BONUS The Friday Show - Dan Pashman's Full Plate
Guest:Dan, do you notice?
Guest:Kalo's, he's growing in up there.
Marc:Yeah, what's going on?
Marc:Hymns, baby.
Marc:Oh.
Marc:Using that hymns.
Marc:I'm actually going to start using hymns with Ozempic, whatever their Ozempic is.
Marc:I'm going to, I think I'm just going to do it.
Guest:And then what about the dick?
Guest:You got to just get it all in there all at once.
Marc:The dick is still fine.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Maybe with the combo, I'll need the third one.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:We'll see.
Guest:So it's a lotion or it's pills?
Marc:It pills, baby.
Marc:Yeah, it's all pills.
Marc:But I also do Rogaine as well.
Marc:So I do a combo.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And are there any side effects?
Marc:I can't taste the color green anymore.
Marc:No, no side effects.
Marc:No, absolutely nothing so far.
Marc:It's working.
Guest:It's a discount Rogaine.
Guest:It's called Joe Rogaine.
Guest:It's fully a human growth hormone.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:I got some takes, though.
Marc:I got some takes.
Guest:It's based on nothing.
Guest:It's total bullshit.
Guest:Hey, Chris.
Guest:BMAC.
Guest:I got somebody else to say hi to.
Guest:Hey, Dan.
Marc:Hey, guys.
Marc:How's it going?
Marc:Dan Pashman, the pasta king of Long Island.
Guest:I should get a t-shirt that says that.
Guest:Yeah, I'm surprised you don't.
Guest:I mean, when would I wear it, realistically?
Guest:Are you kidding?
Guest:You would wear it everywhere.
Guest:You're kind of a jerk.
Guest:Well, okay, maybe at a Giants game.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:You would wear it around the house.
Guest:You would make your kids call you that.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:They already roll their eyes at my silly t-shirts, even though I get a lot of comments on my t-shirt collection.
Guest:Well, Dan Pashman, most of you listening to this know who he is.
Guest:You have heard that voice before.
Guest:You have heard that laugh before.
Guest:Oh, yeah, that laugh.
Guest:sampled his pasta cascatelli or his podcast the sporkful uh or you know him uh as the person who started working with us back in 2004 almost 21 years ago jesus christ i know that's crazy yeah
Guest:It's funny, though.
Guest:We're sitting here.
Guest:Chris has more hair than he had back then.
Guest:Dan, you look well put together.
Guest:Like I have no complaints.
Guest:I look better now than I did 20 years ago.
Guest:I think she's right.
Guest:What do you attribute that to?
Guest:So much eating so much pasta.
Guest:Yeah, she just says this because I grow my hair longer.
Guest:She didn't like when my hair was so short.
Guest:yeah you add the like the short adam sandler thing going on when we first started working at air america yeah yeah but now now i get more george clooney especially or not um uh ben affleck ben affleck who i think has hair plugs so it could be yeah yeah when he grew a beard that was great for me what was the beard choice for you was it just like i i just want it or did you specifically think jawline structure
Guest:i mean i think i was just messing around and then i was like you know you know i was in my i probably did i have a beard when we were working together i don't think so i think you would let it you would have a little like five o'clock shadow yeah but it would come but i had had beards or goatees through you know in college and i just on and off and then i was just sort of like oh that's and then i just decided to stick with it janey likes it so you know i only need to be attractive to one person exactly
Marc:I grew a beard during COVID and it was not a good look.
Marc:And looking back at those photos, I look like a completely different person.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's wild.
Guest:But like at least now you can always tell when those photos are from.
Marc:Yes, that is true.
Marc:Look, I was bald and I had a giant beard for no reason.
Marc:Right.
Guest:You had like that Jason Kelsey thing going on.
Marc:Yeah, I guess.
Marc:Not as luxurious as that.
Marc:But I remember when I was shaving it, I shaved all the different types of other things I could do.
Marc:I did that too.
Marc:Oh, did you?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Hulk Hogan.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:Hulk Hogan.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:That's a fun time.
Marc:I did the MJF where it was no mustache, but all beard.
Marc:So yeah, it's interesting.
Marc:Interesting.
Guest:What does MJF stand for?
Marc:Oh, sorry.
Marc:That's a wrestler from your home island.
Marc:Yeah, I think he's from, like, Great Neck or something.
Guest:Excuse me.
Guest:I'm from New Jersey, just to keep it straight, all right?
Guest:I may live on Long Island, but I am not from Long Island.
Guest:I'm from New Jersey.
Guest:Periodically, I will be talking to someone here on Long Island where I've now lived for 11 years, and we'll be chatting, and then they'll be like...
Guest:Hey, you kind of got a funny accent.
Guest:You're not from around here, are you?
Guest:And I'm like, I'm from New Jersey.
Guest:It's 30 miles away.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:And it also sounds basically the same.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:But I guess it's because I don't talk like, you know, a plumber.
Guest:It doesn't compute.
Guest:I must be from some far off land because I pronounce my R's.
Yeah.
Guest:well dan i just saw you raise a cup to take a sip of tasty beverage there and it is a cup that is emblazoned with your podcast logo the sporkful that's right and the sporkful started 15 years ago this week is that true is it is it exactly because this is right right now today is uh january 17th was it when was the first episode of the sporkful i
Guest:I believe it was January 10th.
Guest:So we're celebrating all week long.
Guest:So you're still in, this is the week of the 15th anniversary of the Sporkful.
Guest:And that's your latest episode is the 15th anniversary episode.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:So it's a walk down memory lane, which I had resisted doing.
Guest:We didn't leave, you know, like sort of the story of the Sporkful podcast.
Guest:We thought about doing it for the 10th anniversary, but we didn't.
Guest:But, you know, like people are always asking me when I go around and I give talks or do like, I did a book last year.
Guest:That's one of the most common things people ask about is like, how did you get this started?
Guest:What were the early days like?
Guest:And I was like, you know, I guess people do want to know.
Guest:They do.
Guest:I got to tell you, people always want to know that stuff.
Guest:And we do episodes that are like, you know, the history of the show and this and that.
Guest:And they do great numbers.
Guest:Like people go and listen to that.
Guest:They want to know it.
Guest:Well, that's good to know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, yeah.
Guest:And I mean, look, you two were there in my early days of my radio career and helped, you know, inspire me to start a podcast.
Guest:So it feels fitting that we're all hanging out.
Guest:Well, let's go back to those early days.
Guest:Let's even go back to before you and I and Chris met.
Guest:You were doing radio as far back as college, right?
Guest:You did it at Tufts?
Guest:Yeah, I won this contest my junior year of college that got me four hours of time on the college radio station.
Guest:And I was already interested in media.
Guest:I was working on the newspaper and all that.
Guest:And then I got on the radio and I was like, oh, my God, this is so fun.
Guest:I want to do this.
Guest:So senior year, I got a radio show and I just sort of fell in love with that.
Guest:And when I graduated college, I just said, like, I graduated 1999.
Guest:I said, my dream is to host my own radio show.
Guest:That is my goal.
Guest:I want to host my own radio show.
Guest:Were you thinking of anyone in particular at the time?
Guest:Like like an influence or to emulate or like that's the type of thing I do.
Guest:I do it like that person like a stern.
Guest:Not I mean a little bit like so in the intro to my college radio show, I definitely ripped off Chris Mad Dog Russo of Mike and the Mad Dog Sports Talk Radio fame in New York.
Marc:Good afternoon, everybody.
Guest:I would do like the and welcome, you know, that kind of thing that he would always do.
Guest:So that was like just blatantly took that from him.
Guest:So Mike and the Mad Dog were a big inspiration.
Guest:But I didn't have on the college radio show.
Guest:I played music.
Guest:We interviewed people a tiny bit.
Guest:We did.
Guest:It was a little bit of everything.
Guest:We did little comedy bits like we started doing Air America.
Guest:I should say the radio show was Thursday night into Friday morning, 2 a.m.
