Podcast

Taja Cheek aka L'Rain joins host Carmel Holt this week to discuss her brilliant, genre-bending, and multiverse of a third album, I Killed Your Dog, which saw Taja contemplating definitions / redefinitions of womanhood and femininity. An in-depth look at Taja's journey thus far reveals an artist who has always been an intrepid explorer of musical worlds: from her classical training on piano, cello, and recorder as a child, to crate digging through her father's record collection, to teaching herself bass so that she could play bands and join the ranks of a burgeoning Brooklyn scene of rock, DIY, experimental, and noise, then taking a self-determined path that led her out of the racist and sexist environment of her college music program to throwing shows and working as music director of her college radio station, where Taja would go even deeper into music discovery and gathering the seeds of her future musical self as L'Rain.

How fun it was to have our old friend Chris Ying on the show. Chris is a cookbook author, podcast host, and the cofounder and former editor in chief of Lucky Peach. He’s currently running point at Majordomo Media, and he cohosts the podcast The Dave Chang Show with you can guess who. On this episode we find out about Chris’s cookbook writing career, including the fact that he’s authored one of our favorite books of all time (no joke). We talk about what makes great “food content” in 2023, working on a show with David Chang, Koreatown's LA expansion, and Chris’s big plans at Majordomo Media. Also on the show we have a lively conversation with the authors of a great new book, But First, Coffee: A Guide to Brewing from the Kitchen to the Bar. Jordan Michelman and Zachary Carlsen are old friends, and run the influential coffee publication, Sprudge. We talk about all things coffee, including making it at home and drinking better in cafes. Make sure to check out their new book, as well as The New Rules Of Coffee, published by Ten Speed Press in 2019. This conversation is part of our ongoing TASTE Live at Rizzoli series in New York City.  Do you enjoy This Is TASTE? Drop us a review on Apple, or star us on Spotify. We'd love to hear from you.  MORE FROM CHRIS YING:Meat and Threes, Underappreciated Po’boys, and Dave’s Boba Order [David Chang Podcast]Recipe Club: Instant Potato Flakes [The Ringer] This Is TASTE 194: Bill Addison [TASTE] Buy: The Wurst of Lucky Peach, Ivan Ramen

"The only way to function is with your instinct."

Dave, Nate, DEM, and DJ Cutso share even more takes about Enter The Wu Tang

The Roots begin to fully form as they record and release their first LP

We’re thrilled to welcome Sohla El-Waylly back to the show. Sohla is a prodigious recipe developer, a fixture of food YouTube, and a judge on HBO’s cooking competition The Big Brunch. Next week she will release her debut cookbook, Start Here: Instructions for Becoming a Better Cook. It’s a terrific book, and we discuss many of the recipes and techniques, and how Sohla photographed the book in her New York City apartment. We also talk about her love of Top Chef, her own reality cooking show turn, and what excites her most—including breakfast at Veselka.  Do you enjoy This Is TASTE? Drop us a review on Apple, or star us on Spotify. We'd love to hear from you.   MORE FROM SOHLA EL-WAYLLY:Pizza Salad [NYT Cooking]Mystery Menu With Sohla and Ham El-Waylly [NYT Cooking]This Is TASTE 189: Sohla El-Waylly [TASTE]