The Trip

Latest Episodes:

We'll Meet You There Apr 18, 2019

Show notes

In just one week we'll be launching with Luminary Audio. Visit luminary.link/trip to keep drinking, talking, and traveling with us.

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Episode 34: Dr. Howard Conyers is Reclaiming BBQ for Black Pitmasters Apr 08, 2019

Show notes

We are in mid-city New Orleans with Dr. Howard Conyers, host of the PBS show Nourish, a rocket scientist by day and whole hog barbecue pitmaster by night and by weekend. If we have to have only one more episode in this flagrantly fabulous town, then we’re glad it's with Dr. Conyers. He is originally from the deep South, the rural South, but he chose to make New Orleans his home after Katrina. We talked about that move and about how black pitmasters are reclaiming barbecue and about exactly what space engineering and fire-meets-pig engineering have in common.

Episode 34 Show Notes:

Check out Dr. Conyers’ PBS show Nourish.Stay tuned for updates on lawyer and food historian Adrian Miller's upcoming book on barbecue called Black Smoke.

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Episode 33: Pepper Bowen is Laying Down the Food Law in New Orleans Apr 01, 2019

Show notes

New Orleans is so old, so fine, so big in the culture, and so vast in its disappointments and its triumphs, that it feels odd to mention just one side of the crescent kaleidoscope. But we have to call out one thing that has long attracted us to the city: New Orleans is like Disneyland for day-drinkers.

In other cities, we sometimes have to apologize a bit for asking our guests to drink before sundown. When The Trip editor Tafi told this week’s guest, the food lawyer Pepper Bowen, that we were interested in a little midday hard alcohol, she wrote back immediately: “Sounds Festive!” That is our kind of lawyer, our kind of town.

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Episode 32: L. Kasimu Harris Imagines an Uprising in New Orleans Mar 25, 2019

Show notes

There is nothing more political, fascinating, uplifting, infuriating than school. The country we are as reflected in our education system is not always how we would like to think of ourselves. But the reflection is true. Take Nathan’s city of New York—last week the city’s best public school (Stuyvesant) sent out 895 acceptance letters for the class of 2023, but only 7 of those went to black students. SEVEN. In a school district where almost 70% of the students are black or Hispanic, it is outrageous. But it’s not just New York, it’s everywhere, including one of America’s greatest cities, New Orleans. A majority black city, that still failing its African-American students in some very important ways.

The Trip is going to do three episodes from New Orleans, all with African-American guests—an artist, a lawyer, and a rocket scientist/BBQ pitmaster. It feels especially right to start this week in a school, talking with artist and author L. Kasimu Harris who has made education a centerpiece of his work in some very surprising ways. There were hard conversations in the Big Easy but Nathan and his guests had a good time nonetheless.

Episode 32 Show Notes:

See more images of the heroic teen leading the education rebellion in Kasimu’s War on the Benightedseries.

Keep an eye on Kasimu’s other ongoing project: Vanishing Black Bars and Lounges.

We highly recommend that you watch Treme, HBO’s drama series set in post-Katrina New Orleans.

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Episode 31: Francis Lam is on a Bleisure Trip to Thailand Mar 18, 2019

Show notes

The morning after a wedding—any big party—is usually a little groggy. It’s not necessarily unpleasant, especially if it’s February in Thailand and the air is a little bit cool and very humid, and you’re kicking around in a quiet village along the Ping River with someone like Francis Lam. Francis, besides being a classically-trained chef, former New York Times columnist, lauded cookbook editor at Clarkson Potter, and host of The Splendid Table on American Public Media is also one of the truly good people in the world of food and letters. So, Nathan was pleased, not just to get some good stories from his time in Thailand, but also to be able to annoy the living shit out of him with one very trashy word—a portmanteau, really—near the end of the show. Nathan may not be an adversarial news magazine reporter any more, but it’s good to know that he can still piss an interview subject off for business or for pleasure.

Episode 31 Show Notes:

If you’re not already listening to Francis Lam’s weekly radio show, what are you doing with your life? Head over the The Splendid Table.

Influential chef Andy Ricker’s roster of Thai restaurants: Pok Pok

Check out the lovely Khun Narata's Instagram.

Bangkok-based Austin Bush's book dives into the cuisine of northern Thailand:

The Food of Northern Thailand

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Episode 30: Naomi Duguid on the Charms of Chiang Mai Mar 11, 2019

Show notes

The Trip host Nathan Thornburgh would not be the first person to admit to falling deeply, darkly in love with the markets of Southeast Asia. There’s just something about the slurry of exhaust, sticky air and stickier rice, knockoff Premier League kits, fresh fruit, and dried worms, wild lime leaves, mango hawkers, and sausage mongers. They hit you in all the senses. They imprint on your brain. And nobody has helped Nathan and countless others decode that imprint and make sense of those markets more than Naomi Duguid—a guide, savant, author, and all-around bridge from West to East.

