Pod Insights The Sporkful Monologues Are Like Meatballs, Says Actor Michael McKean (Reheat) About this episode The comedy icon discusses the role food can play in comedy and drama. Plus, he tells us why learning a new part is like eating spaghetti and how he reacts when people in the audience bring food into the theater.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:34 Dan Pashman? Hey, everybody, it's Dan here. I hope you had a fantastic and delicious Thanksgiving. Hey, hot tip, by the way, a lot of bakeries the day after Thanksgiving sell pies half off. Janey actually wants to celebrate Thanksgiving a day late, just so we can save on pie. Anyway, this week's reheat is a conversation with Michael McKean, who, in addition to being a great actor, is a kindred spirit when it comes to his strong opinions about food. As you'll hear, we go deep on everything from Chicago Italian beef to the best way to cut a sandwich. Now, Michael McKean is a prolific performer, so it is not surprising that he has stayed very busy since we last spoke. In fact, it was just announced to be reuniting on Broadway with his on-screen brother, Bob Odenkirk. From Better Call Saul, you can catch them in a revival of David Mamet's Glenn Gary Glenn Ross that opens next spring. Remember, if there's an older episode of The Sporkful
2:17 Dan Pashman? that you want us to pull out of the deep freezer and reheat, drop us a line. I want to hear from you. Send me an email or a voice memo to [email protected] . Include your first name, location, the episode you want to hear, and why. All right. Enjoy. Michael McKean.
2:33 Dan Pashman? You recently tweeted, "It's five minutes to curtain Broadway. Woman two seats down just opened her hot lunch to go box. How shall I kill her?"
2:42 Speaker 01 Yes. I may have overstated. Listen, if I weren't essentially Gandhi, I would have thrown her right over the balcony railing.
2:51 Dan Pashman? This is actor Michael McKean. He's been in Spinal Tap, Better Call Saul, and about a million other TV shows, plays, and movies. He's married to actress Annette O'Toole.
3:00 Speaker 01 My wife was doing The Seagull. It's a tiny theater, and the people in the front row are right there. They are, you know, spitting distance from the actors. And she said one time, a woman came in with a bucket of KFC, put it on the floor, and it's just like, what do you do? What do you do?
3:26 Dan Pashman? Today on The Sporkful, I sit down with Michael McKean. From Spinal Tap to Best in Show, from Curb Your Enthusiasm to Drunk History to Better Call Saul, and so many more. He's a comedy icon and a great actor. We'll talk about the role food can play in drama and comedy, including how to get pied.
3:45 Speaker 01 It's fun to get hit with a pie, you know. I've only taken a few in my life, but it's always edifying.
3:50 Dan Pashman? Is there an art to taking a pie in the face?
3:53 Speaker 01 Yes, and it's imperturbability. It's like, it's your attitude, once you've had a pie in the face, your attitude has to be, "I see your point."
4:05 Dan Pashman? Plus, we'll find out what Michael's approach to a meal can tell us about his approach to acting. So it's as if the dialogue is the spaghetti, and the monologues are the meatballs.
4:14 Speaker 01 Very good. I hadn't thought about that. That's very true.
4:18 Dan Pashman? That's all coming up. Stick around.
4:27 Dan Pashman? This is This Porkful. It's not for foodies, it's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people. Michael McKean got his first big break playing Lenny on the classic sitcom Laverne and Shirley. Then in 1984, he became comedy royalty when he starred in the mockumentary This is Spinal Tap.
4:45 Speaker 01 In the world of rock and roll, there are certain changes that sometimes occur. Six months from now, I can't see myself missing Nigel any more than I might miss Ross McLaughnes or Ronnie Pudding or Danny Schindler and any of those, you know.
4:59 Speaker 02 I can't believe that you're lumping Nigel in with these people that you played with for a short period of time.
5:04 Speaker 01 Well, I'm sure I'd feel much worse if I weren't under such heavy sedation.
5:09 Dan Pashman? Since then, he's been in so many TV shows, movies, and plays, I don't even know where to begin. And he does drama, too. In the Breaking Bad spinoff, Better Call Saul, he plays Chuck McGill, brother to main character Jimmy McGill. And Michael hosts a show on Cooking Channel called Food, Fact, or Fiction. In it, he explores questions like, is breakfast really the most important meal of the day? And do noodles taste better when you slurp? Actually, I'm in the show, too. Michael often turns to different people to provide the answers to these questions, which is where I come in. Although the way the show is filmed, we had never met in person before this interview. Anyway, Michael doesn't just perform in the theater. He's often in the audience, which is where he was recently when, like he said, a person in his row opened up a to-go box
5:54 Dan Pashman? right before his show was starting.
