Episodes

Welcome to a new feature for Fall - a bonus series in addition to regular episodes, a jump backward in cooking and cultural history. Since October, November, and December all contain holidays celebrated with food, I will be digging into newspaper archives and giving you recipes from early- to mid-20th century newspapers every week, or in some cases, family recipes where newspaper coverage falls short. This month, we'll be enjoying all kinds of recipes that celebrate Halloween, or Samhain. All of...

Welcome to a new feature for Fall - a bonus series in addition to regular episodes, a jump backward in cooking and cultural history. Since October, November, and December all contain holidays celebrated with food, I will be digging into newspaper archives and giving you recipes from early- to mid-20th century newspapers every week, or in some cases, family recipes where newspaper coverage falls short. This month, we'll be enjoying all kinds of recipes that celebrate Halloween, or Samhain. All of...

Welcome to a new feature for Fall - a bonus series in addition to regular episodes, a jump backward in cooking and cultural history. Since October, November, and December all contain holidays celebrated with food, I will be digging into newspaper archives and giving you recipes from early- to mid-20th century newspapers every week, or in some cases, family recipes where newspaper coverage falls short. This month, we'll be enjoying all kinds of recipes that celebrate Halloween, or Samhain. All of...

It's Autumn, but who needs Pumpkin Spice EVERYTHING when you can join me and our Midwest Food Correspondent, Rick Leonard of An American Genealogy for an old family recipe - Gingerbread Waffles. And because they're homemade, YOU control the spice! We talk a bit about the value of food in the Progressive movement of the Republican and Democratic Parties of the 20th centuries (yes, BOTH had progressive wings - read your history, folks), the value of keeping up ancestral traditions in the family ki...

It's Autumn, but who needs Pumpkin Spice EVERYTHING when you can join me and our Midwest Food Correspondent, Rick Leonard of An American Genealogy for an old family recipe - Gingerbread Waffles. And because they're homemade, YOU control the spice! We talk a bit about the value of food in the Progressive movement of the Republican and Democratic Parties of the 20th centuries (yes, BOTH had progressive wings - read your history, folks), the value of keeping up ancestral traditions in the family ki...

It's Autumn, but who needs Pumpkin Spice EVERYTHING when you can join me and our Midwest Food Correspondent, Rick Leonard of An American Genealogy for an old family recipe - Gingerbread Waffles. And because they're homemade, YOU control the spice! We talk a bit about the value of food in the Progressive movement of the Republican and Democratic Parties of the 20th centuries (yes, BOTH had progressive wings - read your history, folks), the value of keeping up ancestral traditions in the family ki...

Have you ever wondered where all of those digitized versions of birth records, census pages, or city directories come from? Well, there is no Genealogy Stork. While quite a few organizations provide opportunities and services, the primary way that records are turned from physical page to scanned image to searchable electronic data is a process called indexing, and the three-step indexing process that FamilySearch provides includes a final step called arbitration. I don't know enough about it, th...

Have you ever wondered where all of those digitized versions of birth records, census pages, or city directories come from? Well, there is no Genealogy Stork. While quite a few organizations provide opportunities and services, the primary way that records are turned from physical page to scanned image to searchable electronic data is a process called indexing, and the three-step indexing process that FamilySearch provides includes a final step called arbitration. I don't know enough about it, th...

Have you ever wondered where all of those digitized versions of birth records, census pages, or city directories come from? Well, there is no Genealogy Stork. While quite a few organizations provide opportunities and services, the primary way that records are turned from physical page to scanned image to searchable electronic data is a process called indexing, and the three-step indexing process that FamilySearch provides includes a final step called arbitration. I don't know enough about it, th...

Ancestry's Summer of Pain seems to have ended, but what does Autumn look like? And have they left us in the Winter of our discontent? They're answering their phones again, the screens seem more stable, but their primary new feature, Potential Parents, is a wolf in sheep's clothing for any genealogist who wants to use best evidence and best practices to do their best work. Revel in my wrath as I discuss why this is not a good development, why the re-indexing of the 1870 census was a friendly-look...

Ancestry's Summer of Pain seems to have ended, but what does Autumn look like? And have they left us in the Winter of our discontent? They're answering their phones again, the screens seem more stable, but their primary new feature, Potential Parents, is a wolf in sheep's clothing for any genealogist who wants to use best evidence and best practices to do their best work. Revel in my wrath as I discuss why this is not a good development, why the re-indexing of the 1870 census was a friendly-look...

Ancestry's Summer of Pain seems to have ended, but what does Autumn look like? And have they left us in the Winter of our discontent? They're answering their phones again, the screens seem more stable, but their primary new feature, Potential Parents, is a wolf in sheep's clothing for any genealogist who wants to use best evidence and best practices to do their best work. Revel in my wrath as I discuss why this is not a good development, why the re-indexing of the 1870 census was a friendly-look...

