Mo Rocca Likes Big Ravioli, And He Cannot Lie (Reheat)

Humorist, CBS Sunday Morning correspondent, and former Cooking Channel host Mo Rocca joins Dan to talk about his grandma, debate whether square or round ravioli is better, and tell us which variety is the Kenny G of ravioli.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dan Pashman?

  As we turn to fall and the weather starts to cool down, I think of things like crunching leaves. I think of sharing from the sidelines of a soccer game, walking the dog in the woods. And when I think of doing all those things, I'm usually wearing something from LL Bean. Whether it's my puffer vest, my puffer coat, my scarf, whatever you're doing outside this year, you probably need something from LL Bean, whether it's their boots, their Scotch plaid flannel, their rugged field coat, or more. Grab the layers and people you love and get outside. Visit llbean.com to shop the fall collection. LL Bean, be an outsider. As someone who has been lucky enough to go to Napa Valley, I can tell you, it's everything people say it is. Beautiful scenery, quaint, beautiful towns, and phenomenal food and

• 0:44Dan Pashman?

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• 1:16Dan Pashman?

  Hey, everyone. Dan here with a reheat for you with really just one of my very favorite people. I really feel like he's one of a kind. There are certain types of jokes, certain delivery, a certain perspective on the world. That's just quintessentially Mo Rocca. And in a world where there are so many voices out there, it is rare to find someone who is so distinct. And that's why I love Mo. He's a correspondent for CBS Sunday Morning and the host and creator of My Grandmother's Ravioli on the Cooking Channel. And yes, as a matter of fact, we did spend most of our conversation talking in detail about ravioli. Remember, there's an episode of The Sporkful you want us to pull out of the deep freezer and reheat? I want to know about it. Send us an email or voice memo to [email protected].

• 1:58Dan Pashman?

  Tell me your first name, location, what episode you want to hear, and why. Thank you so much, and enjoy Mo Rocca.

• 2:06Speaker 01

  Well, my grandmothers were, I'm gonna guess, this is gonna sound outrageous maybe, but they were close to nine inches square, three by three.

• 2:20Dan Pashman?

  This is Mo Rocca. You know him from CBS Sunday Morning and the cooking channel show, My Grandmother's Ravioli. And he's talking about exactly that, his grandmother's ravioli.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  They were really big. That would be like, on each edge being about, being a quarter of a foot long. That might be a little bit of an exaggeration. It was two and a half inches probably by two and a half inches.

• 2:41Dan Pashman?

  Okay.

• 2:41Speaker 01

  Definitely more than two inches. So they were, they were big panes. They were big,

• 2:47Speaker 01

  yeah, square panes, basically. I mean, she could have, she could have worked like in a glass shop or something, putting these things together. And so I have a sentimental attachment to that. I don't like the little ones, because the little ones, even though they're cute, and, you know, they, they almost become...

• 3:09Dan Pashman?

  They have a bad ratio.

• 3:11Speaker 01

  They have a bad ratio, and they almost become like, like, supersized m'nyaki.

• 3:16Dan Pashman?

  Right.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  They look like, they become too doughy.

• 3:18Dan Pashman?

  Yeah. You need that ratio, the fillings to the pasta.

• 3:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, it also casts suspicion on the value, if you're getting your money's worth, because if they're too little, you start to think, oh, this is all shell, or jacket, or whatever.

• 3:33Dan Pashman?

  It's all dough.

• 3:34Speaker 01

  All dough. In the same way that if you get fish and chips, and it's like, this is, or tempura, or tempura even.

• 3:40Dan Pashman?

  Right.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  These are awfully small. Is this just all batter and coating?

• 3:44Dan Pashman?

  Right. And batter, it costs like five cents.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. So that actually, that worries me.

• 3:48Dan Pashman?

  So if you get like a lobster ravioli dish, and you got, it's mostly dough, and it was 20 bucks.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  Great point, yeah.

• 3:55Dan Pashman?

  You got jacked.

• 3:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:03Dan Pashman?

  Today on the Sporkful, Mo Rocca on ravioli. Which is better, round or square? What's the ideal ratio of pouch pasta to trim pasta? And why does Mo describe his relationship to ravioli as sort of a Madonna whore thing? Stay with us and find out.

