State of the Human: Feeding
Eating is one of life’s great pleasures, but what about the pleasures that come with sharing your food with others? In this episode, we’re looking at how the act of feeding can bring people together. We’ll hear the tale of an unlikely pet, a meditation on cannibalism, and a story about children on a rooftop garden in San Francisco.
Transcript for Feeding (Full Episode)
Andy Lee: [00:00:00] You're listening to the sounds of meokbang, South Korean YouTube performances where people film themselves eating elaborate meals. The mukbang star sits behind a table set with bubbling stews, charbroiled meats, steaming bowls of rice, and digs in. They pause between bites to talk to the camera, speaking in relaxed, easy tones, exactly the way you would when catching up with a friend over dinner.
But in this case, it's a performance. Millions of strangers across the world are tuning in.
As a Korean American, I've known about mukbangs, but I've always found them peculiar. Why watch someone eat when you don't even get to taste the food yourself?
To learn more about this phenomenon, I asked one of the most dedicated mukbang fanatics I knew: my dad.
Andy's dad: Hi, I am Andy's dad.
Andy Lee: My dad is a first generation [00:02:00] Korean American. He spent 20 years in South Korea, then another 20 here in the US. But when he moved from one country to another, he saw big differences, including differences in how Koreans and Americans enjoy their food.
Andy, translating for his father who is simultaneously speaking in Korean: One way in which Korean food culture is very different from American culture is that we make noise when we eat our food. We slurp our noodles, we slurp our soups, and you can hear the sound of chewing at every family dinner table. I think that Americans find the noise a little bit off putting, but Koreans like me find it tasty.
Andy Lee: To try and open my eyes-- and ears-- to the joys of mukbang, my dad showed me a video from his favorite mukbang performer, a YouTuber named Yashigi.
Yashigi: Wow. Kimchi.
Andy Lee: Yashigi likes to go around South Korea looking for tasty street vendors. When he finds them, he holds their dishes up to the camera for everyone to see spicy red rice cakes, golden brown fish soups, and my dad loves it.
Andy, translating for his father who is simultaneously speaking in Korean: The foods are very cheap, but they're the kinds of street foods that I used to love when I was young, foods that I am no longer able to eat here in America. Watching the videos, I find myself vicariously able to relive the days of my youth as I'm sitting here.
Andy Lee: Hearing my dad talk about Yashigi, I'm starting to understand why millions of people watch mukbangs. Yashigi's meals help my dad bridge the distance between his life in the US and his childhood in South Korea.
And if there are people like my dad who find these mukbangs emotionally [00:04:00] fulfilling, then who am I to judge them as peculiar?
This is State of the Human, the podcast of the Stanford Storytelling Project. Each episode, we take a common human experience, like gathering or preserving, and bring you stories that explore and deepen our understanding of that experience. I am your host, Andy Lee.
As mukbangs can tell us, feeding someone doesn't necessarily have to mean putting calories in their body. In this episode of the show, we'll explore acts of feeding that go beyond our bellies. Today, we ask, how does feeding nourish our humanity?
That piece was produced by me, Andy Lee.
As a kid, you might have walked into your parents' room and asked the dreaded question: Can we get a dog? They probably gave each other a look and said something like, "Well, who's gonna feed the dog?" And I bet you said, "Me, me, me! I'll feed the dog."
But the fact is, it's a lot of work to keep something alive. Just ask your parents.
In our first story on feeding, we learn about the unexpected daily challenges of feeding a pet and how sustaining the life of another can help you sustain your own.
Parsa Nowruzi: Two years ago, I was gifted a wonderful new pet by a [00:06:00] friend in Indiana. I named her Bubbles.
Bubbles is extremely chill. For most of the day, she just sits on my kitchen counter, staring at the world in silence. Chomping up under ration, I feed her twice a day: once in the morning, and once at night. Bubbles may seem harmless at first sight, but she is a sage of ages. One could say Bubbles has experienced generations.
She is mother to hundreds. Each and every baby she has given me, I accepted with love. I feed her daughters nutritious food, keep them warm and cozy, and help them flourish and become the healthiest and strongest they can be. Then, I heed my oven to 500 degrees Fahrenheit and heartlessly bake her daughters to death and consume their corpses.
Okay, that got pretty dark. Allow me to explain myself. First of all, I'm not a witch, and I do not eat children, although I don't have anything against witches either. Now that we've addressed that, here's the reality: I'm a baker, and Bubbles is my sourdough starter. You may wonder what the hell is that, to which I respond:
For starters, pun intended, Bubbles is a shaggy mix of water and flour. Think pancake batter, but it smells deeply sweet and slightly tangy. What sets Bubbles apart from just any simple mix of water and flour is that she is a living thing. [00:08:00] Bubbles is a live culture of bacteria and wild yeast-- lots of bacteria, and yeast of many different kinds.
