Today, we’re experiencing a Texan pastime: waiting in a long BBQ line at Micklethwait Craft Meats on Austin’s east side with some very special guests: none other than the band, the Deftones.  

The band has been touring and making music together for almost twenty years. In that time they’ve gone from living off a couple bucks a day and eating whatever they could to becoming one of the biggest bands to travel around the world, enjoy amazing meals, and discover great food and good beer. We sat down over smoked meats to hear about their road food horror and glory stories, riders, and their latest album, Gore.

Austin’s restaurant scene has been making waves over the past few years in the national restaurant scene with spots like Franklin BBQ, but on today’s episode we are exploring the longstanding titan of the city’s culinary scene: food trucks.

We’ll talk to old school and new school food truck vendors and an unexpected newcomer: Whole Foods, who recently announced that it would open its very first food truck test kitchen.

Every Sunday in Austin for over 18 years Texans have gone to the Little Longhorn Saloon to drink ice cold beers and bet on where a chicken will drop a deuce. I recently went to the bar to experience one of the last strongholds of the old “Keep Austin Weird” culture that’s slowly disappearing from the city.

On today’s episode, we’re talking to Louis Black, the Austinite who co-founded the Austin Chronicle and SXSW, and most recently directed a documentary about filmmaker, Richard Linklater, called Richard Linklater: Dream Is Destiny. Linklater is one of the most important Texan filmmakers of our time, and one of the first people to capture the slacker vibe of old Austin with his film, Dazed and Confused.

Black is a tour du force who has watched SXSW—and this town—experience massive changes since the festival began 29 years ago. Helen spoke with him about pre-SXSW Austin, his friendship with Linklater, the new doc, and how that iconic drive-in scene in Dazed and Confused with Matthew Mcconaughey came to be.  

Today, we are bringing you a special bonus episode: Two back-to-back live interviews we recorded at Southbytes, SXSW’s food programming which features panels, talks, and events with some of the most influential people in the food world.

First, I sat down with Andrew Zimmern, food writer and host of Bizarre Foods on the Travel Channel; the guy who’s consumed more innards, creepy crawlies, and odiferous foods than most of us will in our lifetimes. He’s also experienced some of the most profound meals in the most remote communities around the world. But rather than chatting about what it’s like to eat skewered tarantula, I wanted to get his impressions on what it means when a community experiences the death of a dish and the traditions behind it.

Then, I sat down with Austin chef Tyson Cole of Uchi to discuss the past and future of sushi—it’s traditional rules, who’s breaking them, and how American sushi chefs are taking the medium to the next level. A slight warning: this tape will make you crave nigiri, so pace yourself.

You might think you know the EVOO queen, Rachael Ray, but today, we’re spending some time with the SXSW veteran—she’s been attending the festival for the past 20 years—to dive into one of her biggest passions: music. Her love for it is so epic that she’s been throwing one of the biggest SXSW music parties with her husband, John Cusimano, for the past nine years. The event, “Feedback,” combines food and music in one space. So how exactly does a famous food personality become one of the biggest music presenters at SXSW? I sat down with Ray in Austin to discuss her thoughts on musicians’ riders, why she’s hanging out with the likes of Naughty By Nature, and what it takes to make a great musical experience.

We speak to some of New York’s new wave pizza makers who are reimagining what’s in a slice about what makes New York pizza so great, and try to get to the source of what might be the unexpected answer: water.

On our first episode of the second season of MUNCHIES: The Podcast, we’re pulling you out of the glut of sleepy winter, and there’s only way to do that: energy drinks.

In 2005, fewer than 2,000 trips to the emergency room involved energy drinks. By 2011, that number was over 20,000. Brooklyn-based band Prince Rama’s just released their energy drink-inspired album, “XTREME NOW,” so we figured they’d be the perfect guides into this underworld. We wanted to uncover how energy drinks are inspiring pop culture and their music alike, and learn about the history of these caffeine-high beverages from expert bartender, Don Lee, to get to the bottom of what’s in your can.attacks.

On the final episode of the first season of the MUNCHIES podcast, we speak to legendary actress and culinary icon, Madhur Jaffrey, who brought Indian cuisine to the west, about her cultural impact and why she believes cooking and acting are very similar.

Award-winning TV show Top Chef helped to define a new era in food by taking the reality TV contest format and placing chefs front and center. We spoke to permanent Top Chef judge Gail Simmons about the world that the show helped to create.

We went to a coffee psychic to see if coffee can predict your future.

On the latest episode of MUNCHIES: The Podcast, MUNCHIES' Editor-in-Chief Helen Hollyman goes on an adventure through Central Park with smell artist, Sissel Tolaas, who is trying to capture the smell of the park. Helen Hollyman and Tolaas discuss why humans have become disconnected from our senses, how we can become better eaters through scent, and why she likes to serve the stench of dirty sneakers with grapes at her famous dinner parties.

Being a cab driver in NYC isn’t easy. You're drinking coffee to stay awake, then you’ve gotta piss and find some time eat, but there’s nowhere to park. But Punjabi Deli has been an oasis where you could park out front and grab some food. In 2010, the city started construction that made that impossible. Today, I’m talking to the the unexpected person who helped solve the problem: Punjabi-American rapper, HEEMS, a.k.a. Himanshu Suri. 

We get to the bottom of what may be endangering your tequila and talk to the unexpected man who is helping to protect it… with bats. 

Legendary chef Wylie Dufresne of WD~50 is one of the American pioneers of molecular gastronomy. We spoke to him about how he approaches creativity, sports, Applebee's, and why lacking curiosity as a human being is a complete waste of time. 

We speak to world-renowned chef, Danny Bowien, about the rise, fall, and comeback of his beloved Mission Chinese, and explore the Danny Bowien that you don’t know, which includes life lessons from tornadoes, kitchen disasters, failure, and more info about Billy Corgan than anyone cares to know about.

An introduction to the new MUNCHIES podcast. We’re going to be talking to famous chefs, celebrities, the food-obsessed, food-averse, and everyone in between, asking them questions about current food culture and the culinary world that no one else is.