Tinfoil Swans Podcast

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On this episode

Padma Lakshmi is probably in hot water right now — not metaphorically but physically. The bestselling author, award-winning TV host and producer, fledgling comedian, and activist has a squillion different jobs to do throughout the course of a day, and her favorite place to get some of that work done is from the bathtub. She was kind enough to towel off and come onstage at the 2025 Food & Wine Classic in Aspen to talk about what comes next afterTop ChefandTaste the Nation— including a massive new CBS show that she’s building from the ground up, complete with a million-dollar prize, her stunning new bookPadma’s All-Americanhow comedy is like sex without touching, why she’s building what she calls an “old broads network,” and the importance of embracing your rage.

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Meet our guest

Padma Lakshmi is the Emmy Award and James Beard Award-winning creator and host ofTaste the Nation; former host and executive producer ofTop Chef;and author of the cookbooks,Easy Exotic;Tangy, Tart, Hot & Sweet; andThe Encyclopedia of Spices & Herbs: An Essential Guide to the Flavors of the World,as well as a memoir,Love, Loss, and What We Ateand the children’s bookTomatoes for Neela. She also editedThe Best American Travel Writingin 2021 and 2024.

Lakshmi was named onTime Magazine‘s 100 Most Influential List in 2023 and was featured in theSports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition. In 2009, she co-founded the Endometriosis Foundation of America and she has served as United Nations Development Programme Goodwill Ambassador since 2019.

Her newest cookbook,Padma’s All-Americanhighlights recipes and stories from immigrants and Indigenous people she met while producingTaste the Nation. Lakshmi’s new show,America’s Culinary Cupwill air on CBS in Spring 2026.

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Meet our host

Kat Kinsman is the executive features editor at Food & Wine, author ofHi, Anxiety: Life With a Bad Case of Nerveshost of Food & Wine’s Gold Signal Award-winning and Folio Award-nominated podcastTinfoil Swansand founder of Chefs With Issues. Previously, she was the senior food & drinks editor at Extra Crispy, editor in chief and editor at large at Tasting Table, and the founding editor of CNN Eatocracy. She won a 2024 IACP Award for Narrative Food Writing With Recipes and a 2020 IACP Award for Personal Essay/Memoirand has had work included in the 2020 and 2016 editions ofThe Best American Food Writing.

She was nominated for a James Beard Broadcast Award in 2013, won a 2011 EPPY Award for Best Food Website with 1 million unique monthly visitors, and was a finalist in 2012 and 2013. She is a sought-after international keynote speaker and moderator on food culture and mental health in the hospitality industry, and is the former vice chair of the James Beard Journalism Committee.

Highlights from the episode

On the intimacy of comedy and food

“Being able to communicate with people and affect them in a positive way spontaneously — that’s what laughing is. It’s so healthy and wonderful to give that to someone. Them laughing at something you said is like sex without touching. Very few things are like that. Eating is like that. The reason I cook is that moment when I give it to you, or I give it to my lover, and they put it in their mouth and say,‘Mmm.’That’s the sexy part. Comedy is like that too.”

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On working from the tub

“I have a bathtub in my bedroom. It’s a game changer. It’s so nice because in the bathroom it gets hot and it’s boring. But if you’re in the bedroom and you have a board across it, you can have a glass of wine. You can smoke a doobie. You can watch TV. You can even be on calls if you mute it when you’re not talking. They don’t know you’re in hot water, you know?”

On bringing her full self to the table on Taste the Nation

“I’m so proud of the legacy that we all built withTop Chefand I feel a great kinship with my cast and crew. But I just wanted to do something else that was me — like the programming that I was interested in. It was also about the issues I cared about. I wanted to blend my advocacy with my curiosity about food.Taste the Nationwas that chance, and it showed me what could happen when I finally had creative control.

I pitched it to six or seven channels. Everybody said no, and it took me a year. And then I was like,maybe it’s just me. Then Hulu wanted to meet. I pitched the show exactly the way I wanted.

I said, ‘I’m tired of women always having to sit straight up. How come men get to swashbuckle all over the godd— planet, and I have to be Miss Nice Guy? I want to be bawdy as well.’ I didn’t want to have to always wear tight dresses. I just wanted to be my full self. If you watchTaste the Nationit’s me mostly in jeans and T-shirts, tromping through the country, and using food as an excuse to see who our fellow Americans are.”

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On making an “old broads network”

“I had to do everything the hard way. My parents were so far from anything that I do career-wise. There’s no roadmap for it. I feel most powerful when I can pick up the phone and give somebody a lawyer. One woman I mentor was about to sign a bad TV contract. I told her, ‘Don’t sign it.’ I called my lawyer and said she can’t sign until we look at it. I said, ‘Every time you appear on screen, your name should appear as the founder of your sweets company.’ She wouldn’t have known to ask for that. I barely found it out myself. Just like there’s an old boys network, I want to start an old broads network.”

On the stakes of her new show

“I’m not as young as when I startedTop Chef.I think I was 35, but now I’m 54 and it’s a lot. I’m terrified again because CBS came to me and made an offer I couldn’t refuse, frankly. I have a production company and I’m a single mom, so I need to go back to work.

It’s a much bigger show thanTaste the Nationwas. It’s probably got 10 times the crew. We’re location scouting and trying to calm the casting director down. We’re looking for sponsors as well — so if there’s anybody who wants to give me $1 million — because that’s the prize money that we’re giving out — which is four times as much as any other food competition that I can think of.”

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About the podcast

Food & Wine has led the conversation around food, drinks, and hospitality in America and around the world since 1978.Tinfoil Swanscontinues that legacy with a new series of intimate, informative, surprising, and uplifting interviews with the biggest names in the culinary industry and beyond, sharing never-before-heard stories about the successes, struggles, and fork-in-the-road moments that made these personalities who they are today.

This season, you’ll hear from icons and innovators like Roy Choi, Byron Gomez, Vikas Khanna, Romy Gill, Matthew Lillard, Ana and Lydia Castro, Laurie Woolever, Karen Akunowicz, Hawa Hassan, Dr. Jessica B. Harris, Wylie Dufresne, Samin Nosrat, Curtis Stone, Tristen Epps, Padma Lakshmi, Ayesha Curry, Regina King, Antoni Porowski, Run the Jewels, Chris Shepherd, Tavel Bristol-Joseph, Paola Velez, Bryan Caswell, Harry Hamlin, Angela Kinsey and Joshua Snyder, Hunter Lewis, Dana Cowin, Edward Lee, Cassandra Peterson (a.k.a. Elvira), Ruby Tandoh, June Rodil, Phil Rosenthal, and other special guests going deep with host Kat Kinsman on their formative experiences; the dishes and meals that made them; their joys, doubts and dreams; and what’s on the menu in the future. Tune in for a feast that’ll feed your brain and soul — and plenty of wisdom and quotable morsels to savor.

New episodes drop every Tuesday.Listen and follow on:Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, TuneIn or wherever you get your podcasts.

These interview excerpts have been edited for clarity.

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Editor’s Note: The transcript for download does not go through our standard editorial process and may contain inaccuracies and grammatical errors.