5:55 Speaker 01 And then I smelled something. I was like, why am I smelling Italian food? And then I realized that, you know, chow time. And it's not just because I'm an actor, you know? It's just sort of like, maybe a Broadway theater isn't where you're supposed to eat.
6:09 Dan Pashman? And it's also the odor.
6:10 Speaker 01 Yes, exactly.
6:11 Dan Pashman? And that is, you know, it's such a sensory experience. We actually did an episode about, recently about food in theater. I don't know, you saw that Sweeney Todd production?
6:21 Speaker 01 No, I haven't seen it yet. No, no.
6:23 Dan Pashman? You've heard of it, I'm sure, as a theater person, where they serve meat pies before the play begins. And they've done it up as you're like in a meat pie shop in London. So in that case, the smell... As part of the show.
6:35 Speaker 01 I did Our Town in that same theater.
6:37 Dan Pashman? Oh, they did the bacon, right?
6:38 Speaker 01 With the bacon. When that bacon hits the, hits the audience in that amazing moment.
6:43 Dan Pashman? For folks who don't know the show.
6:45 Speaker 01 Well, the show traditionally should be in with very bare stage, minimal sets, just tables and chairs, really. And one of the characters at the beginning of act three is revealed that this one of the characters we have been following has died in childbirth. And now she is among the dead. So then this character gets a chance to, to go back for a day and be with her family for a day, or pick a day in her life. Now, in the traditional versions of the play, it continues along these lines. But in, in, in David Cromer's production, a curtain is pulled back, revealing a completely naturalistic kitchen,
7:28 Speaker 01 turn of the century kitchen, with a working stove and mom is making bacon and eggs.
7:35 Speaker 01 It hits you like a wave, you know, it kind of sums up the whole play until, until this moment. Your mouth is watering and your eyes are watering.
7:43 Dan Pashman? Right, right. The intensity, that kind of food memory nostalgia.
7:47 Speaker 01 Do you know, there was an experiment done years ago, probably a hundred years ago, I believe it was a Broadway play, that had as one of its themes, a certain perfume from Paris. That a certain lady walks in and we say, oh, we know from it. It's going to be like interactive theater a hundred years ago. And so, opening night, something went wrong and the perfume started billowing out of the vents. Like, people were getting misted by it. And it was so intense and the air was so rare that people they didn't finish the show.
8:23 Dan Pashman? Right.
8:24 Speaker 01 Opening night, it ran for a half a performance because people were puking all over each other.
8:28 Dan Pashman? That's some verite right there.
8:30 Speaker 01 Yeah, exactly right. Yeah, yeah.
8:34 Dan Pashman? You said that your comfort food is spaghetti and meatballs. Do you try to get meatball in every bite? How do you combine the spaghetti with the meatballs?
8:43 Speaker 01 Uh, I kind of work the spaghetti and sauce awhile, just while eyeing the meatballs like they're, you know, the Easter eggs we're saving for tomorrow.
8:51 Dan Pashman? Okay.
8:51 Speaker 01 Uh, and then I start kind of carving off a bit and with, it, I, I've worked it out. It's funny, now that I'm thinking about it, I don't want to think about it. But what happens is, what happens is I, I wind up to really kind of, I'm very democratic about it. And, uh, the plate is, gets pretty clean.
9:10 Dan Pashman? What, if you're, to, you're democratic about it, what, what are the constituencies that you're, that you're worried about treating democratically?
9:18 Speaker 01 I just don't want to run out of either one.
9:19 Dan Pashman? Okay.
9:20 Speaker 01 Until, until the meal is.
9:22 Dan Pashman? So you would rather not have meatball in the first bite in order to make sure you have meatball in the last bite?
9:27 Speaker 01 Yes, absolutely right. That's very, very good.
9:29 Dan Pashman? Got it. I understand. And do you feel like you're typically a sort of a delayed gratification kind of person?
9:37 Speaker 01 Maybe, maybe, yeah. I've been known to unwrap a whole roll of Neko wafers and just keep the, the, kind of the violet ones to, which are Pepsin or something, some strange flavor. I keep them over to one side and I, and then I like them toward the end. Finish with a white, just for a palate cleanser. I don't know, I've never talked about this before, but I think I really do that. I really, uh.
10:02 Dan Pashman? There's, there's a methodical nature, it sounds like.
