How communities are restoring Long Island Sound one shell at a time. Recorded live at the International Festival of Arts & Ideas, we hear from shellfish farmers Chief Sagamore Buddy Pocknett of the First Light Farm of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe and Beth Simonds of Stonington Farms Shellfish & Tim Macklin of CORR (Collective Oyster Recycling & Restoration) for a conversation about how local aquaculture, indigenous stewardship and community shell recycling are working hand in hand to restore one of our most treasured waterways.

Thank you to Tiffany Hopkins and the whole team at the festival for producing this event. The New Haven Museum for hosting us, and Robyn Doyon-Aitken Deputy Director of Storytelling and Talk Shows are CT Public for editing this show and being a fabulous supporter and partner.

The Table Underground airs on WPKN 89.5fm in Bridgeport and you can find more content on our website www.TheTableUnderground.com. Our theme song is by the Passion Hifi.

Chef's Emily Mingrone, Damon Sawyer, and Arturo Franco Camacho in a Chefs Roundtable discussion on sourcing ingredients, the values and creativity that drive their kitchens, and the people that make it all possible. Recorded live at the 2026 International Festival of Arts and Ideas as part of the Sustainable Kitchens/Thriving Oceans event series.

Many thanks to Tiffany Hopkins of The International Festival of Arts & Ideas, who conceived of this Sustainable Kitchen’s / Thriving Oceans event series, and partnered to make it all happen. Great appreciations go out to the New Haven Museum for hosting us, to all the staff and volunteers for your help. And last but not least HUGE thanks to the extremely talented and kind Robyn Doyon Aitken Deputy Director of Audio Storytelling and Talk Shows at CT Public, for editing this episode!

Go to www.TheTableUnderground.com for more info. We broadcast on WPKN 89.5fm Community Radio in Bridgeport, CT.

Protests in recent years have mobilized millions of people across the country and world, and brought attention to issues of great injustice. Despite these mass actions, real systemic change on issues from genocide to immigration, to food and farm worker abuses have remained out of reach. One reason for this lack of change is that when people are mobilized without a coordinated organizing strategy, and without the support of a broad coalition - we are not able to build the power we need to bring about transformative change.

Our guest today, Jose Oliva is the Strategic Campaigns Director for HEAL Food Alliance and has a long history of organizing and coalition building for workers rights and system change. Through HEAL, Jose works in an alliance of 52 groups that represent over 2 million people working in the food and farm sectors. He was the co-founder and former director of the Food Chain Workers Alliance, he led organizing with the Chicago Interfaith Workers’ Center, Casa Guatemala, and The Restaurant Opportunities Centers United among many others. Jose joins us for this timely conversation on the whys and hows of strategic organizing for social change in our food system and beyond.

Jose shares about non-violent direct action organizing, grassroots organizing practices and details about HEAL's current campaigns to expose and limit corporate control of our food system and their city and state level Good Food Purchasing Policy work. If you are interested in applying for HEAL's School of Political Education to build political power to transform our food and farm systems, check out the link above.

The Table Underground airs on WPKN 89.5fm community radio in Bridgeport, CT on the first Tuesday of every month at 6pm - and by podcast or on our website any time! Please "follow" our podcast to support our show and leave a review if you like what you hear!

Our theme song is by The Passion Hifi.

Chef, activist, artist and author Bryant Terry on his 5th book, Vegetable Kingdom - cooking for his kids - uplifting Black and Asian food traditions - and collective actions to transform our "messed up food system". A show from our archives, first aired in 2020.

Thanks to the Yale Sustainable Food Program and the Yale Afro-American Cultural Center for their partnership on this episode. Music credit: "Sprout That Life" by DJ Cavem. Check out our full post at www.thetableunderground.com from 2024 with photos and lots more info. To learn more about Bryant Terry and what he's been up to since 2020, go to: https://www.bryant-terry.com/

The Table Underground airs on WPKN 89.5fm community radio in Bridgeport, CT at 6pm EST, on the first Tuesday of every month, and by podcast or on our website anytime. Our theme song is by The Passion Hifi. Please follow our podcast or leave a review to help others find us. Thanks for listening!