• 4:32Dan Pashman?

  This is The Sporkful. It's not for foodies, it's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman, and we're about to challenge your assumptions about consumption and drop a sporkful of knowledge on you because we're obsessively compulsive about eating more awesomely, and because if history has taught us anything, it's that the hosts of food shows need a lot of catchphrases. Great show for you today, and I can't wait to get right into it. Today's topic for mastication and rumination is ravioli.

• 4:59Dan Pashman?

  Joining me now is a man whose work I've admired for a long time. He's a correspondent for CBS Sunday Morning, a panelist on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, and the host of Cooking Channel's My Grandmother's Ravioli. Mo Rocca, welcome to The Sporkful.

• 5:11Speaker 01

  Dan, thanks for having me.

• 5:13Dan Pashman?

  So you have a show on Cooking Channel called My Grandmother's Ravioli. In just a bit, I want to talk in more detail about that. But first, let's just talk about ravioli, the food. The most contentious issue, I think, in any ravioli discussion has got to be round versus square. Ravioli. Which do you think is better to eat, and why?

• 5:37Speaker 01

  Well, like a lot of things, I'm torn between what I actually want and what I think I should want. And there's a whole lot of guilt mixed in. The whole series was driven by guilt for not having helped my grandmother in the kitchen. And so I feel especially protective of her ravioli, which was indeed delicious. They were big squares, big, kind of delicate squares. However, even during this intro, I'm thinking and kind of craving the metallic taste of the Chef Boyardee, which aren't exactly round, but are so kind of slimy and

• 6:20Speaker 01

  doughy and overdone and gelatinous almost, that they kind of are almost, they're glob-like, if, you know, not exactly round. So I'm kind of torn. I mean, those are my guilty pleasure. But it's sort of a Madonna-whore thing with me. My grandmother's, of course, is the Madonna, not as in material girl, but like the actual...

• 6:43Dan Pashman?

  The real Madonna.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, the real Madonna. And iconic, if you will. And they're square, and they are...

• 6:53Speaker 01

  Made by a woman who raised her child during the depression and she knew how to make strong corners on her ravioli. But the Chef Boyardee are just bad for you and oh so delicious. I mean, you date round ravioli, you marry square ravioli.

• 7:12Dan Pashman?

  Okay. When you eat Chef Boyardee ravioli, do you eat it right out of the can or do you pour it into a bowl?

• 7:20Speaker 01

  I couldn't eat it cold and you can't obviously, right, you can't microwave the can, so I'd have to, I put it into a bowl.

• 7:27Dan Pashman?

  Okay. And microwave. You could drop the can into boiling water.

• 7:31Speaker 01

  You could do that, but that almost seems a little too fancy or artisanal or something. That's too hipstery for me.

• 7:37Dan Pashman?

  Right, that's how they eat Chef Boyardee in Brooklyn.

• 7:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:41Dan Pashman?

  I think that I would have to go with square ravioli being better. And the reason is, if you look at the anatomy of a single ravioli, you have the pouch and the trim. That's like the two body parts of a ravioli.

• 7:56Speaker 01

  The pouch and the trim.

• 7:57Dan Pashman?

  The pouch is the part that holds the fillings. The trim is the border where the two pieces of pasta are pressed together.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:04Dan Pashman?

  Okay, and so by nature, in a ravioli, the trim-

• 8:09Speaker 01

  I just had to argue with the premise of your question.

• 8:12Dan Pashman?

  Please, go on.

• 8:13Speaker 01

  Because I think the singular might be raviolo.

• 8:15Dan Pashman?

  You're probably right.

• 8:17Speaker 01

  I think it might be.

• 8:18Dan Pashman?

  You're half Italian, right? That's more Italian than I am.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I took Latin. I went to a Jesuit high school, so I wonder if it's raviolis ravioli.

• 8:24Dan Pashman?

  Well, I Google it.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  Because I know if it was a raviola as a plural, that would be a raviolum. Like in the way that the singular of agenda is agendum, although nobody would say, "Let's argue this agendum."

