45: Sandor Katz on the creative the creative tactics and community of Act Up, the modern relevance of ancient food traditions, and migrating from the city to the country.

Sandor Ellix Katz is a fermentation revivalist.  Since publishing Wild Fermentation in 2003, he has taught hundreds of workshops demystifying fermentation and empowering people to reclaim this transformational process in their kitchens.  The New York Times calls him “one of the unlikely rock starts of the American food scene.” Sandor grew up in New York City, where during the 1980s he was an activist with http://www.actupny.org, demanding medical and research resources to address the AIDS epidemic. He migrated from New York City to a commune in rural Tennessee in 1993 after testing positive for HIV.  He now lives down the road from the commune and travels the world teaching fermentation.  He published The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved (2006), a book about food activists and underground fermentors he met on his tours of fermentation workshops, and The Art of Fermentation (2012), an encyclopedic volume that won a James Beard award. In this episode, Sandor talks with Devon about the creative tactics and community of Act Up, the modern relevance of ancient food traditions

photo by Kate Berry