Latest / New Worlder / Episode #98: Shane Mitchell

Transcript

Episode #98: Shane Mitchell · New Worlder

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_03: This is the New Worlder Podcast, and I am one of your hosts, Nicholas Gill.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_03: Co-host Juliana Duque will be joining shortly.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_03: Today, we are speaking with Shane Mitchell.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_03: She is the author of the just-released book,
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_03: The Crop Cycle,
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_03: Stories with Deep Roots,
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_03: which is a history of food in the American South,
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_03: often reflecting on her family's three centuries of history on Edesto Island,
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_03: South Carolina.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_03: Well,
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_03: told through stories that center around 11 different crops,
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_03: the book isn't directly about food,
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_03: but how we center it as a way to understand cycles of life.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_03: All of the stories in the book,
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_03: except for one,
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_03: were originally published in The Bitter Southerner,
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_03: a brilliant magazine and website about the South.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_03: It has some of the most beautiful writing anywhere in it,
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_03: and despite having little to do with the South,
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_03: I read it regularly.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_03: Shane lives in upstate New York and is also the editor-at-large for Sevier,
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_03: which is now back in print and absolutely deserves your support.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_03: She also writes for the New York Times and is the author of Far Afield,
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_03: Rare Food Encounters from Around the World,
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_03: a book about her travels around the world while profiling the stewards of the
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_03: world's traditional foodways.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_03: It also features beautiful photos and recipes.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_03: She is a many times James Beard Award winner and one of my favorite writers anywhere.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_03: So I was really excited to have this extended conversation with her.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_03: If you don't know your work, I hope this sends you on a pathway to reading more of it.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_03: So please check out everything she has written.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_03: If you haven't subscribed to my newsletter,
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_03: just go to newworlder.com or search for New Worlder on Substack.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_03: It's free to subscribe, though paid subscribers get access to all content and archives.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_03: Again, that is newworlder.com.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_03: Also, look for my books such as the Latin American Cookbook at bookstores or online.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_03: There are links to them in the newsletter as well.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_03: Also, check out the New Worlder YouTube channel.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_03: We have full video episodes there as well as some clips and other video content.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_03: Just go to youtube.com slash newworlder.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_03: And please subscribe, like us, and share us.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_03: Every little bit helps this podcast get heard.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_03: Enjoy the show.
• 2:27
  Thank you.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_03: Hi, Shane.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_03: How are you?
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, Nick.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, Juliana.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, Shane.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: How are you?
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: I am doing fine.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_03: Happy Halloween.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, trick or treat.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_03: What do you do for Halloween?
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, this is the funniest thing.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: I have exactly one trick or treater.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: One.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_03: Did you?
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_03: Like he comes every year and you know him?
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: She.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, she.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: because we live in a really remote part of northern New York on the western edge of
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: the Adirondacks.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: We don't have that many neighbors.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: And this little girl literally has to cross through a spooky old cemetery to get to my house.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah, this afternoon I am going to make candy apples for her.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: And she gets whole-size candy bars.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, like, if she's the only person, she should just be spoiled, I guess.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: Well, her parents come, too.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: So they get candy apples as well.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, that's good.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I mean, my kids, where we are, it's just lots of the worst processed candy in little packages.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_03: I would love it if somebody made candy apples or something like that.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, well.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: You know, for us as kids, it was a super important holiday.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: My parents really did it up.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: My dad was an artist, and so he always made these weird, spooky statues.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: Sort of the precursor to those...
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: giant skeletons that you can buy now but he would he would create these ghosts in
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: our studio window with flashing christmas lights his eyes and we would stick the
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: stereo speaker out the window and play wolf howls okay yeah you know and and all
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: the kids in the neighborhood were scared to death but but we gave out the candy too
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: so there was always that
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: Nothing like rituals to get you going.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_03: You were born in Manhattan, right?
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, that's what I thought.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_03: But you've lived upstate since when?
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_03: Like for kind of forever or what?
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: No, not forever.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: I moved up here in the late 90s.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: So I've been here for a while, but that doesn't mean anything in upstate New York.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of like from the south.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: If you say, oh, I'm from Charleston, and people ask you, well, how long have you been here?
