Copper & Heat Radio
Plated with care.
Exploring the forces that shape our meals through narrative, sound-rich podcasts.
2023 & 2019 James Beard Media Award Winner
Where to Start
If you’re a new listener…welcome! We’re glad you’re here. To help you get started, here are some of our most popular episodes.
Be A Girl: Brigade
Our first season, Be A Girl, is a sound-rich, serialized narrative focused on the question: why do women only represent 19% of chefs, and 7% of head chefs, across the culinary world?
We start with the Brigade, asking the questions: Why are restaurant kitchens organized the way they are? And what do women do to work their way up the ranks in a kitchen?
Winner of the 2019 James Beard Media Award for Best Podcast.
Tasting Menus: A Dining Experience
This 6-course audio experience takes you through dishes from pivotal points in the history of the modern tasting menu.
Abalone: The Cost of Consumption
In this episode, we explore the various forces that led to the near-extinction of abalone and how the government ban has criminalized the millennia-old culinary customs of indigenous people like Hillary Renick, a Pomo-Paiute woman who has risked jail time and fines to keep those food traditions alive.
Winner of the 2023 James Beard Media Award for Audio Programming.
Zero Stars: Why is a Tire Company Rating Food?
When Copper & Heat Radio host Katy worked in the Bay Area in her early 20s, she would have given the Michelin Guide 3 stars because those were the restaurants she had to work in to learn the most innovative and interesting food. How has that changed?
Katy and co-producer Rachel investigate the history, data, and money behind the Michelin Guide in the U.S. By the end of the research, Katy and Rachel have very different ratings for the Guide than what their 24-year-old selves would have given it.
Explore All 4 Seasons
Season 4: Value
In this season of Copper & Heat Radio, we explored the concepts of value and craft in the world of food. Why are some cuisines considered more valuable than others (and therefore command a higher price point)? Is food art, craft, or both? Why is restaurant labor considered "low-skill" and undervalued?
Listen: Season 4 trailer | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify
Season 3: Pre-Shift
Named for the pre-service meetings where staff get all the updates and specials, Season 3 focused on the issues hospitality workers face every day that were made even worse by the pandemic. Each episode is advice, tips, tricks, and frameworks from experts on how to deal. Some of the topics in this season include:
Setting boundaries and negotiating raises and promotions
Coping with stress and supporting others through mental health challenges
Understanding DEIA, privilege, and bias
Collective action and unionizing in hospitality
Listen: Season 3 trailer | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify
Season 2: Overhead
“Storytelling by professional restaurant workers to demonstrate how badly the economics of restaurant labor need disrupting.”
From questioning long-standing traditions like the tipping system, to adapting to new trends like the explosion of food delivery apps, each episode of Overhead tells the story of a restaurant approaching their business in a way that is different than the norm. Some of the stories in this season include:
Understaffed and contending with current immigration policies with Teresa Montaño in Los Angeles, CA
Changes in take-out and when tech gets involved in food at Homeroom in Oakland, CA
Sharing finances with employees and open book management at Mei Mei in Boston, MA
Finding value in a meal and in restaurant work at Kin in Boise, ID
Listen: Season 2 trailer | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify
Season 1: Be A Girl
“...a deep dive into the exclusionary traditions around gender, identity and femininity in the kitchens of fine-dining restaurants.”
Be A Girl is a sound-rich, serialized narrative focused on the question: why do women only represent 19% of chefs, and 7% of head chefs, across the culinary world?
Through co-creator Katy Osuna’s experience working in Michelin-starred kitchens in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the stories of other kitchen employees, we explore how the pressures of traditional masculinity in kitchens impact the people that work in them.
The eight episodes in this season weave together:
Katy’s personal narrative
Discussions with cooks who have worked in some of the country’s most elite restaurants
A conversation with Katy’s old boss, Chef David Kinch
A panel discussion between Chefs Dominique Crenn, Reem Assil, and Tonya Holland hosted by The New York Times
Listen: Season 1 trailer | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify
ALSO PRODUCED BY COPPER & HEAT
Loading Dock Talks with Chef Preeti Mistry
Each week, Chef Preeti talks with some of their favorite food folks about their lives, food and social justice, and they do a little shit-talking too.