• 8:36Dan Pashman?

  The internet seems to agree that it is raviolo.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  Raviolo. It's like when they go, "Oh, I've been hounded by that paparazzo."

• 8:46Speaker 01

  I have not been.

• 8:47Dan Pashman?

  Right. Okay, so thank you, Mo, for that correction. This is why we have you here. Raviolo. You have a raviolo, and you have the pouch, which holds the fillings, and you have the trim. Now, the trim, by definition, is twice as thick. Because it's two layers of pasta that have been pressed together around the trim, and only one layer in the middle, right?

• 9:08Speaker 01

  Yes, although I'm just suddenly having visions of the Flintstones. You know how they would do that? They'd have like a bird who would be like with the beak kind of doing the edge of... You know, they do that with the pies, that they make the little holes.

• 9:21Dan Pashman?

  Oh, like the fluting or the...

• 9:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I bet they would have... I mean, that would be if the Flintstones took place in ancient Italy, in like Stone Age Italy, like before the Romans. But they'd have like a bird doing it, and they press it down hard enough. And they always go like, "It's a living!" Like, when they come up. But anyway, I guess my point is whether you're using a prehistoric bird, or just an implement, or your finger, if you do it hard enough, I think you can compress it. So I'm not sure that it really would be twice as thick. Maybe the density would be twice.

• 9:52Dan Pashman?

  Okay, okay.

• 9:52Speaker 01

  But anyway, go on, sorry.

• 9:54Dan Pashman?

  But I do think that when you boil the raviolo, or a bunch of ravioli,

• 10:02Dan Pashman?

  the trim is always gonna be a little bit firmer. It's not quite the same consistency, the pasta around the pouch versus the pasta in the trim. And I like that textural contrast.

• 10:13Speaker 01

  I do too.

• 10:14Dan Pashman?

  And a square raviolo has a higher ratio of trim pasta to pouch pasta.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  Oh, right, because it's not a round shape. It's not the most efficient shape.

• 10:26Dan Pashman?

  That's right.

• 10:26Speaker 01

  And by the way, it's a flock of ravioli, not a bunch. Or is it an exaltation of ravioli?

• 10:31Dan Pashman?

  It's a gaggle, I think.

• 10:34Speaker 01

  A pot of ravioli.

• 10:35Dan Pashman?

  Right, that makes sense, actually.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  So that's a very interesting point. So you're getting more of the al dente, in a sense.

• 10:42Dan Pashman?

  That's right, that's right. And to me, like, one of the things that I love about ravioli is... Now, every time I say the word "ravioli," it doesn't sound right.

• 10:50Speaker 01

  I know.

• 10:50Dan Pashman?

  Even though, when I'm saying it correctly, you've ruined that word for me forever, Mo.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  Well, if we ever debate it, we should do it behind two different podiums.

• 11:03Dan Pashman?

  Done. But I love that textural contrast. And so I want the square because it has more of the trim. That two-sinkability that you get there. Do you have an opinion about the ideal trim size? Like, have you ever encountered ravioli that had too wide of a trim?

• 11:22Speaker 01

  You know, it's interesting. There were times with my grandmother's ravioli where the trim on a particular raviolo was too thin. And so it opened. It kind of... And it's the same anxiety I have of mailing a letter where I haven't spat enough on the envelope. I still think I use some of the... I had some of those envelopes left over with the glue.

• 11:50Dan Pashman?

  Right.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  And you worry... Or if you stuff a manila envelope with tax documents and it's bursting. I'd do that in my 20s and send everything in, all the receipts. And then you think, whoa, what if something... Is this a used envelope? I've recycled this envelope, this manila envelope. What if the edge of it splits open a little bit? And a vital receipt, like, sort of comes out? And/or the whole thing splits open? And I did have that anxiety sometimes with her ravioli, where a particular raviolo might have opened up on the edge. So I guess I prefer a good, probably, I would say, like, a quarter centimeter, maybe. Something like that. That might even still be too thin.

• 12:31Dan Pashman?

  That's pretty thin still.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  A half-centimeter. But I would not go to sort of an eighth of a centimeter.

• 12:36Dan Pashman?

