An Audioblog On Italian Food and Culture

Hi! I'm Paolo and I am the host of a podcast on food and food culture called Thoughts on the Table.

I'm Italian born and raised, but I have been living abroad for over 20 years - first in Vancouver, Canada, and then in England.

Generally, each episode of my show features a new or returning guest who shares their stories, experiences, and insights on what food means to them and how it is a part of their culture. Given my background, a recurring theme has been of course Italian food and especially Italian food around the world in its many renditions and, often, misinterpretations!

I've always been fascinated with the radio, and when I was younger I worked in a local radio station as a sound engineer. I was also a radio show host for a period of time.

I still love the radio and listen to it, but podcasts have naturally become a more accessible option, which offers more variety, and styles. I became hooked on This American Life, and on shows like Stuff You Should Know.

I started my podcast in 2013 along with an ex-co-worker trying to do our own version of Stuff You Should Know: we would both research a topic of common interest, and then record each other share what we learned, along with personal stories and anecdotes. Then, when my co-worker left, I started doing interviews.

I released my first episode fairly quickly, but just to my blog. It took me a few months to realize I should release to iTunes and make my work accessible to all podcast clients.

I try to release one episode a month, after 7 years I have produced a total of 90 episodes. Really, though, my cadence has been quite uneven: I took a pause of 11 months once and then caught up by posting weekly for a period of time.

My production volume is limited because I have a day job and I do this as a hobby without funding. Usually, it takes me a few hours to plan an episode (e.g. work on an outline), then about one hr to do the recording, 10 hrs of editing/post-production, and a couple of hrs working on shownotes, publishing, and promotion.

I haven't taken any sponsorship so far. However, podcasting is extremely rewarding for me. I love meeting new people and put them in the best position to show how amazing they are, and I love making them sound even better with editing. In doing this, I think I also improved my improv skills and public speaking and this has benefitted me at work.

I record mainly using Audio Hijack for Mac which hooks up to Zoom or Skype and gives me two separate tracks, one local and one remote. Then I do all of my post-processing in Audacity.

My guests generally are people who I met online via my blog, other bloggers, authors, chefs, tour operators. In a few cases, I've been approached by people who wanted to promote their work, which I've accepted in exchange for their interesting stories!

I prepare each episode by sharing a Google Doc with my guests and inviting them to edit their outlines together with me.

I publish on iTunes and the show can be found on any podcast client. I promote episodes through my blog, plus Twitter and Facebook. I don't know where most of my acquisition comes from, but I know from Feedburner that there is an increasing number of subscribers and downloads.

Podcasting is a fantastic activity, it's a direct expression of one's personality and can create a very special link with the listeners. But the most rewarding aspect of podcasting is for me the ability to connect with my guests and establish a collaboration. Connect face to face, or just on the phone, and get to know one another.

My best advice for anyone who starts podcasting is to keep listening to a lot of podcasts from others and don't put anything out that you're not proud of - it doesn't need to be perfect but it needs to have good quality, good content, and overall bring value to your listeners.

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