10:04 Speaker 01 I think so, yeah. And I don't think about it, but it just, it just seems to happen that way.
10:09 Dan Pashman? Is that, is that at all similar to your approach to acting?
10:13 Speaker 01 Huh. No, I don't think so. Because I think what happens, what has to happen with any, if you're playing a part, you really have to digest the whole thing and then figure out the basics. Figure out what your character wants and what lengths he's willing to go to, to attain those goals. So you can't do that by saving the last bit to the end. There have been times when I've had a lot to say. When I'm in the process of memorizing, for example, I will, uh, save a big, big chunk that I know has a slightly different rhythm than the rest of the play. And I'll rehearse dialogue and other things and rehearse my beats and figure out what I'm doing.
10:55 Speaker 01 But I will take this half-page here that I gotta say very rapidly. I did Jonathan Lin's, um, Yes, Prime Minister in Los Angeles. Between me and Daken Matthews, we had so much to say. And I would say, okay, Jonathan, we're gonna run everything, but when we get to here, I'm gonna have to pick up the paper yet, cuz I haven't really figured out how to make that a oner, rather than, you know, in pieces.
11:20 Dan Pashman? So it's as if the dialogue is the spaghetti, and the monologues are the meatballs.
11:25 Speaker 01 Very good. Hadn't thought about, that's, that's very true.
11:30 Dan Pashman? You did a Reddit AMA, and you said that you cut your sandwiches diagonally.
11:34 Speaker 01 Yeah.
11:35 Dan Pashman? Why?
11:35 Speaker 01 Well, actually, I always did it cuz I thought it was kinda more stylish, you know? Cut it down, cut it down the middle, and it's just two rectangles. But if you cut it on the angle, it kinda looks like a superhero insignia, you know? There's something kinda really sleek and cool about it. But it turns out, it's, you actually get more flavor that way. There's just more of the good stuff exposed.
12:00 Dan Pashman? Right, you get more like, straight on the interior type of bites.
12:03 Speaker 01 And also, if you put that point in your mouth, oh, you're, you're a third done. Yeah, you're living large.
12:11 Dan Pashman? So the sandwich is sliced in a diagonal, you have a half in your hand, it's a triangle. Do you take the first bite into one of those acute angles?
12:18 Speaker 01 Yes, I take, I take a corner.
12:20 Dan Pashman? Not the hypotenuse, you don't start on the hypotenuse.
12:22 Speaker 01 No, I take a corner, and then what is exposed is huge. It's, yes, it's continental. And so then the next bite, which is kinda right into the fleshy part, oh, you're living.
12:34 Dan Pashman? See, I think that there is some connection between your approach to food and your approach to acting, not only in the way you memorize lines, because you say that some of these things you hadn't thought about before, but then it turns out you have a real process. So there's something sort of that's both methodical and unconscious.
12:48 Speaker 01 Boy, well, that describes acting, you know? Cuz what you have to do in acting is learn all the stuff that's on the page, and everything that you've picked up in rehearsal, and then completely forget it and play the moment. It is no longer a script. It is your intent.
13:08 Speaker 01 Vocalized or physicalized in movement. You are a person who doesn't have a script. You are a person who is living this for the first time. So that's actually very accurate. I hadn't thought about it before. That's true. Thank you, Dan Bashman.
13:23 Dan Pashman? My pleasure. Glad I could help. Maybe now you can just forget this whole acting thing and use all your talents for eating.
13:29 Speaker 01 I have forgotten this interview already. That's how good I am.
13:41 Dan Pashman? Coming up, my conversation with Michael McKean continues. He'll explain how an acting gig in Chicago introduced him to a new food.
13:48 Speaker 01 And you get either Chicago-style hot dog or the Italian beef. Italian beef, which I first kind of heard about.
13:55 Dan Pashman? You slipped into a Chicago accent with the way you just said Italian beef.
13:59 Speaker 01 Italian beef, you gotta do that.
14:00 Dan Pashman? Plus, we'll look at the role food plays in Spinal Tap and Better Call Saul. And is breakfast the most important meal of the day? I'll tell you. Stick around.
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18:27 Dan Pashman? Now, back to this week's reheat.
18:30 Dan Pashman? Let's get back to my conversation with Michael McKean. As I said, the movie This is Spinal Tap made Michael comedy royalty. It's a faux documentary about a fictional rock band. In the most famous food-related scene, lead guitarist Nigel Tufnell, played by Christopher Guest, has a meltdown backstage because the catering platter displeases him. "The meats are sliced too big," he says, "to fit on the little cocktail breads." And he complains to the band's manager.