  Okay, okay. Yeah, because if it opens up while cooking, that's a real shame.

• 12:40Speaker 01

  Well, that sucks. And because you're either going to get a watery raviolo, or you'll have a disemboweled raviolo. Either it'll be bloated, or it will be... It'll be dying. It'll die.

• 12:57Dan Pashman?

  Coming up, the conversation continues. Mo identifies the Kenny G of ravioli. And he tells us about his ravioli-related dispute with celebrity chef Lydia Bastianich. Stay with us.

• 13:20Speaker 02

  And now, a delicious word from our sponsors.

• 13:31Dan Pashman?

  As we turn to fall and the weather starts to cool down, I think of things like crunching leaves. I think of sharing from the sidelines of a soccer game, walking the dog in the woods. And when I think of doing all those things, I'm usually wearing something from LL Bean. Whether it's my puffer vest, my puffer coat, my scarf, whatever you're doing outside this year, you probably need something from LL Bean. Whether it's their boots, their Scotch plaid flannel, their rugged field coat, or more. Grab the layers and people you love and get outside. Visit llbean.com to shop the fall collection. LL Bean, be an outsider. Start the day strong with Quaker protein products. Quaker makes it easy and delicious to get a good source of protein. No matter what the day has in store, Quaker protein

• 14:14Dan Pashman?

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• 14:31Dan Pashman?

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• 15:06Dan Pashman?

  Welcome back to another Sporkful Reheat. I'm Dan Pashman. A lot of times, people want to ask me, like, oh, what are you cooking? What restaurants are you going to? They ask Emma and Andres and the whole Sporkful team the same questions. Well, it turns out, we provide a listener service to you that includes that information. It's our newsletter. We don't send it out all the time. We're not going to spam you. We're just going to send you useful information. Recipes, restaurant information, links to articles that we're reading, shows that we're watching, and guess what else? You'll be automatically entered into giveaways for cookbooks featured on the show, as long as you live in the US or Canada. That's also where I'll email you to tell you about like, special sales happening on this Foligni website by discounts on pasta and stuff. So, there are a lot of benefits and you can sign up right now while you're listening. Head on over to sporkful.com/newsletter to sign up today.

• 15:49Dan Pashman?

  Again, that's sporkful.com/newsletter. Thanks. Now, let's get back to ravioli and my discussion with Mo Rocca.

• 16:07Dan Pashman?

  Did you, when you ate your grandmother's ravioli, which you say were two and a half inches around?

• 16:12Speaker 01

  Two and a half by two and a half.

• 16:13Dan Pashman?

  Two and a half by two and a half squares. Did you eat them in one bite or you would cut them?

• 16:17Speaker 01

  Cut them. We would cut them. And you know, even as savage children, I think we would have wolfed them down if we could. But my grandmother made them, I don't think she did this so that we would be more civilized. But they were so big you couldn't, so you, you know, you would use your, you wouldn't have to use a knife, but you'd use your fork.

• 16:34Dan Pashman?

  Right. And how many pieces would you break it into?

• 16:36Speaker 01

  I would say, I'm gonna say, three. Three.

• 16:41Dan Pashman?

  Three, like, like two vertical lines?

• 16:43Speaker 01

  No, it wasn't like, um, what's that ice cream? Not spamoni, is it?

• 16:48Dan Pashman?

  Oh, like Neapolitan?

• 16:50Speaker 01

  Neapolitan. It wasn't like that. I would go for the bottom left corner, probably.

• 16:54Dan Pashman?

  Okay, gotcha.

• 16:55Speaker 01

  And, and more than a corner.

• 16:56Dan Pashman?

  Right, yeah. Um, I, I like a ravioli that's big, Ravioli, excuse me, big enough to break in half. Because like you said, we want a high, I like a high ratio of trim pasta to pouch pasta, but also a high ratio of fillings to overall pasta.

• 17:17Speaker 01

  Sure, of course.

• 17:18Dan Pashman?

  And so, I like when it's big enough to be broken in half at least with a fork. Because I like that when you bite into that, when you put that half raviolo into your mouth, it helps the fillings to kind of ooze out into your mouth. You get more of that, the filling flavor is accentuated. Because really what you want is more of the texture of the pasta and the flavor of the fillings.

