Abstract While the global podcasting industry has experienced exponential growth, the Singaporean scene remains a site of intense cultural negotiation. Local digital discourse frequently dismisses domestic productions as "cringe" when measured against "overseas" benchmarks. This presentation challenges these aesthetic hierarchies, positioning the food podcast—derived from sensory ethnography—as a radical performance of linguistic diversity in a landscape otherwise flattened by decades of linguistic regulation.

Using my own Singapore-based food podcast, Eat by Ear, as a primary case study, I lead a listening circle and a comparative analysis against a sampling of local food media to map the current linguistic terrain. I argue that the "cringe" label is often a byproduct of unexamined postcolonial anxieties regarding local vernaculars and identities. By integrating theories of postcoloniality and critical pedagogy, this session explores how the medium of podcasting, with its affordance for emplaced ethnography, can be used for "culturally re-sensing" our languages.

The presentation features an immersive audio component, utilizing episode playback in a listening circle to demonstrate how "sonic thick description" can disrupt a sanitized linguistic environment. Through the interweaving of ambient hawker sounds and the textures of local languages—delivered via a humorous and novel docu-dramedy form—podcasting emerges as a method to "rewild" an increasingly flattened linguistic landscape. I propose that sensory-driven podcasting functions as a vital intervention: a means of recognizing and valuing local voices and their inherent lived histories within a linguistically constrained media landscape.