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This episode of Inside Out originally aired in the fall of 2001.

Anna Goldman explains why, as a child, the way to her heart was through her stomach.

Jess Jones visits Geno’s Steaks in her beloved home town of Philadelphia to figure out what makes a genuine Philly cheese steak beat out all the imitators.

In a piece that Ira Glass once described as part musical theater, Gabriel Wildau muses on “the Ratty,” Brown’s dining hall, and their industrial sized vats of pasta sauce.

Robin Amer recreates a passage from Truman Capote’s short story, A Christmas Memory.  Read by Seth Pipkin.

Hosted by Molly Messick with Executive Producer Robin Amer. Contributors include Rebecca Birnbaum, Louisa Lombard, Megan Hall, Selena Juneau-Vogel, Jess Jones, and Paul McCarthy. Oversight by Beth Taylor.

Editor’s Note:  I have no idea where I came across that Capote story, or why I produced it for this show. Out of all the stories about food, why this? Especially when I could have chosen something more contemporary and er, meaty, like David Foster Wallace’s famous essay on the strange brutality of eating lobster. This Capote story seems so antiquated and arcane to me now, with its racist depictions of the village “Indian” they go to for rum, and its quaint phrasing like, “Anyone t’ home?”