Full Expression

Lebanese-born artist and architect Jessy Slim turns an everyday ingredient into an unexpected medium: chickpeas. Working with fabric, rope, and metal, she transforms this staple of Lebanese cooking into flowing sculptures that give shape to memory and her connection to home.In this episode of Full Expression, Jessy joins Dan Imhoff to trace her journey from childhood in Lebanon to architecture and an art practice rooted in experimentation, intuition, and working with her hands. She shares how food and family traditions became part of her creative language, and how a residency at Art Farm in Healdsburg brought a longtime dream to life: a dinner celebrating chickpeas beneath an installation made from the same ingredient.Their conversation explores the freedom to create without a blueprint, the challenge of balancing art with earning a living, and the ways a familiar food can carry the stories of a place and its people. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Few people have had a greater influence on the way the world thinks about food than Alice Waters.A chef, author, activist, and founder of the legendary Berkeley restaurant Chez Panisse, Alice has spent more than five decades advocating for local, seasonal, organically grown food and a closer relationship between farmers, cooks, and the people they feed.In this episode, Host Dan Imhoff speaks with Alice about the experiences that shaped her philosophy—from growing up with her family’s Victory Garden and discovering seasonality in France, to opening Chez Panisse in 1971 and helping build a community that would influence generations of chefs, farmers, and food thinkers.We talk about the early days of the organic food movement, the farmers who transformed the way Alice cooked, and the Montessori education that influenced her approach to food and learning. Alice also reflects on 30 years of the Edible Schoolyard Project, her vision for school-supported agriculture, why meaningful work matters, and her enduring belief that beauty—and eating together—can be a language of care. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Wendell Berry spent more than half a century challenging Americans to reconsider our relationship with the land, our food, our communities, and one another.The celebrated author, poet, farmer, and activist died on August 31, 2026, leaving behind more than 50 books of poetry, fiction, and essays, including The Unsettling of America, Jayber Crow, and his beloved Mad Farmer poems.In this special episode of Full Expression, we open the archives to revisit Dan Imhoff’s 2009 conversation with Wendell, recorded in San Francisco with radio pioneer Davia Nelson of The Kitchen Sisters. Dan reflects on first meeting Wendell in 1993, visiting his Kentucky farm, and the influence Wendell had on his own life and work.They talk about the transformation of American agriculture after World War II, the loss of farming knowledge and rural communities, the dangers of applying simple solutions to complex ecological problems, and why Wendell believed the health of agriculture could never be separated from the health of human culture.They also explore Amish farming, local food economies, the wisdom of fitting farming to the land, and Wendell’s advice to a new generation hoping to become farmers: start small, learn from your neighbors, and understand that caring for the land requires not just productivity, but attention, patience, and love.We extend our deepest condolences to the Berry family and recommend everyone please visit the Berry Center to learn about and support their essential work.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rebecca Tickell has spent more than two decades using filmmaking to tell stories about the environment, agriculture, and our relationship with the natural world.A filmmaker, producer, author, farmer, and environmental advocate, Rebecca began her career as a child actor opposite Sam Elliott in Prancer before leaving Hollywood acting behind and finding a new purpose behind the camera. She went on to produce more than 20 environmental films, including Fuel, The Big Fix, Kiss the Ground, Common Ground, and most recently, Groundswell.In this episode, Host Dan Imhoff speaks with Rebecca on how acting taught her the power of storytelling, why she sees filmmaking as a form of advocacy, and how her work led her from Hollywood to regenerative agriculture and her own five-acre farm in Ojai.We talk about the line between journalism and activism, the challenge of communicating across deep divides, what farmers have taught her about listening, the craft of making complicated ideas compelling on screen, and her ambitious goal of helping move one billion acres of land toward regeneration. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For the first time on Full Expression, we turn the microphone around.Dan Imhoff has spent his life moving between creative forms—as a writer, musician, songwriter, visual artist, journalist, and, most recently, the host of this podcast. In this episode, Full Expression producer Megan Botel sits down with Dan to explore the creative life behind the conversations he's been having with artists, musicians, writers, craftspeople, and makers on the show.Dan shares how growing up in a creative family in Pennsylvania shaped his earliest ambitions, why his father's advice to live an interesting life sent him west with a backpack and $500, and how a desire to become a novelist eventually led to decades of nonfiction writing, environmental work, music, painting, and an increasingly multidisciplinary creative practice.We talk about the discipline of showing up, why Dan believes it can take a decade to become good at something, the importance of making sloppy first drafts and learning to finish, and why working with people who are better than you can transform the work. Dan also takes us inside his songwriting process, his life between California and Spain, and the origins of Full Expression itself.At the heart of the conversation is a question Dan has spent much of his life exploring: How do we stay creative? His answer is both simple and demanding: keep laying down the bricks, over and over and over again. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.