18:56 Speaker 04 Look, this, this miniature bread, it's like, I've been working with this now for about half an hour and I can't figure out, let's say I want a bite, right? You got this?
19:05 Speaker 05 You'd like bigger bread?
19:06 Speaker 04 Exactly. I don't understand how-
19:08 Speaker 05 You could fold this, though.
19:09 Speaker 04 Well, no, then it's half the size.
19:11 Speaker 05 No, not the bread. You could fold the meat.
19:13 Speaker 04 But then if you keep folding it, it keeps breaking. And then you're, everything has to be folded. So it's a complete catastrophe.
19:20 Speaker 05 No, you're right, Nigel. Nigel, but calm down.
19:21 Speaker 04 I mean, I don't, calm, the, no, it's no big deal. It's a joke. It's really, it's all-
19:25 Speaker 05 I don't want it to affect your performance.
19:27 Speaker 04 It's not going to affect my performance. Don't worry about it, all right? Just hate it. Really, it does disturb me. But I rise above it. I'm a professional, right?
19:36 Dan Pashman? Michael's character in Spinal Tap is lead singer David St. Hubbins. He's a parody of the kind of rock star who's always into the latest trend in new age spirituality, even though he's not so bright and doesn't really understand it. I asked Michael, if David St. Hubbins were around today, an aging rock star, what would he be eating?
19:55 Speaker 01 Well, he would be strict vegan, I think.
19:58 Dan Pashman? Yes.
19:58 Speaker 01 Yeah, and so a lot of wheat, grass. I was making fun. My son is a vegan. My son's been a vegan. He's 30. It's most of his life. He's been a vegan and he's very healthy, you know? I have a feeling that David would accept the fact that he's hungry all the time as proof that he's doing it right.
20:20 Speaker 01 You know, which is something that never would have occurred to me.
20:23 Dan Pashman? I feel like he might also be the type who would go to all of the fanciest farm-to-table restaurants. You know, the types of people who go to those restaurants as a sort of status symbol.
20:32 Speaker 01 Right.
20:33 Dan Pashman? They're into the pissing contest of which restaurant they've been to. And he would brag about having been to all those restaurants. But yet he wouldn't really understand anything that he had eaten.
20:40 Speaker 01 I think that's very true, yeah.
20:42 Dan Pashman? Food offers a lot of opportunities for comedy. I mean, just ask Weird Al. I asked Michael why he thinks that is.
20:49 Speaker 01 Because it's universal. That's why sex is funny. That's why farting is funny. You know, because this makes us all equal to some extent. And there's something exhilarating, unless you're a complete idiot. There's something exhilarating about, you know, having it verified that you're a human being and that you're all the same race. You know, we're all hungry.
21:17 Dan Pashman? Food can also serve a dramatic purpose. I'm a big fan of the show Better Call Saul. That's the Breaking Bad spinoff. And Michael is so good in that show. He plays this brilliant attorney, Chuck McGill. And Chuck was once very successful, happily married, but now he's a divorced shut-in. He's convinced he has a hypersensitivity to electricity. So he can't be around light bulbs, cell phones, any of that stuff. He mostly stays at home and lives by candlelight.
21:44 Speaker 06 I am not crazy. I know he swapped those numbers. I knew it was 1216. I just, I just couldn't prove it. He'll never change. He'll never change, ever since he was Nine, always the same, couldn't keep his hands out of the cash drawer. But not our Jimmy, couldn't be precious Jimmy, stealing them blind. And he gets to be a lawyer? What a sick joke.
22:13 Dan Pashman? I feel like food is sometimes used as a way to mark where your character Chuck is.
22:20 Speaker 01 Hmm.
22:21 Dan Pashman? In relation to his mental health.
22:23 Speaker 01 Right. Well, because his cooking was something that he was always very proud of. We don't see a ton of this, you know, we see it in a flashback, I think in the second season.
22:34 Dan Pashman? Yeah, there might have been more than one flashback where he's kind of hosting a dinner party.
22:37 Speaker 01 Right, right, right. That's true. Yeah, and he's, he's the guy who's in, he'll do the fish. His wife, also a cook, and it was a really kind of something they did together, maybe something that brought them together. We don't know that. Yeah, I think that's true. And I think that that's one of the things that was taken away from him by this ailment, which is or is not psychosomatic. We never really, really nail it down. I think it's, it's revealed, I think that there's an emotional element to the genuine pain that he is feeling. You know, then you get into a whole nother thing. How, you know, somebody, somebody mentioned something, talked about how do you, how do you play mental deterioration like you did?