Guest:to 4 a.m.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:And we called it After Hours with my friend Gabe and I hosted it.
Guest:And but all the bars in Round Tufts and Somerville, they all close at 1 a.m.
Guest:So it was kind of good because, like, you know, people go out to bars.
Guest:Thursday night was the night to go out to bars instead of like, you know, campus parties.
Guest:And so everyone would go out.
Guest:The bars would close.
Guest:They'd all come back to their dorms and apartments and order pizza and whatever.
Guest:And then our show would come on.
Guest:So it was kind of built like come back after drinking and listen to the show.
Guest:And so we did little silly comedy bits like the 3 a.m.
Guest:traffic report where I would go to the window of the studio and open the window and stick my head out.
Guest:And I would just be like, there's no cars.
Guest:And I'd be like, wait, there's a truck.
Guest:Here comes.
Guest:OK, the truck's gone.
Guest:That was the 3 a.m.
Guest:traffic report.
Guest:So, you know, there were probably like little kernels of a lot of the things that I would end up doing.
Guest:But I hadn't really sort of I didn't have a specific vision beyond those sort of bits and pieces.
Marc:Was that show called The Dan Pashman Show, or did it have a name?
Guest:So the original show was called After Hours with G-Money and the Pashman.
Marc:Whoa.
Guest:Because Gabe, my friend Gabe was G-Money.
Guest:Wait, who's G-Money?
Guest:My friend Gabe.
Guest:My good friend Gabe.
Guest:He was my co-host.
Guest:So it was After Hours with G-Money and the Pashman.
Guest:And then Gabe, you know, for some weird reason, decided not to pursue a career in radio and instead became some kind of, like, loser lawyer or something.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:No, I'm teasing.
Guest:Gabe's great, and he's doing very well as a lawyer.
Guest:But...
Guest:He left and then I hosted the show solo and then it was called The Pash Man Cometh.
Marc:The Pash Man Cometh.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think I've actually titled one of your appearances on WTF that.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:It's a smooth fit.
Marc:Do you have any of those tapes?
Guest:I think I do have some cassettes somewhere and I pulled a few clips.
Guest:I did a live show, a live Sporkful taping back at Tufts.
Guest:a few years ago, and I played a few clips.
Guest:I got, like, campus personalities to record IDs for the show, so I got the rabbi from Tufts Hallel being like, this is Rabbi Jeffrey Summit from Tufts University, and you're listening to the two guys who could make crossing the desert with nothing but matzah a good time.
Guest:After hours of G-Money and the Pashman.
Guest:Or then like Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, if you know them, they're a band.
Guest:They came to play at Tufts.
Guest:And afterwards, I went up with my little handheld tape recorder.
Guest:I'd written out IDs for each of them to record.
Guest:And the horn player, Jeff Coffin, he played like every horn instrument there is.
Guest:He was a very talented guy.
Guest:And again, remember my co-host on the show, his name was Gabe.
Guest:So I got Jeff Coffin to record an ID that said, hi, this is Jeff Coffin, baritone, alto, tenor, and soprano saxophonist for Bela Fleck and the Flecktones.
Guest:And if you think I spent a lot of time blowing, you should meet Gabe's mom.
Yeah.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:Gabe taking some L's.
Guest:Yeah, Gabe thought it was very funny, but he never played it for his mom.
Guest:I remember, Dan, at Air America, you were the guy who always hunted down any celebrity, any even passing celebrity name.
Guest:It could have been a person who wrote one food book or something.
Guest:You would hunt them down and get them to record a station ID.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I love an ID.
Guest:I'm almost sad that I'm not on live radio anymore because there's no reason for me to do IDs.
Guest:My particularly favorite one that you ever did was you got Charles Barkley to say, I'm Charles Barkley, and when I need the news and can't talk to Michael, Larry, Magic, or Manute Ball, I turn to Mark and Mark on Morning Sedition.
Yeah.
Guest:I remember we did a live taping in Boston and we had then Congressman Barney Frank joined us live at, I think we were at the Somerville, like a cafe in Davis Square.
Marc:Somerville Cafe, that was it.
Guest:Somerville Cafe, yeah.
Guest:And Barney Frank was there and I handed him a script for an ID that he wrote and he declined to read it.
Guest:But for those who aren't familiar with Barney Frank, he was one of the first openly gay people to serve in Congress.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And the idea I wrote for him was, this is Congressman Barney Frank here to remind you that in America you should be able to wake up with whoever you want.
Guest:That's why I wake up with Mark and Mark.
Guest:That's great.
Guest:I thought that was good.
Guest:I thought that was like – I was going easy.
Guest:He's still a sitting congressman, especially at a time when he might have been the only openly gay congressman.
Guest:I thought that was good.
Guest:I thought he might go for it.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Yeah, that was tame.
Marc:I thought that could have went a lot of different directions.
Guest:Also, do you remember that you wrote a bunch out for Ira Glass?
Guest:And he was like at the mic getting ready to record them.
Guest:And he was like, wait a minute, I'm probably not allowed to do this.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:now that you say that i remember yes that was and so you like hunted him down like you were like following him around this the station and you were like what if we changed your name like what if you were like like jerry wood and philip glass here yeah
Guest:And he kept like being like, what are you even talking about?
Guest:I can't do this.
Guest:Yeah, that sounds on brand.
Guest:Well, OK, but so that was you, your tenacity and your ambition and stick-to-itiveness were playing out at Air America.
Guest:But that's five years after you graduate from college.
Guest:So during those five years, you never did any radio?
Guest:A little bit.
Guest:So I interned for Robin Young, who now for years has been hosting here and now on NPR.
Guest:But back then she had a show on 92.9 FM WBOS in Boston.
Guest:I interned for her my senior year of college and then continued to work with her.
Guest:I was writing for an independent newspaper that then was called Boston's Weekly Dig.
Guest:I think it's now called The Dig.
Guest:I'm not even sure if it still exists.
Guest:No affiliation with the Big Dig Construction Project.
Guest:It sounds like that was the illusion.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, I don't know that – I think it was more like can you dig it kind of thing.
Guest:Just to give you a sense of what I was doing there, I was the first staff writer hired to write for Boston's Weekly Dig.
Guest:I believe, if I remember correctly, my salary was $200 a month.
Guest:Um, and one month they didn't have $200 to pay me.
Guest:So the publisher just paid me in a bag of mushrooms.
Marc:Like, like, like psychedelic mushrooms.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:Psychedelic mushrooms.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:I was going to say oyster.
Guest:Those little Japanese ones that go on top of soup.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I waited tables.
Guest:I was waiting tables.
Guest:Then I moved to Chicago, and I loved the city of Chicago.
Guest:My career was going nowhere there.
Guest:I couldn't get a good radio job.
Guest:I was helping to edit the magazine of the Chicago Medical Society, which was very boring work.
Guest:I moved there right after 9-11 without a job, and then no one was hiring because of 9-11.
Guest:I got a job at a temp agency for a while.
Guest:I was employee of the month doing data entry temp work.
Guest:I was the employee of the month, which is a very –
Guest:bittersweet honor to have earned yeah yeah congratulations want to make it forever right weren't you a cab driver as well that was during college i drove a taxi on martha's vineyard for a couple years yeah yeah bounced around but um after a couple years in chicago as much as i love the city my career is going nowhere and i heard about this thing called air america which initially was being started by these rich liberals in chicago right so i
Guest:The Drobneys were based in Chicago, and I thought, so I thought I was already in Chicago.
Guest:I was like, great, this is going to be in Chicago.
Guest:And then somewhere early on in the sort of ideation phase, they decided, no, we're going to do this thing in New York.
Guest:And didn't you just do the Pashman thing where you just fucking hounded them forever?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Not unlike Ira Glass at Air America and many, many people before and since.
Guest:I just I literally I was working with the Chicago Medical Society in a job that I did not like.
Guest:And I would read this before cell phones.
Guest:So I had to call.
