Interested in restaurant criticism, the decline of alternative weeklies, and the rise of influencers? Is food a real part of the cultural landscape or is it just fun? What and who can we rely on for ideas, not just information like hours of operation and the name of a place? James Beard Foundation Award winner Besha Rodell has written a memoir about her food life, Hunger Like a Thirst. Listen. It’s on Tip of the Tongue.

Read her New York Times work. The Brisbane Times.

We talk to a founder of the Museum of the American Cocktail, Tim McNally, about the wine and spirits industry. A wine writer who spent much of his career judging wine, he is the perfect person to ask about the state of the industry today.

He is a writer, and his book about the Sazerac is wonderful.

Want to know more? Listen. It’s on Tip of the Tongue.

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Tim McNally

Let’s not overlook the role of women and home entertaining in the story of the cocktail. Nicola Nice tells the story of how women brought the cocktail home, as a part of regular entertaining - how they entertained during Prohibition and into the cocktail party era. She explains it in fascinating detail in The Cocktail Parlor: How Women Brought the Cocktail Home.

Nicola writes about these themes regularly in her blog, The Hostess Diaries. She describes it as “a blog dedicated to the culture of cocktails and hospitality, as told through the lens of women’s history.” It is a perspective about drinking and drinking culture, especially as it is related to drinking cocktails, that shouldn’t be overlooked, if you are interested in the cocktail and its history.