“Good Food” host Evan Kleiman kicks off UCSB speaker series

A self-described culinary multitasker, Evan Kleiman has been a chef, restaurateur, cookbook author, and today is known most readily as a longtime podcaster and KCRW radio host of "Good Food." Her guruship and thoughtful transmissions with likeminded connoisseurs and chowhounds - from cooks and farmers to artists and scientists - has earned her the title as the "fairy godmother of the L.A. food scene," according to one prominent and devout listener.

Kleiman is bringing her conversational interviewing style to the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center (IHC) at UC Santa Barbara for a sitdown with Marion Nestle, a pioneering food-policy scholar and author of "Sugar Coated: Unboxing the Hidden Forces Shaping America's Favorite Breakfast Food" (University of California Press, 2026). Their talk, "Food and the Body: The Politics of What We Eat," launches the IHC's "Bodies Politic" speaker series. Free and open to the public, the event begins at 4 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 29 in the McCune Conference Room on the sixth floor of the Humanities and Social Sciences Building.

"Nestle's new book is particularly fascinating because she collaborated with Lisa Sutherland, who was the Vice President of Nutrition at Kellogg Company," Kleiman said. "So you have the insider and the food-politics guru looking at our shifting national obsessions with health, ingredients, dietary advice and American culture through the lens of cereal boxes. It's fascinating and disturbing."

The talk between Kleiman and Nestle is a fitting opening event for the series, said Susan Derwin, IHC director. "The theme was developed in recognition of the myriad forms of control that politics, policy and corporate power exert over individual and collective bodies throughout the world. We wanted to explore the dynamics of those power relations and the ways that communities organize to reclaim the destinies of their bodies as well as the narratives through which those bodies are represented."

Into the fall, "Bodies Politic" continues on Nov. 5 with Virginia Tech professor Edward Anthony Polanco, who will discuss the practices of 16^th century Nahua healing specialists of central Mexico in the context of colonialist society. On Nov. 19, Princeton University professor Rhae Lynn Barnes will unpack the intersecting politics of blackface and disability during the Roosevelt era. Audience Q&A and a reception will follow.

More talks are scheduled after the first of the year. Visit the Bodies Politic full schedule.

About UC Santa Barbara

The University of California, Santa Barbara is a leading research institution that also provides a comprehensive liberal arts learning experience. Our academic community of faculty, students, and staff is characterized by a culture of interdisciplinary collaboration that is responsive to the needs of our multicultural and global society. All of this takes place within a living and learning environment like no other, as we draw inspiration from the beauty and resources of our extraordinary location at the edge of the Pacific Ocean.