Guest:I think it was Dave Logan was the guy whose number.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:But even before that, I had I had a phone number to like the personal assistant to the Drobneys.
Guest:And I don't know how I got that number.
Guest:I don't know how I tracked it down.
Guest:But periodically I would sneak downstairs into the basement of the Chicago Medical Society into like the boiler room where I found a landline phone because I had to call during working hours.
Guest:But I was at work during working hours.
Guest:I didn't have a cell phone.
Guest:I couldn't step outside of the street.
Guest:So I and I couldn't call from my desk because I'd be blatantly looking for jobs then at work.
Guest:So I snuck down to the boiler room like once a month and would call him like, hey, do you guys know when you're starting up?
Guest:When are you going to be hiring?
Guest:When's this thing happening?
Marc:There are only two phones in this entire building.
Marc:He doesn't want people to hear him.
Guest:I don't want anyone to know that I'm actively looking for another job, Chris.
Guest:So I have to find a secret phone.
Guest:And the only one was in the boiler room.
Guest:so i chris man of no tact does not understand this concept yeah anyway i um eventually they were like okay we're getting ready to hire uh you got to meet with these uh dave logan and shelly lewis and i was coming home to you know i'm from new york i was coming home to the new york area over christmas it was like december 2003 i had coffee with
Guest:I think it was Dave Logan.
Guest:And then I started putting in my resume.
Guest:I met with Shelly Lewis and that was how I started.
Guest:So yes, it did involve a lot of nagging to get my foot in the door there.
Guest:Well, what I think is interesting, Dan, is that you're talking about this.
Guest:It's anyone who's listening to this and kind of hearing your story for the first time can see, like I said, you're very tenacious.
Guest:You have a lot of stick-to-itiveness when it comes to the things you want to pursue.
Guest:And
Guest:I feel like, you know, celebrating your show being an active podcast for 15 years is like the the idea that, you know, you said, I want to be a radio host.
Guest:I'm going to do this some way, some shape, some form.
Guest:Like, I remember you were trying to do that, like while we were at Air America, you were like, oh, I'm going to try to get on the air here.
Guest:We made a demo, you and I.
Guest:Yeah, I still have that on a CD up in the attic, but yeah, no, for sure.
Guest:I wanted to be on the air.
Guest:That was my goal.
Guest:Probably annoyed some people at Air America.
Guest:We know I annoyed some people.
Guest:Yeah, Danny Goldberg.
Guest:Yeah, Danny Goldberg, who was always- You were Don Pushman, the guy you didn't want on the air.
Guest:Stop letting Don Pushman on the air.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Marin was mostly supportive, except when, Brendan, when you and I filled in and we got more emails than he got when he was hosting, then he would feel a little resentful.
Guest:But it was only because we gave out the email address and encouraged people to email, and he didn't.
Guest:But he would get back from being on break and see tons of emails and think that people liked us more.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Well, also, I think it was also skewed by the fact that he was on vacation during one of the biggest news events of our entire tenure there.
Guest:It was Hurricane Katrina.
Guest:So it was a very active and engaged audience.
Guest:And we wound up being the hosts of the show that week.
Guest:And so, yes, there were a lot of people writing in.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:We interviewed Jesse Jackson.
Guest:That was pretty, I remember that.
Guest:That was pretty cool.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, and then I remember we did this, like, pilot where we pitched ourselves as, like, put us on in the overnights.
Guest:Like, we'll continue producing Morning Sedition, but we'll come into work at, like, you know, one in the morning or something, and we'll do an overnight show.
Guest:Thank God they said no to that.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:Because that would have been such a waste of effort.
Guest:Oh, especially knowing what we know now about this.
Guest:Right, exactly.
Guest:That's what I'm saying.
Guest:Looking back, it never would have gone anywhere.
Guest:We wouldn't have ended up with a radio show anyway.
Marc:Bernie, you could have been the new Dan's former host.
Marc:What was that guy's name?
Marc:Gabe.
Marc:Ron Cooney?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh.
Marc:You could have been Gabe.
Guest:Gabe, yeah.
Guest:You know, so like put me in here, put me in there.
Guest:We specifically said you have no bench.
Guest:We told them that.
Guest:And guess what?
Guest:We were right.
Guest:When stuff started to go south, they had to go out and hire Montel Williams.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Jerry Springer.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:I mean, that's the least of their problems.
Guest:They had myriad, but that was one of them.
Guest:Yeah, no, for sure.
Guest:So I was always, you know, trying to bug people into putting me on the air for sure.
Guest:So I remember and you correct me if I'm wrong, but I do remember talking to you about your ambitions for a podcast.
Guest:And I don't remember from the start that it was 100 percent going to be a food podcast.
Guest:I feel like that was a thing that you that was like on the list of options, but it kind of like only only solidified after a little while.
Guest:Am I right in remembering it that way?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:So the three of us worked together like 2004, 2005, and then we kind of kept bouncing around in the Air America universe.
Guest:We sort of went apart into different projects and then came back together later.
Guest:So that was 2007, 2008.
Guest:For people to understand it at the time, too, it was like we and you and I, Dan, I know we were encountering this same thing everywhere we went, whether it was Sirius, whether it's back at Air America, whether it's independent, independent companies where we were producing radio for them.
Guest:We were encountering this fact that like people didn't do what we did.
Guest:Our like our skill set was was a very limited group of people.
Guest:There were not lots and lots of radio producers that had the type of experience that we had.
Guest:So it's kind of very easy to just bounce around to these jobs.
Guest:But the jobs themselves were not very satisfying one.
Guest:And in terms of growth or progression, they didn't have much prospects there because the whole industry was kind of dying and constricting.
Guest:Right.
Guest:No, I mean, we had the sort of bad luck.
Guest:We had the good luck of being in the right place when podcasting was taking off.
Guest:But before that, we had the bad luck of having come out of college right at a time when technology was turning all the media upside down.
Guest:All the traditional business models were falling apart.
Guest:There were two recessions in my first 10 years out of college.
Guest:And so it was just a very tumultuous time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:economically in general and especially in media and radio.
Guest:I kept getting jobs at different shows and thinking, I'm just going to stay here.
Guest:I'm going to work my ass off.
Guest:I'll work my way up.
Guest:Eventually I'll get my own show.
Guest:And with Morning Tradition, we worked together and with a bunch of others, I kept getting a job on a show and then the show would get canceled because the wind would start blowing in a different direction with the higher ups or whatever.
Guest:I got laid off from like six jobs in eight years.
Guest:And that was when I started saying, maybe I should host a podcast.
Guest:2009 you guys launched when you and mark launched brendan and i remember like you guys were doing it at air america so i was still seeing you while you were doing your podcast because i was still there doing some odd job and i was kind of contemplating it and i remember you and mark just being like hey you should start a podcast it's going great for us yeah which is very funny for me to think of in 2009 because you probably had 800 listeners
Guest:Well, I mean, in relative sense, sure.
Guest:But the reason why we thought it was going so well was because we expected about literally 800 listeners, a thousand listeners.
Guest:That was what we expected.
Guest:And within a couple of weeks, it had like 30,000, right?
Guest:So, you know, in relative terms to today, that's not much.
Guest:But in the sense of what we found we could do right out of the chute,
Guest:I think that was how we kind of spoke to you about, like, hey, we figured out that we have built-in structural advantages here that other people starting podcasts don't.
Guest:And you have the same advantages as a guy who's been producing radio, so you should do this.
Guest:Right, right, 100%.
Guest:So I was brainstorming different ideas.
Guest:To get back to your question of, like, how I ended up on food, I mean, I knew I wanted, basically, like,
Guest:Most of my work to that point had been in news, news, politics, some sort of news comedy, like what we were doing.
Guest:Then I was at NPR for a while, so that was a little bit more serious news.
Guest:But I've been doing news and politics for most of my career.
Guest:But I didn't feel like that.
Guest:I just didn't I didn't think the world needed another guy with opinions on the news.
Guest:I didn't think I had anything special or unique to say on all that.
