Class Introduction
Lesson 1 from: Turning Your Expertise into a PodcastKristina Loring, Cal Peternell
Class Introduction
Lesson 1 from: Turning Your Expertise into a PodcastKristina Loring, Cal Peternell
Lessons
Lesson Info
Class Introduction
So we're gonna give you our recipe for podcasting but wait a minute, I think we have Julia Child in the room with us today. (laughter) This is one awful American syndrome: fear of failure. If you're going to have a sense of fear of failure, you're just never going learn to cook. Cooking is one failure after another and that's how you finally learn. (laughter and applause) Thank you, Julia. So, Julia Child is sort of like our patron saint of cooking and she really teaches like you should cook with reckless abandon. Like, who cares if you spill omelet all over the stove, or you look like a fool, like just keep going, and that's how you learn. And that's sort of our motivation behind our podcast. We want people to just get over it and get in the kitchen. And this is what we're trying to teach cooks through the podcast is to lose the fear of mistakes. Of course with recorded audio, your mistakes can always be fixed, but before you fix them I recommend that you pay attention to those ...
mistakes, not only to learn from them, but just like fallen souffles and broken omelets, sometimes the mistakes are really delicious. So we're going to give you the raw ingredients a.k.a. our origin story and how we came to collaborate. So, as you heard, I'm Cal Peternell. I was the chef at Chez Panisse for over 20 years. I have two cookbooks and my third, Almonds, Anchovies, and Pancetta, comes out on September 25th. I taught countless cooks in a professional kitchen how to cook and that was something that I really enjoyed, but I have a passion for home cooking and wanted to move towards directing my efforts toward teaching home cooks. And I sort of started that journey with a friend of mine. In terms of podcasts, I started with a friend of mine and we're talking about cooking and he told me, "You know, it takes me 14 hours to make a pot of lentil dahl, and I end up drinking like three bottles of wine, then I just, I need another way." And I said, "Well, let me help you. Let's come up..." He was like, "Could it be a podcast?" cause he was in the media field, and I said, "Yeah. Let's make a podcast where we actually teach people to cook." And we just didn't know there isn't, we didn't feel like that kind of a model for that really existed. We didn't know how to do it, and that's when we brought in Kristina. So, I've been in media for about a decade and seven of those years I turned to my first love, audio, because I think it's the most intimate medium. I think it's amazing to hear people tell their stories and share their experiences in their own voice. And I think it's an amazing way to build connection between people when you hear their experience, especially there's something so unique about each of our own voices, and so I love sound, I love that maybe it takes a back seat to our visual culture, so we always try to bring it up, try to make sound first in what we do. And so I do installations as well. I started in public radio, and have done podcasting, but I also do sound installations that are a little more interactive. And I'm always looking for ways that audio can be more experiential, so when Cal was like, "How can we teach people to cook just using sounds?" I was like, "I'm down. Let's try to do this." So, to sum it up, I'm the food, Kristina is the sound, and our aim was to make an interactive podcast. We wanted audio that you could smell and taste. So what we do is we invite guests in, and we look for people who are interested in cooking, but are not professional cooks. We also look for people who are interesting themselves, so musicians, artists, poets, directors, comedians, drag queens come to cook along with us and learn a new recipe. And by the end of it, we have it formatted so you can cook along in real time, so you get your ingredients, you get your pots and pans ready. When you're ready to go, you hit play, and you cook along with us and at the end of a 40 or 50 minute segment, you have a dish made. Or you just like hang out in the kitchen with us and enjoy some really good stories. So here's a little taste of our first season. (rhythmic music) This is Cooking by Ear. [Kristina Voiceover] A podcast that teaches you how to cook. (alarm dings) (soothing music) You just practice gut laughter. (laughing) Just like making sure diaphragm is kinda. (laughing deeply) I'm Mira Nyer, rhymes with fire. So what is this tea you've given me here? Life. It feels quite weak. I'm not sure. What are you looking for? I'm looking for a robust, deep red color. And it's looking closer to your color than mine, Love. (laughing) What's up, girl? This is Tommy Pekoe, writer, editor, and cohost of the podcast Food for Thought. All right, I'm gonna admit something extremely embarrassing. I don't know how to crack an egg. ♪ You already know ♪ I'm Big Frieda the Queen Diva, your best cup of leava. Why, everybody love my booty pop, and what I'm sayin' is if I have to make this so much. Oh, you'll appreciate the one layer I couldn't get this sideways, which is when people hold onto their wines too long and the line is, "Nobody wants to fuck a 50 year old virgin." I'm sure there's like a whole group of people who would. [Kristina And Guest] Yeah right. You live in the Bay Area, so there's something for everyone there, yes. Keep practicing, Baby. I just gave you the ingredients. What's the word for wandering white guy? Mesufu tea. Yeah, it's mesufu tea. It's mesufu tea made in a muzoombo kitchen. (laughing) Put yo' hands on your knees and you arch your back, you put 'cha booty in air and you twerk like that. You gotta get lower, though. It's Cooking by Ear. Cooking by Ear. Well, it's a sensual experience. You gotta use everything.
Ratings and Reviews
Alex Mausolf
I really appreciated the overview of the original steps taken by Kristina & Cal to flesh out their idea. This was a great fly-on-the-wall type conversation to have sat through! There were plenty of gems along the way if you are like me, just at the initial stages of an idea for podcasting. A fabulously enriching way to spend just under an hour and a half!
Michelle MartinF
What a fantastic course. I loved hearing their process and how they've shifted from their original plan when it made sense.
Student Work
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Podcasting