In Perspective

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May 19, 2015

What Are We Eating?

By: Rebecca McInroy

This episode explores historical and contemporary attitudes about the food industry and our food traditions. Our discussants share the major topics that affects the food industry today.

The Discussion

Tom Philpott is a Food and Agriculture Correspondent for Mother Jones.  While studying food and cooking traditions around the world, Tom noticed that American food traditions were being lost to fast food and food processing companies. Tom questions how we can hold onto our food traditions when so much of our food industry is controlled by a small number of companies and their lobbyists that manipulate the federal government. Tom discusses the regulation systems in place that still allow for potentially harmful additives in our food.

Raj Patel is a research professor in the LBJ School of public affairs at UT-Austin, and the author of “Stuffed and Starved” and “The Value of Nothing”.  Raj encourages the globalization of food traditions, emphasizing that many food traditions evolved out of the mixing of cultures.  Raj also focuses on issues of food and national identity.

Marla Camp is the owner and editor of Edible Austin.  She is motivated to bring awareness about food back into the community surrounding and connect them back to where their food comes from.  Marla emphasizes education as a way to strengthen people’s relationship to their food and to the understanding about the true value of food to our body.

What is your perspective?

Food traditions shift and change to adapt to the systems in place to get it to our dinner table. How will the food systems in place today affect our food traditions of tomorrow?

With all the information out there about what to eat and what not to eat, how do you approach the food that ends up on your dinner table?


Episodes

May 19, 2015

What Are We Eating?

This episode explores historical and contemporary attitudes about the food industry and our food traditions. Our discussants share the major topics that affects the food industry today. The Discussion Tom Philpott is a Food and Agriculture Correspondent for Mother Jones.  While studying food and cooking traditions around the world, Tom noticed that American food traditions […]

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April 2, 2015

Women, Gender, & Sexuality

This episode recognizes women, gender, and sexuality with a discussion of the complexities of gender and sexuality from contemporary and historical perspectives. Our discussants share what they’ve learned from their respective research projects, while exploring how privilege and power function in constructions of gender and sexuality. Ultimately, they agree that listening with empathy to each […]

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March 4, 2015

Race In America

Race in America This month’s episode recognizes Black History Month by bringing together several scholars for a discussion of race in contemporary America. As we look back on 2014, we celebrate the achievements of African-Americans, but we also find racial inequality and abuses of power and privilege that continue to endanger and oppress non-white Americans. […]

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January 28, 2015

Home and Homelessness

This month’s episode explores what it means to be displaced or without a home. Our new roundtable participants ask: How do we define “home”? Is it a house? Is it family, a sense of community? Is it a place or a feeling? The discussants share their perspectives, from the practical concerns of living on the […]

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December 4, 2014

Artificial Intelligence

In this edition of In Perspective we teamed up with KUT’s Views and Brews for a discussion on various elements of and debates over Artificial Intelligence. What does it actually mean to think? How does understanding how computers work inform what we understand about the brain? And what is on the horizon for us in […]

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October 17, 2014

War Memorials, Trauma and Identity

This month on In Perspective, our roundtable participants discuss public memory in relation to grief, war, and memorials such as the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. Two of our guests represent that museum, which commemorates the September 11 attacks of 2001 and the World Trade Center bombing of 1993. Also joining us are two […]

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September 15, 2014

Israel and Palestine

In the first half of this edition of In Perspective host Rebecca McInroy of KUT Radio talks with: Dr. Amelia Weinreb, lecturer at the Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Texas; Dr. Yoav Di-Capua, History Professor at UT and author of Arab Existentialism: A lost chapter in the intellectual history of decolonization; […]

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