Guest:I'm a big sports fan, as you guys know, but I sort of had the same feeling.
Guest:The world doesn't need another guy with a bunch of opinions on sports.
Guest:I don't think that I have something interesting to say.
Guest:I mean, it helped, as you say, it helped that I already had 10 years of experience as a producer because I was like, all right, what's my angle?
Guest:I need a topic where I have something to say that's going to stand out or be interesting or compelling, not just regurgitating what 100 other people are saying.
Guest:And then I started thinking about food and I was like, you know, I haven't really, I mean, I waited tables in college.
Guest:I'm not a chef.
Guest:I have no professional culinary training, but I've always loved to eat.
Guest:And as I started thinking about it, I realized, you know, like wherever I've been in audio, I always ended up like pitching a lot of food segments or I was going on the air.
Guest:I was talking about food a lot.
Guest:I really love to eat.
Guest:I started thinking back to like in college, we would like go to the diner and my friends would always be commenting on what I was eating or I'd be ordering an omelet and taking it apart and building some sort of like elaborate sandwich structure.
Guest:And I had a lot of opinions.
Yeah.
Guest:So for the listeners, Chris, since you've seen this, I had a million opinions about the best way to eat something or the best version of a thing.
Guest:And I was like, I guess this is kind of like – it's kind of quirky.
Guest:My approach to food is kind of quirky and different.
Guest:It's full of all of my idiosyncrasies.
Guest:And I was like, maybe this is something.
Guest:This feels like it could stand out.
Guest:And I don't really see this out there in the world of food.
Guest:Most of the world of food media is chefs doing recipes or it's fancy restaurants or this and that.
Guest:And I want to –
Guest:I want something very different.
Guest:That's just going to be like, I love to eat.
Guest:I'm just going to talk about the most basic foods and the most ridiculous detail.
Guest:And the more insane the level of detail is, the funnier it will be and also the more unique it will be.
Guest:I do remember you sending me early listens.
Guest:I don't even know if there were things that made it on the air.
Guest:I don't know if you actually put them up as podcasts or if they were just tests.
Guest:I can't remember specifically.
Guest:But I do remember you sending me them and getting my feedback on them.
Guest:And I was like...
Guest:the bigger a jackass you are about this thing the better like you know any given thing like i found that it really worked when like if you were just listening if you have no idea who you were and you started listening you'd be like who the fuck is this guy why does he think that and then you'd listen to and you got kind of be won over
Guest:Like I and I've had that experience happen listening to you over and over again.
Guest:And I know you.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I would like I remember going to the thing you did with John Hodgman that was live at the Bell House and in Brooklyn.
Guest:And it was a debate over is a hot dog a sandwich, which, you know, you come back when that was a very pressing, like trendy question.
Guest:Yes, right.
Guest:It's gotten a little tired, but it was a hot topic when we did that.
Guest:It was a hot topic and there was no easy answer.
Guest:And mostly because you'd be like, who are these assholes that even pose this question?
Guest:And the kind of secret of the success of the sporkful, at least until you become a pasta maven, is that it becomes a reasonable discussion where you're actually contemplating it and going like, wait, now I think I have an opinion on this.
Guest:And I remember coming away from that.
Guest:I saw that with you, Chris, like we were there in the audience.
Guest:And like, I felt like Reservoir Dogs when Tim Roth's like, they convinced me, give me my tip back.
Guest:Like I turned to Chris in the middle.
Guest:I'm like, oh, Dan's totally right.
Guest:It's a sandwich.
Guest:Like there's no debate.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, thank you.
Guest:That's very gratifying.
Guest:I feel very validated that you agreed with me on that debate.
Guest:In those early days of The Sporeful, when that really was the concept of the show, and it's evolved a lot since, but when that was it, my favorite reaction we would sometimes get from listeners was, I never knew I had such strong opinions about that.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And I love that reaction.
Guest:That's different from I have strong opinions about that.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:It's like I never knew I had such strong opinions until you started talking about it.
Guest:I realized I actually care deeply about the best way to layer peanut butter and jelly on a PB&J.
Guest:Which is a way.
Guest:to get people to come back.
Guest:Because if it's just like, I have strong opinions about this thing, and then they listen to it, and then that's the end of that.
Guest:If it's like, I never knew I had strong opinions of this, they might listen to one a week from now and get more new opinions on things.
Guest:It's the discovery process.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then the next time you go to eat that food, it's a very different experience because you're thinking back to the episode.
Guest:You're thinking back to all those opinions that you didn't quite know you had that were always there lurking just below the surface.
Guest:And now suddenly eating that peanut butter and jelly sandwich is a totally different experience.
Guest:Now, when you first started doing this, I wonder if your experience tracks parallel to me and Mark here.
Guest:Because I remember, well, first of all, you started this with a co-host.
Guest:You guys were doing the show almost like sports talk radio, like Mike and the Mad Dog.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And then you guys got TV, like, I don't know what you would call it.
Guest:Was it a pilot presentation?
Guest:There was something you guys did with food labs or something like that.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:So the guy was Mark Garrison.
Guest:He and I had worked together at NPR.
Guest:And so when I had the idea to start The Sporkful, I was like, you know, I had never hosted anything, really.
Guest:I was like, I should probably have a co-host.
Guest:I invited him to do it with me because I knew he was into food.
Guest:So in the early days, we were doing it together.
Guest:And we did a thing through Slate called Gastrolab.
Guest:It was like silly food videos.
Guest:And that was like – it was kind of like just before Epic Meal Time became a big thing.
Guest:It was kind of like we would find a theme and just start doing crazy concoctions like waffles.
Guest:How many things can we put into a waffle maker in addition to the waffle batter like chicken fingers?
Guest:And we did a waffle with White Castle burgers smushed inside or like all kinds of like sort of stunts, which was a lot of fun.
Guest:If we keep doing these videos, we're just going to have to come up with more and more ridiculous.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:You were back then, 14 years ago, in the conundrum of all these YouTube creators now.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:That have to refill this, topping themselves every time.
Guest:100%.
Guest:So I saw that very early on.
Guest:And then Epic Meal Time came along and they've had a lot of imitations.
Guest:But they were the ones who were like, we're making a 400-pound samosa or whatever it is.
Guest:And first of all, a video like that takes three days to shoot probably.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, it's a huge endeavor, which we didn't have.
Guest:And also, like, I just I was like, this is going to get old very quickly.
Guest:So I kind of burnt out on those.
Guest:But it was fun.
Guest:It was a good time.
Guest:Good opportunity early on.
Guest:But then so what I what I would say when I said this is kind of parallel to me and Mark is that, you know, as you'd start to see something taking off like this, oh, the show, it has like a blossom and you can do something with it.
Guest:There become all these offers to do other things.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That like take you off the path of the thing you're actually doing very well.
Guest:And like it was when like Mark and I had that realization of like, no, no, no, we have a lane and we're going to stay in it and do the best thing we can do in this lane.
Guest:Like, did you have that feeling or did you feel like you could manage the multiple levels of it?
Guest:I mean, a little bit of both.
Guest:I think mostly I'm of the same mind as you, Brandon.
Guest:I think that's one reason why you guys have been so successful.
Guest:And I just feel like in a world where there's so much noise and so many people doing so many things, you're just better off doing a smaller number of things better.
Guest:Do one or two things really, really well and stand out at those things as opposed to doing 10 different things differently.
Guest:You know, mediocrely.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I always from very early on, I had that idea.
Guest:On the other hand, like, you know, you got to self promote, you got to market.
Guest:And so you got to kind of find that balance a little bit.
Guest:But definitely like, you know, you get these, you know, I always remember the early days of podcasting, people would say like, oh, you're not going to make any money hosting a podcast.
Guest:But if your podcast is successful, you'll get a book deal.
Guest:And then you'd go to the publishing people and they'd say, well, you know, there's not so much money in books, but if this book does well, you'll get a TV show.
