PBS – Public Broadcasting Service

I grew up watching American Masters, Nature, and Nova. I liked the accents in Antiques Roadshow UK. I’m just not the audience for American Ballroom Challenge, so I don’t recognize the channel when that’s on. I’ve got the blog for Art 21 bookmarked though. Thank you for programs like American Experience and Frontline.

The PBS station here in los angeles plays cooking shows all day on Saturdays. It’s really your only choice when you get five channels and two of them are in Spanish. Since it’s PBS, the video is all grainy and everyone’s wardrobe looks like leftovers from the set of Family Ties; you can’t tell if you’re watching a 10-​year-​old rerun of Barbecue University or a new episode of Simply Ming.
Anyway, one Saturday, one of the cooks said that the secret to good cooking was empathy. It makes sense – we prepare food for others to make them happy. We’re offering them a physical manifestation of our love and asking them to validate our effort by returning that affection.
So what does it mean when my friend microwaves flavored soy flour and offers me the flaccid, rubbery fake meat, saying, «Taste it, it’s great, it’s just as good as the land animals you eat but I don’t»? I guess it means she has no empathy. Also, it means my apartment is going to smell like a wet dog for about 40 minutes.