For the Love of Foraging

Foraging has been part of the human story forever, and its post-pandemic resurgence is a return to ways of living with the natural world that have only recently been forgotten. Gabrielle Cerberville, or the Chaotic Forager , as she’s known online, is one of the voices championing the practice on social media. Her videos distill the beauty of living with the seasons into bite-size videos, many of them including recipes, from pine-syrup mugolio to simple dry-sauteed mushrooms. Her new book, Gathered: On Foraging, Feasting, and the Seasonal Life , combines personal essays with a kind of narrative field guide, along with—of course—dozens of wildly creative recipes, making for the book version of walking through the woods with a friend. Go beyond the episode: Gabrielle Cerberville’s Gathered: On Foraging, Feasting, and the Seasonal Life Find foraging workshops and videos on her website , TikTok , and Instagram Read Michael Autrey’s account of foraging for mushrooms , or Matthew Desmond’s reporting on the wild ginseng trade in Appalachia Visit our episode page for a list of recommended field guides and cookbooks Tune in every (other) week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek and sponsored by the Phi Beta Kappa Society.

You can listen to For the Love of Foraging online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

For the Love of Foraging is an episode from Smarty Pants by Stephanie Bastek.

This episode is 26:02 long.

This episode was published on Oct 17, 2025.

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