A Barbecue of Big Ideas: Everything You Need to Enjoy Your Summer Outings

Fred Kaufman reads an excerpt from his book A Short History of the American Stomach and describes the media's portrayal of food using sexual innuendo. It's called "food porn."

Egil Krogh, lawyer and official in the Nixon Administration, recounts the first "crisis" to rock the White House: the fight for fat in the American hot dog.

Dave McLean, owner and brewmaster of San Francisco's Magnolia Pub and Brewery, demonstrates the proper way to enjoy a beer. "We usually mindlessly open our beers and pour them, and don't think too much about it," he says.

The late Vanity Fair columnist and alcohol enthusiast Christopher Hitchens shares a passion with the best dictators of the Middle East.  

Chef and author Betty Fussell says "beef is as various as wine."  And there is a right and wrong way to cook her kind of steak.  

Brian Fisher, entomologist at the California Academy of Sciences, seeks answers to mankind's societal problems by observing the social world of ants. In addition to cattle-herding, ants "invented farming 50 million years ago."  

Stacey Perman reveals the "ins and outs" of the secret menu at In-N-Out Burger.

American poet Cor van den Heuvel, describing baseball's history in Japan, explains why he believes baseball is a natural subject for the haiku genre. To prove his point, he reads a few haikus about empty playing fields and childhood sports dreams.

Best-selling author and physicist Leonard Mlodinow discusses the ways that the power of expectation applies to wine. Red dye can deceive even the most experienced connoisseur, and a false $10 price tag on a $90 bottle of wine can manipulate a test subject's reaction.

Dave McLean argues that large breweries apply "science to a process that doesn’t want to be the same every time" in order to generate the greatest mass appeal.