• 17:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's right.

• 17:42Dan Pashman?

  And so by, by, by, by having it in half, you're gonna make those fillings come out right away, right onto your tongue.

• 17:49Speaker 01

  Yes, and I should point out, and it's kind of funny because I made this ravioli years ago, before I even had this series with Lydia Bastianich, who is amazing and who is a friend of mine, and we put it on YouTube, and I told her what the ingredients were, and she said, "There must be cheese inside." I said, "All it was is ground beef, spinach, and garlic." And she said, "Well, that can't be. There needed to be a binding agent, and your question is bringing this to mind." And I said, "There wasn't. There wasn't cheese in it." And she said, "No, no, no. There had to be cheese." And I say this emphatically because Lydia really is amazing, and she genuinely believed

• 18:33Speaker 01

  it must have had cheese. What she said made sense, because the truth is that my grandmother, the filling in her ravioli, did sort of just kind of spill out. I'm not saying it was like a hacky sack.

• 18:49Dan Pashman?

  Right. It wasn't like an empanada filling that can be a little bit crumbly.

• 18:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it wasn't far from it. It was delicious, but it didn't stick together like a lot of raviolis' fillings do. Indeed, when I ate what we made together, my first reaction was, "Oh, this tastes exactly like my grandmother's ravioli if it had cheese in it." But anyway, so to your point, if you split my grandmother's raviolo, a raviolo that my grandmother made in half, and you put it in your mouth, that filling was going to come right out.

• 19:26Dan Pashman?

  Did your grandmother's ravioli have any edge-trim flourishes, or was it just straight lines?

• 19:32Speaker 01

  She wasn't... She was pretty no-nonsense, so there were no flourishes. There were no flourishes, no.

• 19:43Dan Pashman?

  I feel like you don't need the flourishes.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  I don't think so. I think they distract from the essence.

• 19:48Dan Pashman?

  Yeah. How do you feel about bits in the filling? Some ravioli have a very smooth, consistent filling. Others can have... Sometimes there's little bits of chopped nuts, or maybe more substantial little pieces of meat. Do you want consistency in your filling, or do you want variety?

• 20:06Speaker 01

  Well, I certainly don't want this filling to be creamy. I don't want it to feel like a puree. I like bits, but there's a level... There's a minimum level if you're going to include in any ingredient.

• 20:19Speaker 01

  Unless we're talking spice, that's different. But there's a minimum level of bits, like nuts. Because if you drop below that, it feels like an error. And I begin to worry that my food is contaminated. Twice, twice. Once in LA and once here in New York. I had a plate of food delivered to me at a restaurant. Both of them decent restaurants, or I thought they were decent restaurants. And there was broken glass in my food.

• 20:49Dan Pashman?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 20:50Speaker 01

  Clearly, somebody in the kitchen had broken a glass and something had gone in. The shocking thing about when it happened in LA is that they still charged me for the rest of the meal. Which I thought was shocking. And I actually complained. The guy acted like I was crazy. The waiter, sort of, the manager came and said, "What is the problem?" And I said, "You know, there was a glass in my food. You acknowledged that. You came and saw that and you replaced the dish."

• 21:15Dan Pashman?

  It's one thing if it's like hair. That can be a little gross, but you're not gonna die or get severely wounded from eating someone else's hair.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  But you could die.

• 21:24Dan Pashman?

  Right.

• 21:24Speaker 01

  I mean, like, I could have bled to death internally.

• 21:26Dan Pashman?

  Right.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  You know, and so, anyway, that's, that's one of the reasons I don't want random bits in my ravioli. Because I've just had a bad experience with random bits in food.

• 21:39Dan Pashman?

  But you're saying that what concerns you is when there's only a little bit of it.

• 21:43Speaker 01

  It feels like an aberration.

• 21:44Dan Pashman?

  So if there was a lot of glass? Would that be better?

• 21:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, as if it was pureed glass. Which is ironic, because I hate things that are pureed.

• 21:56Dan Pashman?

  Right, right.

• 21:57Speaker 01

  If it was baby food glass.

