Curious food stories, lightly nerdy and warm.
Savor treats food as a doorway into almost everything else. A fish, a gummy candy, naan, an herb, or a glass of sloe gin becomes a friendly tour through history, science, taste, and the odd customs people build around eating.
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Savor is built around the idea that ordinary foods are rarely ordinary once someone starts asking better questions. A topic can be tiny. Parsley is enough. So is ice, naan, gummy candy, mahi mahi, sloe gin, or the institutional logic of school lunches. The show’s rhythm is warm and conversational, with a clear researched spine underneath the chatter. It tends to begin close to home, then widen outward into definitions, storage, history, culture, preservation, and taste. That mix gives it range. One episode can linger on chilled wine, mountain snow storage, Roman physicians, European luxury anxieties, and Mughal ice drinks without making the listener feel trapped in a lecture hall. Another can make room for a returning conversation with Julia Skinner about preserving food knowledge, fermentation, tea time, preventing food waste, and historically influenced apple pie. The pleasure is in the scale shift. Small foods become maps of memory, class, and preference. The show does not treat expertise as a performance. Dense parts are translated into plain speech, often with a little comic deflation before moving on. It can be sincere about history and practical knowledge, but it is also happy to be mildly silly about textures, categories, customs, and names. That balance matters. Savor is for people who want food media that looks past recipes and rankings. It asks why a thing exists, why it caught on, and why it still tastes good to somebody. The result is friendly, researched, and gently odd in the best way: a food show for curious eaters who like knowing the story behind the bite.
Made for: For curious eaters who like food history, everyday science, ingredient lore, and relaxed conversation more than restaurant hype or recipe instruction. It especially suits listeners who enjoy learning why familiar foods became familiar.
What sets it apart: Savor makes small food subjects feel big without making them feel overworked. Its blend of casual banter, careful research, and delighted specificity sets it apart from more chef-driven or trend-focused food shows.
Savor digs into how people live and how they eat – and why. Hosts Anney Reese and Lauren Vogelbaum interview the culinary creators and consumers of the world, exploring the science, history, and culture of food and drink, all with a key question in mind: Why do we like what we like, and how can we find more of those things?
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Savor makes everyday food legible through conversational histories attentive to culture, commerce, technology, and the complications behind familiar tastes.
Savor turns familiar food and drink into compact histories of trade, technology, custom, and power. Anney Reese and Lauren Vogelbaum move from ice harvesting and refrigerated luxury to raclette traditions, the growth of Lipton, and the complicated legacy of Thomas Downing's…
An ice bar tangent leads to Alexander's chilled wine; you can bring your own snack.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A history of ice that turns a small curiosity into a wider story about privilege, medicine, and everyday use.
Ice ends up as more than a novelty here. The episode uses it to move from mountain snow to chilled wine, from storage pits covered with branches or cloth to the old habit of treating cold as a sign of privilege.
A tea-brand origin story that keeps fact and folklore clearly apart.
Thomas Lipton's story is told with a steady eye on what can be verified and what remains part of the legend. It traces his path from Glasgow to the U.S., notes his birth there in the 1800s, and keeps the family details and the 1871 grocery business in view without dressing them…
Fish sauce turns a late-night craving into a winding story about how food travels.
Vietnamese fish sauce enters the episode first as a memory of smell: Lauren Vogelbaum walking into a late-night Atlanta Vietnamese restaurant and catching something savory, faintly sweet, and oceanic.
A cheese story that ties winter tradition, alpine custom, and festively decorated cows together.
Raclette is the hook, but the episode's broader pull comes from how it links the cheese to European Christmas markets and to Valais customs around bringing cows home for winter after the summer grazing season.
Oysters lead into a layered food-history episode about ambition, exclusion, and nineteenth-century spectacle.
Oysters give this episode its cleanest way into Thomas Downing's world: a New York restaurant that helped turn a popular food into fine dining while also reaching into catering and exports.
A relaxed history thread gives way to listener mail and a Spanish Inquisition callback.
The episode starts with a bit of history, then opens out into listener mail, which gives the show a relaxed, lived-in rhythm. Its charm is not in building one airtight argument, but in letting the conversation make room for a comic swerve.
A warm pantry-side conversation about food preservation as a global cultural practice.
Savor's conversation with Julia frames food preservation as a cultural map, using her book's gathered stories to show how preserving changes across communities.
Hosts Anney Reese and Lauren Vogelbaum explore kugel, a Jewish casserole dish, during Rosh Hashanah.
Hosts Anney Reese and Lauren Vogelbaum interview food historian and author Julia Skinner about her new book, 'Essential Food Preserving: The Comprehensive Guide.' Skinner discusses her journey from food insecurity to becoming an expert, emphasizing accessibility and community in preservation practices.
This classic episode from 2018 explores the history and surprising facts about chewing gum, including personal anecdotes and its connection to food culture.
Annie Reis and Lauren Vogelbaum close Savor with tequila, explaining how blue agave piñas are cooked, shredded, fermented and distilled at least twice.
This episode features an interview with comedian Will Ferrell discussing his career and his father's advice about knowing when to quit if something stops being fun.
This transcript features promotional snippets for multiple iHeart podcasts, including Love Trapped about women uncovering a dating con artist and Thanks Dad with Will Ferrell.
An interview with Julia Skinner discussing her new book and her work on topics like fermentation, food waste, and historical food practices.
This episode appears to be about school lunches, exploring their nutritional value, policy implications, and impact on children's health and education.
This is a promotional compilation for various iHeart podcasts, including Love Trapped and Thanks Dad, featuring snippets about true crime and celebrity interviews.
This episode previews the Love Trapped podcast, which investigates a paternity hoax involving Bachelor star Clayton Eckerd and explores cases of women dating the same con artist.
This episode features advertisements for hepatitis C treatment with Epclusa, the Wells Fargo Autograph Journey Credit Card for travel rewards, and savings at Smith's grocery store.
Ice gets a surprisingly long runway here.
Tea takes on Lipton.
Savor hosts Annie Reif and Lauren Vogelbaum trace Vietnamese fish sauce, or nuoc mam, from salted anchovies and sea salt to nuoc cham served with rice paper rolls.
Raclette sits at the center of the conversation.
This is a promotional trailer for multiple iHeart podcasts, including Love Trapped and Thanks Dad, with brief snippets of their content.
The episode follows Thomas Downing from his New York oyster house into the wider world of nineteenth-century food and hospitality.
The hosts discuss their decision to tackle an episode about European quail, acknowledging the topic's complexity and their research into quail reproductive habits for their food show.