Together, they work in harmony and make a resilient little society. And a delicious one, indeed. I named her Bubbles because when she's well fed and happy and healthy, she's full of tiny bubbles of gas, which if you are wondering... yes, they are indeed her farts.
This is a story about Bubbles, but also about me. It is a story about preserving ourselves through challenges. This is a story about life-- my life, and also, her life.
Two summers ago, I was leaving Indiana for Nashville. My baker friend, Kenzie, gifted me a tiny little jar; in it was a tablespoon of dough. Not any dough, but living and breathing dough. It was Bubbles. The next day, I packed Bubbles away in the comfort of my sweaters and hopped on the bus to Nashville.
On the ride, I cried over dearly missed friendships in Indiana and looked forward to building new ones in Nashville-- most importantly, my new baking buddy Bubbles. She was tiny. I wanted her to be big and strong. I thought to myself, [00:10:00] she's going to have such a bright future, so many loaves of bread we will make together.
And then, I got home. As I procrastinated on unpacking, Bubbles quietly cozied up in my suitcase... for one day, and a second day, and then a third one. In the busyness of settling in Nashville, I forgot to take Bubbles out to feed her. By the time I remembered, I wasn't even sure she was alive anymore. Three days is a long, long time in a starter's world to go without a feed.
With little hope, I decided to make an attempt at reviving her. Poor thing was so pressed in the tiny jar, as soon as I unscrewed the lid, she violently spurted out like she had been banging on the door nonstop the past three days, waiting to be let out. I was lucky. A couple of feeds later, she was thriving, bubbly, and healthy.
Bubbles amazed me with her resilience. When I look back at that memory now, the early challenge helped Bubbles and I develop a closer relationship. Reality is, Bubbles depends on me to survive. If I don't feed her, she will not live. It is a responsibility to be her caretaker, a responsibility that I had to accept wholeheartedly.
Fantasizing about making bread was one thing, keeping Bubbles alive, another. And I did commit to her. I thought to myself, after this [00:12:00] experience, I have learned a lesson. And from now on, I'm going to be the best parent out there for Bubbles.
My job as Bubbles' caretaker is to feed her fresh water and flour on a regular basis. Emphasis on regular. When she's out on the counter, I feed her once or twice a day. If I can't keep up with that, I move her to the fridge. In the fridge, Bubbles goes to a deep sleep, and she can go for a couple of weeks before needing another feed.
I care for Bubbles, and in return, she gives me delicious loaves of bread. It's a great deal, right? ...if everything just stayed fine and cool, for like, forever, forever, forever.
Most of the time, caring for Bubbles feels like a joy. Other times, it can feel like a burden. Being a human is hard. Things don't always go as planned. When I'm running late to class and I have no time to feed Bubbles in the morning, she feels like a burden. When I'm out of flour to feed her with, and I have no time to go to the store, feeding Bubbles feels like a burden.
And that's the easy stuff.
There was this time that it became extra challenging. A wave of depression hit me in the middle of everything, and completely put me out of commission. I stopped showing up to classes. My room smelt like trash. My dirty laundry was spread out all over the floor, and I barely had food left in the house.
Even taking care of the basics [00:14:00] felt impossible, let alone caring for Bubbles. The thing about depression is that it's not just feeling hopeless. It gets in the way of your life. It gets in the way of your relationships, and this time, depression was getting in the way of my care for Bubbles. Feeding Bubbles was the last thing I wanted to think about.
In fact, I actively ignored her. I didn't feed her for days. She was right there, right there on my kitchen counter, but I ignored her. Days passed, one after another. I even refused to move her to the fridge. I was experiencing the world in a different way. My entire life felt like a failure. Nothing else mattered, so why should Bubbles matter?
I refused to care for her, the same way that I refused to care for myself. I refused to even acknowledge that she or I were deserving of care. This whole time, Bubbles sat on the counter watching me do nothing as she starved. Every day, the feeling of guilt grew in me bigger. So did my unwillingness to do anything about it.
Depression had me believe it was easier to give up on Bubbles than to move myself 10 feet across the room to check on her. In a way, how I felt about Bubbles was how I felt about everything else in life. All week, I curled up under the blanket, dreading the inevitable moment that I would have to face the [00:16:00] reality.
A week passed. Finally, one morning, I convinced myself something had to change. I owed Bubbles an apology. I got myself to walk up to the counter and uncover her bowl. I was not ready for what I was about to see.
Bubbles seemed dead. She was flat. No signs of any bubbles in her, no signs of life. She had a gray bluish layer formed on top of her. What is the gray layer on the top? Is it mold? Is- is that it? Is it over? Bubbles, I'm sorry I failed you. How did I ignore you for so long? How did I let the voices in my head win? Why did I not change something earlier?
I didn't give up. I cut through the glooming, dark layer and isolated a spoonful of the mixture from the bottom of the bowl. What was left on the spoon was a foul smelling, lifeless liquid. Nothing in it resembled my dear Bubbles. I transferred it to a new bowl and fed it with a lot of flour and warm water.