• 21:59Dan Pashman?

  Yeah, I think Gerber makes that.

• 22:00Speaker 01

  Gerber class.

• 22:02Dan Pashman?

  Yeah. So, I'm with you that I like some texture in the fillings. But I don't mind, I don't want it pureed if it's gonna be like soft and mushy. But I do love a nice butternut squash ravioli. With a nice sage brown butter kind of a sauce situation.

• 22:25Speaker 01

  I feel like butternut squash ravioli, and I'm not somebody that's an authority on this at all, I'm probably getting my dates wrong, but it feels very 90s. And look, the 90s, in retrospect, were a pretty good time. But I guess I just feel like butternut squash ravioli makes you think of like Kenny G or something. It just feels, you know, I want, and he's very, very talented and obviously very successful, but I want real jazz.

• 22:53Dan Pashman?

  Coming up, I push Mo to take this whole Kenny G of ravioli idea a step further. That's after the break. Stick around.

• 23:01Speaker 03

  Hope you're hungry because it's time for some ads.

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• 24:34Dan Pashman?

  I grew up on Land O' Lakes cheese. I still remember going to the supermarket deli counter with my mom and her ordering Land O' Lakes American cheese. And now, Land O' Lakes cheese and butter are a huge part of my home. There are so many easy weeknight recipes using Land O' Lakes cheese and butter that bring delicious restaurant taste right to your table. From chicken parm to weeknight shrimp pad thai, Land O' Lakes has plenty of quick dishes that'll have the whole dinner table talking. Visit landolakes.com/reцепes/collection for easy weeknight dinners.

• 25:09Dan Pashman?

  Welcome back. Now, let's return to my conversation with Mo Rocca. So if butternut squash ravioli is Kenny G, what's, I mean, what's Charlie Parker?

• 25:21Speaker 01

  Boy, it probably would be, um, oh, God, that would be something like some wonderful, you know, I don't know, like a beef brisket inside of the ravioli.

• 25:33Dan Pashman?

  Something that's really gonna stick to your ribs.

• 25:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:36Dan Pashman?

  Okay. How do you feel about fried ravioli?

• 25:40Speaker 01

  I like it. I mean, I worry that it's a little bit of a cop out, that it's a way of making a lot with a very slim margin of error, but I'm not sure how satisfying it is. I mean, it seems like a little bit of a cheat.

• 25:56Dan Pashman?

  You think it has a slim margin for error or a wide margin for error?

• 26:00Speaker 01

  I think a slim margin for error, because you fry it and you can keep it longer. And if you're serving a whole bunch of people, it seems to me.

• 26:07Dan Pashman?

  So there's a wide margin. A wide margin for error means that it's hard to screw it up?

• 26:12Speaker 01

  Sorry, that's what I meant.

• 26:14Dan Pashman?

  Right.

• 26:15Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, for years, I've been saying that wrong.

• 26:18Dan Pashman?

  And I've been saying ravioli wrong. This is great, Mo. We've made a lot of progress here today.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  And also, we both might have been using the word peruse wrong. Because I think, I used to think that peruse was just to sort of breeze over something.

• 26:29Dan Pashman?

  Right.

• 26:30Speaker 01

  It's actually to really scan it thoroughly.

• 26:33Dan Pashman?

  Interesting. Sounds like someone's been perusing the dictionary.

• 26:35Speaker 01

  I know.

• 26:44Dan Pashman?

  Let's talk a bit about the show, My Grandmother's Ravioli, which airs on Cooking Channel. For the people who haven't seen it, give them a quick explanation.

• 26:52Speaker 01

  Well, I go around the country into grandmothers and grandfathers' homes and I learn how to cook from them because I don't know how to cook. It may shock all, everyone who's heard me opining and lecturing and decreeing all about, about, about ravioli. I'm 45. I, I turned around one day and I said, I don't know how to cook. It's pretty pathetic and I frankly like projects where I can learn something that I think I should know, or that at least I'd like to know. And so I turned it into a TV show. So it's not shticky. It's like I'm really going around learning from these people and hanging out with grandparents, having fun with them.

• 27:36Dan Pashman?