Guest:And the TV people say, well, there's not so much money in TV, but if your show's a hit, then you can sell oven mitts.
Guest:And the oven mitt people are like, well, don't look at us.
Guest:You know?
Marc:Who are the oven mitt people?
Marc:How are they doing?
Guest:Big oven mitt, you know, the oven mitt lobby.
Guest:You know, but the point is that, like, you know, you can kind of fall into this trap of thinking that you have to do everything.
Guest:I also think, though, like I've had, you know, some side projects and things I've done that have gone really well, some that have crashed and burned.
Guest:And, you know, so like I try to find the balance of like being selective about second projects, but not shutting them out entirely.
Yeah.
Guest:Well, you also kind of moved the show into this area where it becomes almost like a human interest presentation that happens to have food as the umbrella.
Guest:I think you've had ways to kind of philosophically describe this, right?
Guest:Like your way about talking about how like basically food brings us together, but the togetherness is the part you're trying to get at.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, well, I think food is a really great tool.
Guest:Sometimes I think that the idea that food brings us together is a little bit like overused because the truth is there's a lot of ways that food is used to keep people apart.
Guest:It's more that food is a tool that – because everyone eats and food is a part of every culture just about and –
Guest:In one way or another, it's part of every person's childhood, whatever that is for you.
Guest:And so it's like it's just a huge part of your identity.
Guest:And so I just sort of came to feel like – at a certain point, I kind of got tired of debating the best way to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and whether hot dogs or sandwiches.
Marc:The right way to eat a pizza slice?
Marc:That's right.
Marc:That always got me.
Marc:Inside out.
Marc:Have you tried it though, Chris?
Marc:I haven't tried it because it sounds illogical.
Marc:The inside out pizza slice.
Marc:What are we talking about?
Marc:You fold it inside out.
Marc:My favorite is you telling the guy from Roberta's, I want to say?
Marc:No, Grimaldi's.
Marc:Patty Grimaldi.
Guest:Yes, yes.
Guest:Who at the time was like an 83-year-old.
Guest:He's probably in his 90s now.
Guest:But at the time he was in his 80s, New York City pizza legend.
Guest:And I was trying to convince him to fold his pizza slices inside out.
Marc:i'm so glad that's on camera too this guy this guy is side-eyeing you side-eyeing you like nobody's business yeah it's also telling an 80 year old hey have you tried this new way to eat a pizza right he's like the most old school pizza person yeah yeah
Guest:but that's why he was perfect for that like i always wanted people for those things who were going to shoot me down because then it was funnier um but anyway so but i sort of evolved beyond that and i just sort of came to feel that like you can talk about anything when you start off with food do you put a moment on it for yourself because i like to me i know a moment where i was listening to you and knowing who you are like i was like this is like he he's he's evolved this thing to a great place i know exactly what it was
Guest:i'll be curious to hear yours i don't know i mean like you know that live show with john hodgeman we debated is a hot dog a sandwich to me was sort of like the apotheosis of sporkful 1.0 that was that was like the the crowning moment it was an incredible night the bell house was packed it was like the week after they were debating whether a hot dog was a sandwich on the today's show it was like it was the fall of 2015 i want to say um and so like i
Guest:But it was also a time when the podcast boom was starting, shows like Serial and Startup were happening, long-form storytelling and podcasting.
Guest:Yeah, that was our big year, 2015.
Guest:Yeah, shows with more depth were coming, and I was like, I just got to raise my game.
Guest:And then sort of the first real substantive thing we did was this series about race and food called Other People's Food.
Guest:So that's sort of what I think about.
Guest:But what do you think about, Brendan?
Yeah.
Guest:I thought that the moment when I listened to your show and said he he hit the next level and this is like sustainable and high quality.
Guest:And he you know, it felt like you had like to me, it was your achievement along the lines of, you know, when we had Obama on like I was like, oh, this is this is that moment for Dan.
Guest:And it was not so much just what you did, but then what another show did in relation to you.
Guest:And it was your show about the Aleppo sandwich.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So there was a story about two journalists.
Guest:Right.
Guest:They were a couple.
Guest:And one of the things they had in their memory was being in Syria and having this sandwich.
Guest:Is that I'm telling the story right.
Guest:They were journalists covering the Iraq war in the early 2000s before war broke out in Syria.
Guest:So back then you would go on vacation to Aleppo in Syria.
Guest:And they did.
Guest:And they ate this.
Guest:They sort of fell in with a local guy who was showing them around.
Guest:And it's like, you've got to eat.
Guest:If you're in Aleppo, you've got to eat this sandwich.
Guest:And took them to this sandwich place in Aleppo.
Guest:And they were just like, this was the most incredible.
Guest:These were the most incredible sandwiches they'd ever had.
Guest:The bread, the ingredients, everything about them was incredible.
Guest:And they were like, yeah, but like this was we were doing this at the height of the Syrian civil war.
Guest:And they were like, and we just assume that that place doesn't exist anymore because Aleppo in particular was so hard hit.
Guest:And so we set out to do an episode to try to find the place, to see if it still existed, to find out what happened to it.
Guest:Are the owners even alive?
Guest:And while my friends remembered that the sandwiches were great, they couldn't remember exactly what was in them.
Guest:So it was like, what are these sandwiches?
Guest:Why are they special?
Guest:What is this place?
Guest:Why is the place special?
Guest:And does it even exist?
Guest:And if not, what happened to the owners?
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, and it has like a, almost like a suspenseful ending.
Guest:It's got a, it's got a, it's a satisfying listen.
Guest:It was like, that was a thing.
Guest:I remember listening to it and being like that, man, that was great.
Guest:But it was like, that wasn't enough for me to think you, you produced something great.
Guest:It was the fact that it was Adam Davidson, right?
Guest:That was the journalist.
Guest:So he worked at the New Yorker.
Guest:And so the New Yorker was,
Guest:also produced a version of this like their own version of what your reporting was and the stuff like so that they could kind of piggyback on it what's our you know uh journalist and he can write about it and this other show did its version of it and they credited everything it was almost like did you have a deal to do it in tandem or i don't know how that came about i
Guest:I think we did ours first and then they took it after the fact and repurposed it.
Guest:I see.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So all I do remember is that listening to their version, this was the New Yorker and being like, Oh, they didn't do as good a job with this.
Guest:Like their version was lesser and didn't hit on the same things that made yours so satisfying.
Guest:And I,
Guest:I was like, that's the benefit of his, this experience of, you know, and the trajectory of, of knowing how to produce this, being a podcast producer.
Guest:And like, I, that was the moment for me.
Guest:It was, it was the combination of hearing your show, which was great, but you had done other great episodes.
Guest:So it wasn't like, you know, one great episode was going to put it over the top.
Guest:It was more that like, ah, that's his lane that it shows right there on in a comparison side by side.
Guest:One is better than the other.
Hmm.
Guest:Oh, thanks.
Guest:I mean, I appreciate that.
Guest:I'm trying to remember.
Guest:I actually think that I think, to be honest, I think that I listened to their version and felt the same way.
Guest:But it's hard for me to tell, like, is it objectively better?
Guest:It's just that, of course, the Sporkful is going to reflect my taste and what I'm most interested in.
Guest:But maybe the New Yorker version would be better to someone else.
Guest:Yeah, I think it's like to me as someone who would equally, you know, respond to either one, whichever one sounds good.
Guest:It was like understanding that they are still working in an older framework of like and this we you know, you and I encountered this all the time when we were, you know, coming up and you'd notice like the New York Times, like before they hit on the daily, like they would try some type of podcasting.
Guest:You're like, oh.
Guest:who the hell would listen to this?
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it required a radio person going to them and being like, I'll produce this thing.
Guest:Like the daily was a gamble.
Guest:Like they were just like, yeah, sure.
Guest:Like you three people want to do this.
Guest:And you came from, you know, Boston NPR or whatever, go for it, see what you can do.
Guest:And you know, that is the same thing.
