Let Sophia Roe feed you. With her recipes. With her words. With her passion to make the world just a little bit better.

The Brooklyn, New York-based chef is midway into the second season of her show Counter Space . The series uses food as a lens to explore todays news and culture. Roe, who hosts and produces the show, takes viewers on a journey through different culinary experiences by telling the stories of the people who make them directly. Season Two premiered on Tastemade on Jan. 17.

An advocate for sustainability and food accessibility, the James Beard Foundation Award winner has built an intentional space with her show and her social media presence to champion education about food systems and inequality.

With Season One of Counter Space, Roe, who is of Black American and Japanese descent, became the first Black woman nominated in the culinary category for a Daytime Emmy.

Its a show not about me, and I love that, Roe told HuffPost during a recent Zoom call. I feel like Im just this really cool vessel, this story steward, that gets to really share about all sorts of things not just where our food comes from, but I think a lot of us already know that there are a lot of problems, so I think the show really covers solutions, which I think is really what we need to be talking about.

This season of Counter Space explores how hunters in Appalachia are addressing food accessibility, the huge impact Jamaica has on the world, how climate change is affecting Turkish honey producers, and why it seems like everyone has a tequila brand now.

For I Run This, Roe discussed her culinary journey from childhood, her work to fight food injustice, and her hopes for the future of the food industry.

Congratulations on Season Two of Counter Space. Can you talk about how the show came to be, and how it evolved this season?

Season One, it was more newsy because it had to be, because we were in the middle of a pandemic. I mean, even making the thing, it was six of us, and I was the only person without a mask on, and I wasnt even allowed to take public transport at the time. It was so separate, and everything was over Zoom, and it was a very challenging show logistically to make.

Whereas Season Two, while we were still definitely in a pandemic, there were protocols put in place for safety. We understood what were doing. And with that, we were able to travel. I was able to actually sit down with someone in person, which is really rad. And then I also think that the second season has a really cool culture piece.

I think its important to talk about where our food comes from. Who are these people that are making our food? What are their names and where do they come from? Anecdotal evidence of people who grow our food we hear this many farmers, but that is not storytelling evidence that these are actual real people.

So yes, theres the importance of where our food comes from. Yes, theres imagination. Yes, theres solution. But theres also a fair bit of pop culture stuff in there that I think is really cool and pretty sexy. Im excited that we get to do that in the second season.

How did your own food journey help you and your team to really connect the dots for folks today who are watching your show, and who really only view food as coming out of a grocery store?

I mean, food does come out of a grocery store, and that is also a problem. We dont live in an agrarian society. We are so disconnected from our food because of that grocery store, and we dont really understand distribution. More than 60% of the food that we eat and consume in the United States comes from somewhere else.

I have a really beautiful conversation with [author and food historian] Michael W. Twitty in this season. He talks about origin in such a beautiful way, and using food as a means for these hard, difficult conversations. I think it is a really great entryway point.

I want people to consider their origin stories when they watch the show. I want people to consider why they need origin stories to be happy and good and kind. I know we want to feel warm and fuzzy when we think about our food. Most of our origin stories, in the United States in particular, are not good and not kind.

I grew up a very hungry kid. I grew up really confused about why I was hungry and why some other kids werent, and why I live in Florida but theres boxes of oranges being shipped here from Mexico. What is going on? Very confused. My past is essential to the work that I do. I have to go back and reference it all the time.

On the show, Michael Twitty said: On your quest to figure out who you are, be prepared to find out some things about yourself that you dont like very much. That is something that I consider all the time when Im talking and thinking about food and thinking about the origin of this country and thinking about the origin of who has things and who doesnt.

How were you introduced to the culinary world?

Honey, its white out there. Its gotten better, but I think for me it was desperation. I grew up very just enthralled and really excited about food, but I was a very pedestrian, regular-ass kid. I think it must have been a guardian angel. I was really unseen as a kid. I could just walk into an area and no one would see me or pay attention to me. I think that really contributed to me being pretty fearless.

Both my parents were drug addicts, so I was in and out of foster care, and so I was used to being around a lot of strangers. And I think that really was my superpower, because Im really not scared to fail. I worked really hard in high school and then went to college, but I didnt have a car. I couldnt get to classes. I just didnt have much direction. I just needed a fucking job, because I just needed to survive. I just needed money.