Thanksgiving is a tradition-laden holiday: a particular stuffing, a favorite green-bean dish, a beloved pie recipe, a long walk after dinner. For Lynne Rossetto Kasper and Sally Swift, the host and producer, respectively, of public radio's "The Splendid Table," Thanksgiving morning is devoted to fielding calls from panic-stricken cooks from coast to coast in an entertaining two-hour live broadcast they call "Turkey Confidential." The two recently sat down in Kasper's inviting St. Paul kitchen to spill a few details and share a few opinions.

Q What's the genesis of "Turkey Confidential"?

Sally Swift: It started locally with Katherine Lanpher [former host of Minnesota Public Radio's "Midmorning"]. Frankly, it's hard to get people to work on Thanksgiving, so that's how we got on.

Lynne Rossetto Kasper: At one point she asked, "Would you do an hour?" Then it was two hours. Then we confessed to one another that we turned down weekends away so we could do it, because we were having so much fun. Also, the callers were fabulous.

SS: Then we went national. We've been doing that for four years.

Q Is there a typical call?

LRK: In some cases, people are pretty naked; it surprises me. I love them for that.

SS: They're so all over the place. We've been accused of setting up calls, but we haven't. We're pretty ruthless about screening. One of the great calls we got last year was these two guys doing a deep-fried turkey outside.

The women were inside, doing another turkey. The guys were playing basketball and they knocked over the turkey, halfway through cooking.

LRK: They were practically whispering into the phone, yet talking to an entire nation.

Q What was your advice?

LRK: Cut the turkey in half and grill it. The biggest concern was that the five gallons of spilled oil would light up, but nothing was lost, the garage didn't burn down. One of my favorite calls went to [Cook's Illustrated editor and "Turkey Confidential" guest] Christopher Kimball, who is very funny. The caller said that she had the turkey in the oven, but there were two vegetarians sleeping in the basement, and did she have to use this awful Tofurkey stuff? Christopher's comment was, "Just let them sleep through Thanksgiving."

Q Do you hear any turkey horror stories?

SS: There was the turkey that was being brined for three days in a 50-degree garage.

LRK: We hate to sound like the food police, but that led to all the ptomaine calls. They ended with a man calling and saying essentially we were full of you-know-what. At least that's what his words implied. He said, "For 20 years I've been doing my turkey the same way. The night before, I stuff it, I put it in the oven and turn the heat up to god-knows-what for a half-hour, then I turn the oven off, leave the turkey in the oven overnight and the next afternoon turn the oven back on again." And Katherine said, "How many people have died?"

Q Have you ever been stumped?

SS: I don't think so. Thanksgiving is pretty easy.

LRK: You cook a turkey any of a number of ways and it gets done. Everyone should know that, for most people, the turkey is the most boring part of the meal. There's always a neutral dish on the table -- for Asian food, it's the rice -- that acts as the backdrop to other flavors. For this bird, as big as it is, as showy as it is and as obsessed as we are about it, in the end, most of us don't notice what it tastes like. It's neutral.

Q What do you say to freaked-out first-time Thanksgiving dinner cooks?

LRK: You calm them down. You do triage. It's corny, but I tell them to trust their logic. They probably know more than they think they know.

Q How do the two of you spend Thanksgiving, post-broadcast?

SS: We usually go to my house and have a feast, but this year we're not because Lynne and I are leaving bright and early the next day for Mexico. I decided it was just too much.

LRK: The thing I love about us getting together is that it's the loosest meal you could ever imagine, and the most forgiving one. I think we are the least perfection-driven on that day. We spend so much time hearing what people go through and it's like, why go through that?

Q What's your idea of a perfect Thanksgiving guest?

SS: Someone like my friend Will. There's no one I like feeding more than Will, because he's so celebratory, so easy to please, so appreciative.

LRK: Yes, please be nice enough to like what I have made. It's not that you have to rave. OK, kissing my apron is just fine. I can understand if you're not overwhelmed by the food, but the least you can do is fake it [laughs]. And contribute, please. So often in holiday groups, people don't always know each other. Inevitably the nightmare for me, as host of the party, is not wanting people to feel left out or overwhelmed. I love it when guests are warm, smart, funny and really opinionated, but also when they're really engaged and really aware of what's going on around them.

Q Who does the dishes?

SS: Whoever doesn't cook.

LRK: I've built a marriage on that.

SS: I actually love the after-the-dinner-party cleanup, when you talk about the party, you dissect it.

LRK: The fire is still going, you take a glass of wine and you really relax. So what if it takes two days to clean up? Big deal. Those people who say, "I can't stand waking up to a dirty kitchen"? Get over it.