ANTHONY BOURDAIN was born on June 25, 1956 in New York City, but raised in the nearby suburb of Leonia, New Jersey. His mother Gladys was a copy editor at The New York Times, and his father Pierre was an executive in the classical music recording industry. Bourdain said the spark for his culinary career came when, as a boy, he had his first oyster, while on a trip to France visiting his father’s family. He would subsequently drop out of Vassar College to work in seafood restaurants in Provincetown, Massachusetts, then move on to attend the prestigious Culinary Institute of America. From there he worked at numerous restaurants in New York City, until landing at Brasserie Les Halles, where he rose to become executive chef. Later in life Bourdain was open about his extensive drug usage during these years. In the early 1990s, he published a couple of unsuccessful detective novels, but in 1999 he published an essay about restaurant life in the New Yorker magazine (called “Don’t Eat Until You Read This”) that would change his life. When an expanded version of the essay was published as a book called Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, it became an immediate bestseller. Courted by producers to turn the book into a television show, Bourdain would go on to essentially create the food-travel show genre, hosting his own hugely popular programs: A Cook’s Tour; No Reservations; and Parts Unknown. On June 8, 2018, Bourdain was on location filming an episode of Parts Unknown in Kaysersberg, France, when he was found dead in his hotel room, an apparent suicide.

HELEN ROSNER is the food correspondent for The New Yorker magazine, where she writes about gastronomic culture and history. Formerly, she was a cookbook editor at Workman Publishing; restaurant editor at New York magazine; executive editor at Eater.com; and executive digital editor at Saveur magazine. In 2016, she won the James Beard Foundation Journalism Award for her essay, “On Chicken Tenders.”

JESSICA BENNETT is the former assistant editor of Rain Taxi Review of Books and founding editor of Beacon Broadside. She has written criticism, essays and interviews for Publishers Weekly, the Ruminator Review, and others.

JILL DUPLIEX is an Australian chef, critic, and food writer who is the author of numerous cookbooks. After a long stint as food editor of The Times (of London), she returned to Sydney, where she is a frequent guest on TV and radio, and writes regularly for leading publications including the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON is an astrophysicist who is the director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York. He has served on government commissions related to the aerospace industry and space travel, and written for numerous popular publications on those issues. Tyson has hosted several of his own television and radio programs on PBS and National Geographic.

JOHN W. LITTLE is the creator of Blogs of War and the host of the Covert Contact national security podcast. His analysis and reporting related to encryption and intelligence collection has received global coverage from major news organizations, and he is a 2017 Institute for the Future fellow.

PETER ARMSTRONG is a long-time CBC News journalist, having served in many capacities there, including as Jerusalem bureau chief, anchor of CBC Radio’s World Report, and as host of the business news series on CBC TV, On the Money.

TREVOR NOAH is a South African comedian and actor who is host of the satirical news television program The Daily Show. His 2016 autobiography, Born a Crime, was a critically acclaimed bestseller.

ERIC KOHN is executive editor and chief critic for Indiewire. His work has also appeared The New York Times, New York magazine, Variety, Filmmaker, and elsewhere.