  I mean, that's really what makes the show compelling is your relationship with these old folks with very varied backgrounds and you manage to sort of connect with them, find common ground with them, sort of often develop a sort of teasing, fun rapport with them. Do you have specific lessons that you've learned from doing this show? I mean, you said you sort of, you set out to educate yourself a bit, like has it changed the way you cook or eat doing the show?

• 28:01Speaker 01

  No, not at all. No, but I've learned a lot about, oh, how do I say this without sounding hokey? I've learned a lot about people. I've learned a lot, certain, I don't even know if they were cliches, but certain things have been confirmed for me, at least among these people that we've had on the show. You know, when you get older, you care less what people think of you, which is, I think, where we all want to be. You settle into caring about two, three or four kind of big things, like you're not caught up in things that, you know, maybe people who are 30 or 40 years younger, like, like me, get caught up in. People are tribal. They really are. And it's great when they admit it.

• 28:45Speaker 01

  They like people like themselves and they like their kids to marry people like the family. Most people believe in God.

• 28:56Speaker 01

  Everyone uses garlic, except if you're Pennsylvania Dutch. In Pennsylvania Dutch, they just use tons and tons of butter to compensate. They are literally the only grandparents I've had who have not used garlic. But, um, yeah, it's, it's a kind of, I, I, one day I thought, wow, this would be cool. This is the show that made you want to get old. And I have to say, and I run the risk of sounding really sanctimonious here, but I'm really happy to do a show that features people that you'd actually want to be related to, that you like, instead of freak show horrible people that are the main course, if you will, in pretty much all non-scripted, most non-scripted programming.

• 29:35Dan Pashman?

  Right. Yeah, I think there's a real earnestness to it, which I think is really, um, brings the viewer in, and I really enjoy it. So I hope you will check it out. Mo Rocca, correspondent for CBS Sunday Morning. You hear him frequently on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, and he is the host of Cooking Channel's My Grandmother's Ravioli. Mo, thanks so much.

• 29:53Speaker 01

  Thanks, Dan.

• 29:55Dan Pashman?

  All right, friends, that does it for this week. Thank you, as always, for tuning in. This show is a production of WNYC and The Sporkful. Our producer is Kristin Meinzler. We get web help from Talia Ralph and Alight Trong. Special thanks to Chris Bannon. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman, reminding you to eat more, eat better, and eat more better.

• 30:20Dan Pashman?

  This reheat was produced by Gianna Palmer. The team that produces The Sporkful today includes me, along with managing producer Emma Morgenstern. And senior producer Andres O'Hara. Our engineer is Jared O'Connell. Music help from Black Label Music. The Sporkful is a production of SiriusXM Podcasts. Our executive producer is Camille Stanley. And hey, did you know you can listen to The Sporkful on the SiriusXM app? Yes, the SiriusXM app, it has all your favorite podcasts, plus over 200 ad-free music channels curated by genre and era, plus live sports coverage. Does your podcasting app have that? And there's interviews with A-list stars and so much more. It's everything you want in a podcast app and music app all rolled into one. And right now, Sporkful listeners can get three months free of the SiriusXM app by going to siriusxm.com/sporkful.

• 31:05Dan Pashman?

  Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.

• 31:11Speaker 04

  Having lots of choices sounds like it would be great. Who doesn't want more flavors of ice cream? It turns out, the answer is us. Too many choices can make us anxious, overwhelmed. I'm Shankar Vedantam, host of the Hidden Brain Podcast and YouTube channel. Each week, Hidden Brain brings you fascinating, science-backed insights about human behavior. So the next time you have to choose, choose Hidden Brain on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or hiddenbrain.org.

• 31:41Speaker 05

  Integrity matters when it comes to providing financial advice. At Ameriprise Financial, we believe doing the right thing is always the right choice, and it has been for over 130 years. No wonder Ameriprise is the highest-ranked diversified financial services company on Time's 2026 America's Most Iconic Companies list. Ameriprise Financial: Advice Worth Talking About. Visit ameriprise.com/advise for information and disclosures. Securities offered by Ameriprise Financial Services, LLC, member FINRA and SIPC.