23:19 Speaker 01 And I said, I didn't play mental deterioration. I fought it. You know, it's a different thing. It's a, cause to, to, oh, please don't let me go crazy. That's not something you can play. You can pray it, but you can't play it. It's the same thing with crying, you know? How do you cry in a scene? How do you not? If what you're going through is, is making that character, bringing that level of sadness,
23:46 Speaker 01 unless you're gonna be just a puddle of tears on the floor, fighting it is your active, that's your action. So I, I, I think what happened in, in the case of Chuck McGill, was that was one of the things that was taken from him.
24:00 Dan Pashman? And there's flashback scenes where he is, he's got a bottle of wine, he's got multiple pots going, he's making, he's reducing his sauce.
24:06 Speaker 01 And he's good at it.
24:07 Dan Pashman? Right, he clearly knows what he's doing in the kitchen. And then you see him in the present day and, and. You know, it's really kind of poignant when Jimmy, or later it's the assistant from the office.
24:18 Speaker 01 Yes.
24:19 Dan Pashman? Who shows up with like a cooler full of ice and like a package of Oscar Mayer bologna.
24:23 Speaker 01 Yeah.
24:24 Dan Pashman? And you think of like Chuck eating bologna from the supermarket when he was, you know, spending three hours reducing tomato sauce.
24:30 Speaker 01 That's right.
24:31 Dan Pashman? In a previous life.
24:31 Speaker 01 Yeah. As far as food and emotions and those connections are very important and it's not always, it's not always noticeable. Lovely movie called Fatso, directed by Anne Bancroft with Dom DeLuise. There's a scene when something terrible has happened. He's lost a family member or something and he's just crushed and he's just sobbing. It's, he's all alone in the kitchen and he's sobbing and while he's sobbing, he looks over and there's the spaghetti sauce that he's boiling on the stove and without breaking a stride, he picks up a piece of bread and tries the sauce, bites into it, still crying, chews it a little bit, adds some salt.
25:10 Speaker 01 And it's, it's a beautiful scene because it is, it is food as emotion and emotion as food.
25:19 Dan Pashman? Michael says sometimes working on a part has introduced him to new foods. In 2008, he starred in a play called Superior Donuts, which was first staged in Chicago, where the play takes place. Michael's character was an old Chicago guy.
25:32 Speaker 01 So he had a line, it was such a Chicago line, and he's talking about his ulcer. Kind of ulcer. Yeah. You know, I say it's from stress. My wife says it's from smoking cigars and eating Italian beef. So I said, what is this Italian beef? And Tracy Letts, the writer, who is a native Oklahoman, but.
25:53 Dan Pashman? He's sort of adopted Chicago.
25:54 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah. And Chicago, he's Chicago through and through.
25:57 Dan Pashman? And he wrote Augusto Sage County.
25:59 Speaker 01 Right.
25:59 Dan Pashman? In Homeland.
26:01 Speaker 01 Brilliant guy and, you know, good pal. He says, oh, Italian beef, oh my God, it's incredible. And he says, all right, I'm taking you out, I'm taking you out to lunch. And we're still in Chicago and he goes to Uptown Chicago, which is where our play takes place. And he takes me to this, this place. He says, yeah, there's three great places. This is probably the best.
26:21 Dan Pashman? Chicago Italian beef, just so you know, is roast beef on a soft roll, served with au jus. And if you want, they'll dip the entire sandwich, bread and all, into the vat of glorious meat juice.
26:32 Speaker 01 And we went there and it was just pretty stunning. So now I get that when I go to taste Chicago, because that's, that's the goods.
26:38 Dan Pashman? Don't you feel like more sandwiches should be dipped in delicious juices?
26:42 Speaker 01 Uh, yeah, I do, I do.
26:45 Dan Pashman? Isn't that a problem in the world?
26:46 Speaker 01 Yeah, and it's funny, I've never been a huge French dip guy, but a really good French dip sandwich gets close to the, the Italian beef sandwich.
26:54 Dan Pashman? Right, and actually, speaking of French dips, that's one of, one of my segments in this coming season of Food Factor Fiction is about who invented the French dip. And actually, it was some French guys who had a sort of like, a rivalry of French restaurants in, in LA.
27:07 Speaker 01 In Los Angeles, yeah.
