The Dinner Party Download
WFSU-FM is excited to bring listeners The Dinner Party, a new show from American Public Media. Hosted by Rico Gagliano and Brendan Francis Newnam, The Dinner Party is a culture show designed to help you dazzle your friends at your next social gathering. Launched as a podcast in 2010, The Dinner Party is beloved by audiences for its spontaneity, thoughtfulness and exuberance. The show was lauded by Wallpaper magazine as one of the “Top 40 Reasons to Live in America” and hosts Gagliano and Newnam were named to Food & Wine magazine’s “40 Big Thinkers Under 40” list.
The show unfolds like a dinner party, kicking off with “The Icebreaker”— a joke to warm things up. Next comes “Small Talk,” in which top print and online journalists from around the country share their favorite odd news story of the week. The “Cocktails” portion of the show features a true tale from this week in history with a handcrafted cocktail recipe themed after that it. Later, we usually “Eavesdrop” on an author reading from a hot new release or answer listeners’ burning etiquette questions. The marquee segment of the show is the “Guest of Honor,” in which hosts Gagliano and Newnam interview some of the most fascinating celebrities in the world and routinely get them to talk about the most unexpected, dinner-party-worthy subjects. Guests have included: actresses Anna Kendrick, Emily Blunt, Rashida Jones, Anjelica Huston; playwright and filmmaker Martin McDonagh: author, illustrator and filmmaker Marjane Satrapi; and actor Gary Oldman.
The Dinner Party is the only show where you’ll hear Jon Hamm expound on the cosmic phenomenon of “dark matter,” where Oscar-nominee Michelle Williams teaches us the word “melliferous,” or where you’ll hear Molly Ringwald bark like a dog – alongside other kinds of stars, like astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, conductor Gustavo Dudamel, and rock legend Patti Smith.
Rico Gagliano has worked in public radio for almost a decade. His pieces have been heard on All Things Considered, Weekend America, The Savvy Traveler and other series, but he’s best known as a reporter on Marketplace, for which he has filed stories from England, Ireland, Sweden, The Netherlands, India, South Korea and across the good ol’ USA. He also pens and performs many of the show’s “Marketplace Players” comedy sketches. Prior to radio, Rico worked as a TV writer on shows for MTV, ABC, Fox Family and The Cartoon Network … and as a freelance print reporter for LA Weekly, the Village Voice, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and others. Rico holds an M.F.A. from the American Film Institute. He’s been a fan of dinner parties since childhood, when it meant he got to eat in his parents’ bedroom and watch TV all night while the grownups sat around in the dining room getting wine-tipsy.
Brendan Newnam is a native of Philadelphia, Pa., who still can’t come to terms with the fact that he lives in Los Angeles. Before working for the national public radio programs Marketplace, Marketplace Money and Weekend America, he was a freelance radio reporter and he freelanced domestically and abroad for various publications. He worked for three years as an associate producer for a local arts program at WRTI in Philadelphia and prior to that he was the staff researcher at the NPR program Fresh Air with Terry Gross. Newnam holds a B.A. in English Literature from Rutgers University, where he graduated with high honors and he holds (and still pays for) a J.D. from Temple Law School where he was a member of the Moot Court Honor Society. He enjoys eating decadently, engaging in spirited debate and writing pop songs.
The Dinner Party download can be heard each Sunday at 9pm on 88.9 and 8pm on 89.1 in Panama City.