The purpose of this project was to explore food-based podcasts and find three distinct episodes that related to one another. After sifting through multiple podcast websites, I discovered Sporkful’s “Other People’s Food Part 2: What’s Poor People’s Food” episode, Gravy’s “What is White Trash Cooking?” episode and the Splendid Table’s “$4 A Day “ episode. The key theme that tied these episodes together was the discussion of lower-class food.
In the Sporkful’s episode, its host Dan Pashman explored how food and identity were related. Pashman achieved this by interviewing African American cookbook author Nichole Taylor, NYU Professor Krishnedu Ray, cookbook author Chitra Agrawal and by incorporating his own monologues. Pashman’s segment of the podcast with Taylor discussed how her race influenced her food choices. Pashman’s interview with Nicole revealed that she considered southern African American food to be “slave food.” She found shame in eating what she regarded to be lower-class food. Taylor’s opinions about the food she grew up with related to Joan Gross and Nancy Rosenberger’s The Double Binds of Getting Food among the Poor in Rural Oregon. Taylor would refuse to eat “slave food” because she did not want to lower her cultural capital. In Gross and Rosenberger’s book, cultural capital is described as something that is “captured in the acts or goods that indicates ones taste as higher than others” (59). Taylor thought consuming “slave food” would indicate her tastes were lower than others, thus giving her a lower status. After Taylor’s interview, Pashman talked with Professor Ray. The professor claimed that what is considered lower-class food is due to a country’s economic standing. Following this segment, Pashman had a monologue about how lower-class food is being revamped via Instagram to look more appealing. He then ended the podcast by interviewing both Agrawal and Taylor. The final interview talked about how the author’s cookbooks are considered less valuable because of the author’s race.
The 22 minute duration of the podcast made it easy to listen to. The cast’s diversity added a unique element to the podcast that brought about issues an all-white cast would not have covered. Pashman’s charismatic and causal approach to each interview made the interviews not only provide relevant information, but fun to listen to. The podcast incorporated music between each interview to let me know there was a transition between segments. This design element was a smart way to smoothly shift between subjects. Directly after each transition, Pashman would give an analysis of each interview. This summary was a successful way to communicate to me, the listener, what key points the podcast wanted me to take away from the episode.
The Splendid Table’s episode had multiple segments all relating to food. In the first segment, the main host, Lynne Rossetto Kasper, interviewed a woman named Leanne Brown on a thesis she wrote about using a $4 a day budget to buy nutritional foods. This budget is what Americans on food stamps live on every day. This segment related to Mark Bittman’s Is Junk Food Really Cheaper? It is commonly assumed that junk food is the cheapest food available. Most people believe that “it’s more affordable to feed a family of four at McDonald’s than cook a healthy meal for them at home” (1). Therefore, people with smaller budgets often spend their food stamps on this so-called cheap food. However, Bittman’s article set out to prove that healthy food is cheaper than processed foods. Brown’s thesis further supported this claim by verifying that healthy food is not only cheaper than processed food, but it can also be achieved with a food stamp budget. After the interview with Brown, two foodies took over to recommend a seafood restaurant near Seattle. Following this segment, a woman named Noel Carter became host temporarily. Carter interviewed Professor Josh Kun above the history of dining in L.A.. Kasper then became host again to talk with someone about Taiwanese food history. The host then changed once more to a woman named Sally Swift. Swift talked to Wendy Suzuki, who claimed one of the best ways to exercise the brain is to try and decipher each ingredient in a meal with smell. Finally, the podcast was handed back over to Kasper for a phone segment. In this segment, Kasper took calls from listeners then gave cooking advice.
The Splendid Table’s podcast was 55 minutes long and had about ten minute’s dedicated to each segment. The length of the podcast made it difficult to give my full attention. However, the podcast did go through various changes that kept me interested. I found the incorporation of multiple hosts a nice change. All three of the hosts in the episode had personality behind their voices, despite being obviously planned interviews. The interviewees assisted the hosts in keeping my attention with their unscripted and personable responses. The podcast had a helpful design choice similar to the Sporkful. There was music between each segment to let the listener know that there was a transition occurring. Another interesting design choice of the podcast was a teaser of what they believed to be an interesting topic. At the beginning of the podcast, Kasper teased the interview about how smell exercised the brain. This teaser technique piqued my curiosity in a way that made me want to listen to the podcast’s entirety in order to learn about the foreshadowed information.
In Gravy’s episode, host Sara Reynolds gave the history of Eddie Mickler’s cookbook White Trash Cooking. Reynolds achieved this by interviewing Eddie’s daughter Helen, talking to a woman from the south named Ashley Day, and by conducting her own extensive research. The podcast started with Ashley Day describing foods from her childhood that gave the listener a sense of what white trash food was. From her description, it could be concluded that white trash food is lower-class white people food that is a mixture of processed and unprocessed foods. This related back to Laura Shapiro’s Something in the Oven. White trash food is essentially a collection of what was known as doctored up foods in the 50s. In Shapiro’s book, “doctoring up” food was the act of incorporating processed foods into everyday meals. This practice did not stick with most upper-class cooks because processed foods were considered beneath them. However, it is not surprising that this simple and inexpensive method of cooking became an integral part of white trash cuisine. Reynolds then talked to Helen about what Eddie was like as a father. After this, Reynolds moved on to give the full history of what Eddie had to go through to publish his cookbook. The podcast then ended with Reynolds having Ashley Day cook her a white trash pastry.
Gravy’s podcast was 27 minutes long. The podcast, unlike the previous two, sticks to one key topic. Despite being such a short podcast, I found listening to the episode to be difficult. The host lacked any personality. Luckily, Ashley and Helen brought enough charisma to their parts of the podcast that there was some entertainment value. Similarly to the previous two podcasts, this episode used music to transition between Reynolds’s monologues and the parts with Ashley and Helen. Unlike the previous two podcasts, music was also played softly behind Reynolds’s voice when she was saying something profound. Once Reynolds finished her point, the music crescendoed and played for a bit before Reynolds moved on. I felt this was a relevant design choice that added intrigue to the host’s boring tone.
The podcast’s content and design worked hand in hand to best deliver information to the listener. The Sporkful used upbeat music and chose youthful interviewees that brought animated tones to engage its audience. The Sporkful episode also pushed its own ideas onto the listener by having the host give an analysis of his thoughts after each segment. The Splendid Table used engaging hosts and transition methods to keep the listener entertained during each segment. The Splendid table chose highly regarded interviewees to give the information they relayed to the listener more weight. In addition to this, the hosts would get interviewees to say what they wanted them to by asking certain questions. Gravy’s podcast utilized music to let the listener know there was an important point being made. Gravy’s two interviewees were chosen because Eddie’s daughter gave its listeners the most accurate information on the White Trash Cooking author and Ashley gave the listeners an authentic sense of white trash cooking. The podcasts related to this class because they all covered a topic we have often discussed: lower-class foods. The Sporkful had a segment that covered how lower-class food defines people's social status. In class we have read multiple articles that talked about how food is capable of influencing and defining social status. Also, we have been discussing how hard it is for people to eat healthy on food stamps. The Spendid Table’s segment that reviewed a guide on how to spend four dollars a day on healthy food tied back into this discussion. Finally, at the beginning of this class we talked about how processed foods are deeply ingrained in our everyday lives. This is clearly reflected in white trash food. When Gravy’s podcast talked about white trash cooking, it was described as meals containing processed foods ingredients.