Guest:I think you and I, and you know, Chris, you identify this all the time where you're like listening to, to listen,
Guest:Whether it's our show or some other podcast we're talking about where you're like, if that actually sounds good, like those things got forgotten as well.
Guest:Like, you know, you got to make this sound good.
Guest:You got to make the experience pleasant for people and not just try to do a version of the newspaper or a magazine article like it's got to be produced like audio.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I think for me, your show, I mean, you're chronicling the Cascatelli saga.
Marc:I think that for me was like, that was chef's kiss, no pun intended.
Marc:But that whole journey with, you know, your wife being on there and like trying out stuff, like I really thought you kind of came into your own there.
Marc:You know, I feel like that's where the show kind of leveled up yet again.
Marc:How do you feel about that?
Marc:Do you feel like that was a turning point for you?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:No, and I appreciate that.
Guest:I mean, yes, definitely.
Guest:I think that was like another level of quality.
Guest:It was also kind of like, you know, in the early days, like we were saying, in the early days of this workflow, it was very much driven by my opinions about food.
Guest:And then when I started evolving the show and making it more substantive and more varied.
Marc:So many opinions on food.
Guest:But but like part of that required me to kind of step back and and I start like the show became less about my opinions and my personality.
Guest:It was still driven maybe by my sensibility, but it was less about me and more about the guests or the story we were telling.
Guest:And so I and I sort of started to see my role kind of like as the point guard of the show, which for non basketball fans, the point guard is kind of the person on the on the offense who doesn't always score the most points.
Guest:They're more the person who like runs the offense and often leads the team in assists.
Guest:So when you're the point guard of the show, it's like it's my job to host the show in a way that makes for the best show.
Guest:And some weeks that will mean me saying very little and getting out of the way or asking just the right questions and then shutting up.
Guest:Other weeks maybe I have more of a lead role.
Guest:But with the pasta story, which for people who don't know, like I set out to invent a new shape of pasta and it's like a three-year quest.
Guest:And that was like the first time that we were –
Guest:combining so first of all it was the first time that i was the main character like as opposed to be it's different there's a difference between a show being driven by my opinions and me being the main character of a story and so that was first of all something that i had to kind of get comfortable with like we like we we produced parts one it was a five-part series originally we produced parts one and two like a year before it came out and we edited them
Guest:Right.
Guest:And we edited them with a bunch of people, got a bunch of feedback.
Guest:And the number one feedback was like, we want to hear more of Dan just struggling and less.
Guest:Like originally I had imagined it like, so public radio nerds may remember the Planet Money t-shirt series where they did this whole thing about making a t-shirt.
Guest:And it was about the economics of T-shirts.
Guest:And they went to the factory.
Guest:They went to the cotton fields where the cotton for the T-shirt was grown.
Guest:And they went to the factory in Indonesia where it was made.
Guest:And it was kind of like each little story about every little part of making a T-shirt that sort of like told this larger story about the global economy.
Guest:And then it ended with them putting the T-shirt on sale.
Guest:And that was my model.
Guest:And I was going to have all these detours like, oh, here's a detour about wheat and like where the wheat from the pasta is grown or whatever.
Guest:But when we edited it, people were like, we don't really care that much about the wheat.
Guest:We just want to hear Dan struggle.
Guest:And so that's when it shifted to be more like – so Alex Bloomberg, who was a key guy on the Planet Money t-shirt thing, his next big project was startup, and that was also the shift he made.
Guest:When he went from the Planet Money t-shirt series to startup, it was less about the story of the product and more about the story of his personal struggle.
Guest:And so then I started seeing myself more in that role.
Guest:And so that was something I kind of had to like –
Guest:get my head around but what's interesting is that like the the pasta series really was like a that was really three like the third level of the sporkful because it really combined so first like it was the first time i was really the main character of a story and involve evolve using like involving the long-form storytelling components that we were using in the newer version of the sporkful but it also used my opinions yeah
Guest:So it kind of combined early Sporkful with mid-period Sporkful.
Guest:It was satisfying to someone who'd been listening for a very long time because they're like, yeah, I remember this guy having arguments about this and now it's being applied in a real world setting.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And interestingly, so I mean, I did a book that came out in 2014.
Guest:It was like my first big opportunity from Sporkful.
Guest:And there's a section in there.
Guest:It's not a cookbook.
Guest:It's like my opinions about food.
Guest:It's like early Sporkful in a book.
Guest:You're eating it wrong.
Guest:Eat more better, it's called.
Guest:Oh, eat more better, right.
Guest:You're eating it wrong was the cooking channel show, the same concept, though.
Guest:Yes, right.
Guest:But I developed these three metrics to judge all pasta shapes.
Guest:So you guys know them well, but it's forkability, how well does it stay on the fork, sauceability, how readily does sauce adhere to the shape, and tooth sinkability, which is how satisfying it is to sink your teeth into it.
Marc:That's my sign of the cross now.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Well, so I had those metrics defined in Eat More Better.
Guest:I wrote about those things in 2012.
Guest:But I was so stubborn in my first book.
Guest:I was like, I do not want any practical information in here.
Guest:I didn't want it to be anything like a cookbook.
Guest:You just wanted it to be like takery.
Guest:I just wanted it to be entertaining.
Guest:I wanted it to be funny.
Guest:I wanted it to change the way you would eat.
Guest:It would be practical in the sense of you would think differently about making a sandwich, but it didn't have recipes.
Guest:It didn't have those practical news you can use type things.
Guest:Cascatelli was the first time, the pasta shape, that I took all these opinions and put them into practice.
Guest:Then I could actually say, I have all these opinions about food, and I made a thing.
Guest:And now you can try this thing that I have invented based on my opinions that I've been ranting about for so long.
Guest:And I feel like that took my opinions to a new level.
Guest:It made it more interesting than just hearing this guy talk because now there's an actual thing you can experience and see for yourself.
Guest:Well, I remember before the pasta hit the market that I remember talking to you.
Guest:We were at the Prospect Park Zoo with our families.
Guest:And I remember you being like, you know, you're right on the cusp of it coming out.
Guest:I think that was the day you showed me the picture of it for the first time.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And you were like...
Guest:You're of the opinion that anything that happens from that point on was gravy because like the series had been a success.
Guest:And so now the ending is going to be good either way because it's either about how it is a hit pasta or it fails and nobody buys it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So you kind of like we're up for either one as an ending of the series.
Guest:Right.
Guest:The worst thing that could have happened would be modest success.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Or small failure.
Guest:Like, you either want it to be a huge success or to completely crash and burn because either one of those is a good ending for a story.
Guest:But now, have you played out in your mind the trajectory of what happens if it's not a success?
Guest:Like, if it goes away, there's no casket.
Guest:I mean, it comes out and fizzles and there's no real...
Guest:future in making the pasta and anything dealing with the pasta.
Guest:And so you're just basically back to, okay, now we're going to start up some new stuff on the sporkful.
Guest:Does the sporkful go another five years?
Guest:Like, are you still feeling good about the show or did the, the success of the pasta like reinvigorate what you do on the program?
Guest:I mean, it definitely did – I was not – nowhere in my head was I thinking like, oh, if this doesn't work, I'm going to stop doing the Sporkful.
Guest:I didn't feel like I was running out of steam or anything like that.
Guest:So I wasn't – it's not like I was thinking of – that I needed this to keep going.
Guest:That being said, when it came out and was a huge success and went viral and was named one of Time Magazine's Best Inventions of the Year and all that, like it did –
Guest:inject new life into the podcast and broaden new listeners.
Guest:And it just sort of like gave us this thing.
Guest:And it led to my cookbook, which came out last year.
Guest:And like, um, plus it just sort of like, it was the first, you know, we had done some two part stories like the Aleppo sandwich.
Guest:When you say that we don't, we don't maybe two or three others that had done well, but this was the first like really long form story and where I was a main character.
Guest:And so it just sort of like, um,
Guest:You know, the way I think of it is on the spork pool that we have, like, several different templates of shows that we do.