Family ties, a slight genealogical mystery, a discussion of privilege, 19th and 20th-century classism in Midwestern America, and the value of comfort food all converge in this week's episode of The Family Cookbook. And, we welcome our new Food Correspondent, Rick Leonard of An American Genealogy! Rick shares with us the backstory of a family member who wasn't blood but who was central to his family for four generations, and then shares her recipe for a simple, hearty casserole, known to the fami...

Family ties, a slight genealogical mystery, a discussion of privilege, 19th and 20th-century classism in Midwestern America, and the value of comfort food all converge in this week's episode of The Family Cookbook. And, we welcome our new Food Correspondent, Rick Leonard of An American Genealogy! Rick shares with us the backstory of a family member who wasn't blood but who was central to his family for four generations, and then shares her recipe for a simple, hearty casserole, known to the fami...

Family ties, a slight genealogical mystery, a discussion of privilege, 19th and 20th-century classism in Midwestern America, and the value of comfort food all converge in this week's episode of The Family Cookbook. And, we welcome our new Food Correspondent, Rick Leonard of An American Genealogy! Rick shares with us the backstory of a family member who wasn't blood but who was central to his family for four generations, and then shares her recipe for a simple, hearty casserole, known to the fami...

This episode is a special treat, an interview with Joseph McGill about his incredible labor of love, The Slave Dwelling Project. He shares with us his background, his motivations, and what it's really like to encounter children and adults as an educator and historic preservationist in the rarefied yet crucial field of preserving the history of the enslaved in a world that speaks almost exclusively about the plantation owners and enslavers of history. We talk about the places where genealogy and ...

This episode is a special treat, an interview with Joseph McGill about his incredible labor of love, The Slave Dwelling Project. He shares with us his background, his motivations, and what it's really like to encounter children and adults as an educator and historic preservationist in the rarefied yet crucial field of preserving the history of the enslaved in a world that speaks almost exclusively about the plantation owners and enslavers of history. We talk about the places where genealogy and ...

This episode is a special treat, an interview with Joseph McGill about his incredible labor of love, The Slave Dwelling Project. He shares with us his background, his motivations, and what it's really like to encounter children and adults as an educator and historic preservationist in the rarefied yet crucial field of preserving the history of the enslaved in a world that speaks almost exclusively about the plantation owners and enslavers of history. We talk about the places where genealogy and ...

Have you ever looked someone up on one of those reverse-phone-number sites to see who the heck is calling you at 2am? Did you know that those sites, and the apps that go with them, are great for genealogy? In this episode I'll discuss my favorite, BeenVerified, and how I use it to find generations of family members when I'm shrubbing, and when I'm working with someone whose parentage is unclear and who is using DNA for research. Family trees need all the help that they can get; public records ag...

Have you ever looked someone up on one of those reverse-phone-number sites to see who the heck is calling you at 2am? Did you know that those sites, and the apps that go with them, are great for genealogy? In this episode I'll discuss my favorite, BeenVerified, and how I use it to find generations of family members when I'm shrubbing, and when I'm working with someone whose parentage is unclear and who is using DNA for research. Family trees need all the help that they can get; public records ag...

Have you ever looked someone up on one of those reverse-phone-number sites to see who the heck is calling you at 2am? Did you know that those sites, and the apps that go with them, are great for genealogy? In this episode I'll discuss my favorite, BeenVerified, and how I use it to find generations of family members when I'm shrubbing, and when I'm working with someone whose parentage is unclear and who is using DNA for research. Family trees need all the help that they can get; public records ag...

Did you know that family recipes have their own genealogy? I thought I was skimming yet another back-of-the-magazine recipe in a special family cookbook when I Googled Johnny Mazetti, and then one of its key ingredients, Sauce Arturo. It wasn't as simple as I thought. And it made me wonder: did my grandmother pick this recipe up in the Midwest, or did my grandfather's mother pick it up in Panama? A rather big question! I will never find the true answer, but I have solved it to my own satisfactio...

Did you know that family recipes have their own genealogy? I thought I was skimming yet another back-of-the-magazine recipe in a special family cookbook when I Googled Johnny Mazetti, and then one of its key ingredients, Sauce Arturo. It wasn't as simple as I thought. And it made me wonder: did my grandmother pick this recipe up in the Midwest, or did my grandfather's mother pick it up in Panama? A rather big question! I will never find the true answer, but I have solved it to my own satisfactio...

Did you know that family recipes have their own genealogy? I thought I was skimming yet another back-of-the-magazine recipe in a special family cookbook when I Googled Johnny Mazetti, and then one of its key ingredients, Sauce Arturo. It wasn't as simple as I thought. And it made me wonder: did my grandmother pick this recipe up in the Midwest, or did my grandfather's mother pick it up in Panama? A rather big question! I will never find the true answer, but I have solved it to my own satisfactio...