Add Passion and Stir

Host Billy Shore talks with Chef Erik Bruner‑Yang (Maketto, Ours at Manifest) and Immigrant Food co-founder Peter Schechter about immigration enforcement, ICE checkpoints, and what that means for D.C. restaurants and workers. They explain how they use know-your-rights training, ICE location group chats, and Uber rides for staff. 

Gastro‑advocacy tools, like Immigrant Food’s weekly Engagement Menu, are deployed to keep...

The current interruption in SNAP benefits are disproportionately impacting the indigenous people of the United States. In this reprised episode of APS, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nicholas Kristof and Johns Hopkins Center for American Indian Health Director Allison Barlow talk about poverty, education and the struggle for social justice in Native American communities.

“The Bureau of Indian Education schools only have...

This timely encore of Add Passion and Stir, featuring Princeton poverty expert Kathryn Edin will provide insights from Edin’s book The Injustice of Place. Edin shares compelling data and stories connecting America’s deepest poverty to historical roots in rural communities.

Explore how food insecurity, local action, and social infrastructure shape outcomes for children and families—and learn why addressing these issues is m...

Urban Institute senior fellow Elaine Waxman and Jeremiah Program president and CEO Chastity Lord know the power of single moms on the economic mobility of entire communities. “Great moms are dreaming in threes: they dream for themselves, they dream for their children, and they naturally dream for their community,” says Lord.

The Jeremiah Program supports single mothers as they invest simultaneously in their own goals as we...

Maine Governor Janet Mills is protecting the rights and benefits of people in her state. “When you're right on the law and you're right on the public policy, why shouldn't you stand up? That's the way bullies act: they don't stop unless you stand up to them. And even then, you've got to fight with all you've got,” she says.

Mills is standing up to the Trump Administration's deep cuts to important benefits like SNAP. “Whate...

Australia’s Reverend Tim Costello is the former Chief Executive of World Vision Australia and a lawyer, minister, and social advocate. “A free society is an extraordinary moral achievement… It takes morality,” he says.

“When we start to see morality - which is we, not I - corroding and empathy evaporating, we are in trouble for a free society.” However, he remains hopeful of humanity’s goodness. “Hope is saying there will ...

Navyn Salem, founder and CEO of the malnutrition social enterprise Edesia, discusses our shared humanity in caring for children all over the world. Edesia produces fortified, peanut-based products like Plumpy'Nut for humanitarian agencies like UNICEF, World Food Programme, and other NGOs working in emergency and conflict zones.

“We feed children everywhere because that's what humanity is, and we do not want to lose our hum...

Retired Senator Debbie Stabenow discusses the importance of strong leadership, raising our voices about what we believe is wrong, and her continued advocacy for issues like hunger and mental health.

“I may have retired, but I have not retired my voice. At this time, where so much is at stake, nobody should be retiring their voice,” she says. “We should be electing people that show some leadership,” she continues. “Hunger i...

Chicago chef and restaurateur Curtis Duffy recounts some of the revelations in his new book, Fireproof: Memoir of a Chef on this episode of Add Passion & Stir. Duffy writes about surviving the tragic loss of his parents at a very young age. “If it's helping somebody else get through what they need to get through… and if it helps them, in some way, or if they're able to relate to it somehow, then that's a win for me. Th...

Partnership for a Healthier America President and CEO Noreen Springstead discusses how to make America healthy again through high quality food and empowered communities. “Is the food system broken, or is it designed in the way that it's supposed to be operating today, which is around profit?,” she posits. “There is data that suggests if the food supply is healthier, it's available, it's affordable, it's accessible, we can ...

Bestselling author and No Kid Hungry supporter John Grisham gives listeners a behind-the-scenes look into how Share Our Strength founders and siblings Billy and Debbie Shore built their successful childhood hunger nonprofit from humble beginnings and a great idea. “In my memory, we knew that we had a really big and powerful idea… we just didn't know the path," explains Debbie.

“We also weirdly had a sense that this was goi...

Well before the school year ends for American children , advocates like former USDA Deputy Under Secretary for Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services Stacy Dean and Hawaii-based consumer advocate and substance abuse counselor Zahava “Zee” Zaidoff are planning how to feed kids over the summer. “The experience of hunger, in and of itself, is a terrible thing. But hunger amongst children is so much more devastating... They do...

India’s children are hungry. Gauri Devidayal, Co-Founder and Director of The Food Matters Group, and Pankaj Jethwani, physician and Executive VP at W Health Ventures, are working to solve that problem. Devidayal is using her platform to draw attention and funding to the cause while Jethwani is helps run holistic nutrition programs.

“I think India's one of the greatest nations when it comes to hospitality. It's just somethin...

Two staunch child advocates, Bruce Lesley of First Focus on Children and Phoebe Boyer of Children’s Aid, talk about the detrimental impact of poverty on children and the crucial role of social safety nets and nonprofit organizations in mitigating this harm.

“Every aspect of the life of a child is negatively impacted by poverty. It impacts their health, their education, their early childhood, their nutrition, their housing s...

Three social changemakers -

• Jeff Bradach of The Bridgespan Group,
• Daniel Stid of Lyceum Labs, and
• former US Treasury advisor Clara Miller-

discuss the impact of the current political climate on the nonprofit sector.

“It was a huge shock to the system to have international aid just cut like that and it created a whole ripple of fear. I felt it; I think we all did,” says Miller. “We’re in this very strange place wher...

Why would anyone cut 7,000 employees to save 0.06% of the budget from one of the most important agencies in the federal government?   That’s the question Congressman Tom Swasey asked at town hall with former Social Security Commissioner Martin O'Malley. Over the past few days, O'Malley has warned that the 89-year streak of Social Security sending monthly benefits could come to an end.

That is why we are reprising ...

On the very special episode of Add Passion and Stir, we revisit or conversation with chef, food writer, food critic, and author Ruth Reichl. Ruth discusses the transformative power of food and culture. “One of the great things to me about food is that you have the ability to touch these moments of grace throughout the day simply by biting into a perfect peach and going, ‘oh my God, I'm glad I'm alive,’" she marvels.

Her new...

In this very special episode of Add Passion and Stir, we reprise an episode from May 2024 with two powerful leaders of the Mayors Alliance to End Childhood Hunger. The Mayors Alliance is a bipartisan alliance of almost 400 mayors from across the country.

In this time of turmoil, local leadership is all the more important to protecting and helping those in need. Mayors Sharon Weston Broome of Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Matti...

In a new conversation, Jimmy Chen, founder/CEO of Propel and Ofek Lavian, founder/CEO of Forage, return to discuss current trends in using technology to ensure more people can access government food benefits.

“As of January 27, 2025, at least, our plan is to continue to invest in the things that we have confidence that are not going to change over the 20-, 30-, 40-year time horizon, while we stay nimble and adapt to what m...