Love listening to NPR's This American Life. And, I adore food and cooking. (Natch!) So, why is it that I have yet to heed my foodie friends' advice and tune into the popular foodie radio show The Splendid Table?
They keep telling me that if I'd just tune in, I'd become addicted. Yet, I don't. Why? Is it that food seems too physical, too visual (pornographic in a sense), to seem the proper topic for ears only?
Well, if my friends' clamoring wasn't enough to get me to give up my aural prejudice when it comes to vittles, today's New York Times has finally done the trick. The Dining In, Dining Out section sports a cover story exploring tasty radio and podcasting fare:
Fans of the medium say that radio taps deeply into one's food memories, feeding directly into the brain in a way the written word can't. Where television cooking evokes a sort of slack-jawed passivity, radio requires the listener to hear the sizzle of butter and bread on a griddle and conjure the sight and smell of a grilled cheese.
Television might be the superior medium for actual cooking instruction, but radio fans say it's easier to cook and listen than it is to cook and watch.
"You know how you feel like in your living room and your friends are over and you just have that easy vibe? That's what radio feels like to me," said Ms. Quinn, who was food editor for Martha Stewart Living Television before becoming the host of the "EatDrink" radio show on the Sirius satellite network, which announced earlier this week that it had 4 million subscribers.
The current interest in radio has been primed by the niche community building on the Internet, where one can discover other lovers of hibiscus or create friends simply by posting a photographic record of recently consumed bowls of ramen.
"Food radio nowadays gives you that access you learned to have from the Internet but with the live interactiveness of TV," Ms. Quinn said. "It can be a private experience but it also is a public one."
Thinking I'd better tune in...And, possibly consider launching a podcast of my own, while I'm at it. Anyone out there want to listen-in as I make ice cream? The machine can make quite a ruckus. But then again, so can I!
Comments