Naomi basically invented a deeply popular genre of book: the wandering, anthropological journalistic cookbook. With classics like Hot Sour Salty Sweet, Burma: Rivers of Flavor, and Taste of Persia. Of all the places she could have settled on Earth, she settled in Chiang Mai, Thailand, where she lives half of the year. That’s why Nathan, oh so thirsty at the end of dry January, chose Naomi to help him break his fast with fermented sticky rice wine and that delightfully downmarket thing they call Thai whiskey, which is actually rum.

Episode 30 Show Notes:

Hot Sour Salty Sweet

Burma: Rivers of Flavor

Taste of Persia

Salt: A World History

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Episode 29: Creating Thai Cinema with Tom Waller Mar 04, 2019

Show notes

In this week’s episode, you’ll hear the bird call of the Asian koel, but the real soundtrack of Bangkok is the internal combustion engine: the mopeds and the Mazda 2s. It’s a city of perpetual motion. Just be sure to look both ways before crossing.

This is the first of three episodes we’ll be running from Thailand.We’re starting off with Tom Waller, a Thai-Irish filmmaker who took me for a classic Bangkok morning fix—roadside Thai iced tea—and chatted with Nathan at his home studio about a big film he’s making, The Cave. It’s the only Thai-led film in the works about the dramatic Tham Luang cave rescue in Chiang Rai. They talked about smog, tea, and filmmaking in the Kingdom of Thailand.

Episode 29 Show Notes:

The Last Executioner

Mindfulness and Murder

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Episode 28: Tokyo Fixing with Shinji Nohara Feb 25, 2019

Show notes

Shinji Nohara has been making good things happen for visitors to Tokyo for almost two decades—ever since a lanky camera-shy writer named Anthony Bourdain arrived with Lydia Tenaglia and Chris Collins to shoot their first television episode ever. Shinji was the fixer for that episode. First, he found out what Tony’s food-kinks were, and then he delivered those deepest desires in one single sizzling experience that, by Tony’s own admission, changed his life. That’s Shinji’s job, and nobody does it better than him. So of course, on a layover from Bangkok earlier this month, I asked Shinji to jury-rig two hours of wish fulfillment for me. In this case, it was a layup for the man: a bowl of Setagaya ramen, an extremely cold and fresh beer, and a deep conversation with Shinji in Haneda airport’s new terminal is, to be totally honest, my dream breakfast.

Episode 28 Show Notes:

A Cook’s Tour

Kitchen Confidential

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Episode 27: Japanese Love Hotels with Toko Sekiguchi Feb 18, 2019

Show notes

This podcast episode should have porn, right?” It’s an odd but necessary question to put to my old friend and former TIME Magazine colleague, Tokyo-based business journalist Toko Sekiguchi. But she’s a gamer, that Toko, and for this episode, falling close to Valentine’s Day, she’s taking us inside the world of Japanese Love Hotels. Toko and I have done this before, four years ago, while I was reporting for Matt Goulding’s book Rice, Noodle, Fish. But Japan is always in flux, and the infidelity industrial complex keeps on growing. So she and I are back. As a warning, just in case the last 26 episodes of this show haven’t made it clear: this is not appropriate content for children. Or even for spouses. Discretion advised.

Episode 27 Show Notes:

Rice, Noodle, Fish

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Episode 26: Yasmin Khan Cooks Her Way through Palestine Feb 11, 2019

Show notes

Chef, author and former human rights campaigner Yasmin Khan seems to have a mission statement very like our own at Roads & Kingdoms. That is, pay attention to what’s on the plate in a way that might spark some change and bring people together (and have a damned good time doing so). There aren’t many books that try to do all of that as gorgeously as Zaitoun, Yasmin’s new book about Palestinian cuisine. We met a while back at the Roads & Kingdoms office in Brooklyn as Yasmin somehow hacked a pretty decent Old Monk hot toddy from our office kitchen. Her book Zaitoun is out this week in the United States, and we’re a better country for it.

Episode 26 Show Notes:

Yasmin's gorgeous cookbooks

Zaitoun: Recipes and Stories from the Palestinian Kitchen

The Saffron Tales: Recipes from the Persian Kitchen

The Roads & Kingdoms Perfect Dish series with Anthony Bourdain and Yasmin Khan:

Perfect Dish Okinawa

Perfect Dish Tokyo

From the closing notes

Midnight in Chernobyl: The Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster by Adam Higginbotham BUY THIS BOOK TOO. It's excellent

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