Tasty Tales of Boardroom Crab, Cold Turkey, and Tiger Food

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Think about everything you love about radio and podcasts: the suspense, the characters, the drama and the humor – Back pocket media takes all of these elements and puts them live on stage.

For eight years, they gathered stories from magazines, podcasts, investigative journalism and friends of friends to produce a show that aired in more than 20 cities.

In today’s episode, Back Pocket Media co-founders McArdle Hankin and Ellison Libiran host California Report Magazine and share three of their favorite stories from their latest event in San Francisco. The theme of this event was Taste of Then: stories about food and memory.

Their next event In a Silent Way: stories about music and tension arrives at the Herbst Theater in San Francisco on Friday, June 21.

What I would cook for love

Most people who have worked in a workplace, which is to say almost all of us, have at some point developed a crush on the office. You see the person day in and day out. You know you can’t move but you secretly want to. Secretly, you are waiting for some sort of signal or opening. Well, for storyteller JP Frary, that opening…. It’s Dungeness crab.

The fruitarian

People have always come together around the shared taste of food, but in contemporary culture it’s just as likely to see communities – and even identities – form around the foods we don’t eat. Storyteller Don Reed takes the specialty diet to a new extreme.

When the forest calms down

This story was told to the public over the phone… This is because the storyteller is currently incarcerated in San Quentin. Kelton O’Connor begins his story in the courtyard of another prison. It’s the middle of the day and he’s walking toward a high barbed wire fence – a fence that’s the only thing separating him from the outside world.