I was hoping the extra [00:18:00] large feed would make up for my absence the past week. The next day I came back and saw little signs of activity in her.
And the gray layer grew back again. The unrelenting gray layer that haunted her reminded me of how depression felt, unwelcome, yet unwilling to go away. Just when you feel like you got rid of it, it's back again.
But I had to keep trying. What if it was just like that time in Nashville that I forgot to feed her? What if there was a chance? I fed her again with more flour and more water, and I kept doing that every morning and every evening. The fear of losing Bubbles made me channel all my energy to stop that. I was committed to reviving Bubbles.
I promised myself, if she'd come back, I would never make the same mistake again. Days passed. Nothing changed. Bubbles was still flat, and the gray layer was persistent. After a couple of feeds, I did notice the gray layer was becoming weaker. I kept going every day.
First thing in the morning: feed Bubbles.
Last thing at night: feed Bubbles. Bubbles, Bubbles, Bubbles.
And then, one morning, I woke up to see a few bubbles in her bowl.
Seeing Bubbles was the ultimate good news that I needed. Seeing [00:20:00] Bubbles means there's life. And I felt like someone had just taken a massive weight off my shoulders. Bubbles was alive, after all. A week later, Bubbles was back to full strength, happy and bubbly and smelling yeasty.
And I was grateful that I didn't give up on Bubbles, or on myself. I was glad that I kept showing up, even when it felt too late, and I was happy in the end that Bubbles and I were both alive. Bubbles did something for me. She made me care when I was least capable of caring. She made me realize there were still things in life that I cherished. Bubbles showed me life was worth preserving.
There is an Armenian proverb that says, "first bread, then question." It means before you start asking someone about their day, you feed them first. You take care of their basic needs. You give them bread, you give them water, you let them catch their breath. And only after then, you can ask questions.
Over the past two years, Bubbles and I have grown together. Our stories started bad, but it doesn't [00:22:00] end there. I almost lost Bubbles twice, and I almost lost myself, too. It was terrifying, but we survived. It wasn't the end of the world, even though it did feel like it. In the end, the gray layer left Bubbles alone, and depression left me alone.
...for now. Will they come back? Perhaps. This time though, when it happens, Bubbles and I will stick together, one feed at a time, one day at a time.
Preserving Bubbles proved a lot harder than I thought. Bubbles is a living and breathing thing. She needs food. She needs care. She's precious, but also fragile. If I don't tend to her often, she can't make it. If I give up, she won't make it. As yeast or as human, life seems a lot more fragile now. Precious, but fragile, too.
Fragile things need a little more care, a little more tending. Bubbles needs tending. And I need tending. But before I can tend to her, I need to tend to me. Bubbles showed me that caring for others comes with a responsibility: the responsibility of taking care of myself first. If I don't keep me alive, I can't keep Bubbles alive. As Armenians say, "first bread, then question."
Andy Lee: That story [00:24:00] was produced by Parsa Nowruzi.
The act of feeding others can bring people together, and being fed by someone we care about can bring us great joy. But what happens when feeding yourself involves feeding on someone else? In our next story, we're going to look at a type of feeding that many find, unnerving: cannibalism.
But as we'll learn, survival's not the only reason some of us might choose to nibble on a pinky finger.
In our next story, we embark on our own exploration, uncovering the motivations behind what, or who, we choose to eat.
Sam Waddoups: Earlier this year, we walked around Stanford dining halls to ask a question most people hesitate to answer, especially at mealtime.
Isabella Saracco: We're with the Stanford Storytelling Project, and we're wondering if we could ask you a question for a podcast. So if you were starving to death, would you eat another human being?
Sam Waddoups: That's right: cannibalism. It is been food for thought ever since my co-producers, Isabella and Camelia, took a class on polar literature. They read about expeditions that went horribly wrong and became obsessed with explorers who took an extreme measure to survive, eating their own crew. No matter how much Isabella and Camelia discussed it, they just couldn't understand.
How did these explorers, who weren't so different from you or me, decide to eat their teammates, their friends? As you might imagine, the idea of eating another human makes most people... uncomfortable.
Random interviewee 1: What's the question? Gimme a second.
Random interviewee 2: No.
Random interviewee 3: [00:26:00] No.
Random interviewee 4: No.
Random interviewee 5: No.
Random interviewee 6: Possibly.
Random interviewee 7: I decline to answer any more questions.
Sam Waddoups: But it might surprise you. The thoughts about cannibalism can bring out the adventurous foodie in some.
Random interviewee 8: I feel like the butt would probably be the most meatiest.
Random interviewee 9: Hmm. Depends on the taste.
Random interviewee 10: It tastes like bacon.
Random interviewee 9: Yeah, then absolutely. Like--
Random interviewee 11: --you go for chicken legs, right? So just go for a human one.
