Tommy Pico

Tommy Pico is a poet, writer, and co-host of Food 4 Thot. Follow Food 4 Thought on Twitter here.

Is it difficult to have a show with multiple hosts? Would you recommend it?
Having multiple hosts is wonderful for distributing a lot of really hard work over multiple people, but it can be a farty nightmare in terms of scheduling. We all have jobs, a creative practice & passion outside the show (we’re writers and writing sucks fyi), romantic/social lives, live in different cities etc. etc. etc. so finding a time, even in the age of Zoom, for five people to have a spare 90 minutes (all hosts plus producer) is… pretty craptacular. Also having four queer hosts who swear a blue streak while gushing over books and dick means people get our voices mixed up a lot. It’s not whether or not I recommend it, I think shows are what they are and form & format will dictate how many hosts you have. Pop Culture Happy Hour is Pop Culture Happy Hour, The Read is The Read. Just know if you have four people at the mic, unless you like work at NPR and podcasting is your full time job, having a regular recording schedule is impossible. Try creating a show with somewhat evergreen content so you can record a bunch of episodes over the course of a few days every month or every other month.

If I remember correctly, you were independent, and now your show is with iHeart. What fueled that decision and what was that process like? That's a dream many podcasters have, and I'm sure they'd appreciate insight.
Food 4 Thot started with a ton of goodwill and the sharing of resources. Our original producer, Julia Alsop, was a friend of mine who was working at LatinoUSA at the time. When they moved back to Canada, I put our call out on a podcast listserv thingy asking for a producer interested in making a slutty, queer show with a multiracial mix of writers. Basically I was like, “smart gay sluts.” Producer Alex(andra DiPalma) responded and it was pure, Dickensian coincidence. She was literally the perfect person at the perfect time and didn’t ask to be paid. She said it was an idea she adored and she was tired of only producing straight/white/male content (I hate that word btw). Tom Tierney and Alex Meade-Fox, a couple friends from college, had a studio in Brooklyn called Spaceman Sound where we were able to record high quality audio for hella cheap. Fran had a graphic designer friend and a photographer friend, Ben Wagner and Michael George respectively, who did all our branding and photos for free. It was truly a community effort and a labor of love.

We had an 8 episode first season that managed to garner a really devoted audience, I think because we rejected the idea that there is a distinction between “high” and “low” culture. We rejected the idea of respectability. We rejected the idea that education is the same as intelligence. You can be smart and talk shit and suck dick. Anything else is just homophobia, sexism, and white supremacy with a new haircut.

Then we were hosted by Grindr and Into, and literally Grindr would send a Push notification on Sundays when our episodes published and after that it was over for you heauxs. Then it looked like Into was folding or something like that, so we jumped over to Forever Dog, home of amongst other things Las Culturistas with friends of the pod Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang as hosts. Then iHeart. I think it worked partly because we worked so hard on something we loved with people we loved, partly because it was a community effort, and partly because there were a lot of scared queers at the end of 2016 and the top of 2017 who needed some kind of affirmation and light in the world. Before the pandemic I toured colleges a lot on my poetry and I got a lot of people who found my work through Food 4 Thot, who said in some way shape or form that the show saved them. I gotta say, I think the show saved me, too. 

Describe your fans in 3 words.
Horny gay brats.

If you were going to create another podcast, don’t worry about the logistics or whether or not anyone would like it, what would it be?
Oooh but I did! With my friend Drea Washington we created Scream, Queen! last year: a podcast about scary movies by people not typically depicted in scary movies, also produced by Alexandra DiPalma and Domino Sound. Our third season is about to drop August 25th, and we’ve also been doing YouTube videos and shows on IG Live. I’ve known Drea over ten years, and within ten minutes of hanging out we were always talking about the latest scary movies we’d seen, sharing how our identities had been formulated around scary movies, despite never seeing ourselves (queer/indigenous/black) in them very often. The conversation evolved naturally into a podcast format, which I think the most enduring podcasts are. 

I’d known for years that I wanted a podcast, but I did too much artificial handling of subject matters and formats and the results were always mangled, manufactured, messes. I think most times you don’t actually have to do much thinking when figuring out the right show for you. I think it should naturally evolve out of something you’re already talking about or doing. When I met Dennis, Fran, and Joe at a writing retreat thing, our conversations were so easy and went so quickly between books, Beyoncé, and butt stuff. It really felt like we had chemistry. Same with Drea. Stay tuned!

Women in podcasting are constantly being criticized for their voices. What is your relationship with yours? How would you describe your voice?
There was a time in my adolescence and teenage years where I stopped talking altogether, or talked as little as possible, because people were always telling me I sounded “gay,” and of course would use that as a pretense for kicking my ass. It was particularly painful for me because I was a singer as a child and it was (and continues to be) the most sincere form of joy I experience. I can’t tell you how many times singing in my apartment has saved me from a full blown panic attack in the pandemic. Unlearning the fear that I associated with my joy took… a decade and a half? Of introspection and breath work and intense therapy, but now my voice is my superpower. I can make it do anything I want to. I got to come home. 

Should podcasters read their Apple Podcast reviews?
Fuck no. But maybe I’m just fucked up because I can read 15 good reviews and one bad review and the bad review is the only one I can hear, see, or think about. It’s a no from me, dawg.

Thanks, Tommy!