Coline Witt thinks she can lure Trevor Noah onto her podcast, ‘Eating While Broke,’ with a bologna and margarine sandwich

February 23, 2022

We are deep in the midst of February, and therefore Black History Month, so Dax and Alesha are sharing some amazing podcasts from Black creators for us to listen to all year round. Our guest this week is the host of “Eating While Broke,” Coline Witt, who talks with us all about her inspiration for the podcast, her own broke meals, her favorite guests, and more.

First up, Alesha and Dax are super excited about the podcast “Higher Learning with Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay.” We actually find out that Dax and Van are friends, having worked with each other at TMZ before Van went on to become an Academy Award winner. The podcast focuses on topical current events, from sports to politics to pop culture, with an emphasis on Black culture and racial issues. The two can’t stop singing their praises for Rachel and Van, citing how nuanced and brilliant the two hosts are together, Rachel, of course, being a former lawyer while Dax has always admired Van for his wisdom. Dax and Alesha specifically recommend a recent episode of the podcast with Peter Rosenberg titled “Brian Flores Sues the NFL and Peter Rosenberg Talks Whoopi.”

Next, Alesha has a Health is Wealth podcast to recommend, one she recommended way back at the start of Podsauce: “Therapy For Black Girls.” Hosted by licensed psychologist Dr. Joy Bradford, “Therapy For Black Girls” focuses on taking up space in the mental health conversation and letting Black women be okay with not being okay. Alesha loves that this podcast makes space for Black women to speak about mental health (we all saw how Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka were treated for setting boundaries) and work towards becoming their best and healthiest selves.

Finally, the main event, Coline Witt joins Dax and Alesha to talk all about her podcast “Eating While Broke.” To kick things off, Alesha shares that her favorite broke foods were the Wendy’s Extra Value Meal (specifically the chili and a baked potato). She’d supplement the Wendy’s with Vienna sausages and crackers on the side. She’ll have to get on Coline’s show. So, “Eating While Broke” is a podcast all about what people, from actors to musicians to entrepreneurs, ate before they made it big. They chat all while cooking that same meal.

Coline’s inspiration for this show comes from a few different things. She cites Trevor Noah‘s book, Born A Crime, where he talked about how he was eating worms and sleeping in a station wagon. She was also inspired by her friend, DeStorm Power’s wild stories about his many jobs and meals before his career took off. On top of all that, when COVID hit, her events company and many of her friends’ businesses were shut down, so she took the leap to make the show.

She says that she often looks back on her time of barely scraping by as her glory days, fondly laughing about the wild meals they ate now. While it was difficult, Coline encourages young people to not skip those broke days (although, some people don’t have a choice, of course), which really resonates with Alesha. Alesha says she loves that the show connects food for comfort with memory, and that to this day, she will make cornbread and milk when she’s feeling homesick. Coline says that this is essentially the essence of the show, having on very successful people and who can be vulnerable while looking back on the difficult days.

Coline says that she loves when guests share that they still make their comfort, broke dish to this day. She also shares that she received many comments that she would see the same dish over and over on “Eating While Broke,” like ramen or hot dogs. But Coline says that everyone has a unique twist on their dishes, saying that people’s cultures and backgrounds definitely tweak the types of dishes they make.

As for her dream guests, Coline would love to chat with Trevor Noah and her favorite artist of all time, Jay-Z. As a super fan of Trevor, she knows that he could never turn down a bologna and margarine sandwich, so it sounds like she definitely knows how to get him on the podcast. And as for her own broke meals, she was big into McDonalds, Del Taco, and ramen, of course.

Her favorite podcast, aside from her own, is “Drink Champs.” A hip-hop show, she loves how the hosts manage to pull vulnerability from their guests over a drink and a smoke.

To wrap it all up, Dax hits us with his podcast recommendation: “Code Switch.” Its fearless conversations about race hosted by NPR journalists, and Dax and Alesha specifically recommend the episode “A Whiteness That’s Only Skin Deep.”