Sam Waddoups: After interviewing people on the topic, we began to realize it touches an essential quandary. When it comes to feeding ourselves, what do humans deep down want to preserve: our principles, or our lives?
Random interviewee 12: Uh, I'm vegetarian, so...
Random interviewee 13: I think there's things that are more important to me than life.
Random interviewee 14: I think my will to survive would be stronger than my disgust at eating a human body.
Sam Waddoups: When we first considered this question, "Would you eat another human?", we imagined an extreme survival situation in the middle of nowhere with no food in sight. But we came to learn that the practice of cannibalism is a lot more nuanced and varied than we initially thought. It's not just a last resort method for survival. But first things first, to learn more about the reasoning behind survival cannibalism, we turn to Dr. Rob Dunbar. He's a professor in the Earth Systems Science Department at Stanford. He teaches that class on polar literature and also travels to some of the most remote and extreme places on Earth. He knows a lot about the history of survival cannibalism.
Dr. Rob Dunbar: In 1982, I also started working in Antarctica and started reading extensively the literature of polar exploration. And cannibalism was, you know, just beneath the surface of many of these stories, particularly in, in the Arctic.
Sam Waddoups: Survival cannibalism has a long, historical precedent among sailors and explorers. [00:28:00] The men in those occupations knew what they were getting themselves into: dangerous situations where they might have to resort to eating each other, if they wanted to live to tell the tale.
In our first story, Rob Recounts one of the most famous events in the history of cannibalism at sea. A ship ran into a storm and sank. The crew escaped in a lifeboat, but soon, they were running low on food.
They decided one of them should sacrifice their life to provide food for the others.
Dr. Rob Dunbar: It just so happened that the cabin boy, uh, drew the short straw, and they proceeded to bleed him, drink his blood, and then eat him when he died. And so, they had carved him up and, and were letting strips of cabin boy dry in the sun, 'cause they didn't know how long they were gonna have to, uh, survive on this.
Sam Waddoups: Once they were rescued, they made no attempt to hide what they'd done. For the survivors, it was simple. They'd cannibalized to stay alive. Rob calls it, "the custom of the sea."
The ease with which the sailors made the decision to eat the cabin boy was a bit of a shock to us modern day land lovers. But at the time, their fellow English citizens experienced an even greater shock. When the surviving explorers returned home, there was a public outcry. How could it be in this modern day, the 1800s, cannibalism still existed?
Accustomed to a lifestyle of reading novels and sipping tea, [00:30:00] Victorian high society imposed its norms on a survival situation. Of course, they couldn't understand the sailors' actions, but to our sailors, cannibalism was simply the rational solution-- the only way to survive a very, very bad situation.
Suffice it to say, the Victorians didn't appreciate their pragmatism. For surviving on the flesh of their cabin boy, the sailors were arrested, tried, and convicted. The court decision is from the 18th century, which is to say, it's hard to follow.
Here's my co-producer, Camellia, to explain what went down.
Camellia Ye: Shipwreck sailors are no different than soldiers at war. It is their duty to die heroic deaths. They're not free to abandon their morals to live. The sailors chose to preserve their lives instead of die, so we find them... guilty.
Sam Waddoups: After hearing this story, we presumed Victorian England judged and punished all instances of cannibalism. That, it turns out, wasn't the case.
Next, we have the story of Sir John Franklin, an explorer who happened to also be a knighted English nobleman. In this case of cannibalism, who you were, and who your accusers were, could change the narrative completely in this story. When it came to accusations of cannibalism, racism and classism override credibility.
In 1845, Franklin led an Arctic expedition that went disastrously wrong.
He and his crew were never heard from again.
Later expeditions tried to find out [00:32:00] what happened to Franklin and his men. When they found their remains...
Dr. Rob Dunbar: Some bodies showed signs of having been butchered with knives that only the English had, and there were tooth gnaw marks.
Sam Waddoups: The evidence clearly pointed to Sir Franklin's guilt, but no one believed it-- or rather, no one wanted to believe it.
The people at home were so ashamed that one of their countrymen-- a knighted countryman, at that-- would eat someone, that they went into complete denial.
It simply wasn't possible. A nobleman would never stoop to eating his fellow man.
But there was another darker, reason why the British didn't believe the cannibalism reports. The man who told the search expeditions about the suspected cannibalism was Inuit. Because the reports were from a native person, the British dismissed them. But the unfairness goes further. Those who believed that the man of the Franklin Expedition could do no wrong used horribly racist rhetoric to allege the Inuits lied.
The incident revealed the underbelly of British Social Convention in more ways than one.
In the first three stories, we learned about a strong societal disapproval of cannibalism, specifically in [00:34:00] Victorian England. That made us wonder: did other societies score in survival cannibalism too? Our investigation led us to an example of survival cannibalism in Song Dynasty China that was judgment free this time.
It wasn't explorers battling nature. It was humans battling each other.
