Cheese culture, from rind to counter.
Cutting the Curd is a lively interview show about artisan cheese and the people building its culture. Episodes move from wheels and flavor notes into craft, community, travel, small business, advocacy, and the politics around milk and food.
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Cutting the Curd is an interview-led guide to the artisan cheese world, built around the makers, mongers, writers, judges, shop owners, and advocates who keep that world moving. It is practical, sensory, and curious. The show often begins with a concrete cheese, shop, book, film, or producer, then widens into questions of place, process, labor, and culture. A conversation about Pardinho Artesanal becomes a route into Brazilian raw-milk cheese, mountain flavor, palate training, and what cheese judging teaches a buyer. A book about the world's 100 best cheeses becomes a way to talk about the World Cheese Awards, unfamiliar styles, and how much even specialists still have to learn. Episodes about Mexican cheese linger on storytelling, family producers, biodynamic wine, logistics, festivals, and the work of building a local artisan scene. The shop episodes are just as interested in the counter as a civic space. Pride events, drag, fundraising, reproductive rights, and community advocacy sit beside gouda, provisions, and small-business reality. The freelancing conversations bring a different kind of honesty. They describe the freedom of working across events and companies, but also the chaos, thin money, health constraints, and paperwork that come with not having a permanent counter. The show also looks at cheese through media and history, from the documentary Shelf Life to Anne Mendelsohn's writing on milk and the scale of the drinking milk industry. Its best moments come when a simple question gives a guest room to explain how something actually works. The language stays accessible. Technical ideas are translated through taste, smell, origin, and use. There is warmth, but not much polish for polish's sake. Sponsor breaks and network housekeeping appear regularly, and the transcripts show the occasional rough edge of live conversation. That informality is part of the texture. Cutting the Curd suits listeners who like food culture at ground level: the people behind the case, the producers behind the wheel, and the communities that gather around both.
Made for: For cheese lovers, food professionals, mongers, makers, and curious eaters who want accessible conversations with the people behind artisan cheese. It especially suits listeners interested in craft, flavor, small shops, food labor, and community advocacy.
What sets it apart: The show treats cheese as a living culture rather than a luxury object. It connects tasting and technique with labor, identity, geography, advocacy, festivals, books, and the real economics of working in cheese.
Featuring interviews with notable cheesemakers, cheesemongers, and cheese-lovers, Cutting the Curd is an informative, occasionally irreverent, but always cheesy look at the curdy, the nerdy, and the downright funky world of artisan cheese.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Cutting the Curd reveals the labor, community ties, and cultural choices behind artisan cheese.
Cutting the Curd treats cheese as a window onto work, place, and community. Through interviews led by hosts including John Braga and Alicia Norris-Jones, cheesemakers, cheesemongers, and shop owners explain how their choices take shape.
A Pride fundraiser and a raw-milk testing bill belong on your cheese board.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A brisk, craft-minded visit to Brazilian mountain cheese shaped by sensory training, judging experience, and wheel selection.
Cutting the Curd visits Pardinho Artesanal for a focused conversation about Brazilian mountain cheese, sensory training, and the everyday judgment behind choosing wheels for customers.
A conversational world-cheese tour that stays close to the plate
Cutting the Curd turns to One Cheese To Rule Them All, using Carlos and Patrick's new book to frame a conversation about the World Cheese Awards and the challenge of keeping up with cheeses arriving from around the world.
A cheese-shop interview that treats pride and advocacy as part of the business.
Two New York cheese shops on opposite sides of the Hudson River frame a story about retail that also serves as public care. The cheesemongers' work stretches from artisan cheese to Pride fundraising, drag, reproductive-rights work, and the idea that a storefront can mean more…
A candid look at freelance cheesemongering, from Wisconsin cheese promotion and community-building to the realities of health, money, and taxes.
Freelancing 101 follows Alicia Norris-Jones as she opens a series on freelance cheesemongering, tracing work that moves between companies, temporary counters, trade shows, local influence, and cheese promotion.
Two Mexican cheese paths meet in a warm look at family-sourced cheeses, biodynamic wine, and helping customers enjoy what they buy.
Mexican artisan cheese comes into focus through two routes into the same culture. Gabriela Flores brings the view of a biologist turned cheesemaker, with a path that began in France and continued through training with cheesemakers in the Americas.
A Sao Paulo cheese farm turns cattle expertise, raw milk, and terroir into a grounded story of Brazilian cheese crossing borders.
Cutting the Curd follows a farm in Sao Paulo's Cuesta region as decades of cattle-genetics work evolve into artisanal cheesemaking. Raw milk, terroir, animal welfare, and landscape all sit close to the center, while Vanessa Alcolea, the farm's veterinarian, affineur, and…
Goat cheese production gets a grounded look through safety testing, milk choices, and small-batch economics.
Goat cheese is framed here as both craft and calculation: how many animals a maker can manage, how much testing a batch can absorb, and which milk fits the cheese being made.
Bourbon talk, barrel stories, messy good pours.
Bourbon reviews with memory, candor, and community.
Everyday life, thought through together.
This episode of Cutting the Curd revisits a 2014 interview where host Greg Blais talks with goat cheesemakers Judy Schad of Capriole Goat Cheese in Indiana and Michael Lee of Twig Farm in Vermont.
This episode features a check-in with the Cheese Culture Coalition, highlighting professional development grants and a cheesemonger scholarship.
Host Jessica Kesselman interviews Anne Mendelsohn about her book 'Spoiled: The Myth of Milk as Superfood' and the history of milk.
Host John Braga interviews Vanessa Alcolea, a veterinarian and affineur from Pardinho Artesanal in Brazil.
Brian Civitello, who founded Mystic Cheese in Groton, Connecticut 13 years ago, turned to milled curd cheeses during the 2020 pandemic slowdown after repeatedly rereading a Slow Food Italian cheese book.
Brazilian raw-milk cheese reached the U.S. by plane in dry ice, with only about 70 wheels per pallet.
Jessica opens the show with Carlos and Patrick, who are joining from the UK.
John Braga starts with a simple idea: cheese shops can be places of connection and purpose.
Alicia Norris-Jones opens her first Cutting the Curd episode by defining the freelance cheesemonger as someone who works for different companies without a permanent counter.
Heritage Radio Network host John Braga opens his first official episode with Gabriela Flores of Del Rebaño and Paulina Gomez of Bajo Fuego for a conversation about Mexican artisan cheese.
Host Carol Warren interviews Robin Metcalf about the new cheese documentary Shelf Life, discussing its premiere at Tribeca and plans for future screenings with cheese tastings.
This episode features a check-in with the Cheese Culture Coalition, highlighting professional development grants and a cheesemonger scholarship.