Tim Macklin & Todd Koehnke of CORR: Collective Oyster Recycling and Restoration and Kim Granbery a wild oyster farmer and owner of Leetes Island Oysters share about their work to return oysters to Long Island Sound. This farming and stewardship work helps to rebuild habitat, filter water, prevent erosion, and cultivate biodiversity as well as a love of oysters and our ocean and water ways. Find more info on this episode and many others at www.TheTableUnderground.com.

The Table Underground airs on WPKN 89.5fm community radio in Bridgeport, CT. Please click "follow" to support our show and leave a review if you like what you hear!

Our theme song is by The Passion Hifi. All photos are courtesy of CORR, Leetes Island Oysters, and Tagan Engel.

Soraya Hosni is a French-Tunisian social entrepreneur, olive oil sommelier, farmer and environmental anthropologist. She speaks 8 languages and is as comfortable talking with North African olive farmers as she is with global leaders. Her innovative work to address systemic challenges and inequities in the olive oil supply chain led her to develop cultural, technical and economic solutions that benefit both farmers and the earth they farm on. Tunisia is one of the world's largest producers of olive oil, yet most of it gets mixed with oil from Spain and other countries and sold under labels with an Italian sounding name. Olive trees in Tunisia are hundreds and sometimes thousands of years old, drought resistant, and typically raised free of chemicals. Soraya shares about the many creative ways she has worked to uplift Tunisian olive oil to help return profits to farmers and preserve these heritage farming practices.

As with most social entrepreneurs, Soraya’s creativity and projects surpass the confines of one sector and one conversation. To learn more about the full breadth of her work check out The New Medina, a cultural heritage center she founded in Tunisia and @thenewmedina on Instagram. Clever Harvest is the agriculture tech company and system she started to help farmers coordinate their harvest, milling, and aggregation. Visit our website for photos and more links to her amazing work and many past shows at www.thetableunderground.com.

The Table Underground airs on WPKN community radio, 89.5fm in Bridgeport, CT, and by podcast any where and any time. Our theme song is by the Passion Hifi.

Rob Peck, aka Hood Farmer Rob is a Black urban farmer, mushroom grower and educator based in Bridgeport, Connecticut. His love of fungi has led him from cooking up mushrooms to foraging in parks and the forest, to growing mushrooms - both indoors and out - and now, into the Lab to grow his own spawn. Through his business Hemp Milk & Honey, Hood Farmer Rob is focused on growing food and farmers for the future. One of the ways he’s doing this is through leading mushroom cultivation workshops for networks of Black, Brown and Indigenous growers.

For more info, photos and links from this episode, go to www.thetableunderground.com. Follow Rob's work at @hoodfarmerrob and through his business @hempmilkhoney both on Instagram. And check out this sweet article about him from CT Farmland Trust.

The Table Underground is produced and hosted by Tagan Engel. It airs on the first Tuesday of each month on WPKN 89.5fm community radio in Bridgeport, CT and by podcast and streaming whenever and wherever you get your podcasts. Our theme song is by the Passion Hifi.

For our first show of 2026 - go behind the scenes with our Host Tagan Engel's family, her partner Enroue Onigbonna Halfkenny and children Tomitsela and Ayo Engel-Halfkenny. They talk about the themes of this show: food, radical love and creative social justice which are also pretty big themes in their family. Hear from these parents and teen/young adults in this progressive family who are muli-racial (Black, Ashkenazi, White - including Irish and Swedish, and Indigenous - Miq’Mac and Saponi) and also mulit-faith practicing both in Judaism and the Yoruba Tradition. They dig in about the food they love, their varried experiences, and the ways they engage in family, community and social justice work in the world. At this pivotal moment, where their son Ayo turned 21 this year and is in college, their daughter Tomitsela will be leaving for college in the fall, as well as in this moment of much political and social upheaval, it seemed like a special time to capture these reflections and a great way to start the new year.

To find links to many of the things discussed in this episode go to www.thetableunderground.com.

This episode was edited by Tagan Engel, and our theme music is by The Passion Hifi. We air on WKPN 89.5 Community Radio in Bridgeport, CT on the first Tuesday of each month at 6pm eastern.