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Malia Politzer is the executive editor of piqd.com, and an award-winning long-form journalist based out of Spain. She specializes in reporting on migration, international development, human rights issues and investigative reporting.
Originally from California, she's lived in China, Spain, Mexico and India, and reported from various countries in Africa, Europe and the Middle East. Her primary beats relate to immigration, economics and international development. She has published articles in Huffington Post Highline, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Vogue India, Mint, Far Eastern Economic Review, Foreign Policy, Reason Magazine, and the Phoenix New Times. She is also a regular contributor to Devex.
Her Huffington Post Highline series, "The 21st Century Gold Rush" won awards from the National Association of Magazine Editors, Overseas Press Club, and American Society of Newspaper Editors. She's also won multiple awards for feature writing in India and the United States.
Her reporting has been supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, The Institute For Current World Affairs, and the Global Migration Grant.
Degrees include a BA from Hampshire College and MS from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where was a Stabile Fellow at the Center for Investigative Journalism.
The Embattled History Of Milk
I've always been pretty fascinated by the history of food—how and when different ingredients and dishes were introduced to different countries, how they were incorporated into different cultural dishes, and why we eat what we do.
But I'd never thought about the history of milk until I discovered A Taste of the Past, a podcast that explores the history of food. In this particular episode, host Kat Johnson interviews Mark Kurlansky, author of the book Milk! A 10,000 Year Food Fracas, which is about milk's curious and crucial role in cultural evolution, politics, and economics, from antiquity to the present day.
If you think about it, it's pretty fascinating that milk—a food that most humans don't have the ability to digest after the age of two—has become such a staple in diets throughout the world.
He reveals that the breastfeeding v. bottle debate is one that's winded through history, with animal milk featuring as substitute human baby food in many different cultures when wet nurses were unavailable: Romans bottle fed their babies with cow milk, while other cultures preferred buffalo, goat, sheep, horse, camel or even seal. Some French orphanages even kept goats and donkeys for "direct feeding".
The interview also touches upon some of the fundamental milk-related debates that have been going on for centuries, including topics that touch upon pasteurisation, the economics of dairy, and why we even drink the stuff at all.
For anyone curious about the role of food in our lives, cultures, and economies, this podcast is definitely worth a listen.
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