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: If you can't say 1670, you're not from Charleston.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, it's similar up here.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it sounds nice.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_03: I always see your photos and things on Instagram, and it sounds peaceful.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not quite that far up.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_03: I wish I was further up, but I still, especially my wife needs to be attached to the city still.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_03: So anyway, we're here to talk about your new book, which I have a copy of.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yay.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, wow.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for getting it.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_03: I just, I was out of town and it was waiting for me when I got back like two days ago.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_03: So I was so happy.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_03: I read most of the stories already, you know, from when they were published on Bitter Southerner.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah,
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_03: I'm excited to have it and like read it all together because I,
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_03: I figured it was going to be a book,
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_03: when just,
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_03: but that was never officially the plan.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: No, no.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this was extremely organic the way it grew.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: it started out with just one story,
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: which I did for Bitter Southerner,
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: well,
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: almost 10 years ago now.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought that was it.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: Just, you know, funny, quirky essay about grits.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: And then all of a sudden I said, well, hey, you know, there's this...
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: There's other stories out there that maybe we should be addressing.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: And it evolved, of course, to what you see now in your hands.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: Although I will say that the book version has been edited for...
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: um to update it and bring it into the present and it also now is is it it's edited
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: for consistency okay um because some of the stories originally were first well were
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: present tense and others were past tense and we felt that the narrative as a whole
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: needed to be updated a bit
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: for consistency, but just also to add context.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: There's a couple of stories that I really wanted to bring kind of more into the now.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_03: The first story was, I hate grits.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_03: Like, that was the first story.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_03: And from what I understand, it's the first food story that Bitter Southerner ever did, right?
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: So when I first...
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: got connected with them,
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: Kyle Tibbs-Jones,
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: who is their editorial director,
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: reached out and said,
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: would you consider writing for us?
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, who are you?
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I knew Kyle, but I didn't know Bitter Southerner.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: And it was very early in their genesis.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, there was conversation back and forth about, well, what would you like to write about?
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: What's your connection to the South?
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what does it mean to you?
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, well, you know, honestly, I noticed that you don't have any food coverage.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: And they basically came back and said, well, if you were to do that, what would you write about?
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, well, I'd like to write about grits.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: And they said, well, you know, grits is kind of pretty common.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: You know, everyone's written about it.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: You know, who really cares anymore?
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, no, no, no, you don't understand.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: I hate grits.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: I hate grits.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: And that was all they needed.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: They're like, oh, oh.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: Go.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: So that was how it started.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: And then I realized that there was a much more deep narrative that we could do if
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: we covered a whole series of these stories and crops.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: And it's evolved into this sort of consequential food history in the American South.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_03: No, it's wonderful.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's an important...
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_03: important piece of literature, thinking about food.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_03: But it's also personal.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_03: It's very personal.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_03: It's also about your own family and yourself.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that's what hooks me on it.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_03: This really doesn't even have to be thought of as a culinary book.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_03: It's just a great read.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I like to say my family, my plot device.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: I've abused the living and the dead.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: If they're going to come back for me, it's going to be today since it's Halloween.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: Or maybe tomorrow because it's Dia de los Muertos tomorrow.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: But, yeah, perhaps we should talk about that as far as giving people some context.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: My family literally did wind up in Charleston in 1670.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: And actually,
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: we're in South Carolina slightly earlier than that,
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: because on my dad's side,
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: my family were Huguenot refugees from France.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: They basically got literally there's a documented letter to one of my great, great, great grandfathers.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how many grades, about 10, I think, saying, if you don't leave now, we're going to kill you.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so he essentially picked up the family,
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: and so did some of the neighbors,
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: and they all emigrated to the New World and settled in South Carolina.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_03: They settled in Charleston or in Edessa?
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: No, they didn't.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: They settled in Berkeley County, which is north.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: up near Georgetown.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: And then,
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: as families married,
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: my French family married my Scottish family,
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: and that's where Mitchell comes in.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: And ultimately, one of my other grandfathers,
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: settled on Edisto and that's one of the sea islands off the coast of Charleston
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: that's where the family's been ever since I actually still have a cousin who has a
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: place out there and I go back all whenever I can you know mostly just to clean off
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: graves and say hi say hi to anybody who might be there
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_03: Did you what was your I guess growing up your connection to that?
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_03: Did you visit often or?
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: So so my mom was born in Florence, South Carolina, which is a little north of Charleston.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's sort of.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: If you were to drive inland from Myrtle Beach, you'd hit Florence in about an hour.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: So it's what's termed as upcountry.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: My dad was born in New York, because my grandparents, my father's parents, moved to New York.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: My grandfather was an artist, and nobody was buying paintings back in the Depression in the South.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: So they moved up north.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: But my dad spent most of his childhood going back and forth from New York to Edisto,
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: along with my uncles.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: And when I was growing up, the family would go down for summer breaks.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: My folks would load us up into the VW microbus,
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: drive all the way down to Folly Beach,
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: where one of my dad's cousins had a
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: summer beach house and you know we just basically were feral kids we spent the
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: whole day on the dock crabbing and you know getting in the pluff mud and you know
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: getting bit by nasty bugs and
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: It was a fun childhood.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I became very close with my other cousins who are mostly all still in Charleston.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so that certainly helped with getting context for what I started to write.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_03: There's one line.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_03: that I thought stood out.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_03: Like,
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's in the first chapter and it says to be of a place,
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_03: but not from it has been the crux of an unresolved identity crisis.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_03: Can you explain what you, what you mean by that?
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: Well,
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: I think in many ways this narrative is about belonging or finding a place in the world,
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: as much of my writing is when I write about culture and understanding culture.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, there is a specific expression someone used once who said, you're not from round here.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, yeah, but I belong here.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so for me,
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: I think of the South as a place that I connect to because of my family history
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: rather than just a place I might have been born.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: The other thing that's an aspect of the culture that I grew up in
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: is that storytelling is a very important part of island life,
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: especially when you're on an island that used to never even have a bridge to the mainland.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: So telling stories is a big deal.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: Or as some of my great-aunt and uncles used to say, telling lies.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: Excuse me.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: So...
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: I always wanted to be a storyteller.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: These are some of the richest stories I have.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: So that kind of has given me a way in and a means to feel like this is part of my existence.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: This is part of who I am.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: Does that make sense?
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think so.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_03: You say you always wanted to be a storyteller.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_03: Like since when?
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: Nine.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_03: Nine?
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: I knew I was going to be a writer when I was nine.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_03: Honestly, I'm the exact same way.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_03: But I think I was like in second grade.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_03: So I was probably like eight or nine.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_03: Basically when I was, you know, really got into books and things.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, like I knew then there was nothing else I could ever do.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_03: I mean,
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_03: I could try to do other things,
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_03: of course,
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_03: but there was nothing else my mind would kind of be happy doing.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that just has never left me.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's lovely.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's lovely to know.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, again, I mentioned my grandfather was an artist, but so was my dad.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: And we were allowed in his studio, all five of us, five kids.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: And we got to use anything we wanted.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: Dad had paints, watercolors, crayons, gouache.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: He had a printing press, a letter press in there.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: He had multiple easels going always with whatever projects he was working on.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: We could sculpt.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: We could play his musical instruments because he also played harmonic and banjo and mandolin.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: He was just one of those artists who...
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: Could create anything that he wanted, no matter what.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: He built furniture.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: So we were allowed to use anything.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: I still have rolls of paper from his studio in my studio, which is where I'm talking from today.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: But the one thing that I gravitated to was his manual Remington typewriter.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I sat on that and would whack away and come up with little stories while all my
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: other siblings were splattering paint on the walls.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: So that's how early I knew this is what I wanted.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: And the same with you.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it was always books were my escape.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's kind of from the first minute I could read
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: to now, to today.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's still my escape.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_03: Did you ever think,
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_03: like,
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_03: did you ever,
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_03: at least,
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_03: like,
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_03: when you were in high school or college,
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_03: like,
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_03: maybe I'll do something else or maybe I'll find some kind of career path that's,
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_03: that's,
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_03: uh,
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_03: livable or anything like that.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: You mean paid the bills?
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, sure.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: I was going to go into the theater.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, yeah, even better.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was going to be a playwright.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: I made it all the way to applying
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, almost made it all the way to applying to Yale Drama.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I was actually a double major in English and theater at school.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I dabbled in anthropology a bit and history a bit.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, we were allowed to take any courses we wanted.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: There was one stupid requirement where you had to fulfill some other...
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: You know category and I took sociology which was boring as hell It's all statistics
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: and I suck at math so that didn't help either but but I still have a great love of
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: the dramatic arts and
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: In some ways,
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: that was also feeding into my way of learning how to tell stories,
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: is to learn the dramatic arc of storytelling.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I was very fortunate to study with some extraordinary professors
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: One of whom was sort of the world's expert on Strindberg and Ibsen and Chekhov.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: So,
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: even though it was a drama major sort of kind of,
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: I was still learning,
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: the tools of the trade,
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: so to speak.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: I have a question about that and the way you,
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean,
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: you just mentioned all the influences you had from when you were a child,
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: art,
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: and I can see the anthropological eye,
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: the sociological eye,
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: even when you hate it,
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: and so many more,
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: right?
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: Biology, obviously, art and literature and poetry.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: So
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: seems to me that you're writing it's like the mindset of a renaissance thinker
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: because that was that came to mind when I this is a very multi multi-dimensional
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: approach and there it feels that there were so there are so many flows of
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: consciousness even when the main topic is food and you know food writing so I was
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: wondering how you how
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, first is impressive.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: You can encompass all these and your writing because, so how do you organize all these in your mind?
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'm sure there are so many source of inspirations and aesthetics and information,
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: obviously you gather,
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: but how you filter all that when you're writing and,
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: and how,
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: The feedback you get from people because it's so rich and at the same time so
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: specific about a concrete thing that grits,
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: right?
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like grits.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, you go all the way to symbolism, abstraction, poetry, existentialism.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's everything.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: It really is.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: So just... How do I do that?
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: Well...
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: I always say that these stories aren't about food.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's really that this is how
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I use food as the centerpiece to understand all these other things.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: And one, you know, I do have to say I'm a bit of a sponge.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: I just, I'm fascinated with minutia.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: I can go into, down rabbit holes that are so deep you never see the sky again.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: When I'm just looking at different aspects of life,
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: how to tell a story you know I'm fascinated with symbology I'm fascinated with I
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: mean I can look at my bookshelves and see you know I have a lot of books on history
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: of the region but I also have books on slang you know I mean I like language so all
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: of that kind of
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: coalesces in these narratives um and and you know each of them for instance you
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: know i had a deeper theme in the back of my mind about what these narratives were
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: telling not just oh i hate grits but you know i wanted to tell a narrative that uh
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: you know, centered corn as something that's both historic but mythical in the New World narrative.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: Don't forget that it's one of the most sacred crops
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: in our part of the world.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's also an indigenous crop.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so there's a lot of celebration to that.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: So I kind of had that kind of a narrative idea in the back of my head.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: If you look at the chapter on okra, I wanted that chapter to celebrate women.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to talk about okra as a seed that women brought here and look at ways that
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: women survived in this culture.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, for instance, I interviewed some Hmong farmers in Arkansas for that one.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: I interviewed a voodoo mambo in New Orleans during one of the most important
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: celebrations in the voodoo calendar in New Orleans.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so, so it's, it's, it's just, it's just, those are just ways I love telling stories.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: But thank you so much for saying that it's, it's complex.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'm happy to hear that.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: No, thanks to you.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_03: So how did you pick these like stories?
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_03: Were you thinking of specific crops when they started to come together around the,
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_03: around like a book length story?
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_03: narrative or was it, did it start somewhere else?
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: It didn't,
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: to be honest,
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: it didn't start out with me saying,
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_01: oh,
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_01: I want to do 10 crops plus,
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: plus a little lanyap at the end.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, uh, you know, I, it, it was a lot more, um,
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: It was more fluid than that.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: There were moments in time when all of a sudden I realized,
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: oops,
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: hey,
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: we need to cover onions,
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: for instance.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: And originally I never would have thought that Vidalia onions would really have that deep a narrative.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's an onion.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: But when something crossed my desk about the...
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: the federal case on human traffickers that broke a few years ago,
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: I thought,
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: oh my God,
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: this is something we really have to tackle.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: And because Vidalia onions are so specific to the region,
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: it really made it into sort of an important piece.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: But I wasn't writing out a chapter plan 10 years ago.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm sure.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: And even up to almost the last chapter, which I reported... Wow, I reported it earlier this January.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: I wasn't thinking about kumquats.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_01: I just thought, well, I really want some kind of citrus story.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: But Bitter Southerner had already done an orange story.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, they'd done two orange stories.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I was like, well, you know...
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: But then I realized that kumquats were so lovely and sweet and fun.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, sometimes you have to have a happy ending.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: So I chose to do that.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: But then again, you know, with kumquats, I was able to address a very serious issue in the U.S.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: of this invasive...
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: invasive disease that's killing all the citrus in america um there's a very
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: possible chance that we may know no longer have any citrus trees in the u.s because
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: of this disease so you know it there was a there was a big issue there too it
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_03: turned out when you find these like stories okay so you
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_03: now you're thinking about,
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_03: after a while you're thinking about certain crops,
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_03: but where does the story begin?
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_03: Like, that's always my issue.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_03: Like, okay, you're thinking about kumquats.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_03: What's the start point?
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, often it's with one of my aunts, one of my great aunts.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, you know, which is why, why I had that very sort of like, um,
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: vague and obscure dedication on page one.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: There are so many stories I have about those ladies that I was able to pin pretty
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_01: much every narrative to one or the other,
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: if not my parents or one of my siblings.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um,
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: but,
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: but,
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: uh,
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: I will give you,
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_01: uh,
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_01: I,
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: I think the most,
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: the strongest example of that Nick is actually the watermelon story.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because as, as, as a, a, as a white woman and as a author who writes often about the South, um,
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_01: it is very complex for someone like me to write about watermelon and, and not see it as performative.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: So I had to think very deeply about how I wanted to address watermelon and in a way
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: that didn't feel like I was,
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: um,
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_01: crossing a narrative line.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I, I,
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_01: dug really deep about that because I thought you know we've there's been plenty of
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: plenty of conversation about how complicated that fruit is to so many people in in
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: the U.S.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: and so many different cultures I mean even up to last week you know when that
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: comedian got up and made a racist crack at a political rally about black men
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: carving watermelons
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's still with us.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: So for me, I thought the best way for me to address that topic is to look at how
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: Watermelon has been perceived,
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: the visual evolution of it as from a bravura still life to its weaponization as a
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_01: racist trope in our material culture.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_01: And for me, I thought that was a great narrative arc and a way to address it.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_01: I got to see some of the most important paintings of watermelon in the Fogg Museum at Harvard.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_01: at the Met in New York,
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_01: and in folk art galleries all the way down in Alabama,
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_01: and got to spend time with one of the most extraordinary modern contemporary
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_01: artists in Atlanta who's doing extraordinary work,
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: kind of sort of recapturing or reclaiming the image of watermelon for people.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_01: in her work.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_01: So that's kind of how that sort of thing works out for me.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_01: That's how I kind of create those stories.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: I have a question about recipes and the way you relate to recipes,
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: given that you have to go with them forever.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: If over time you see them in a different way, they have a different role in your writing, or
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: if you see people relate in a different way with them,
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: because there is obviously an over,
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: flow of recipes on the internet and books and every,
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: everywhere,
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: it's overwhelming.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: So how do you see their role?
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean,
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: given that they can be informative,
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: provocative,
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: evocative,
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: we know all these,
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: but,
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: but,
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: but I wonder if that has changed for you or if you have thought about it.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's actually a really good question,
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_01: because for me,
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: the recipes that I reference in this book were like little historic signposts.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_01: They
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_01: the thing I started to learn as I was researching across the years that I wrote
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: these stories,
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: and I would look at the recipes as historical documents.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_01: There's very important early household diaries and plantation stories
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_01: plantation journals that include some of the most important first references of these recipes.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_01: And remember that the South is kind of a crucible for our culinary history.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_01: So to be able to actually reference those first cookbooks and look at the recipes
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_01: in them and then look at the recipes
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_01: in real time,
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_01: for instance,
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: when I'm eating out somewhere to see,
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_01: how it might've evolved is,
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_01: is for me,
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_01: yet again,
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_01: another way of telling a story.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_01: And,
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_01: and growing up,
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_01: for instance,
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_01: I grew up eating Southern food because my grandmother cooked it.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_01: My mother cooked it.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_01: My father cooked it.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_01: My brother went to the Culinary Institute, became a chef.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_01: He cooks it.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_01: I cook it.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so these recipes are sort of living, breathing history.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: I literally have destroyed my kitchen pantry trying to recreate a blackberry,
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_01: fermented blackberries drink
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_01: that blew up and splattered all over the walls.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_01: So for me, that's what recipes are.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_01: As you notice, there's no recipes in the book because you can access these recipes anywhere.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_01: One of the greatest things that I found was to be able to look online and digitally
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_01: access some of these earliest cookbooks.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_01: Now, bearing all that in mind, these fundamental cookbooks were often written by white women.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: as part of their household diaries,
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_01: and many of the actual recipes are unattributed to the people who cooked those dishes.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: If at all,
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_01: especially back in the late 17th century,
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_01: early 18th century,
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_01: we were lucky if we knew their first names.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_01: If they were referenced in some of the
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_01: household records.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_01: But I had a really interesting conversation with a young caterer in Charleston back
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_01: in March of this year when I was writing the last chapter,
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_01: which is,
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_01: as I said,
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_01: Nick,
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_01: the lanyard on Benny.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_01: And we were talking about one of the most
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_01: Important books in Charleston,
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_01: which is important cookbooks in Charleston,
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_01: which is the Junior League cookbook,
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_01: which came out in 1950,
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: I think.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_01: I believe so.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, so the important thing is what she wrote.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: brought up is she said,
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_01: yeah,
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_01: in,
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_01: in,
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_01: our neighborhood,
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_01: we,
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_01: she said that my grandmother said,
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_01: oh,
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_01: that's so-and-so's recipe.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_01: That's not Mrs.,
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_01: South Abroad's recipe.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_01: We know where that recipe came from.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, well, you know, I have to admit, one of my great aunts had a recipe in that cookbook.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_01: And we kind of had a laugh over it.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_01: But that's kind of how complicated recipes are for me.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_01: If that helps answer your question.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, of course.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: Best.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_03: This book, like when I think of you writing this book, it took almost ten years, right?
