TRAILER: Up For Discussion! (Start Here If You're New!)

Transcript: Hi! I'm Tom Zalatnai, and this is the trailer for Up For Discussion, a podcast about great food and the people who love to make & eat it. Every week, I phone up some friends to help me explore a different ingredient, dish, meal, cuisine, or element of the food world, sharing stories, recipes, and tips, and chatting with experts who know way more about this stuff than I do.
I am not a professional chef. I am not a restaurant critic. I am not a food writer. I'm just a podcaster, a home cook, and a big, big fan of food. I believe that all food is good food, and that the joy that comes from preparing and eating food is unparalleled. And, if I'm doing my job right, this podcast will let me share a little bit of that joy with you. I also believe that cooking doesn't need to be hard or complicated, and that cheap, simple meals are just as valuable as fancy restaurant food. After all- it all ends up in the same place, right? So, I'm here to debunk myths, learn about history and culture, and, most importantly, to celebrate food. And I hope you enjoy it!

An important note for brand new listeners: prior to episode 288, this was a General Interest podcast, so any episodes 287 or below are more of a Fun Talk Show with a heavy focus on personal growth and mental health struggles in performance spaces, which is also cool and worth listening to, but it might be kind of jarring if you were just here looking for food content. That said, we did cover food a lot! Back in March of 2020 we had our Munch Madness food bracket, an 8 week series where we pitted different foods against each other in a tournament, while interviewing restauranteurs, bartenders, food writers, and we have a lot of other food content in our back catalogue as well. So if you *do* decide to go back and listen to everything, I don't think you'll be disappointed. But, if you're only here for the food show, I completely get it.
Why the big change 288 episodes in? To be honest, I am a totally different person now from when I started in 2015. I stopped enjoying the process of making the show the way we used to make it. I'm proud of the first 287 episodes for the most part and love most of the people who were on them, but I got burnt out on the old format. I figured, if I was going to change the show to anything going forward, it was going to be something I could never get tired of talking about, and I already had a Dungeons & Dragons podcast, so, yeah. Food!

Lastly, this show could not and would not exist without support from listeners like you over at www.patreon.com/upfordiscussion! All of our patrons get to request topics for us to talk about on the show, and there's all kinds of other great perks available as well, like access to a private Discord server, invitations to Zoom dinner parties, and so much more.

So, that's it! I hope you enjoy Up For Discussion!