Eight Flavors of American Cuisine, Rocket Girls

Eight Flavors of American Cuisine Guest: Sarah Lohman, Historical Gastronomist, “Author of Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine” American food. What makes the cut? Hamburgers and hotdogs? Pizza? French Fries? Apple Pie? Maybe there’s not a truly American food or flavor because everything we eat today originated in the recipes and tastes our immigrant forefathers brought with them from other lands a few hundred years ago.  Sarah Lohman set out to test that theory. She’s an historical gastronomist – which means, among other things, that she spends a lot of time recreating very old recipes - and through a combination of data analytics and sleuthing, she settled on eight central flavors of American food: vanilla, black pepper, garlic, chili powder, soy sauce, curry powder, Sriracha and MSG.  Check out Sarah's blog here. Rocket Girls: NASA’s Female Computers Guest: Nathalia Holt, Author of “Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us from Missiles to the Moon to Mars” On Sunday, the film “Hidden Figures” is up for three Oscars, including Best Picture. It’s about the team of black female mathematicians at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia who overcame racism and sexism to help put a man in space. Meanwhile, on the other coast, at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in California, a separate racially-integrated team of women was doing the calculations behind the rockets that powered the space program.