Podcast episodes, transcripts, interviews, and related content.
Zuo Zhi, executive director of the Yunnan Sili Centre for Ecological Alternative Technologies, teaches farmers out in the fields to use fewer pesticides and grow heritage rice varieties, building trust by ‘speaking plainly’ while promoting climate-friendly rice.
Xiao Jing, Yu Yang and Li Ye, three heavy users of digital mealtime content, discuss whether watching it while eating can ease loneliness. Research teams found this way of eating increases total caloric intake by 15% and may cause gastrointestinal dysfunction, indigestion and nutritional imbalances.
Jiang Ke joined McDonald’s with a passion for studying restaurant operations and served as a shift manager for seven months. From the 90-second service target in the back kitchen to the Smart Production System and shared store manager, she explains how McDonald’s operates like a factory and the pressure employees face.
Huang Chen, a former Caixin assistant editor-in-chief, and Foodthink colleagues Yuyang and Li Ye visit a community ecological vegetable shop in Sanyuanqiao, Beijing, and, while stocking shelves, sorting produce and working the till, rediscover the tangible reality and concrete connection of labour away from screens.
Chen Jingjing, with 20 years of rural construction experience, worked in the fields for the first time in Qingshan Village, Hangzhou. By avoiding herbicides and relying on sun drying, he incurred extra labour costs and calculated that the cost of a catty of rice exceeded 30 yuan. The accounts uncover how land rent, grain subsidy and division of labour are changing ecological rice cultivation.
Milk travelled the world on Dutch merchant ships, came to the table in Shanghai, and over more than a century was shaped by advertising, scientific discourse and nationalism into a drink for strengthening the nation and the race; after the melamine incident, Chinese people with lactose intolerance still put it on their everyday table.
An ecological farmer from Yangdong Village, Qiandongnan, the owner of Wocuiyuan Family Farm in Baoding, and the Farmer Seed Network’s Eastern Office head discuss vanishing old varieties, seed saving difficulties, and the Philippines’ “Golden Rice” lawsuit, asking who decides what we grow and eat.
Wen Zizi and Chang Jiaoling have created Gaia Worth Garden on 30 mu of land in the foothills of the Beijing suburbs, growing vegetables, raising chickens, providing nature education, and sharing their planting experience amid climate fluctuations.
Behind 30-minute delivery, former JD 7Fresh picker He Siqi worked 31 days. He ran 30,000 steps daily, earned just 30 paise per item, had nine minutes per order, faced scolding and fines when late, and sometimes paid his own delivery fee for a supplementary delivery.
Social worker He Siqi, who focuses on workers’ rights, worked for a month as a picker in a JD 7Fresh dark store and experienced PDA countdowns, supervisors’ urging, fines for mistakes, and the algorithmic labour behind ’30-minute delivery’.
