mr Show, and he has a new podcast and comedy special out now! David says he grew up poor, hating a lot of the penny-pinching meals his family ate. But he still loves some of the foods he ate as a poor adult, when he was trying to make it as a stand-up comedian. We’ll learn the history of poutine...

Across the pond, in a country far, far away (um, England), Your Last Meal has a podcast cousin! On each episode of Desert Island Dishes , chef and host Margie Nomura asks her guests about the dishes that have shaped their lives, including the last dish they’d eat before being cast off to the desert island.   Host Rachel Belle was a guest on the show and this week we are bringing you that episode!...

Reggie Watts is the best kind of weirdo: a comedian, musician and beat-boxer who spent eight years as the house bandleader for The Late Late Show with James Corden . His new book, Great Falls, Montana, is a coming-of-age memoir that proves Reggie’s been cultivating his own brand of oddball humor since he was a teenager.    Reggie grew up with a French mom, eating escargot on special occasions, so...

Welcome to the very first Your Last Meal Thanksgiving! We’re having a big Friendsgiving audio potluck, inviting past guests to contribute a dish to the holiday meal. Country music star Martina McBride is bringing the salad, actor Zosia Mamet defends marshmallow sweet potato casserole and opines on cranberry sauce, director Greta Gerwig shares her dad’s unusual stuffing recipe and Christopher Kimba...

Lessons in Chemistry , an Apple TV+ show based on the bestselling book of the same name, is set in the early 1950s and centers around a young woman named Elizabeth Zott, played by Brie Larson. Elizabeth is a chemist and her entire life is consumed by her scientific curiosities. The only thing Elizabeth loves as much as chemistry is cooking because, well, cooking is chemistry!  The show features qu...

Andrew Rea is best known for his super-popular YouTube channel, Babish Culinary Universe, where 10 million subscribers tune in to watch him host cooking shows like Binging with Babish , where he recreates dishes from TV shows and movies.  The focus of his new (third!) cookbook, Basics with Babish , is cooking mistakes. He cheekily reveals every single mistake he’s made while attempting to cook eac...

Comedian and writer Sarah Cooper rose to fame in the most modern of ways: through TikTok! Her viral videos, lip-syncing Donald Trump’s speeches during the pandemic, eventually landed her a Netflix show ( Sarah Cooper: Everything Is Fine ), and she just released a memoir called Foolish .  Before Sarah could pay the bills with comedy, she worked at Google, where employees are fed three incredibly de...

Zarna Garg immigrated to the United States from India alone, at 16, without a penny to her name. Fast-forward to 2018: She’s a stay-at-home mom with three kids and bored out of her mind. At her children’s insistence, Zarna got on stage at an open-mic night. Five years later? She has her own comedy special on Amazon, “Zarna Garg: One in a Billion!” Zarna loves to top many of her meals with a big ol...

Ron Upshaw and Don O’Neill are longtime radio partners who spent decades moving around the country together, hosting all kinds of big-market radio shows. And YLM host Rachel Belle was a part of The Ron & Don Show on KIRO Radio for a decade! Ron and Don have worked together since they were teenagers, in all sorts of professions. What keeps two people working together for 40 years? We will discu...

If you've ever had a tomato sandwich, then you know this is the best time of the year! In honor of *tomato season* (and host Rachel Belle being on vacation) we are re-airing this episode from 2019. Iron & Wine sounds like a band but in fact there is just one man behind the music: a soft spoken, North Carolina singer-songwriter named Sam Beam, who unintentionally stumbled into a music career la...

After years of living in New York City and Los Angeles, the pandemic brought comedian Heather McMahan back to her hometown of Atlanta, where she’s living in her childhood home with her husband and ... her mother! If it sounds like a sitcom, well, she’s working on that script right now. Atlanta is home to Buford Highway, an off-the-beaten-path culinary wonderland featuring 100 immigrant-owned resta...

Mexico City native Pati Jinich made an unusual career change: from a political analyst at a Washington, D.C. think tank to a cooking teacher and, eventually, award-winning PBS host. For over a decade, she’s been sharing her love of Mexico and Mexican cooking with the masses through her shows Pati's Mexican Table and La Frontera. Pati is Mexican-Jewish, and grew up eating Mexican takes on classic A...

