Dan Avery of Time Out New York has 3 questions for food historian Francine Segan whose tasting series at the Y will focus on famous television food scenes on Jan 15.

1. Your books are pretty sophisticated—Shakespeare’s Kitchen, The Opera Lover’s Cookbook. Why do a talk about food and TV?
Food gives you an anchor into any topic—I’ve written books on food and ancient philosophers and food and film. And it’s a such a big part of so many television shows, whether it’s a meal the main characters are sharing or just something for the actors to do with their hands. The talk is divided into different segments—we’ll look at food as setting a time period, like on The Flintstones, and food as humor, like the I Love Lucy bonbon episode. And of course we’ll talk about all the cooking shows that have popped up.

Related: Here’s more blog coverage of the food talk featuring Michael Pollan, Joan Dye Gussow and Dan Barber that we posted video from last week.