27:09 Dan Pashman? As I told Michael, one of the things I like about working on Food Factor Fiction is that I've learned so much about food, history and culture. In particular, I'm struck by how often marketing, or even propaganda, ends up working its way into conventional wisdom. The segment that, of the ones that I've done for the show that, that has stuck with me the most was about the idea that breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
27:31 Speaker 01 Yeah.
27:32 Dan Pashman? And this guy, Bernays, who was sort of one of the original marketing gurus of the early 20th century.
27:38 Speaker 01 Yeah.
27:39 Dan Pashman? Uh, he was the guy who came up with, you know, that old trope, four out of five doctors agree.
27:43 Speaker 01 Yes.
27:43 Dan Pashman? That was, he invented that. And he was hired to, uh, by Beech Nut to sell more bacon.
27:48 Speaker 01 Right.
27:49 Dan Pashman? And so he went to a, a bunch of doctors and, and said, well, do you agree that a hearty breakfast is better than a small breakfast? And they were like, yeah, sure. And he was like, and don't you think bacon and eggs is a hearty breakfast? And they were like, yeah, I suppose it is. And it was like, breakfast, the most important meal of the day. It was like, all these newspapers picked it up like it was scientific research.
28:10 Speaker 01 Yeah.
28:11 Dan Pashman? I, I got a daughter who's in first grade.
28:13 Speaker 01 Yeah.
28:13 Dan Pashman? She came home from school and she said, did you know that breakfast is the most important meal of the day?
28:19 Speaker 01 It won't ever go away.
28:20 Dan Pashman? And I was like, get me the principal.
28:24 Speaker 01 No, it's true. A lot of those things are about marketing. One thing that I really kind of am tickled by is when there is something benign in the world that is expressed through food, or kind of a food will be associated or allied with something with a positive movement, the jelly donuts providing work for people who didn't have work.
28:48 Dan Pashman? Right.
28:49 Speaker 01 And being part of a Hanukkah celebration, for example.
28:52 Dan Pashman? Another segment from Food, Fact or Fiction that Michael found moving was about Brooklyn blackout cake. That cake was invented by a local bakery during World War II. Back then, people who lived near the Brooklyn waterfront had to do blackout drills. They turned their lights off so ships could take off from the Navy Yard undetected. And that's what gave rise to Brooklyn blackout cake.
29:13 Speaker 01 If you associate this comforting, beautiful food, like a really, really good chocolate cake, with, out of the necessity of war, we're kind of doing a joke on the dark here. We're kind of showing that there is an element of fear, there's an element of terror, but let's eat, because it's time for dessert, and we've made coffee.
29:45 Dan Pashman? That's actor Michael McKean. He has been and is in so many things, I don't even know how to begin listing them all. But please do make sure you check out the show we're both in. It's called Food, Fact or Fiction on Cooking Channel. A new season just began. We're going to be covering topics like, how did grilled cheese and tomato soup become a thing? Do noodles taste better when you slurp? And is corned beef and cabbage really Irish? Again, the show is Food, Fact or Fiction. It airs on Cooking Channel, Sunday nights at 10:00 PM Eastern, 7:00 PM Pacific. This show is produced by Anne Sannie and me. Dan Charles is our editor. Music help from Black Label Music. The Sporkful is a production of Stitcher. Our executive producers are Chris Bannon and Jenny Rattlet. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.
30:27 Speaker 07 This is John Zia-Hedgins from Macon, Georgia, reminding you to eat more, eat better, and eat more better.
30:44 Dan Pashman? This reheat was produced by Gianna Palmer. The team that produces The Sporkful today includes me along with managing producer Emma Morgenstern. And senior producer
30:53 Speaker 04 Andres O'Hara.
30:54 Dan Pashman? Our engineer is Jared O'Connell. The Sporkful is a production of Stitcher Studios. Our executive producers are Nora Ritchie and Colin Anderson. And hey, did you know you can listen to The Sporkful on the SiriusXM app? Yes, the SiriusXM app, it has all your favorite podcasts, plus over 200 ad-free music channels curated by genre and era. Plus, live sports coverage. Does your podcasting app have that? And there's interviews with A-list stars and so much more. It's everything you want in a podcast app and music app, all rolled into one. And right now, Sporkful listeners can get three months free of the SiriusXM app by going to siriusxm.com/sporkful. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.
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Previous Comic Fortune Feimster Joined The Swim Team For The Fun Dip Next The Mixologist Who Stopped Drinking Page updated November 6, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated