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SMNTY Classics: Michele Norris · Stuff Mom Never Told You

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha. I'm welcome to stuff
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: I never told you Production by Heart Radio, and today
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: we are bringing back a classic that's relatively new. But
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: we talked about it in our recent end of the
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: year roundup of our favorite episodes, and it is our
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: interview with Michelle Norris. I just loved it. I thought
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: the conversation was so fantastic. I am kind of all
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: struck by her. I grew up listening to her with
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: my mom in the kitchen, So for her to have
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: a podcast called Your Mama's Kitchen, it just feels very Yeah,
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: it feels really perfect me. And it's so moving, Like
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: every episode is so moving. And she's done so much.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: She's been NPR, she did the Race Card project, and
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: so we just have so much to talk about. As
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: mentioned in that end of the year wrap up, we
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: did discuss the mac and cheese and we did do it.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: Pictures of it mine, I I froze.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Some of mine and I've looked it up. It should
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: still be good. What a year, Yeah, because it was
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: a Super Bowl, we were getting the big game, don't
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: sue me. Yes, I looked it up and it said
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: it probably won't taste good, but it's not going to
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: actually do any damage.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, as we've watched more and more like Zombie or
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: ind of World movies, I often think about like, but
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: we're gonna regret it, like things that we wish we
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: had even if it had been that old. I have
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: had those thoughts lately in that just popped in my
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: head without macaroni cheese, even though I'm like, you don't
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: eat it now, but at the same time, eat it
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: now because you might it might be dead, And you.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: Know, I have kind of the opposite issue of I
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: might start the zombie back ups. It's like, this is fine.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: Fun's the carrier all.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: I'm sure Michelle Norris will be like, you know a
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: lot about food, but no, this was a lovely episode
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: and please enjoy it. Hey, this is Anny and Samantha.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: We're welcome to stuff I've never told you, protection by
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: hurried you, and today we have an interview for you
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: that we were so excited to share. As you know,
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: we often nerd out to perhaps get nervous fangirl over
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: amazing women who have done amazing things, and this was
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: one of those instances because we were fortunate enough to
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: get to interview Michelle Norris, and I'm still like, we're
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: recording this separately because she's really busy and was covering
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: a hearing in Washington, d C. In the middle like
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: she was like, I gotta go to get to this hearing,
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: right And she took the time to talk with us,
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: and it was amazing And it was an amazing conversation. We
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: have so much more we wanted to talk about, didn't
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: have the time. But hopefully, Samantha, you really you really
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: put down the seeds.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: I was really trying real hard. I'm like, I want,
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: I need this conversation to keep going. So I'm going
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: to put a teaser out bait her hopefully and how
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: she'll want to come back on. But you also did
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: a good job with the mac and cheese, Like a
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: wa need to follow up with that anyway, yeahs obviously.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: Yes, you're gonna have to listen to learn about the
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: maca cheeese. But Michelle Norris, if you don't know who
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: she is, she has done amazing work. She was a
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: correspondent for ABC News in the nineties and early two thousands.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: She got a Peabody for her coverage of nine to eleven.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: She was the first black woman to host NPR of
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: All Things Considered, and she's done so much more than that.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: She's got the Race Card Project, which you can learn
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: more about at the Racecardproject dot com. She's got a
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: book that came out called Our Hidden Conversations, What Americans
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: Really Think about Race and Identity. She's got a memoir
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: called The Grace of Silence. She has done so much.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: Really check her out and she's really really she's just
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: someone who's so curious. And even in this interview, we
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: kept getting kind of caught in her interviewing us. And
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: I grew up my mom loves All Things Considered, and
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: I kind of talk about it in this episode, but
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: we would listen to it in the kitchen while we
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: were cooking, and my mom when I was lucky enough
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: to interview Michelle Norris on other podcasts, I do Saver
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: and at the end, she did the thing she does,
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: which is ask you a question. And I was talking
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: about my mom in my mom's kitchen because this question
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: just brings out so much in you. And my mom
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: listened to that episode and was so moved by it
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: and so like, oh my gosh, I can't believe that
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: this person I was listening to in the kitchen is
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: talking about my experience in the kitchen. It was really sweet.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: It was a very sweet thing. So I'm very moved
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: by that. And we had a million things we wanted
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: to talk about we didn't get to. I would say
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: one of the things we didn't get to is that
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: you can you can find her her book and read
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: more about it. But her grandmother was someone who was
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: one of the performers who went around and portrayed Aunt Jemima,
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: who cooked and portrayed Aunt Jemima. It's really fascinating. But yeah,
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: I mean, Samantha, I'm sure you could speak more to it,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: but it was difficult to limit our questions.
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: Or there's so much she's doing so much. I think
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: that's the bigger portion is like the amount of content
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: she has is overwhelming, especially in the last year, like
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: just in the last year alone, and we were trying
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: to kind of kind of just keep it in that
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: realm because she also is a fabulous storyteller, as she
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: will say it, and a story collector, and I don't
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: think there's any other way to describe her because like
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: just being a journalist, which is a big feat in
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: it self like all of that, it's not enough to
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: describe her, like it's not who she is what she does.
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: So it was a phenomenal conversation and she does so
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: well in giving intense questions but in the simplistic way
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: that opens up so many doors. And it was beautiful. Yeah,
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: and we definitely were like, no, I'm not telling you this.
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: You have to come back, because she was trying to interview,
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: plit the tables on us. At one boy, she said,
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: I'm sitting on my hands trying not to ask you
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: more questions, follow up questions. I was like, no, ma'am,
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: we're not doing this.
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: And I think that's the beauty of when a podcast
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: is at what I personally think is at its best,
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: is that curiosity that like, I want to know more,
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: let me listen, tell the story, let me collect the story,
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: let me tell the story, like all of those things.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: So with all of that, let us get in to
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: our interview with Michelle Norris. So today we are so
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: thrilled and excited to be joined by Michelle Norris. I'm
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: honestly like, I'm so excited to talk with you. Can
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: you introduce yourself to our audience?
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: Hi, Hello. First, Hello Sam and Annie. So good to be.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: With you, So good to be We're so excited.
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: I am. My name is Michelle Norris. I am a
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: storyteller and a story collector. I'm a storyteller in that
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: I am a longtime journalist. I am a senior contributing
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: editor at MSNBC. Prior to that, I was a columnist
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: at The Washington Post. I've worked. I worked for ten
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: years as a host of a little show on NPR
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: called All Things Considered, and before that worked at ABC
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: News and the Chicago La Times and The Washington Post
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: earlier in my career. So longtime storyteller. For the last
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: fifteen years, I've been a story collector. I run something
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: called the Race Car Project, where I collect stories from
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: people about race and identity that begin with just six words.
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: So they start with a little microburst and they often
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: grow into something bigger. And I now host a podcast
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: called Your Mama's Kitchen, where I collect stories from fairly
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: famous people who tell me about how the kitchens that
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: they grew up in shaped the people that they became.
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: And the theory of the case there is that the
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: kitchens are incubators. As Conan O'Brien said, it's like the
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: killing where the bricks are made. You learn about justice
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: and generosity and grace and grievance and all kinds of
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: things in the kitchen. A lot more goes on in
• 10:11
  Speaker 3: the kitchen beyond nutrition.
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: Your podcasts and just the way you described your work
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: and who you are the story collector, that's exactly the
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: perfect description of what you do. It's not just a conversation,
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: it's not just a podcast, it's not just a book.
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: It seems that your work in its entirety, even though
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: the basis and your education and your background is journalism,
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: it is story collecting. It is storytelling, and you do
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: a beautiful job and relaying different people's different backgrounds stories
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: in such a way that you feel like you know
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: these people, which really like tugs. I think I was
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: gushing right before. I know I was gushing right before
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: we got onto record about your ability to talk to
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: people in such a way and ask the questions that
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: are seemingly so simple, like you literally said, give me
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: six words about race, and you gave out postcards, and I,
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: by the way, that format is so Roman romantic to me,
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: it just got me. I was like, yes, and you're
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: talking about how you put them in bibles. Don't think
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: I didn't know what you were doing. I love that
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: you did that, but.
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: We should explain that.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: We should.
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: So I developed the race Card Project while I was
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: on a thirty five city book tour. And I developed
• 11:27
  Speaker 3: the race car Project in part because I wrote a
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: book about my family's very complex racial legacy, called The
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: Grace of Silence, and I knew I would be going
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: out in the world talking to people about race and
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: I thought no one wanted to have that conversation. So
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: the race Card Project was created to create an entry
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: point with postcards. Just give me a postcard with your
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: six words on it. And I had to figure out
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: how to distribute the postcards. And so when I was
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: traveling across the country, I was leaving them in the
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: back of airline, you know, little little marsupio pouch. I
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: was leaving them in the airline pouch. I was leaving them,
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: and restaurants, I was leaving them behind mind on tables
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: and in hotels where the Bible comes in the nightstand.
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: You know, there's often a little Bible in the nightstand,
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: And so I put postcards in the Bible so I
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: figured if somebody was like, you know, meaning a good word,
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: that they were trying to find the palm psalmer proverb. Yeah, yeah,
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: I would fall a post card.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: I mean to be honest in my mind if I
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: had found a postcard in the Bible, which I don't
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: necessarily looked at them, but every now and then you're like,
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: there it is. You're like, what did the Mormons want
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: from me? Like what are these questions that the Mormons
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: are asking me? But no, it was such a fascinating
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: and amazing beginning. And like I said, I love like postcards.
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: Those are so romantic, and I love that in general.
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: But you have an amazing way of transforming people's stories
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: into this beautiful, beautiful narrative where you just feel that
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: you feel where there's these where they people are coming
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: from and the hurt, the beauty of finding themselves. Like,
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: this's such an amazing thing. And you have taken that
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: all the way from again postcards. Of course, you've been
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: a journalist, You've done this. Now you're here at podcasting
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: and you do the same thing. You do the same
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: thing with that question, tell me about your mama's kitchen.
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: So can you talk to us a little bit about
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: this podcast and what it's about and how you got here.
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: Well, isn't it interesting? That's that's I was reminded when
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: I was in San Antonio recently that even that question
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: is six words, tell me about your mama's kitchen. I
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: never put that put the two together. But the idea
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: for the podcast grew out of my work in public radio.
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: And you two live behind the microphone, so you understand
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: that you want people to talk a little bit before
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: you are off to the racist and you start recording
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: your show, and it's something called a mic check. And
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: at NPR, the standard question for the mic check was
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: what did you have for breakfast? Samantha Wood, you have breakfast.
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: I haven't had breakfast coffee.
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: Okay, that's see, that's the issue. Ms Reese, what did
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: you have for breakfast coffee? Okay? So no one talks
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: en up, right. You never have the person who says, oh, girl,
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: I had French toast and it was dredged in eggs
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: that were harvested down the road, and it was dusted
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: with cinnamon sugar, and I had it along with some
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: beautifully scrambled eggs and some country fried bacon and I
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: had a glass of no one says that, they say coffee,
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: they say nothing, they say toast, they say oat mill.
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: And it's never enough time for people to talk. And
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: so I started asking odd ball questions. Do you use
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: paper or plastic when you go to the grocery store?
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: What did you do for fun on a Saturday night?
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: Tell me about your first summer job. What is your
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: favorite pair of shoes? And why all of them were?
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: You know, you'd learn something about someone and you would
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: get them talking a lot more. But the one that
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: was the gold the golden question was tell me about
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: your mama's kitchen. Because people would go to a different
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: place in their head and they would start talking. And
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: even if it wasn't a good experience, you know, they
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: just it just rendered the pot. It just got them looselimmed,
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: and it made for different conversation once we got into
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: whatever we were talking about. I mean, even if we
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: were talking about, you know, military expenditures, it was it
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: was just a deeper, richer, better conversation because we loosened
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: the guest up. And I always thought that that would
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: be a great idea for a podcast, and then I
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: wound up connecting with the good people at Higher Ground Media,
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: which is the production company that is owned by Barack
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: and Michelle Obama, and the light bulbs went off and
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: we said, let's create a really wonderful podcast around this.
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: And the theory of the case was that we become
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: who we are in the kitchen. And it's interesting how
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: we asked this question to all these different guests, same question,
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: a bunch of different guests, and it goes in completely
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: different directions. You know, there's no there are a few redundancies,
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: but even so there's difference even if the experience is similar.
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: And so I know, it's an interesting experience for the listener.
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: And it sure is a heck of a lot of
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: fun from me to get to know people in a
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: different way because often these are famous people, they've done
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: lots of interviews. But we learned things that no one
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: else has heard before because we're entering through a different door.
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: Right, I mean listening to Michelle Obama talking about how
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: much she didn't like eggs.
• 16:48
  Speaker 4: She like anything, Yes, I was like I would have
• 16:54
  Speaker 4: not imagined.
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: And you know, and missus Robinson, who's recently gone to glory,
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: we both lost our moms right around this in the
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: same week, actually right around the same time. Was a
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: tough cookie. I mean, she was a very you know,
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: disciplined woman, but she indulged a little. Michelle Obama said, baby,
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: if you want a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, that's
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: what we're going to give you. I Mean, the piece
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: of that episode that I really appreciated was when she
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: talked about her cousin who came who went off and
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: came back with all these radical ideas about what a
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: woman could and should do. And you also learn about
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: those sort of smaller characters in someone's life. She probably
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: wound up having a really big influence on Michelle Obama
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: and who she became and how she saw the world.
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: And you know, because Chicago is basically like being in
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: the South. If you're on the South side of Chicago,
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: it's you know, black people who all came from the South,
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: brought Southern values, Southern ideas with them about all kinds
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: of things, religion, gender, race, and then when people started
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: to break out of those cocoons and explore bigger worlds
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: and then bring those ideas back, they were not often
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: met with an open armed embrace. What'd you talk about?
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: You know, trying to shake up the world order, you know,
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: and and that was she had never talked about that before,
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: you know, And so it was really interesting and I
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: spent you know, a lot of time with her. I've
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: interviewed her over years. I've read her books, I've traveled
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: with her on book tour, I've read a bunch of
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: her interviews. And that was like new material that helped
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: us understand her origin story.
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: I love that. Yeah, and I love that beginning you
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: talked about feminism in the kitchen and you actually brought
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: that up into it, and I was like, here we go,
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: here we go, and talking about the growth of the
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: matriarch and what feminism was then was just the mere
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: fact that, yes, the household was run by women and
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: there was no plan about But then you had the
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: cousin coming in talk about a different narrative of like, no,
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: I'm not coming here to serve you, this is not
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: this is not happening. It was such an amazing conversation.
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: But all you can to understand that in a black
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: household in the nineteen sixties, for a young women to
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: come in and say I'm not here to serve you, thunderclass.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: You know that was a silent moment.
• 19:10
  Speaker 4: Everybody is what's going to happen here, you know, But
• 19:15
  Speaker 4: that that that theme comes up over and over and
• 19:18
  Speaker 4: over again because.
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: For some of us of a certain age, feminism came
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: along and changed the world underneath our mother's feet, I mean,
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: the world shifted. They had made choices or choices were
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: foisted upon them, and then suddenly things were different or
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: there was the possibility of things being different. But there's
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: a group of women that were sort of caught, you know,
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: in the middle of seeing a possibility of change but
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: not being able to execute on that because of where
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: they were stuck, you know, in that timeline. But at
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: the same time, we've also learned that for some women,
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: the idea of feminism was interesting because the kitchen was
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: their domain and it was the one place where they
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: could be fully in control, right and in other spaces
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: they couldn't, But the kitchen was one place where they
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: could be in control. And then for some women, and
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: I'm finding particularly for women of color, was a case
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: where the idea of feminism not even you know, within
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: the kitchen or outside of it, but the idea of
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: feminism was interesting because in some spaces, particularly educated when
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: we were fighting to have a home and family, to
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: have a home, family and work, to work outside the home,
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: and for a lot of women of color or women
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: women who were of working class or lower it's like, well,
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: we've been doing that all along, right, the struggle is real,
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: but so is the juggle, right, you know, we have
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: we have already been doing this exact and to be
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: able to explore that through a child's eyes from someone
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: who is now an adult has been really really interesting.
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: I mean, Terry Jones. I don't know if you listen
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: to that episode, but that was another example. She went
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: to college and it blew her mind and she just thought,
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: I am never going to be that person. I love
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: my mom, but I am never going to be that person.
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: I don't want to cook. And now she's a cook
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: and fool she makes cakes on you know, all the time.
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: But there was a she had to figure out, how
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: do I do this without it being subservient? Right, how
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: do I do this on my own terms? And realizing
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: that her mother had made a beautiful home for the family,
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: but also realizing that wondering what kind of sacrifices that
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: she made right right in order to create that space
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: and did she had to subjugate her own ambitions right
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: or sort of pretzel twist herself to fit into a mold.
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: I mean, you definitely mentioned about having it all in
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: that false narrative in itself and how it can feel
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: overwhelming in that whole level, like you do want to
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: be the perfect cook and have the perfect home. And
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: the narrative was for the longest time that if you're
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: not doing these things, you're not fulfilling your role as
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: a true woman, as a good woman, uh, not having
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: that perfect household as well as juggling the perfect job,
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: and like rising up in that industry to make sure
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: that you are showing that a woman can do this.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: Like all of these narratives.
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: I have two thoughts on that. I am fascinated by
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: old magazines, old emity magazines, old calls magazines old and
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: the idea of prof Who were these people who were
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: who were like pushing the idea of perfection on women,
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: Like you couldn't just serve jello. It had to come
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: in a mold and it had to be topped, It
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: had to be ambrosia, It had to have like stuff
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: on top of it. You couldn't just serve lemonade. It
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: had to have like little grown wedges of lemons with
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: Maraschino cherries in it. I mean, who were these people
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: who were forcing you know, this idea of womanhood on
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: I would love, you know, not like I have all
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: the time in the world, but part of me wants
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: to go back and go inside those editorial pages. You know,
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: you look at the editorial page like who was this?
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: How did they come up with these ideas? Did they
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: live lives of perfections themselves? Or were were they doing
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: this to women? They were going home and you know
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: and eating boiled eggs for dinner because they you know,
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: if you were doing this and you were a woman,
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: you were working yourself and raising a family. Or was
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: there secretly a cabal of men, you know, who were
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: coming up with these ideas and forcing it on women?
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: And then even into the nineteen seventies, I mean Michellebaum
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: and I talked about this in her episode that Angelie
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: ad that add about you can bring home the bacon, Yeah,
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: fry it up in the pan and never let them
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: forget you're a man. And when I was an NPR,
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: I actually thought about doing this, and I because we
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: can so all things, and I actually thought about doing
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: it and I just never have and maybe after this conversation,
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: I should actually go ahead and do it, because I
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: actually wanted to find the person and talk to them
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: who came up with that ad, you know, I wanted
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: to actually talk to them. And it was at about perfume.
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: It wasn't even about food, you know, And it's and
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: she's got a trench coat on. You should go back
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: and look at the you can find it.
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: On you I know you're talking about it. She has
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: held this vague memory.
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: Of that, yes, and she's you know, and that she
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: takes it off and she's got like that Keana dress
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: on and you know, and then the idea is that
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: she's frying at bacon, and I guess the implication is
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: that the dress is going to come off and she's
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: going to go, you know, make somebody happy.
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: But she can do all that and still make bacon.
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: And still be perfect and smell good because she's wearing
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: an Julie.
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: Well, she don't smell at macon. Yeah. We actually had
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: a conversation because we had this similar with my partner's
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: mother talking about how like southern and magazines really messed
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: her up and saying that she had to make the
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: perfect Christmas or she was failing as a mother and
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: a wife. Like she held that for the longest time.
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: And I'm like, what is this culture that has done this?
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: And you are right as men and capitalism that's what
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: it like simple terms.
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I have I have theories about this.
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: I think that you know, I think that they were
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: just trying to figure out at a post war period
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: how to create new roles for people, you know, And
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: I think that that's why men were There was a
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: whole culture of men mowing.
• 25:29
  Speaker 4: Lawns, and I think it was frankly to get them
• 25:30
  Speaker 4: out of the house. Yes, you know, go mow the lawn,
• 25:33
  Speaker 4: Go do something.
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: Go do something, just so you're not home like lording
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: over everybody else and think of break. Maybe that's why
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: fishing culture grew also, get out of the house.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: Oh my god, I love this. I really want you
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: to do this, becaure because I need to know. For me,
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: the kitchen has always been kind of a fraught space
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: of like, I enjoyed the time with my mom, but
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: then like I guess the men and my family's felt
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: bad and so they would come in and start talking
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: to us, and I'm like, no, I don't want you
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: to be in here. If you're not gonna help, like,
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: then get out. But I actually do enjoy the cooking
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: part with my mom. But it's also one of my
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: earliest memories of getting really angry is I'm like, I
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: don't get what you're expected to do this. I don't
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: understand it. And I feel like the kitchen, as you
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: mentioned it's been, it's the space where you learn so
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: much because it's the kitchen table is like a place
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: where the bills are building up, or the homework is
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: being done, or the arguments are being had or all
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: of these things, and it's just when you look back
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: at it, you're completely right. It makes so much sense.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: People have all these stories that maybe they're like, oh,
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: I haven't thought about that in a long time because
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: I wasn't processing it then, but now I am. And
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: the kitchen has become a really political space. It is
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: like one of the I've tried to get to the
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: bottom of this, Michelle, is why do we still tell
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: women to get back to the kitchen or go make
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: a sandwich today? Like, why is that still one of
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: our biggest.
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know we're talking right now, and there's actually
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: a hearing going on in Washington, d C. Where Nominee
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: is being questioned about, you know, denigating the idea of
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: women in combat and the idea that women should be
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: moms and not in combat, as if you can't be both,
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: you know, both things. I think it's so interesting that
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: you understood gender dynamics in your house at such an
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: early age because of what happened in the kitchen. What
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: did you learn about that? What did you divine from that?
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: At the time, I was very I just thought it
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: was unfair. I remember thinking, like in a very childish
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: I don't have like the understanding necessarily to define why.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: But I thought it was unfair because she would be
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: like sitting down and my little brother would ask her, like,
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: can you go get me something that he could have done.
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: He could have just done it, but she would get
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: up and do it, and she was like, no, it
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: doesn't bother, it's easy. She wasn't upset by it, but
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: I there was something in me that was like, I
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: just don't like this. I don't get why he can't
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: just do it. And I felt like I would have
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: gotten up and done it. I wouldn't have asked her,
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: And so there's just something in me that was, like,
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: I thought it was unfair.
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: I guess is this And it's so deep because for
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: some people it may be just a natural There are
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: people who really get get great pleasure out of serving people,
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: you know, and I totally understand that I probably fall
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: within that category, cooking as an act of love, you know,
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: presenting aqut to people as a act of love. But
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: there also is an element of keeping the peace, you know,
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: and there is an element of keeping up with the culture,
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: you know, the cultural expectations, and then there's just you know,
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: there's so much that goes into this. When I was
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: writing my first book, I came upon this book about
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: the Great Migration, but it was written through the prism
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: of marriage and the pressures around people who were trying
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: to figure out how to make it in new environments,
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: who had fled, who were refugees from the Jim crowsout
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: and brought all that trauma along with them because they
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: had escaped terrorism. I mean, let's just be honest about that.
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: They were running towards something better, but going out into
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: the world and having to deal with all the outside
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: pressures particularly around race and around finances, and around inequality,
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: and not ever being able to be fully who you
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: have the potential to be because of the strictures that
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: keep you from doing that, and the double stricts that
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: keep you from doing that as a person of color
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: and a woman of color. And then coming home, and
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: the book talked about that home was often the one place.
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: We talked about the kitchen being the one place where
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: a woman had there, you know, had filled domain. Well,
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: the home was the one place in a heteronormative marriage
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: where the man had filled domain. And so all the
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: outside expectations, all the pressures would come home and you know,
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: Nikki Giovanni, we just lost. And that wonderful exchange with
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin where she's talking about fake
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: it for me, Like you go out in the world
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: and you smile, and you figure out how to go
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: along and get along because you have to go along,
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: and you come home and you you have the benefit
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: of letting your hair down and being your full self
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: and bringing all that anger home with you. But sometimes
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: I wish you would just fake it for me. So
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: I'm not the repository of all of that you know,
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: anger and frustration, and the kitchen was often you know,
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: I imagine it probably played out in the bedroom, and
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: it probably played out in the driveway, and it probably
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: played out in the car on the way to church
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: or whatever, but the kitchen was definitely a place where
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: that played out. And as the kids, you know, you
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: didn't see what happened in the kitchen. You maybe saw
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: what happened in the front seat of the car, but
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: you saw the back of their heads, so you weren't
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: seeing the sideways glances, you know, and all the stuff
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: that happens. But the kitchen is everything is on full display,
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: so you're seeing, you know, everything, and it winds up
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: being a certain kind of education for the family members
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: who are in the kitchen, for the kids, for the
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: mother in law who's visiting, for the neighbor who's you know,
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: checking everybody out, you know, and the kind of inside voice,
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: outside voice. I mean, another thing that comes up in
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: the episodes over and over and over again, regardless of
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: what kind of kitchen we're talking about, is people talk
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: about the moms phone voice. Do you know what I'm
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: talking about?
• 32:08
  Speaker 4: Your mom was talking and then you know, fussing at
• 32:10
  Speaker 4: the kids speaking in a certain octave, and then the
• 32:13
  Speaker 4: telephone rings Hello. That just goes away, you know, like suddenly,
• 32:22
  Speaker 4: you know you better get yourself downstairs and get it
• 32:25
  Speaker 4: together and get out the door.
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: But Hello, switch it.
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: Up, just like yeah, yeah, I I have so many
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: memories with the kitchen. When you were talking and asking
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: about the kitchen and what it looked like, tell me
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: about the setup of the kitchen, of your mom's kitchen,
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: and I remembered immediately, like when I was young coming in.
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: I was adopted at seven, so I was somewhat older
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: learning English. But one of the things that I love
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: to do. The way that my parents' kitchen was set
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: up was the stove and the oven or next to
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: each other, but it like had a little nook thing
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: in between the dining room and the kitchen, so I
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: could sit on the other side of the stove to
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: watch my mother cook whatever it was cooking, and I
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: would sit and have a conversation with her, whether I
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: was singing to her about some made up song I
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: had for the day, or telling her what happened at
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: school or to that she would she would listen, like
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: you know, she did, uh huh uh huh, but I
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: just remembered that memory so much because I was so
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: they renovated it and they took that down and that
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: was very hurt, like they did.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: Uh.
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: But on top of that, that's also how my mom
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: realized one time that she forgot me because I wasn't
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: present while she was cooking, that she was supposed to
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: pick me up somewhere. But all of those stories, it
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: does feel like that kitchen is this moment of core
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: memory of my childhood. Like my childhood was good. There
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: was a lot of trauma like most people, I think
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: in general, but like there was a lot of trauma
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: in trying to figure out my identity. But one of
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: the things that I loved was feeling connected to my
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: mother in that moment to seeing her cooking and she
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: wasn't she wasn't a bad cook, but she's cooked simply
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: for four kids, very quickly. Whatever she had, so Hamburger
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: Helper was always on the menu, Sloppy Joe's were on
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: the menu, you know, stuff like that. I had a
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: weird relationship with that. I had to back and forth
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: with that, but it was something about that the kitchen
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: is like the heart of our home, and that's that
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: familiarity of my mother, Like, no, I didn't want anyone
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: to ever touch me when I was sick except for
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: my mom. I needed her to give me a hug.
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: And that's that feel in that kitchen. Why do you
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: think that it does belong to women like that? Why
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: does it belong to the matriarch?
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: Well, you know, going back over centuries, this is the
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: division of labor, you know, And gendered roles have been
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: prescribed going back over centuries, you know, And there are
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: aberrations to that. There are places where women do the
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: hunting and gathering, but those are few and far between.
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: So I think that it's something that is, you know,
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: and I'm not sure that it's nature. I think that
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: it's sort of decisions that were made about who was
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: who was going to be viewed as strong and going
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: to go out and fight wars and and hunt and gather,
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: and who is going to like do the child rearing. Now,
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: the child rearing is part of that, because women produce
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: children and there's a certain point where they do have
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: to quite literally feed a new human being with their bodies,
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: and an out of that may have grown the expectation
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: that they would that they would just be you know,
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: the person that would handle the kitchen handle the and
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: and you know, if you understand what life was like
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: before there were stoves and refrigerators, you know, the idea
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: that women were doing this because they were the weaker sex. Well,
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: I invite you to go out and gather water and
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: carry you know, two buckets of water across broom handle
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: on your shoulder. That's the equivalent of like deadlifting. You know,
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: I invite you to go out and use an axe
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: to split wood and then carry all that wood into
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: a cook stove and keep things going. I invite you
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: to spend time with livestock, and so it's it's not
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: necessarily that they were the weaker sex. There was an
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: argument over time that women have been weaker of mind
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: and you know, and then maybe that was an effort
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: to keep them out of they didn't call it the
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: workforce at that time, but to keep them away from
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: life and letters. But this, this continued, and then there's
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: a certain degree of social engineering that uh, you know,
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: has happened over time and in capitalism. You know, there's
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: a there's a book by Juju the Shapiro. I can't
• 37:01
  Speaker 3: remember the name of it, but she writes about the
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: evolution of the kitchen and and how that was you know,
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: aimed at women and the lives that they led. And
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: then there's cultural forces. So I can remember my own kitchen,
• 37:20
  Speaker 3: but I could describe to you the Breedy Bunch kitchen.
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: I remember where the oven was. I remember, you know,
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: the color scheme. It looked like inside of a burger
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: king kind of orange and brown. I remember Laura Petree's kitchen,
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: you know, in the Dick Van Dyke Show. So there
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: were all kinds of cultural clues. I can describe with
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: great detail that fabulous kitchens that the Cospy's had, you know,
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: with the big table in the center of the kitchen.
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: I don't know if anybody in New York City has
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: a kitchen that that's lot, that is that large, But
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: they managed to create a massive farm house style kitchen
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: in a brownstone in New York City that you know
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: that we all want. Yeah, so there's there's no you know,
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: easy answer to that, but there are a lot of
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: ingredients that went into that stew. I'm kind of curious
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: about life now because cooking, and I'd love to hear
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: more from you because I'm older than both of you,
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: cooking has become it's something that we have to do
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: to feed ourselves, but it's it's an obsession with I
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: think millennials, and in a different kind of way, you know,
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: Instagram shows us that there's a kind of afformative aspect
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: of cooking. There's a kind of communal dinners, there's there's
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: there is a greater interest in this, and I'm wondering
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: if there's more gender parity because of that.
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: That's I mean, again, Michelle, I wish we could just
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: there's so many things we could talk about with this,
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: because I think I was thinking about We've done episodes
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: on like Betty Crocker and women kind of being alone
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: in the kitchen and having this person that wasn't real
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: but they really connected to because they felt so isolated,
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: and then that moved into like food shows, and then
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: that moved into Instagram and social media and from there,
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: it just there are so many issues to unpack because
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: I do think it has become at least in my
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: friend group, I feel a lot of times it is
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: more equitable with the cooking. There's still sort of lanes
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: people seem to stay in, but there's also kind of
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: there's the whole trad wife thing, which we've talked about before.
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: And there's this food prep thing that I feel I
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: don't think it's as prevalent now, but it got really
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: out of hand for a while where it.
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: Was still happening. It still happened, like preparing your meals
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: for the week and in that little tiny container.
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: Oh, I'm a I'm a fan of Sunday for the
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: whole I prepped for Sunday for the whole week.
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: It got out of hand though, like people all excel
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: based on that, like let me help you with the
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: specific type of continent, like the capitalism that came from
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: the capitalism that came from that. It became such a
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: thing and it had to be manly and or if
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: you're not eating all proteins and you're not doing.
• 40:22
  Speaker 3: Oh, it's like yeah, I mean, I'm a big fan
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: of the prepping. I did that for years when I
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: and I was working, I would prep for the week
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: and it would just I could cook so much faster.
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: I would just spend Sunday watch something on you know,
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: watch a great movie, listen to something and just prep
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: for the week. But I understand what you're saying that Instagram.
• 40:43
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's like the butter board. Remember for a
• 40:45
  Speaker 3: while everyone was doing those butterboards.
• 40:47
  Speaker 4: Like nobody wants to spread butter on a wooden board
• 40:49
  Speaker 4: and then like like dip stuff into butter.
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: I mean, that's so things take off. But one of
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: the reasons I asked the gender question because you know,
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: even though the world of the kitchen has been gendered
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: toward women, if you look at celebrity chef culture, right,
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: it's still so male. Yes, And I'm noticing if you're
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: on Instagram, a lot of the most popular people on
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: Instagram are who are cooking and doing that kind of
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: performa of cooking are also men. So but I wonder
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: if that translates into people picking up the kind of
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: the responsibility of cooking at home. It's different to cook
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: on Instagram with the right lighting and you know, the
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: right angles and everything else. Something that can feel like drudgery,
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: you know, because people you got to eat, so someone's
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: got to cook. And when that happens. Is there still
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: the sort of what's for dinner culture as opposed to
• 41:52
  Speaker 3: you know, what can we cook for dinner? The what's
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: for dinner? What's for dinner is such a loaded question
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: because it's the expectation that you were going to you're
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: going to perhaps something to the dinner, as opposed to
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: let's talk about what we should have for dinner, right,
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: because what's for dinner means it kind of means what
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: are you serving me for dinner?
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: Exactly. I think we did talk about this in the
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: line of that, Yes, chefs is more dominated as a
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: profession by men, but even still today women are more
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: likely to be the home cooks. And you can even
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: tell almost in the type of food being served that
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: women are more likely going to have a little homage
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: to the old style or their family style versus like
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: being the professional French cuisine like you see that line up.
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: Still even though, because just like in everything we talked
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: about with brewing beer, it was that same mentality. You
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: used to be women who did that. Then it became profitable,
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: so men started taking it.
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: I didn't know that that women used to they were
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: the home brewers.
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: They were called witches.
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: Sometimes, Okay, learn something new.
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: You're interviewing us. This is not going.
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: I can't help it.
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: This is not the way they're supposed to go. One
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: of the things that I love about food in general.
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: And again you spoke to me with your books as
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: well as your questions and everything, because you did hit
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: into like race identity in your book book you released
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: uh last year and it's still going strong, and I
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: was able to do it on audible, not a sponsor
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: a y'all, but that uh, it does so well you
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: bring in people. I almost it's almost like a podcast.
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: I was like, WHOA, what's happening here? And then with
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: the jazz transitions, I was like, yes, I I wanted
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: to ask you about this.
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: The first music that came back with it, I was like.
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: The jazz transitions, like, I see what she's doing. She's
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: trying to listen to being comfortable before we get like
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: our hearts smashed. I'm fine. But the one of the
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: things that that connection for me in finding my identity
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: is not necessarily just cultural, but it's food. It's food based.
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: I really have been triggered by food memories, like to
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: the point that I would have like panic attacks. I'm like,
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: oh no, this is too real to my pre adoption era,
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: but really like taking it on and honing and all
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: and realizing, no, these are things that I know. The
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: memories that I have of my biological grandmother was that
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: she owned the snack bar or a restaurant, and I
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: remember distinctly smells from that, foods that I ate from that,
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: and I can't like, I have discovered it as an
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: adult and it has brought me into such a place
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: that I'm like, where am I? Like? I feel like
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: there are memories in the back of my head that
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: I can't quite grasp onto, but I feel it. And
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: this is this level of knowing that this is about
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: part of my identity and it's because of food. And
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: obviously that connection is so deep. You were talking to
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: Eric Knam about this and his culture and trying to
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: get that southern which, oh love, that was like from Atlanta. Yeah,
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: where's he at?
• 45:09
  Speaker 3: You should find him? Yeah, you do, you need to
• 45:12
  Speaker 3: be friends.
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: But like the fact that he does have this connection
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: of like being you know, first generation with his mother
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: who still has very very like dominance in the kitchen,
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: but teaching that to him and learning that culture and
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: learning his identity of being both about being from the
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: US and then also being from current culture. It just
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: spoke so much. Why do you think these types of
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: conversations are so important to be had, especially when it comes.
• 45:43
  Speaker 3: To identity because they help us understand ourselves and each
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: other and our complex world. I you know, people say, oh,
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: we've got to have a conversation about race, or we
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: have to have a conversation about identity. I'd like us
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: to get to a point where we can say, we
• 46:00
  Speaker 3: get to have a conversation because you know, I just
• 46:04
  Speaker 3: learned eighty five things about you and in that short exchange,
• 46:12
  Speaker 3: you know, and if we kept going, because you know,
• 46:15
  Speaker 3: I want to ask you, like when you discovered that
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: you remembered I can't help myself, but you know when
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: you realize, oh I have that food memory. Were you
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: in a market, you know, were you out in the
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: world someplace? I mean our food memories the kitchen. I
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: think the other reason that I think it's important for
• 46:35
  Speaker 3: us to have these conversations because it's how we find
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: each other. It's it's how we educate ourselves about each other.
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: It's how we do self exploration. And it's because it's
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: interesting because people are very interesting and the kitchen is
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: such a interesting space to do that. Also, because the
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: kitchen animates every single one of your senses. It's it's
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: you know, it's all there. And so those early kitchen
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: memories are are not just about food. They're not just
• 47:08
  Speaker 3: about nutrition, They're about emotion. Food is linked to emotion,
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: the emotion of the event, the emotion behind who gave
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: that to you, the emotion attached to where you were
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: at in your life, the emotion around a memory that
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: you've you just haven't had enough time to go back
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: and explore. And so that's why it's a it's a
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: you know, if we said, tell me about your your
• 47:33
  Speaker 3: mama's dining room, a lot of stuff happens in the
• 47:35
  Speaker 3: dining room, it would be a very different conversation than
• 47:39
  Speaker 3: tell me about what happens in your kitchen.
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: True.
• 47:47
  Speaker 3: And I am sitting on my hands right now because
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: I do want to ask you, like, what are you
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: going to do to go back and and excavate and
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: cultivate those memories? And did your parents ever try to
• 47:56
  Speaker 3: help you explore your culture through food? You know?
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: I want to hold on that so that you have
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: to come back. I'm gonna make it come back. I'm
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: gonna make you get interested. This is this is me
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: you know of you?
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: Oh wow, I love that well. I also got I
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: had the honor to talk to you on the other
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: podcast I do Saver, which is about food. And one
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: thing that we were talking about over there is that
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: I think a lot of people make the mistake of
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: divorcing food in the kitchen from everything that it that
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: like history and identity and gender dynamics and all of
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: that stuff. What do you think, through your work and
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: through doing this show, how do you think we can
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: see all of that through those conversations and how is
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: it shape as and to who we are when we
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: become adults.
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: Well, I hope that when people hear these episodes that
• 49:08
  Speaker 3: they wonder about their own lives. And we now are
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: creating a space, and I know that people do because
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: we've created a space where people can send their own
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: audiograms or video messages to YMK at higher Own Productions
• 49:23
  Speaker 3: dot com, and you know, we listen to them tell
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: their own stories. And so I hope that it's much
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: like the book. Also that if you read the book
• 49:32
  Speaker 3: or listen to the book, if you listen to the
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: podcast or eventually watch it, because we're going to be
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: doing video episodes, also now that you will have a
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: greater curiosity about your own space, that you might pick
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: up your phone and call your cousin do you remember
• 49:46
  Speaker 3: you know this, or you might if you're lucky enough
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: to still have living parents, that you might want to
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: talk to them, that you might sort of explore. Okay,
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: is this why I keep a can of bacon grease
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: next to because my mom did? Or do? I never ever, ever, ever,
• 50:04
  Speaker 3: ever want to do this because I don't want to
• 50:07
  Speaker 3: do what my mom did. I don't want to actually
• 50:10
  Speaker 3: follow that path. So I hope it leads to to exploration,
• 50:16
  Speaker 3: you know, perhaps more listening of course, and more reading
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: of you know, deeper exploration of the projects, but also
• 50:23
  Speaker 3: a little bit of self self exploration. I think that's
• 50:27
  Speaker 3: that is the highest compliment I get when people say,
• 50:31
  Speaker 3: you know, it made me really think about my own space,
• 50:34
  Speaker 3: and you know, now I want to go back and
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: explore my own kitchen. And one of the things that
• 50:39
  Speaker 3: we hear over and over again on the show is
• 50:41
  Speaker 3: I've never said this before. I've never told anyone this before.
• 50:46
  Speaker 3: We learn about things that people haven't talked about before.
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: Conan O'Brien tell us this great story. It's one of
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: the stories that really sticks with me. His mother. Conan O'Brien,
• 50:59
  Speaker 3: the comedian, late night host now head of Team cocoa
• 51:04
  Speaker 3: his podcast Empire and really is an Empire.
• 51:07
  Speaker 4: Grew up in.
• 51:08
  Speaker 3: Brookline, Massachusetts, and his mother. They have working classroots, and
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: his mother did well in school and went off to
• 51:15
  Speaker 3: fancy university and became one of the first women at
• 51:17
  Speaker 3: a white shoe law firm in Boston, Massachusetts, and excelled
• 51:22
  Speaker 3: there and did really well, and while at the same
• 51:25
  Speaker 3: time raising like a passel of kids back home, you know,
• 51:28
  Speaker 3: Irish Catholic family, and I imagine, I'm you know, the
• 51:32
  Speaker 3: juggle for her must have been incredible, right, because the expectations,
• 51:39
  Speaker 3: you know, for her to you know, maybe I don't
• 51:42
  Speaker 3: know if she felt the expectation to be perfect, but
• 51:43
  Speaker 3: there's a lot of moths that had to be fed,
• 51:45
  Speaker 3: while you also definitely had the expectation to be perfect
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: on a law firm where there weren't a lot of
• 51:48
  Speaker 3: other women. And he tells this great story about how
• 51:53
  Speaker 3: she brought the kids to work and they got to
• 51:55
  Speaker 3: see her office and how proud she was for them
• 51:57
  Speaker 3: to see that. But he also remember this story about
• 52:01
  Speaker 3: how she was and he just recently lost both of
• 52:06
  Speaker 3: his parents, and so it really means a lot to
• 52:08
  Speaker 3: me that he shared the story with us that she
• 52:14
  Speaker 3: was not allowed to be in the boardroom when they
• 52:18
  Speaker 3: had meetings lunch meetings with big clients, but she was
• 52:22
  Speaker 3: so respected that they needed her close by, so she
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: would eat at a card table outside the boardroom. And
• 52:36
  Speaker 3: Conan is telling the story, and it's kind of funny.
• 52:38
  Speaker 3: He's talking about, well, they're you know, lawsuit. I mean
• 52:41
  Speaker 3: that would in today's environment, you probably couldn't do that.
• 52:44
  Speaker 3: But he mentioned something that I've always thought of is
• 52:47
  Speaker 3: that he said there were few people, few lawyers had
• 52:49
  Speaker 3: such respect for her. I think her name was Ruth,
• 52:53
  Speaker 3: that they would no, I'm good, I'm going to go
• 52:56
  Speaker 3: and eat with her outside, and if you need me,
• 52:59
  Speaker 3: I'll be outside with her. And I love that he
• 53:03
  Speaker 3: shared that story. I love that she shared it with
• 53:06
  Speaker 3: him because she wanted him to know that the hill
• 53:09
  Speaker 3: was pretty steep for her. And I think that she
• 53:11
  Speaker 3: was conveying to him at least the message I took
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: from it, and I shared the story with my own
• 53:16
  Speaker 3: kids who are adults. I said, be the person who
• 53:19
  Speaker 3: gets up and goes and has has lunch with her,
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: you know, because that's the real power. And the people
• 53:25
  Speaker 3: who were in the room excluding her, they think they
• 53:27
  Speaker 3: have the power. The real power is to change the
• 53:31
  Speaker 3: dynamic and be the person who gets up and says,
• 53:32
  Speaker 3: you know, I'm good. I'm going to go out lunch
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: with her if she's smart enough to be outside the room,
• 53:36
  Speaker 3: because we need her. She's the one who deserves to
• 53:38
  Speaker 3: be in my she deserves my company, I deserve and
• 53:41
  Speaker 3: I'm honored to be with her. You know, that's not
• 53:45
  Speaker 3: I don't. I don't think Conan sharing that story in
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: Late Night, you know. And and so I'm glad that
• 53:51
  Speaker 3: we have an opportunity to mine those kinds of stories
• 53:56
  Speaker 3: so that we understand a little bit about this person
• 53:58
  Speaker 3: who makes us laugh, but also that we just are
• 54:01
  Speaker 3: able to send those really little intimate moments out into
• 54:07
  Speaker 3: the world to better understand our culture. I mean, right now,
• 54:12
  Speaker 3: we do this with primarily people who have a certain
• 54:15
  Speaker 3: amount of acclaim or their marquee figures. But that's why
• 54:20
  Speaker 3: I wanted to open up the inbox, because I much
• 54:22
  Speaker 3: like I do with the Race Car Project and I
• 54:23
  Speaker 3: did in the book Our Hidden Conversations, I want to
• 54:24
  Speaker 3: hear from all kinds of people. I know someone, for instance,
• 54:27
  Speaker 3: his mom had a kitchen and it was a stop
• 54:30
  Speaker 3: in the green book, you know, the Green Book that
• 54:33
  Speaker 3: people used when they traveled in the South as people
• 54:36
  Speaker 3: of color and they couldn't go and she had stop
• 54:39
  Speaker 3: in the Green Book on Memphis. I would love you know,
• 54:42
  Speaker 3: I'm trying to get him to record his story because
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: I mean imagine, and he would help her peel potatoes
• 54:47
  Speaker 3: and he would chop up stuff with her. And a
• 54:51
  Speaker 3: lot of famous people went through Memphis and they couldn't
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: go to restaurants or hotels, and so they'd wind up
• 54:55
  Speaker 3: eating in her kitchen. And I think things like that
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: probably happened all over the place.
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: Well this because this Yeah, so I'm gonna have to
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: tap in before you leave us, because you are a
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: masterclass in interviewing and story collecting, which is why I
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: love that title, because being on a podcast, you know,
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: and doing this interviewing is a skill. It is a
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: talent that is difficult to do sometimes, especially when trying
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: to get that personal story, that depth that you want
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: to see this person. So can you advise us, oh
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: master of interviewing this story collecting, on how to do
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: a good interview?
• 55:36
  Speaker 3: Well, I think curiosity is a superpower. Yeah, so you
• 55:39
  Speaker 3: have to be curious. It helps to be informed. It
• 55:45
  Speaker 3: helps to have an idea of an arc of the conversation,
• 55:48
  Speaker 3: but to then have a complete willingness to throw that
• 55:50
  Speaker 3: out the window. So you go where the story takes you.
• 55:56
  Speaker 3: But I think a big part of it. And I'm
• 55:58
  Speaker 3: going to be careful about how I say this because
• 56:00
  Speaker 3: I don't want to impune anybody. But you know, we
• 56:03
  Speaker 3: all listen to a lot of podcasts, we all watch
• 56:05
  Speaker 3: a lot of interviews. I think one of the things
• 56:08
  Speaker 3: that people sometimes lose truck of is a good interviewer
• 56:13
  Speaker 3: gets out of the way. You know, you're I'm there
• 56:17
  Speaker 3: to make room for someone else to tell their story,
• 56:21
  Speaker 3: and so I keep the balloon up in the air,
• 56:25
  Speaker 3: but I try to recede. I try to pull back
• 56:29
  Speaker 3: so they fill in the spaces. And and to think about,
• 56:38
  Speaker 3: you know, some of the best answers come from the
• 56:40
  Speaker 3: oddest questions. I just I don't know why this came
• 56:43
  Speaker 3: into my head, but I was interviewing Dave Brubek, the
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: jazz musician, and I was able to do it in person.
• 56:50
  Speaker 3: And as I was talking to them, and I realized,
• 56:52
  Speaker 3: you know, as you get older, your hands tighten up,
• 56:55
  Speaker 3: you know, And I said, tell me about your hands.
• 56:59
  Speaker 3: He said, no one has ever asked me that he's
• 57:02
  Speaker 3: a pianist. You know, no one has ever, So you know,
• 57:05
  Speaker 3: to think about that sort of simple thing and sometimes
• 57:09
  Speaker 3: those yield the best, the best answers, I mean, the
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: crazy idea, tell me about your mom's kitchen, to go
• 57:20
  Speaker 3: go where it sounds like star trek, to go where
• 57:21
  Speaker 3: no man has gone.
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: But but you.
• 57:24
  Speaker 3: Know, think of the questions that no one is asking.
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, thank you so much for submit. I feel
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: like you're to like work advice.
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: Sorry I had to get them while she was here. Yeah,
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: this is invaluable.
• 57:39
  Speaker 4: Well, there's one other thing I would say is stop
• 57:42
  Speaker 4: talking sometimes, you know, especially in a difficult moment, because
• 57:46
  Speaker 4: if it's difficult, your instinct is to fill void m
• 57:52
  Speaker 4: with your voice, and sometimes it's hard to do.
• 57:55
  Speaker 3: But let's be the one that was it's like a
• 58:00
  Speaker 3: game of chickens.
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: Well, thank you so much for being here. It's amazing.
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: When you were talking about you know, quote unquote simple
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: question that has so much to it, I've like honestly
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: fighting back tears that Conan O'Brien story, because you can
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: relate so much to it and you can connect so
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: much to it. Through these stories, and we got a
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: little bit of a teaser for your next season of
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: Your Mama's Kitchen, and I'm very, very excited. But is
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: there anything that you want to to tease or that
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: you're excited about that's coming up?
• 58:50
  Speaker 3: Oh with the first three episodes are just gold. It's
• 58:55
  Speaker 3: Stephen and Ebbie Colbert and you know, in their partnership
• 59:00
  Speaker 3: and they just love food and they're so funny and
• 59:03
  Speaker 3: they're so funny together. Ina Garten. Have you read her book?
• 59:11
  Speaker 3: I highly recommend it's Be Ready When the Luck Happens.
• 59:16
  Speaker 3: She had a very I mean, for someone who brings
• 59:18
  Speaker 3: so much joy to people, she had a very unhappy
• 59:20
  Speaker 3: childhood and emotionally violent and sometimes physically violent. And she
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: overcame that and she found someone who understood her. And
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: she writes with clarity and honesty and it's a great
• 59:35
  Speaker 3: book and it's a great conversation. And she is someone
• 59:40
  Speaker 3: who just broke molds and created new paths and I
• 59:47
  Speaker 3: think people will really dig that. And we sat down
• 59:49
  Speaker 3: with John Legend in his creation house, like Goals, he
• 59:53
  Speaker 3: has a house that he and Chrissy don't live in,
• 59:55
  Speaker 3: but it's where they create. She creates recipes, he creates music,
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 3: and he too had a very difficult childhood that he's
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 3: only now just starting to open up about. And so
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 3: you understand not just John Legend as an artist. He
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: is a beautiful man inside and out. I've got to
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 3: know him over many years. But you understand that great,
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 3: big heart of his, you know, because you realize that
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 3: it was broken pretty early and he had to figure
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 3: out how to put it back together. And it's almost like,
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 3: I can't remember the name of the art, but the
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 3: Chinese principle they break a piece of art and then
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 3: you put it back together, using gold to put the
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 3: pieces back together. It's almost like that represents what happened
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 3: to him, that his heart is stronger, his soul is richer,
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 3: his life is stronger because of the brokenness. It's there's
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 3: strength in that brokenness. And all this talked about, you know,
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 3: through the prism of the Kitchen, and in every episode,
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 3: I guess I should remind people that everyone we talk
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 3: to gives us a delicious recipe. Yes, so it's going
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 3: to be a great season. We also talked to Big
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 3: Freda and Wendell Pierce and Susan Orlean and Leshana Lynch
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 3: who is in Jamaican and lives in Britain, and she,
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 3: you know, talked about life growing up there. It's it's
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 3: good stuff. We serve up some delicious every week starting
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 3: January twenty eighth, So pull up the seat and join
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 3: us every week.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: Yes, I heard there's mac and cheese involved, and I'm
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: incredibly excited.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 3: Yes, and he claims it's the best mac and cheese
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 3: on the planet.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: So oh, I will be very happy to test that theory.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 3: Maybe we should have a mac and cheese Sunday where we, like,
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 3: everybody like we can could we recruit you to do that.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 3: It's like in early February, everybody everybody makes John Legends
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 3: mac and cheese on an appointed Sunday, and then we
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 3: all should we do that?
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 2: Have you done all these recipes or or have you
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 2: had favorites and any of these recipes?
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 3: I wrote test the recipes, and I do have a
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 3: few favorites. Michelle Obana's red rice is a banger. Okay,
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 3: is a banger. It is really good hot or cold
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 3: that's worked its way into the rotation. Andy Garcia's Pooficacy
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 3: took a lot of time. I mean it was a
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 3: labor intensive labor of love. But the results were crazy good.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 3: I mean, my family is like, and then you put
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 3: raisins in there?
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: Wait what what?
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 2: Wait what?
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah? But you put the raisins in and they stay
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 3: and they they sop up all the like the wine
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 3: and the marinade and everything else, and they become these
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 3: little flavor bombs. They reconstitute and turn into almost like grapes,
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 3: and so they you know, they're dried up. I mean
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 3: that's what they are, dried grapes, right, and they turned
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 3: back into grapes, but the filling is got out of
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 3: the marinade and so when you bite them, this little
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 3: explosion of deliciousness. So that that was a real winner.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 3: Abby Wombo's mom makes this pasta dish, which my family
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 3: really loves. There were the snow cookies that Nicole avant
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 3: Or that her mother makes were a big hit for
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 3: the holidays. So yeah, the food has been the food
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 3: has been spot on. For the mac and cheese, my
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 3: son now makes the mac and cheese. In our family,
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 3: all my kids cook and he has taken over the
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 3: mac and cheese. So he's actually going to make the
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 3: John Legend mac and cheese coming up. And I actually
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 3: liked the idea, though, I think I'm gonna we may
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 3: need to run with that, is to like everyone do,
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 3: because remember Samin Nosrat did the big lasagna where everyone
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 3: made her lasagna during COVID at the same time, and
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 3: that's the first time I made lasagnah is when I
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 3: did that. And so her chicken soup also, she did
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 3: a Persian chicken soup that was super lemony, like so
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 3: much that your cheeks kind of yeah, and she then
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 3: layered it with a little bit of ghee mm hmm.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 3: And it's it's you know, it's winter in much of
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 3: the country right now, and that's a that's a really
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 3: good one for this time of the year.
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 2: I'm getting very hungry.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, one of the risk of the job of
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: food journalists.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, well.
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: I am so down for mac and cheese.
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 3: Okay, I'll let you know. We'll pick a Sunday, maybe
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 3: like Super Bowl Sunday or right before Super Bowl. But yeah,
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 3: we definitely let's do that. And I think John and
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 3: Chrissy would probably we'll recruit them also when.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: Obviously, yes, we know you're so busy, I have so
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: many other questions.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 3: Well, you know, maybe I'll come back one day.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: Samantha has already laid the track.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: I'm trying. I'm trying. Look, we have so many things
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: to talk about. I'm just saying.
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: Because I feel like I wanted to talk about price
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: dynamics because a lot of times I think when people
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: talk about their mama's kitchen, there's always like she made
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: this cast role that was just cans and stuff. Yeah,
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: but then there's also the very labor intensive things that
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: takes so long. So yes, definitely please come back. Is
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: there any where can the good listeners find you? Is
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: there anything else you want to shout out?
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 3: Well, you know, they can find us wherever you your mama's kitchen,
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 3: you can find wherever you listen to podcasts. Our Hidden
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 3: Conversations is sold in bookstores across America. It's still it's
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 3: you know, was released a year ago, almost a year
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 3: ago this week, and people are still finding it and
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 3: elevating it. I always encourage people to listen as well
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 3: as read it because you want to see it, because
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 3: the pictures are beautiful, but the audio, many of the
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 3: people are telling their own stories. So when Samuel said
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 3: it felt like a podcast, it was meant to feel
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 3: like a podcast. I mean, I really wanted to create
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 3: a real experience. And if you've listened to this, you
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 3: know I have six words I want to send. You
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 3: can find us at the Racecard project dot com. You
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 3: can send us your six words story I am. I
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 3: write columns for MSNBC, and I show up, you know,
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 3: occasionally sharing my thoughts on air, so you can find
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 3: me lots of different ways. I what's the fake back
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 3: to all fields? You know?
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: Yes? Yes, well, thank you, thank you, thank you so
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: much for being here.
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 3: I have love talking to both of you. Thank you.
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 3: Hope we do it again.
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 2: Yes, please cheese.
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: And that brings us to the end of our interview
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: with Michelle Norris. It was so delightful, if so lovely.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: Hopefully we're going to get to do this mac and
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: cheese thing. I am so in.
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think I'll be good at it. I
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 2: might have to put my partner onto it, because he
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 2: does a really good mac and cheese, except for I
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: can't trust him because he likes to deviate from the
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 2: actual recipe and that drives me crazy. Like it's both
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: good and bad.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: I think that would be interesting to talk about though,
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: because we kind of touched on that when she was
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: talking about her son making the mac and cheese and
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: like the yeah, the gender equity when it comes to
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: social media and cooking, that would be interesting if you
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: made one and he made one.
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: Mine would stick to the recipe for like absolute I
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 2: don't like my first time, especially making it something for
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 2: the first time. I follow the recipes strictly, and then
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 2: after that I'll see what I want to do. But
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 2: he is all over the.
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: Place, and I am like, what do I have?
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 2: I mean, and that's talent though I've been talking about that,
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 2: the talent of being able to create from what you
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 2: have but actually make like intensive recipes with like oh
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 2: I have these beans and this kind of protein, I'm
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 2: gonna do this broth. Then maybe I could add this.
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: That's at bit because I also was thinking about the
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 2: fact that she had people coming on sharing family recipes.
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 2: I'm like, I don't have everything I have either comes
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: from another recipe or from my mom never teaching me
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 2: something like even I don't know she could, she doesn't
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 2: know how to do that. But most of her recipes,
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 2: as I mentioned, was like an easy to go box
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 2: dinner or something that's just simple enough. Because she was
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 2: feeding so many of us, but like, yeah, we don't
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: have that.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: Right And honestly, if we had had more time, I
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: would have loved to hear your conversation expand about because
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: she have such an interesting like southern food and career.
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 2: Right well, like I told you, Like in the interview,
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 2: we talk about Eric Nahm, who is from He says Atlanta.
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 2: I have a foot like he says, on the outskirts
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 2: of Atlanta. But his mom, you know, cooks all Korean cuisine.
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 2: To the fact that she flies to Korea, gets supplies
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 2: and comes back Wow. But then he grew up in
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 2: Atlanta and has his own style. That's both of those things.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 2: So I really love bad perspective and I love that
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 2: that's common enough because we also like Edward Lee. I
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 2: was talking about the cooking show that's the Korean Cooking
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: Show and he was on there, but he we went
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 2: to his restaurant and I realized way later who he was.
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 2: I was like, oh, because I was very critical at first.
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 2: I was like, who is this dude combining Korean in
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 2: Southern and DC. Who is this And it turned out
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: to be Edward Lee, who was from Kentucky. I was like, Okay,
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 2: that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, and I felt
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 2: a certain way. I was like, who is this Who's
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 2: representing my life in a restaurant?
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: Well, that's the thing, uh is we talked about it
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: in this episode, but all the histories and identity and
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: all that stuff. But also like I do that too,
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: where I'm like, who who are you making this food?
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: I'm just curious does.
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 2: It come from your heart? Does it come from money?
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 2: But yeah, so those are the conversations that Man, I
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 2: think there's so many subjects that we could come on to,
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 2: and we were all because essentially she's not necessarily like
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: a food journalist like that, she's there for the story
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: that it happens to be about food. Like it's very
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 2: interesting because I was talking if you get a chance listeners,
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 2: and I think we probably should do her book as
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: a book. Like I said, it's listening to it. It's
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 2: a different whole different scenario because she is doing interviews
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 2: because she didn't want to tell their story for them,
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 2: and so she had different actors or different people come
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: in and represent their own six words story that interjects
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 2: and then it's beautiful how she does it with her
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 2: own research and work behind it. So definitely worth to listen.
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 2: They do have in the audible or audio version the
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 2: pictures that come with it, so they're also gorgeous. But
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 2: I think we're going to have to pick that one
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 2: up soon.
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: I think. So it's amazing how quickly she and the
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: people she interviews will move you to tears. I did
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: not describe wow, but there are stories we all can
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: connect or really to in some way that I think
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: that's why they're so powerful. I would also say check
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: out if you want to learn more about her history
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: in food journalism or why she was interested in it,
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: check out the episode I did over on Saver with
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: Lauren interviewing Michelle Norris, because it was great. It was
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: a great interview, but also, yeah, she's done all of
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: these things. She's got the second season coming out of
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: Your Mama's Kitchen, and it's really beautiful and it's amazing,
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: So please check it out listeners, and if you would
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: like to contact us, if you have any thoughts about
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: Your Mama's Kitchen, you can contact Michelle. She gave you
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: the information, but you can also contact us if you
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: would like. You can email us at Hello at Stuffmennever
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: Told You dot Com or stuff medium Stuff at iHeartMedia
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: dot com. Both work. You can find us on Blue
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: Sky at mom Stuff podcast, or on Instagram and TikTok
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: at Stuff When ever told you. We're also on YouTube.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: We have a tea public store, and we have a
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: book you can get wherever you get your books. Thanks
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: as always to our super producer Christina, our executive Bruce
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: and Maya, and our contributor Joey. Thank you and thanks
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: to you for listening Stuff one ever told you to
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: prediction of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: you can check out your iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: where you listen to your favorite show