My co-producer, Isabella Meyn, who read Chinese Walled Cities by Stephen Turnbull, a lecturer at the University of Leeds, has the story.
Isabella Meyn: So the year is 593 AD, and the capital of the Song Dynasty is currently getting invaded. So they send an emissary to the two forces who were the ones attacking the capitol.
The emissary then reports that in the city, they were exchanging their kids. Eating them and splitting up their bones for fuel. And if you fast forward a few centuries, it's now 1215 AD, but the cannibalism, I mean, doesn't stop. Another walled city, Zhong Du, was under attack from the Mongols. And the Mongols were led by Genghis Khan, and they were nomadic, so they didn't necessarily get to choose, um, what they ate.
So legend has it that they would kill somebody, then preserve their flesh, so that in really dire times they had, you know, that to go off of. Um, so, you know, Zhong Du was putting up a really good fight. It was a walled city, so they barricaded themselves. That meant nobody could come in, nobody could get out. Um, and the Mongols took that as a very sort of convenient thing and let them starve themselves to death, um, within the walls.
And then by the time the city fell, there were like countless reports of cannibalism.
Sam Waddoups: In 19th century England, we saw their approach in disgust directed at those who ate a fellow human. But that wasn't the reaction in Song Dynasty China.
A starving nomadic army met a starving city fortress, and both used their fellow humans as food.
In these walled cities with no other resources, humans became the [00:36:00] resource. As you might've heard in high school, it's only weird if you make it weird. Chewing and swallowing is just taking a bite, and if that bite helps the army win, then all the better.
After learning more about survival cannibalism, it started to make more sense. We could sympathize with the sailors, Sir John Franklin, and even the nomadic army. Having put that question to rest, we started thinking about something else: the implications of cannibalism when it's not for survival.
The cannibals in our previous stories didn't pause to consider the morality of their actions. They made a bargain, the lives of many, for the death of a few, and dug in. Now, we want to pause on the cannibals feast and consider the question metaphysically. Sure, your body might be fine, maybe even great with a full stomach after a hardy meal, but we were curious, how does cannibalism affect your identity, your conscience?
My co-producer, Isabella Saracco, is going to tell us a French fairy tale about the imagined consequences cannibalism has on the soul. It's called "La Goulue."
Isabella Saracco: Once Upon a Time, there was a little girl who loved to eat meat. She loved to eat meat so much, in fact, that she refused to eat anything else. Her parents, though poor peasants, loved their daughter and would do anything to make sure she was satisfied. Being peasants, her parents [00:38:00] had no way to get animal meat.
But they came up with a plan. They dug up a fresh grave and fed the corpse's leg to their daughter. She ate it, but the corpse came to life and appeared before her. When she noticed the missing leg, the corpse screamed at her for eating it and dragged her back to the grave... and ate her.
Sam Waddoups: Even French peasants hundreds of years ago associated cannibalism with all kinds of evils, selfishness, gluttony, wanting what you shouldn't have. They feared the curse of cannibalism. Some would say that this same curse shows up in cases of real life cannibalism. Some cannibals contract rare diseases only present in human brains and flesh.
And the cannibals that ate the cabin boy died in Australia soon after their exile. Coincidence, or divine punishment? Who knows.
When we did our rounds through the Stanford dining halls, people were also worried about the moral consequences of cannibalism. When it comes to eating another human, people can't stop thinking about their values.
random speaker2: I'm partly spiritual, and I don't think I can go to heaven and look my maker in the eye and say, "Yeah, I ate another human being."
Random interviewee 1: I can do it. I just eat it and ask God for forgiveness.
random speaker5: Uh, everybody is gonna die eventually, uh, and some ethical constraints are way too important in my opinion.
Sam Waddoups: The taboo of cannibalism runs deep. So deep, it's expressly forbidden in some Judeo-Christian religious texts. In Leviticus and Deuteronomy, for [00:40:00] example, eating another human is an indicator that the people are acting against God's will.
But even if we strongly object to eating people on principle, there are circumstances when it's not only excusable, but sacred. Take the Catholic tradition of Eucharist, in this case, the eating and drinking of the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ is not a desperate attempt at survival, or seen as a sinful act.
It's intended to bring you closer to what's sacred. The flesh of Christ becomes your flesh. The blood of Christ becomes your blood. You might even call that a form of ritualized cannibalism.
For us, this was a new way of looking at cannibalism, but the sanctified ritual consumption of human flesh isn't new at all. That has existed all over the world for a long time. Depending where you look, the meaning behind the practice varies. We found cultures where it's a psychological component of warfare, the final violation of the enemy by reducing them to prey. We found cultures where it's a way to honor the dead; eating flesh of the deceased transferred their physical abilities to the living.
In ancient Egypt, pharaohs saw cannibalism as a way of guaranteeing an eternal afterlife.
It's a confusing paradox. Cannibalism is one of the strongest no-nos around, used to justify the colonization and domination of indigenous people who practice it. But at the same time, it's also a sacred ritual shared by humans, the world over.
Dr. Rob Dunbar: There's this feeling that once the soul is gone, you know, that's just not a person anymore, right? It is what it is. Dust to dust. It's an empty body, free of its soul.
Sam Waddoups: We began our investigation with a question, "if you are starving to death, would you eat a human?" Even after hearing all this, you still might not be able to answer that question. But what if you thought about [00:42:00] it this way:
Just like we don't only eat to live, humans don't only practice cannibalism to survive. And no matter what you're putting in your mouth, the question's always there: When you eat, are you nourishing your body, or nurturing your soul?
Whether it's carving a Thanksgiving turkey, fighting over the corner piece of a brownie, or chomping down on a human femur, this essential question connects you to the cannibal next door.
Andy Lee: That story was produced by Isabella Meyn, Isabella Saracco, Sam Waddoups, and Camellia Ye.
Our final story, Camellia Ye takes us to one of San Francisco's toughest neighborhoods, the Tenderloin.
A student under 10: I like vegetables because they make you grow...
Charlie Mintz: There, we look at tender shoots, growing on a city rooftop. And by tender shoots, we mean fifth graders discovering how to feed themselves fresh-picked kale, and like it.
Natacha Ruck: How do you teach a child who lives in an urban jungle of concrete, with barely a tree in sight, where his food comes from? Can you really teach a city kid not only to enjoy green vegetables, but to relate to them-- to understand their connection to the earth and the seasons, and their impact on health?
This is where Maya Donaldson from Graze the Roof and Chef Becca come in. It seems like an impossible mission, but urban farmers are very resourceful, and if they can't plant a seed in the ground, they'll take it to the roof.
A number of young students: Hi!
Nathan, a student under 10: My name is Nathan, and my favorite thing for coming to the garden is planting some stuff.
Angel, a student under 10: Um, my name is Angel and my favorite part about gardening is when I get the water, the water gun, and then I go like, "tssss!", and I squirt it at everybody.
Arturo, a student under 10: My name is Arturo and I, and I, and I love about the apartment is that, uh, they gave us food and all [00:44:00] that. And I like coming to the garden too with the plants.
Maya Donaldson: My name is Maya, and I am the rooftop garden organizer.
And my favorite thing about the garden on the rooftop is because I get to have fun with all of the young students at FYCC and inspire them to care about their, their environment, and learn how to grow food from planting a seed, taking care of it, watering it... all the way through harvesting vegetables and learning how to cook very delicious meals with all the produce that they're growing up in the garden.
A number of young students: We're at Glide Church and the garden is up top, on the roof. We like church and the garden is on the rooftop. We come here every Thursday.
Another student under 10: Um, the vegetables are good here because they're made from the garden, one-hundred percent natural, and they help our eyes and our digestive system.
Natacha Ruck: This is quite an unlikely garden growing on the 900 square foot roof at Glide Memorial Church in the heart of downtown San Francisco. To get there, you take the elevator to the top floor, walk up a flight of stairs, turn off the security system, and unlock a door. When you step outside, apartment buildings surround you, and the church steeple seems within arm's reach. Yet standing on the gravel covered roof are dozens of elevated garden beds made from milk crates. And they're bursting with leafy greens of all sorts, Swiss charred mustard, green kale, arugula.
It is such an unlikely place. You can't help but wonder how it came about. And of course, like everything else, it began with one person's dedication. And this person is Maya Donaldson. Maya now bears a strange title of rooftop garden [00:46:00] organizer, but when she first moved to the city, her first San Francisco garden didn't turn out so great.
Maya Donaldson: Um, when I first moved to the city, I had never lived in a city before. Of course, I lived in an apartment complex and we didn't have any, uh, outdoor space and there was a small patio on our apartment building. And so, of course I wanted to, to try to, um, see if I could grow food on that patio space. So I just took two small planters and I brought them up to the rooftop, and I filled them with soil and added, you know, I started planting lettuce and carrots.
And then our landlord actually forced me to take the planter containers off the rooftop, um, right before they were ready to be harvested. So that was my first experience gardening in the city was I was told that there was no way I could keep those planter boxes on the rooftop.
Natacha Ruck: But urban gardeners are like ivy. You try to suppress them, and they find a more fertile ground to grow. Maya knew plants could thrive on San Francisco's rooftops-- maybe not in her own house, but surely she'd find a place to make it work.
Maya Donaldson: And then, I actually had an internship with a nonprofit in Oakland called Bay Localize, and I worked on their rooftop resources project.
So they, their project actually, um, analyzed the potential and also advocated for rooftop garden development, uh, but also like solar technologies and living roof technologies and rainwater catchment technology. And through my internship there, I got inspired to, um, think about the possibility of creating a community rooftop garden somewhere in the Bay Area. And so they actually told me about a grant opportunity for a young person to complete an environmental project.