Guest:And I love that we rotate between the templates so that from one week to the next, the show can be very different, which makes it, I think, more fun, still fun for me after all these years and fun for listeners.
Guest:And so, like, that introduced a new template of, like, Dan goes on a quest.
Guest:And we've replicated that in smaller things, like we did one about whether I could make a viral TikTok show.
Guest:That was like a one off episode.
Guest:But still, like it was a similar idea of like Dan is Dan's the main character of this episode.
Guest:He's embarking on a mission of some kind.
Guest:It's going to have some, you know, so it gave us a new template for an episode.
Guest:And then it just became our calling card.
Guest:Like a lot of people who don't even know about the podcast have heard of the poster.
Guest:They've seen it in a store.
Guest:So it's just sort of like fun to be able to say.
Guest:Now, you keep talking about the we of the Sporkful.
Guest:Who is your current team?
Guest:What's the size of it and who is in the makeup of it?
Guest:So the main folks are our managing producer, Emma Morgenstern, and senior producer, Andres O'Hara.
Guest:They're the two full-time folks who work on the podcast with me at SiriusXM.
Guest:And they've both been on the show.
Guest:They started one right after the other.
Guest:They've both been with me for about five years, give or take.
Guest:Um, so they're both great.
Guest:Um, and, and, uh, I certainly count on them to do a lot of the work of making the show and they have a lot of input.
Guest:Uh, and then we've had a few different editors and, uh, executive producers over the years.
Guest:Our current EP is Nora Ritchie and she's our editor too.
Guest:Um, Colin Anderson works with us and, um, we had some great editors before that.
Guest:And then Jared O'Connell is our engineer.
Guest:So a day to day, it's me, Emma and Andres, the three of us.
Guest:And then we have a few other folks who work with us, you know, a few hours a week.
Marc:Kind of a big crew.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, you know, it's funny because, you know, I feel like the two most influential kind of jobs I had before I started this work for one working with you two on Morning Sedition at Air America and then working at NPR on a show called The Bryant Park Project that no longer exists.
Guest:But that those two are both morning shows, both newsy, but very different styles of shows and produced very differently.
Guest:And I took a lot from both of them.
Guest:And, you know, like we had what we had.
Guest:I mean, it was four or five of us, maybe producers, and a few other sort of folks we had part-time making a show that was three hours a day.
Guest:Then I went to public radio, and it was like 14 people making a show that was two hours a day.
Marc:There's your problem right there.
Guest:So, yeah, look, everything is relative.
Guest:Our show is probably a big team compared to other shows of our size as a sort of middle-class podcast.
Guest:Sure, but also probably not compared to other shows of your production level and quality.
Marc:Yeah, the production's much improved.
Marc:Like, weren't you doing the music at some point?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I think you made the music, yeah.
Guest:For many years, yes, I made the music in GarageBand.
Guest:I mean, I used to mix the show.
Guest:I mixed the show myself on my laptop.
Guest:Oh, wow, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then even once I handed that off, I still would pick the songs for every episode, and then I would listen every Friday afternoon and give mixed notes and be like, add 0.2 seconds more silence here.
Guest:One of the great things about taking on Cascatelli and making this pasta shape, because it was...
Guest:so time consuming that it forced me to get better at delegating, which ended up working out very well because Emma and Andres, my producers are great.
Guest:And like, I started delegating more to them and they've taken that stuff on.
Guest:So, um, so yeah, I mean, but there's not a single job.
Guest:I've, I've sold the ads.
Guest:I've written the blog posts.
Guest:I've done the mixing.
Guest:I've composed the music and picked the music.
Guest:I've booked the guests.
Guest:Um, I've booked the studio.
Guest:I've run the board.
Guest:So at some point in the last 15 years, I've done every job involved.
Guest:I've done the marketing, the PR, um,
Guest:Every job involved in producing, marketing, and monetizing a podcast, I've done it at some point.
Marc:I mean, that's just you.
Marc:From what Brendan was talking about, from what you were saying about in Chicago, that's just you, man.
Marc:You're a dog with a toy, and you're just going to wrestle the shit out of it.
Marc:It's a testament to who you are as a person, that you're going to get that product out there.
Guest:Well, thank you.
Guest:I appreciate that.
Guest:Well, I will also say, Dan, you have remained in a sector of podcasting that surprisingly has not filled with the glut of podcasts that other areas have.
Guest:So I do think that is a bit of a competitive advantage for you in that like...
Guest:There are a limited number of notable food podcasts.
Guest:And despite the fact that I don't think it's entirely fair to say your show is a food show, it's a show that should fall into a lifestyle show.
Guest:It's like This American Life or anything like that.
Guest:But still, when it gets categorized, just like our show gets categorized as comedy still, even though it's just an interview show...
Guest:there's a comedian at the helm.
Guest:So that's what people think it's comedy and your show gets categorized as food.
Guest:And there's still, you know, for, for whatever reason, it has not like blown up as a podcasting sector.
Guest:I think that probably helps you quite a bit.
Guest:A hundred percent.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm not quite sure why.
Guest:I mean, a lot of celebrity chefs have tried podcasts.
Guest:I think partly they've always done it like in a very lo-fi way.
Guest:So like, you know, they, they,
Guest:Of course, they all do the sort of WTF ripoff format where they talk to some other celebrity and just walk them through their career.
Guest:But, you know, not as well as you guys do it.
Guest:And then also, I think a lot of the celebrity chefs just, you know, they're not giving producers.
Guest:They probably wouldn't listen to a producer anyway because they think they're already TV stars.
Guest:Nobody can tell them how to do anything, even though hosting a podcast is different from hosting a TV show.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So a lot of them have turned out not to be as good, their podcasts are not as good as you might think.
Guest:But yeah, 100%, look, there's a lot of very big billion-dollar companies that make food or want to be associated with food, travel companies, credit card companies that want to buy ads on food podcasts, and their ad agencies are like, all right, what are the top food podcasts?
Guest:And there's only a couple, and we're one of them.
Guest:And so that has allowed us to do very well on the ad sales.
Guest:And I also work very hard behind the scenes with the SiriusXM ad sales folks.
Guest:who are honestly excellent.
Guest:And when ad sales opportunities come in, I am always on the phone with them.
Guest:I join meetings and pitch meetings with ad agency people.
Guest:Because the thing is, The Sporkful is a good size.
Guest:We're a good, successful, middle-class podcast.
Guest:But SiriusXM has podcasts with tens of millions of downloads a month.
Guest:I mean, some of the biggest podcasts on the planet.
Guest:And so I need to make sure that the folks who are selling our ads don't forget about The Sporkful when
Guest:when they go into a meeting because it would be very easy for them to just focus on smart lists and call her daddy and all these other huge names.
Guest:Um, so I'm always working with the ad sales folks coming to meetings, reaching out to them with ideas, responding to them.
Guest:So that keeps us top of mind.
Guest:And then we make really good ads.
Guest:The ad sales people are happy.
Guest:So I think our show managed to punch above our weight on the business front, partly because like you said, there's not that many food podcasts, uh, but there are a lot of food advertisers or advertisers who want to be in food.
Guest:And partly because like, uh,
Guest:my team and I work our asses off behind the scenes to like cultivate those opportunities.
Guest:And, and the show is still available for free, basically on all platforms, right?
Guest:Anybody can listen to it anywhere.
Guest:They listen to podcasts.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Yep.
Guest:And this week you're doing your, you, you have posted your 15th anniversary show.
Guest:Do you have any thing to preview from that for anybody who wants to listen?
Guest:Well, you're going to hear some Marc Maron in it for sure, because Marc was our first celebrity guest.
Guest:I believe it was episode number nine of The Sporkful back in maybe March 2010.
Guest:We were supposed to do a show about coffee, although when I first came in and started chatting with him, I brought in some hamantaschen.
Guest:It was around the time of the Jewish holiday Purim, and those are Jewish cookies.
Guest:And we had a very funny exchange, and there's a clip of that in there.
