Carlo Petrini, the Italian activist and Slow Food founder died this week at 76. Corby translated for Petrini on his American and British lecture tours and wrote the first English-language book about the movement. He remembered him as a brilliant political strategist who married the joy of traditional, regional cuisine to the radical idea that you can’t truly love food without caring about the environment and the dignity of the workers who grow it.

The conversation then pivoted, with characteristic Boston Public Radio wit, to the decidedly less philosophical territory of Memorial Day weekend eating: skyrocketing beef prices, RFK Jr.’s steak-topped food pyramid, the dubious wisdom of marinating hot dogs, and the debut of the Spam dog, with Kummer gamely defending Spam’s unlikely New Deal origins while Jim and Margery remained firmly unconvinced.