Um, I was looking for a community site and that's when Glide came forward as, uh, an organization that would be interested in developing the rooftop space into an edible garden. And so we wrote the [00:48:00] proposal, and then we successfully received the grant, and then we started about a year and a half ago.
The Tenderloin is an interesting neighborhood in San Francisco, just 'cause of the diversity that exists here. And then also the average income of people that live here is, um, pretty low.
So it's a rough and tough neighborhood. Um, there's a lot of drug abuse, um, that you see on the streets, and it's not really a neighborhood that you would wanna walk around by yourself at night.
There's a very high percentage of young people that live in the Tenderloin, and I don't think that's known. They're the ones that are affected by the fact that they don't have a lot of healthy food options around them. You know, people are buying really unhealthy food, um, because that's what's marketed to them, and that's what's available at corner stores.
Natacha Ruck: It's one thing to think of a way to get kids to garden so they can learn to grow and cook vegetables, but doing it is something else entirely.
Maya Donaldson, speaking to a group of young students: So what we're gonna do today, is everyone is gonna be able to harvest one charred leaf, and I want you to find the biggest Swiss charred leaf that you can find, and then you're going to get a chance to harvest it.
When you're done harvesting it, I want you to go around and line up at the door again, 'cause then we're gonna go down to the kitchen.
Maya Donaldson, speaking to a young student: You know what plant this is?
A fifth grader: Ah, I don't know.
Maya Donaldson, speaking to a young student: Swiss chard!
A fifth grader: Swiss chard?
Maya Donaldson, speaking to a young student: You got it! Yep. Now use both hands very carefully and clip it. Perfect. Which one's the biggest leaf? That one? Is that the tallest, or the biggest?
A number of young students: Maya! Maya! Oh, can I get two?
Natacha Ruck: There are 15 kids on the rooftop. They range from seven to 10 years old, and each one of them is holding one green and purple Swiss charred leaf, like a trophy.
I wonder how can you possibly turn this into food they would wanna eat? Who could accomplish such a [00:50:00] feat?
A student under 10: Oh! Chef Becca!
Chef Becca: This is the fourth month. I, I emailed Maya, and I said, you know, "What do we have? What's in season? What are we gonna be cooking with?" And she emailed me back, and she said, "Well, we have kale, Swiss chard, and mustard greens." And I was like, "Oh my gosh, this is the fourth month we've done, we've done, you know, green leafy vegetables with, with a bunch of kindergartners, first grade and second graders."
So, we've done kale pesto, we've done cabbage pesto, we've done kale chips in the oven. We've done Swiss chard rolls stuffed with ricotta cheese and sun dried tomatoes. And now we're doing kale tamales.
So, for the average person getting a, uh, kindergartner to eat kale once is a feat worthy of a medal.
This is-- this is times four. Four time Olympic kale winner.
A student under 10: Today!
Natacha Ruck: Chef Becca might be an Olympic kale winner, but as the children gather in the kitchen to wash their hands in complete chaos, I begin to doubt her ability to create something with them-- let alone edibles with charred tamales.
But her method is worthy of a Roman general strategy: divide and conquer.
She creates different tasks force of no more than four kids. Maya and another teacher, as well as three teenage student helpers, take command of each team. There is Team Cheese in charge of crumbling the queso fresco. Team Masa, responsible for mixing the dough, and Team Guacamole.
As they divide the work around the big conference table, covered in cellophane, Chef Becca takes team Swiss chard to the actual kitchen stove.
Maya Donaldson, speaking to a group of young students: Alright, let's turn that off. So make sure we don't get our faces close to this because this is hot, and you might get burned.
Do you remember what you put in it? What were the things you put in it? What's this green leaf?
Giovanni, do you remember what this is? What we picked on the rooftop?
Giovanni, a student under 10: Swiss [00:52:00] chard.
Maya Donaldson, speaking to a group of young students: Swiss chard, you're right. And what about, what about these white-- what about these white things that we chopped up? What are, what's that?
A number of young students: Onion! Um... onion?
Maya Donaldson, speaking to a group of young students: Onion! And what about this, that we peeled?
A number of young students: Um... garlic. Char-- garlic! Garlic. Garlic.
Chef Becca, speaking to a group of young students: Ooh, that looks beautiful, look at the caramelization! Do you see that, that lovely golden color you have to those onions that were once white? Caramelization is when the sugars concentrate in the vegetable, and you get a really delicious concentrated flavor.
Beautiful. Here, let me help you. You hold the pot.
It's a heavy pot. Wow. Alright you guys, now comes the fun part. We're gonna combine all this stuff...
Natacha Ruck: Back in the classroom, everyone assembled around the conference table has accomplished their task.
Maya Donaldson, speaking to a group of young students: Where should your bottom be? I need your bottom on that seat, and I need you facing forward and listening to Chef Becca.
Chef Becca, speaking to a group of young students: Can I have you three from the cheese group-- come up, please. All three of you in the cheese group.
