The Truth About Erewhon

A conversation with LinYee Yuan and Johnny Drain about seven years of co-editing MOLD’s print magazine.

Joshua Sbicca of the Prison Agriculture Lab is on the podcast to discuss the way that the prison industrial complex uses food and agriculture as a way to uphold itself.  His piece for MOLD, 'It's Time To Compost The Prison Plantation' is part of our series on Food and Abolition, tackling the ways in which the  project of prison abolition can inform a movement for redesigning sovereign food systems. 

On this episode of the Food Futures podcast, we speak to street vendors from Plaza Tonatiuh in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park and community organizer Brian “Leo” Garita about their fight for a share of public space.  We’ll also have a conversation with urban planning scholar, Ryan Devlin, who studies street vending and design solutions for vendors.

In mid-May of this year, Olivia Maher posted a simple tiktok in her kitchen describing a meal she dubbed “Girl Dinner”— low effort meals consisting of a smorgasbord of ingredients scavenged from the fridge, freezer, and pantry. What started as a quick video has turned into a viral trend with thousands of videos using the Girl Dinner hashtag set to songs that have been made to accompany the trend.  Now, in August, it seems that Girl Dinners are here to stay. In an internet culture where trends cycle faster than ever, what is it that has made this one so ubiquitous? With the release of Greta Gerwig’s sensational Barbie Movie, and the seasonal staples of “Hot Girl Walks”, and “Hot Girl Summer”, a renewed embrace of a feminine identity online seems to have set the stage for the still-growing internet trend. The ethos of Girl Dinner removes the pressure to produce high-labor and aesthetically pleasing meals, and instead embraces indulgence and cravings which result in an oddly satisfying weirdness to the plates presented on social media.  Olivia Maher, creator of the Girl Dinner, and Mold Magazine’s Madeleine Young discuss all things Girl Dinner in this episode of Food Futures.

Lesbian bars were disappearing at an alarming rate. But might we be entering a renaissance of the sapphic space? Journalist Meghan McCarron and bar owners Emily Bielagus and Mara Herbkersman of The Ruby Fruit are on the podcast to discuss.

Erewhon, the buzzy LA-based grocery chain, Erewhon, is known for selling things like 20$ smoothies with hyaluronic acid and 30$ jugs of oxygenated water. It's understandably earned its viral reputation as “America’s Most Expensive Grocery Store.” But it might come as a surprise to recent customers and haters alike, that the health-food store actually has its roots in a mission of world peace. MOLD's Senior Editor, Isabel Ling discusses with Ludwig Hurtado on this episode of the Food Futures podcast, revealing the untold story of how this grocer got from Boston to Beverly Hills.  Read Isabel's full story for MOLD here.

More and more restaurants are beginning to experiment with NFT membership programs, where token-holders can get that coveted VIP treatment at their establishments. The writer, Terry Nguyen⁠ comes on the Food Futures podcast to discuss whether NFT's will change the dining industry as we know it. Nguyen is a writer, critic, and poet who currently works as a senior staff writer for Dirt, a Web3 media company. Before that, she wrote about consumerism, technology, and pop culture for Vox. 

What's so bad about using a gas stove? And is the Biden Administration really putting a ban on them? In order to understand why gas stoves have become such a contentious topic in the news, we reached out to Rebecca Leber. She’s a senior reporter at Vox, where she covers climate change. She’s been reporting about gas stoves long before they were making headlines, so she helps us understand what people have been getting wrong about the topic. She also gives us some realistic tips about how to go electric.

Whether you’re the target audience or not, you’ve probably come across one of The Liver King's videos before. He's infamous online for posting videos of himself eating raw meat. Now, he's come under fire because it’s been revealed that he actually uses steroids in order to achieve the physique that he touts as a result of his diet. On this episode of the Food Futures podcast, we’re joined by writer Jack Bachmann, who wrote an essay for MOLD Magazine about the Liver King. We talk about the ways that Raw meat diets are about a lot more than just food. Read Jack's full essay here: http://bit.ly/3kEKpsB

Alicia Kennedy is a food writer based in Puerto Rico. On this episode of the Food Futures podcast, she joins the show to discuss ways we can mitigate climate change through eating. Read Alicia's piece for MOLD reflecting on the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recommendations: http://bit.ly/3Hd4vSA