This is a guest post by Nancy Groce, Senior Folklife Specialist at the American Folklife Center.
The American Folklife Center is delighted to announce the launch of Season 6 of its popular America Works podcast! The new eight-episode season, which starts today, focuses on food. Specifically, it features excerpts from longer Occupational Folklife Project (OFP) interviews with contemporary American workers involved in growing, harvesting, preparing, and feeding other Americans.
Just in time for Labor Day, Episode 1 is available today, September 29, 2024, at this link. Subsequent episodes will be released each Thursday through October 17, 2024.
Each podcast episode is short (5- to 7-minutes) and gives listeners a “taste” of the work lives of food workers, whose full-length interviews are available online as part of the AFC’s Occupational Folklife Project (OFP).
To date, OFP has produced and archived in-depth, hour-long interviews documenting stories, experiences, and perspectives of more than 2,000 contemporary American workers in scores of trades and hundreds of locations throughout the United States. Recently, the AFC posted its 50th OFP (Editor’s note: see Celebrating the Online Launch of the Fiftieth Occupational Folklife Project – And How It Got There!) and more are in the works.
You can read descriptions of each Season 6 episode below. Or, if you just want to jump to the podcast itself, it is available at this link, with the most recent episode on top.
Season 6 Episodes
Episode 1: David Swett, the owner of Swett’s Restaurant, a culinary landmark in Nashville, Tennessee since 1954, talks about running a family-owned African American business, working in the food industry, Southern cooking, and his pride in being part of the Nashville community.
Episode 2: April Matson, manager of the Pitt Stop food concession at the legendary Ransomville Speedway, a family-owned dirt track racecourse in western New York, talks about her job, why food is such an important part of the Speedway experience, and preparing popular local specialties — including ‘flat dogs’ and hand cut fries.
Episode 3: Alfred Quijance, a fisherman and subsistence harvester from Seldovia, Alaska, talks about growing up in a remote Alutiiq/Sugpiaq community on Kodiak Island, learning traditional Native American seining, fishing and harvesting, and leaving at age 13 to find work on fishing boats and canneries throughout the state of Alaska.
Episode 4: Emily Daniel, one of a small but growing number of female agricultural pilots – or, as they are often called “crop dusters” – talks about learning to fly planes as a teenager, career challenges, and managing a small family-owned crop spraying business that services farms from New Jersey to Texas.
Episode 5: Jade Sato, the founder and owner of Minoru Farm in Brighton, Colorado, talks about being part of a growing movement of Asian American farmers, many of them women, who are experimenting with raising and marketing Asian heritage crops, like shiso, ginger, and gobo root, for a rapidly diversifying American palate.
Episode 6: German American sausage maker George Neiden, who owns and runs the Old Country Sausage Kitchen in Maple Heights, Ohio, talks about learning and plying his trade and the delight he takes in creating new sausage varieties.
Episode 7: Phuong Mai Nguyen and her husband Amp Phettaphong, owners of the popular Indochine Café in Columbus, Ohio, talk about coming to the US and establishing their family restaurant, which features the traditional dishes they grew up with in Vietnam and Laos.
Episode 8: Dale Baumgartener, long-time Head Cheese Maker at the Tillamook County Creamery Association, a farmer-owned cheese and dairy cooperative in costal Oregon, talks about growing up on a dairy farm, his start in the cheese industry, and his pride in working for a nationally recognized brand like Tillamook Cheese.
The first five seasons of America Works, launched in August 2020, April 2021, January 2002, March 2023, and March 2024 respectively, are also available. Listen and subscribe at this link.