Guest:And I think there's also a clip of us on the Air Morning Sedition arguing about egg sandwiches from before the Sporkful started.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:That was basically like the origin of like you doing food arguments on the air.
Guest:You would come on with Mark who, you know, was aggravated by your opinion on something.
Guest:And so he'd be like, you know, save this for the air.
Guest:We'll do something.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But there's a clip of Rachel Maddow who came on to talk about cocktails.
Guest:Yeah, that was the first time I ever learned about Coco Lopez.
Guest:And now that's what I only use for making pina coladas.
Guest:You know, the funny thing about when we had Marin on, you know, back in 2010, it was the stone ages of podcasting.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Mark was our first celebrity guest, and so I emailed the people at Apple Podcasts, back then it was iTunes, to see if they would feature Mark's appearance on The Sporkful in their big promotional carousel.
Guest:Now, today here in 2025, there are whole teams of marketing and PR people who are lobbying Apple to get features in this carousel.
Guest:It is prime real estate.
Guest:You cannot buy it.
Guest:It's only up to the editorial discretion of what is actually a group of people at Apple.
Guest:But back in 2010, you literally just emailed a guy named Steve.
Guest:Steve Jobs.
Guest:Not that Steve.
Guest:Steve Wilson.
Guest:And you were like, hey, Steve, I'm this guy, Dan.
Guest:I have a podcast called The Sporkful.
Guest:Mark Maron, famous podcaster, is going to be on my show in a couple of weeks.
Guest:And he'd be like, oh, cool.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:Just here's the specs.
Guest:Send me the art.
Guest:And that was it.
Guest:And that was how we got featured in Apple in 2010 was I literally just emailed Steve and he said, okay.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, that was that way literally all the way up through when we had Obama on.
Guest:I was still emailing Steve Wilson.
Marc:Well, you know, your show has what I think Brendan would always tell me or tell anyone who was listening.
Marc:Like what you need for a successful podcast is A, you need to sound good.
Marc:And B, your art has to be clear and beautiful.
Marc:And Sporkful has that.
Marc:You have a clean look to you.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The amount of bad podcast art out there is really mind boggling.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I guess I shouldn't be surprised.
Guest:It is the difference between literally hundreds of thousands of downloads for some people.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that was when I was starting in the very early days, that was like I always felt like
Guest:In reality, I'm doing this podcast out of my living room, but I need to look to the outside world like a pro, you know, because I am a professional, even though this is a very lo-fi setup.
Guest:And I was literally using a hand-me-down recorder from a friend at NPR when they upgraded their recorders.
Guest:He gave me his old one.
Guest:And that's how I was doing the show.
Guest:But, um, yeah, I was like, we need to have a nice logo.
Guest:We got to have good music.
Guest:It needs to be mixed correctly with fading in and fading out and good microphones and like just all those, which to us as audio professionals are very basic things.
Guest:But like in the early days of podcasting, when any person talking into their phone could have, I mean, still anyone talking into a phone can have a podcast.
Guest:Like you gotta, you gotta look like a professional.
Yeah.
Guest:Well, you have been very professional now for 15 years.
Guest:I'm not going to say all 15.
Guest:You probably had your moments.
Guest:But you like us, Dan, I think one of the things is also consistency.
Guest:And we know that as like morning radio producers, you just got to be in there.
Guest:You got to shovel the coal into the fire and you got to produce a thing.
Guest:And you continue to do that.
Guest:And, you know, that's that's a thing that I think all the people who subscribe to this, it's like one of the reasons they subscribe is that they know that we're going to continue to deliver for them.
Guest:Like there's not going to be some time where all of a sudden the kind of thing they're enjoying listening to goes away.
Guest:And I think that's just kind of like in all our blood as the way we produce these things as audio producers.
Guest:We're like, yeah, we'll we'll come up with more.
Guest:We will make more.
Guest:Right.
Guest:No, for sure.
Guest:And that's credit to you guys and something I take pride in.
Guest:I think, yeah, I think that those early days that we had of, you know, coming into work every morning and the show's going live at 6 a.m.
Guest:and you have to just keep cranking and making shows, you know, and and not to be too precious about it.
Guest:But, yeah, I take a lot of pride in consistency and longevity and just sort of like keeping something going and keeping a high level of quality.
Guest:And, you know, yeah.
Guest:some episodes are going to be a little better than others, but like, you know, just feeling like you're always putting out good stuff, you know, and there's always next week is, is to me like sort of what, what keeps me going.
Guest:And you don't have to walk into a room where you dump a bunch of papers next to Mark Maron and have him freak out.
Guest:That's your job, Brendan.
Guest:It is.
Guest:I think I've gotten it a little more under control than it was 20 years ago.
Guest:But yes, absolutely.
Guest:I'm sure.
Guest:I'm sure.
Marc:So last week or a couple weeks ago, Brendan asked listeners to send in their favorite food from a region.
Marc:If we are ever in the unfortunate event of being on Long Island, what should we eat when we're there?
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Yeah, I like going on your best thing, Dan.
Guest:What is your favorite thing that exists out there around where you live where you're like, if I had money burning a hole in my pocket or I'm just really hungry and I can't wait to eat this thing, I'm going to go eat it.
Guest:I mean, it's always so hard for me to pick one thing in food because so much of it depends on my mood, the time of year, the weather.
Guest:There's a lot of variables.
Guest:I'll give you a couple quick ones.
Guest:Near where I live in Huntington, if you go to South Huntington, Huntington Station, there's a huge Salvadoran and Honduran community.
Guest:I think that there are phenomenal pupusas.
Guest:We probably have better pupusas in Huntington.
Guest:It's one of the few foods you can say is better on Long Island in New York City.
Guest:Great pupusas.
Guest:There's a great peri-peri chicken place called Peri-peri Guys in Hicksville,
Marc:I went to that place.
Marc:You told me about it.
Guest:Oh, you went there?
Marc:I got the chicken.
Marc:It was delicious.
Guest:It's so good.
Guest:It's spicy.
Guest:It's full of flavor.
Guest:It gets delivered to you by a robot.
Guest:It's in the same strip mall area as Chuck E. Cheese.
Marc:It's a lot of robot action in this place.
Marc:It's the robot capital of the restaurant industry.
Guest:Oh, the robot district.
Guest:I got you.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:They also have good dosas in Hicksville.
Guest:And then there's great rotisserie chicken at the Golden Chicken in Bayshore.
Guest:That's a Peruvian place.
Guest:And then good Chinese food in Stony Brook near Stony Brook University because there's a big Chinese population there.
Guest:And I'm sure there being a college.
Guest:Yes, yes.
Guest:So those are some of my – and I love Masala Grill by the Walt Women Mall.
Marc:All right.
Marc:We got some options.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:That's more options in Long Island than many people have been given in a very long time.
Guest:So we appreciate that, Dan.
Guest:We also appreciate you taking your time to be here and celebrate your 15th anniversary with us.
Guest:I know that our WTF longtime listeners know you very well, but also then maybe we've got some newer people who don't know you as well, or maybe they've never even listened to the Sporkful.
Guest:So hopefully this will be the start of that for them.
Guest:I hope so.
Guest:And if folks want to check out that whole story of the making of my pasta, the series is called Mission Impossible.
Guest:It's still available.
Guest:You can just search it up, start with episode one.
Guest:But yeah, I appreciate you guys having me on.
Guest:And I can't think of two better people to celebrate the 15th anniversary of The Sporkful With than two guys who were there in the prelude to the launch of the show and there when it all started.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Well, if anybody has anything they want to send in about this episode, the link is there in the comment section.
Guest:Just give it a click.
Guest:Send us a comment, your ideas, your topics, your food suggestions.
Guest:And then we will be back, not with Dan Pashman, but with me and Chris next week for the Friday show.
Guest:And so until then, I'm Brendan.
Guest:That is Dan.
Guest:And that is Chris.
Guest:Peace.
Guest:Later.