How Long Gone · Chris Black & Jason Stewart / Talkhouse

920. - Jessica Koslow

March 20, 2026·1 hr 17 min·7 clips

Jessica Koslow explains why she moved five minutes from her restaurant to escape constant problem-solving.

Chris starts in London, irritated and sunlit. A Lime-bike wrong-way move almost becomes a fight with a stranger in a mesh hat, because even dodging traffic can apparently use better manners. Jason translates the lunge into plain American terms, and then Jessica settles in as the kind of guest who can make bakery work sound like a contact sport. Bread is heavy. Really heavy. The more she explains production, the more the room turns dough into a running theory of risk, machines, giant bowls, and what happens to a body after enough of it. Tartine comes up as the scale reference, but nobody gets precious about the gear. The joke is simpler: moving that much dough without help sounds like a medical chart waiting to happen. Then the bread gets too intimate, naturally. A bit about being buried under sourdough starter turns into a riff on position, weight, and how long everyone can pretend the conversation is still about baking. Jessica stays with them, which is why the episode works. The story then slips into the strangely sad matter of losing a starter during the pandemic. Jason needs the non-baker version. It was not lost. It was left alone until it died. That gives Chris room for fake tragedy music in his head, and the whole thing hovers between bakery science and grief bit. The conversation keeps moving instead of tidying itself up. By the end, fondness for Jessica, her restaurant, and the people around that orbit all bleed together in the show's usual half sincere, half needling tone. A London street flare-up, industrial bread labor, dead starter, and restaurant devotion all get the same level of attention. The close slides into goodbyes, French signoff energy, and a McDonald's breakfast read that fits the rhythm so cleanly it almost sounds like one more bit.

As heard by us

Jessica Koslow makes bread production, lost starter, and rare Jason praise feel funny, tactile, and oddly tender.

Jessica Koslow's How Long Gone episode opens with the show's usual detour: Chris in London, freshly aggrieved after a Lime bike confrontation, before the conversation finds its way into kitchens, bread, labor, and the odd emotional life of a sourdough starter.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

If you want food chat with London chaos and a guest who can keep pace, press play.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from How Long Gone