I interviewed Greta Gerwig back in 2017, when her film Lady Bird came out, and in honor of Barbie-mania, I am re-airing an edited version of my interview with the writer and director of the new 'Barbie' movie! Greta is a huge fan of Funfetti cake and insists the box of Pillsbury cake mix is best. So I invite Food Network host Molly Yeh ( Girl Meets Farm ) to talk about her homemade Funfetti, a cak...

Peppermint was the first out, trans contestant on RuPaul’s Drag Race, the first trans woman to originate a principal role on Broadway and she stars in the new Netflix series “Survival of the Thickest!” And Peppermint … loves peppermint! Tea! Candy! All of it! So host Rachel Belle digs into the history of the ancient, zesty herb that has been mentioned everywhere from the bible, in Greek mythology...

Bear Grylls is a survivalist, adventurist & host of soooo mannny TV shows, including the wildly popular Man VS Wild, Born Survivor and the new season of Running Wild With Bear Grylls: The Challenge , where celebs like Russell Brand and Bradley Cooper tag along on his extremely wild adventures. Bear tells host Rachel Belle about the nastiest foods he's eaten in the wild, why he no longer eats v...

Canadian twin sisters and band mates, Tegan and Sara , have been touring the world, playing music together, since they graduated from high school in 1998. In honor of their new book, a semi-autobiographical graphic novel called Junior High , host Rachel Belle asks them, and the listeners, about their most memorable middle school foods and HOLY GUACAMOLE we were human garbage cans when we were 12!...

You may know Marc Summers as the host of Nickelodeon's Double Dare and Food Network's Unwrapped , but you may not know that he got his start as a magician and helped launch Guy Fieri's career! Marc joined host Rachel Belle on stage at Seattle's Crosscut Ideas Festival to talk about what the iconic Double Dare slime was made of, how he almost gave up show business to sell salmon, and why he decided...

It's Bill Nye the Science Guy! Nye has spent decades using his special brand of high energy humor to educate folks about science, so obviously he can get real nerdy when it comes to the science of baking bread. Nye shares his precise recipe for the perfect baguette and then gets into a mini debate about cannibalism with host Rachel Belle (any guesses who is for and who is against??). Then Janine M...

It's a pod swap! This week I'm bringing you an episode of Food with Mark Bittman and Mark is sharing an episode of Your Last Meal with his listeners. Mark Bittman is the prolific author of 30 cookbooks, he wrote about food for the New York Times for 30 years and he was once a guest on Your Last Meal! This week you'll hear his conversation with another prolific writer, one of America's favorite hum...

Taylor Dayne blasted onto the pop/dance scene in 1987 with her first big single, “Tell It To My Heart,” and over the last 35 years she's released seventeen Top 20 singles, earned three grammy nominations and an American Music Award.  This Long Island girl loves her brunch, a meal that makes her nostalgic for the bagel and lox she shared with her family, as a kid, on Sunday mornings.  Did you know...

Business doesn’t always mix with pleasure, but for comedic actor and writer Rachel Bloom ( Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Reboot), Olive Garden left a big, saucy mark on both her personal and professional life, popping up on her award-winning TV show Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and in her last meal!  Host Rachel Belle calls up Marilyn Hagerty, a 96 year old newspaper columnist, to talk about the viral Olive Garden...

Margaret Cho has been a standup comedian for four decades (since she was 14 years old!) but she also LOVES to cook and collects specialty cookware and gadgets – she has her very own mochi machine!   Her last meal takes us to Hawaii, where Spam is so popular it’s even served at McDonald’s. But here on the mainland, Spam is often stigmatized. Robert Koo, author of Dubious Gastronomy: The Cultural Po...

Cousins Kim and Tyler Malek opened Salt & Straw Ice Cream over a decade ago in Portland, Oregon, and from the very start they were scooping up unusual flavor combinations like pear & blue cheese and bone marrow with bourbon smoked cherries. Tyler shares the WORST flavor he's ever made (hint: there was seafood involved) & they talk about Grandma Malek, the matriarch behind both of their...

Every home cook worth their can of anchovies can throw together a dish based on the bits and bobs knocking around their cupboards and crisper, and for writer Tucker Shaw, his pantry pasta is last meal worthy.   Tucker’s debut novel, “When You Call My Name, ” follows two, gay teenage boys who are navigating the AIDS crisis in 1990 New York City. But host Rachel Belle became a fan of Tucker’s in 200...