Filipino food scholar Bel Castro tells the oft-repeated story about a mythic era in the late 19th century in which wealth abounded for Philippine coffee growers thanks to lags in the world market. She debunks and complicates this myth with a political and post-colonial analysis that has relevance for all commodity tales today. "[The] history of coffee in the Philippines … is told as a fairytale of great golden days, that if you work hard and if we do our job right and we can go back to it...

What responsibilities do public institutions have in resisting the corporatization of food? Canadian chef and activist Joshna Maharaj shares the trials, the quirks and the successes of a one-year project to overhaul a Toronto hospital’s food system, taking it from frozen pre-packaged foods to fresh, local fare. "If there's any place on this planet that should have a rolling broth pot, I think it's a hospital." -- Ox Tales is produced by Anna Sigrithur, edited by Naomi Duguid and Fiona...

English food writer Bee Wilson traces the genealogy of kitchen utensils and how they shape our lives-- from vegetable peelers to paleo lithic knives, chopsticks and even the mortar and pestle. She begs the question: why shouldn’t we consider kitchen tools to be just as important as military or industrial technology? "We think technology means cannons or, I don't know, guns-- and we forget it could be a pot or a pan or even a wooden spoon."  -- Ox Tales is produced by Anna Sigrithur, edited by...

Arctic culinary scholar Zona Spray Starks explains the diverse range culinary techniques of the Iñupiat people of Alaska, and how the seasonal food landscape shaped family relations. While doing so, she shares the story of her later-in-life return to Alaska and the connections she's built there.  "Frozen is a way of altering food and cooking is a way of altering food, but freezing does the same thing. …And in fact the taste is very different when the meat is almost thawed, it's still a little...

What do famine foods throughout history tell us about the world in which they were eaten? Medieval food and magic scholar Andrea Maraschi makes a mythical and historical foray into the history of the lowliest yet most versatile famine food in Europe, the acorn.  "In times of hardships we need to keep trusting that things are going to get better. We need to keep thinking that yes we are still ourselves we are still who we used to be yesterday and the day before. The easiest way to do so is...

Many indigenous communities around Turtle Island (North America) are reclaiming relationships to ancestral seeds after hundreds of years of disconnection due to colonial violence. Chef Sean Sherman and scholar Elizabeth Hoover tell the tales of seeds, seed-keepers, and indigenous chefs who are bringing traditional foods back into focus. "Thinking about seeds as living relatives-- how do you ensure that they continue to have a relationship with other people in your family, in your community,...

What happens when one people’s traditional food is also an international controlled substance? Turkish architect and food researcher Aylin Öney Tan goes on a deep dive into the history of opium poppy cultivation for food in Anatolia and the subsequent decades of international political interference in Turkey’s agricultural production. “The] opium poppy has always been a source of food for Anatolian people. You have to grow your own food and you have to be self sustained, that’s it!”  Ox Tales...

World-renowned fermentation revivalist Sandor Ellix Katz embarks upon a philosophical and biological journey into the origins of multicellular life, and how the multi-species activity of fermenting foods has played a central role in the evolution of microbes, our bodies-- and even our culture. “To embrace bacteria particularly as part of our food is a great way to make sure we are increasing biodiversity in our own bodies and maximizing our adaptive potential by embracing the presence of...

Announcing Season Two of Ox Tales, premiering April 10th, 2019!  Listen here for a teaser of the Tales to come.  For more information, including the lineup and guest information, visit our website, www.oxfordsymposium.org.uk/podcast.  We'll see you in a few weeks!  

Retired LA Times food writer and food historian Charles Perry explains how the 19th century Los Angeles practice of earth-pit barbecuing whole bulls became a culinary craze for settlers who saw the eating of the bull’s head as a wild west delicacy, and how the rise of Hollywood changed the practice into what we know today as the backyard barbecue. “People had this obscure sense that they had been having too much fun in the 20s and they now were being punished and so everything became suave...

English performance artist and food scholar Amanda Couch reprises the ancient Mesopotamian art of liver divination, and tries to answer questions from mortality to Brexit by reading the lines and lobes on a sheep's liver.   “Chance, when you use it to make a composition or to make a decision to do something, it’s taking away from those enlightenment ideas of hierarchies of what art is and returning them back to where they were in prehistoric times when art objects were connected to...

In Japan, 'slurp' is more than just eating-related onomatopoeia. Japanese cultural and food historian Voltaire Cang researches and explores the significance of this important sound in the complex role it plays when people eat noodle dishes (ramen, in particular) and during the refined tea ceremony, Chado. “it's not because people here aren’t taught about manners. It's because it IS manners to slurp your noodles.” --- Ox Tales is produced by Anna Sigrithur and edited by Fiona Sinclair...

Fozia Ismail, a British-Somali social anthropologist and food activist, challenges the easy consumption of foods with roots in colonialism by exploring the ways different people in Brexit-era Britain see the culinary landscape around them. “As the place became more hostile, I was craving home comfort food, and my comfort food is Somali food. You know?....  I really wanted my mum's food.” --- Ox Tales is produced by Anna Sigrithur and edited by Fiona Sinclair and Naomi Duguid with...

Third generation French foie gras producer Guillemette Barthouil takes you on a history lesson that spans thousands of years and an ocean as she makes the case that foie gras is the quantum offal- a food that is both loved and reviled. “I think foie gras is really an interesting topic because it is an offal and is not an offal at the same time. That is why I call it the quantum offal.” --- Ox Tales is produced by Anna Sigrithur and edited by Fiona Sinclair and Naomi Duguid with...

What do the Pillsbury Bake Off and molecular gastronomy have in common? Culinary historian and food writer Laura Shapiro unwraps the significance of gender to the prestige afforded to different arenas of innovation-driven cuisine by examining the history of the USA’s oldest cooking competition. “Home cooking has always been the kind of cooking that is supposed to kind of go without notice, except in the world of the family, where you're supposed to be rewarded by the happy faces around the...

Hello dear listeners, We are delighted to announce the official launch of Season One of Ox Tales, beginning on April 18. Please enjoy this trailer of highlights of what's to come! Ox Tales is the podcast that serves up rich and surprising stories about food and how it makes us who we are- from the Oxford Food Symposium.   Every year since 1981, hundreds of scholars, writers, chefs and enthusiastic amateurs from all around the world gather at the Oxford Food Symposium to share their...