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Jonathan Gold on getting to know a city through its food

Jonathan Gold on getting to know a city through its food

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Plus Daylight Saving Time, Maria Sharapova, and your SXSW preview

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This week on Verge ESP: Emily chats with food critic Jonathan Gold about the forthcoming documentary City of Gold, a movie about his approach to LA's food. In fact, we discuss a glut of movies this week, including the genre-benders The Witch, 10 Cloverfield Lane, and Midnight Special. Liz and Emily revisit the topic of spoilers — are there some cases where a lack of expectation is to be encouraged?

Also: Sunday is the start of Daylight Saving Time in the US, a stupid practice Liz feels ought to be discouraged. Not only does it interrupt her morning schedule — the sun's only just started rising when she gets up and she'd like that to continue — it also leads to sleep deprivation. And everyone is worse when they don't get enough sleep!

Meanwhile, Maria Sharapova, the world's highest-paid female athlete, was taking performance-enhancing drugs and still couldn't beat Venus Williams. What's even weirder is the drugs' history: they were originally meant for Soviet super-soldiers. Anyway the moral of this story is that Venus Williams is an incredible athlete, and we all ought to admire her. (In fact, both Williams sisters are remarkable athletes — Sharapova lost to Serena Williams the same day Sharapova tested positive for PEDs.)

Subscribe to Verge ESP on iTunes, listen on SoundCloud, or subscribe on RSS. And be sure to let us know what you think of the show on Twitter — @mslopatto and @emilyyoshida.