Everybody have one scoop of the cheese.
A number of young students: I do.. I'm not gonna do it... I do it... cheese scoop!
Chef Becca, speaking to a group of young students: Just one, and then pass it down.
What do you guys think? Does it taste like the inside of a tamale?
Oh, why didn't it taste good, sweetheart?
A student under 10: 'Cause it tastes nasty.
Chef Becca, speaking to a group of young students: Oh, you mean 'cause it's not cooked yet?
Chef Becca: Um, well I was, uh, checking for seasoning. I was checking for salt, um, just to make sure that it was seasoned enough. And it tastes like corn and like, uh, onions that we've sautéed, Swiss chard from the garden. And the queso fresco is a salty Mexican cheese. So I got a little hint of that coming through as well. And a little bit of cilantro. Maybe not, maybe not enough.
Natacha Ruck: Now there is a full assembly of kids, and there is something for each one of them to do: fill corn husks with tamale mixture, and make the actual final product.
Chef Becca, speaking to a group of young students: 1, 2, 3, eyes on me! 1, 2, 3, eyes on me! Everybody, gimme [00:54:00] your two peace fingers to show that you're listening. Peace fingers, peace fingers. Eyes up here!
Mason, watch your language please.
Everybody is getting one corn husk because what we're gonna do is we're gonna take our tamale mixture, and we're gonna put it inside of our corn husk and roll it up.
But if you don't listen to directions, you're not gonna know how to do it, okay?
Eyes up here guys.
So we're gonna take, and we're gonna go like this. We're gonna let everybody lift up their tamale, and put their fingers underneath it and roll it back and forth. Give it a little shimmy. We wanna make a little cylinder, a little tube, like a little snake out of our masa corn mixture.
And once, once you guys have your little snake, once you have your little tube made of the massa corn mixture, we're gonna fold the tail up. Everybody fold the tail up. So that means student helpers, Kevin and Derek, and Ana, you guys can take them to the next phase of rolling.
Beautiful.
Natacha Ruck: And now, Chef Becca's secret weapon: the microwave.
Corn tamale would normally be steamed for an hour, but the ones we made are pretty tiny, and the microwave is good enough to steam them.
Chef Becca, speaking to a group of young students: You know what? They're super, duper, duper hot. Don't touch yet! I said, they're really hot.
A student under 10: I like it.
Classroom helper: You want what?
Another student under 10: Another one!
Classroom helper: What about you?
A student under 10: Another one.
A number of young students: I like it. [chomping sound] I wanna eat all of yours! No.
Chef Becca: Why do I do this? Um, well, because, 'cause I can, you know. I thought for a while that everybody knew how to cook, until I realized that, um-- not, not everybody, not everybody has it in them. Like, I mean, I'm, I always took my passion for granted, and thought, "Gosh, you know, if people just wanted to cook, they could."
I don't think it's like that. I think that people need somebody to invoke the passion. And I carry, I carry a lot with me in terms of, you know, willingness and desire to make time in my schedule to come and do this. So I do, it makes me feel good. Um, I like to give back. I like [00:56:00] to, I like to look at their little faces.
I love when they, just like, open up and they're like, "Oh wow, this is actually really good!" So I get a lot of satisfaction out of it, and it just makes me feel good to spread what I know.
A student under 10: Thank you, Chef Becca!
Chef Becca, speaking to a group of young students: Thanks, guys!
Classroom helper: Thank you.
Chef Becca: Thank you.
Classroom helper: That was very nice. That was very good.
Chef Becca: Did you enjoy it?
Classroom helper: Yeah. Yeah, I did.
Chef Becca: Cool, I'm sorry you didn't get to eat more, but they were--
A student under 10: I like it!
Chef Becca: I liked you guys, too! so much!
Classroom helper: I learned a lot, and I take it home!
Chef Becca: Awesome!
Classroom helper: And have a nice night.
Chef Becca: Yeah, you too.
So, that's why I do it, you know.
Healthy habits definitely start when you're young. Um, and they carry through. You know, the stuff that these kids learn here, I think they'll probably remember forever.
Andy Lee: That story was produced by Natacha Ruck and Charlie Mintz.
You've been listening to State of the Human, the podcast of the Stanford Storytelling Project.
This episode was produced by Parsa Nowruzi, Bella Meyn, Isabella Saracco, Sam Waddoups, Camellia Ye, Natacha Rock, Charlie Mintz, Allie Wollner, and me, Andy Lee with support from Tiffany Naiman, Christy Hartman, Jenny March, and Jonah Willihnganz.
For their generous financial support, we'd like to thank the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, the Program in Writing and rhetoric, the Office of the Vice President for the Arts, and Bruce Braden.
You can find this and every episode of State of the Human on our website, and learn more about the storytelling projects, live events, grants, and workshops. We are at storytelling.stanford.edu.
For State of the Human and the Stanford Storytelling Project, I'm Andy Lee.