“Tell me about your mama’s kitchen”—this podcast’s opening salvo transports guests (and listeners) to a specific time and place, evoking memories of sights, sounds and smells that shaped their identity. Michele Norris, former NPR All Things Considered host and Washington Post columnist, understands this power and uses it to create something genuinely moving.
Produced by the Obamas’s Higher Ground media company, this podcast explores how those early kitchen experiences—recipes passed down, traditions upheld or abandoned, moments of connection over shared meals—fundamentally influenced guests’s worldviews.
When Michelle Obama, Kevin Kwan or John Legend open up about their childhood food memories, Norris’s seasoned interviewing skills draw out the deeper connections between nourishment, identity and belonging in ways that transcend typical celebrity conversations.