an interview with Lauren Vogelbaum and Anney Reese
This conversation is part of the Unplated series, a collection of interviews with folks whose work intersects with food, but who work outside culinary spheres. My hope is that these conversations not only spark your curiosity, but help you think about how what you eat is connected to the world well beyond your plate.
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Anney Reese and Lauren Vogelbaum are veteran podcast hosts and generally all-around great people.
Lauren is a writer and performer around Atlanta and the internet. Her roster includes a conversational food science & culture podcast (Savor), a daily science podcast (BrainStuff), a dark history podcast (American Shadows), and scripted fiction miniseries (The Second Oil Age, 13 Days of Halloween). She probably wants to talk to you about your microbiome and your D&D characters. Anney is a writer, actor and host of the podcasts Savor and Stuff Mom Never Told You. She is also a huge nerd who loves Star Wars, cosplay, horror, videogames, and fanfiction.
I met them both during my time running the rare book museum, and have over the years been a guest on their show to talk about food waste, afternoon tea, and even to bake a 400 year old pie.
One thing that has always struck me about their work is that, even in their food-focused podcast, they take a really expansive view, deep-diving into the history of what they study and its cultural significance, and not being afraid to explore unexpected rabbit holes even if they seem like they might not connect to food (but of course, so many things do).
Here, we talk about the unique and rewarding format of podcasts, and the importance of storytelling when we talk about food.
JS: To start, tell me about how you came to podcasting. How long have you been doing it? How does your work/educational background from your pre-podcasting life inform the work you do now?
LV: I started podcasting in 2013, but I never really intended to. I never meant to be a performer at all. My background is in creative writing and science copyediting, and around 2011, HowStuffWorks hired me onto their Editorial team. The company mostly did web articles at the time, though their podcasts were getting bigger. Back then, podcasting was almost entirely chatty, two-host nonfiction shows – and one day, one of their co-hosts left. I might’ve been the only person in Editorial who wasn’t already on a show, so they asked me if I’d like to try it. It was terrifying. It took me years to stop sweating every time I sat down at the mic. The nigh-daily on-the-job experience over the past decade has been invaluable, but so has that background in writing and editing – y’know, parsing and sorting information from diverse sources, turning a pile of facts into a story, and developing different voices for different projects.
We started Savor in 2017 because – well, I’d been wanting to pitch a food show for years, and the podcasting stars aligned, and Anney had shared her (deeply researched) barbecue and donuts with me at SXSW the previous spring. As we speak, it’s our fifth anniversary.
AR: I tumbled into the world of podcasting about 11 years ago. In high school, I wanted to make documentaries and submitted my resume to an Atlanta-based company that I thought fit the bill called HowStuffWorks. I got a reply back from management basically saying we appreciate your enthusiasm, but you're a bit young, please apply again when you get older. I forgot about it, and after many conversations about competition and the probability of success in the field, documentary-making became a hobby instead of a career path.
So here I was, about to move to China after graduating college, and I got a surprise call from HowStuffWorks asking me to come in for a job interview. I had not updated my resume online and put the whole thing at the back of my mind, but my parents convinced me to go, hoping I'd stay near them in Atlanta. I took the interview, assuming I'd never get it, and over a decade later, here I am.
At the time, podcasting was still a new thing, and no one was quite sure if it would take off or not. HowStuffWorks was one of the businesses at the forefront of podcasts, and one of my first assignments at the company was editing the show Stuff Mom Never Told You, a show I now host.
I've always been a curious person and a storyteller, both of which are so important in making an hour-long deep dive into turnips, for instance, interesting. My jobs and training before podcasting involved researching, writing, condensing, and sharing information in a palatable way, all things that I certainly use in podcasting.
JS: What is it about this particular format that is unique? How does podcasting help us tell food stories more effectively, or explore food topics in different ways than we can using other media?
AR: Audio is a unique format to talk about food in a number of ways. When we're talking about senses, so much of food is taste and smell and sight and texture. While sound can be an important part of the experience, I find most people don't want to listen to the sounds of people chewing. There are other sounds of food of course, like food preparation, that really help compose an audio story, but that's really the key: telling a story, of memories and connection across history, both on a personal level and global level, that emotionally resonates. How did these ingredients end up on our tables, and why does it matter? These are some of the questions we want to answer. Podcasting is unique too in that we're in people's homes and their ears and through the stories we share, they get to know us and connect with us across cultures and experiences.
LV: So much of food media is visual, and so approaching it from an audio-only standpoint makes you really consider what you’re trying to say and how to say it to make it evocative. And in general, podcasting is an amazing medium because listeners welcome deep dives, so you can really dig in, get granular, and tie in the side quests that fill out a story. It can also feel more personal than other media – like listening to friends. If you can earn and keep that trust, you can present really difficult information (and of course, lots of things about food are scientifically or politically difficult) and people will give it a chance.
JS: One thing I love about both of your work is that, while you do purely food-related episodes, you both are also part of podcasts outside of the world of food. How does researching/presenting across multiple subjects inform your understanding of food? What insights do you have about food that you otherwise might not?
AR: Researching across multiple podcasts means that we come at food topics from many different angles. Something that we often joke about is that you never know where the research will take you, and food is no exception, whether it's a fascinating historical tidbit, an amazing technological innovation, or an important social issue. Food is and pretty much always has been steeped in politics. Through the research I've done over on the podcast Stuff Mom Never Told You, I've learned to ask more questions, to look at food through an intersectional feminist lens, and to do my best to showcase the women and marginalized folks who have been erased from the story, who have done so much of the work and been dismissed.
LV: My continuing work for general science and history shows (and my former experience on tech shows) gives me so much context about the cultures and technologies we discuss on Savor. I frequently find myself cross referencing sources among shows – sometimes really surprising ones. (We did an episode on spinach recently that had me referencing stuff about carbon nanotubes, because some researchers had used ‘em to “teach” spinach to send emails about landmines. Of course.) Food is integral to the human experience, which means it touches all of us and impacts everything we do, every system we create. Being able to zoom out is just as important as being able to zoom in.
JS: What are, to you, the key elements of effective storytelling around food? Whether podcasting or writing, what can we do to tell better, more engaging stories?
AR: To me, it's integral to keep that curiosity, to keep asking questions, to know where our food comes from and the work that goes into it, and to remember that ultimately, we're talking about people. Through food, we're telling the story of us, of living histories and futures, and it's incredibly important to do what we can to make sure we're being representative of all of us.
JS: What excites you the most about the future of food media, whether in podcasts or in general?
AR: I'm excited to see more representation, to see a general broadening (and respectful broadening) of horizons and a renewed interest in being more cognizant of where our food comes from and the people behind it, along with an invigorated sense of adventure, responsibility, and social awareness around food. There are still so many stories and voices to hear, and I can't wait to hear them.
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