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_03: And each story is.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_03: I'm sure it's not something you just do over a weekend,
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_03: it's these are these are stories that take months,
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_03: maybe years of research,
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_03: every single one of them.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_03: Like, how do you manage to do that?
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_03: Like, how do you manage to just carve out that amount of time?
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_03: I'm sure Bitter Southerners is not exactly some cheap internet thing.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_03: I'm sure they pay fine,
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_03: but very few magazines support this kind of work,
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_03: let alone over a 10-year period,
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_03: let alone 11 stories of it.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_03: How do you manage to make it?
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_03: Because that's always my challenge, is just trying to
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_03: find the resources to dedicate enough in finding the publication that's flexible
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_03: enough to let you create stories like this.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I want to first say that Bitter Southerner has been incredibly supportive.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_01: That's not necessarily in a financial way,
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_01: but just fundamentally intellectually supportive of any kind of trajectory I wanted.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_01: We did have one little...
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_01: One little story that I thought should have been in here,
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_01: but I get why some people were not as excited about it as I was.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_03: Can we say what story it was?
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to do something on tobacco.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_01: Because you don't eat it, but you sure chew it.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um,
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_01: plus I wanted to go to Talladega to the super speedway and stand around with the
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_01: crusty old smokers and ask them why the hell they're still doing it.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but, but, uh, that, you know, that doesn't mean that that story won't ever happen.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um,
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_01: it's,
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_01: it's just,
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_01: it's just,
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_01: it's like,
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_01: do you write about cotton in a story crop cycle about food?
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_01: You don't cause you don't need cotton.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but tobacco is not good.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, uh, all that being said, um, Nick, you know, I'm also an editor at large at Savor.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I, I dance as fast as I can.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um,
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_01: the,
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_01: uh,
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_01: the thing about these stories is I,
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_01: I am fortunate to have an incredible network,
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_01: uh,
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_01: all throughout the South that I can tap,
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_01: um,
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_01: And also just have a lot of resources for research that allow me to do it over the
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_01: course of a period of time.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_01: The onion story took nine months.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_01: And it really took up my whole life, to be honest.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_01: But I needed to do that because it was such an important...
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_01: Such an important story to report.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_01: I still get people going, what do you mean there's slaves still?
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, you know, read the newspaper for crying out loud.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_01: I still am shocked that people don't know that other human beings are trafficked still.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_01: Even when it's ahead of the news cycle.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so that was one that I really dedicated myself to.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_01: And there are years where the bills might pile up a little higher.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_01: So that helps.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no, it's fine.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_03: It's basically my life as well, just trying to do whatever you can just to kind of make it work.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't know,
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_03: like,
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_03: I feel like I've always,
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_03: I've had to write,
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_03: 200 bad stories just to be able to write every one good one,
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_03: just to carve out that space,
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_03: I guess.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_03: It's always a challenge.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, absolutely.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_01: I have my 10 best hamburger stories.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_01: I still write 10 best hamburger stories because that pays the bills.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_03: I say this all the time.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_03: I've written the same story about ceviche in Lima at least 200 times.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but it's necessary.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_03: It's fine.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_03: It doesn't really change that much.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe a restaurant here and there or a dish, but
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_03: It's the same story that, you know, sometimes pays my bills.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I like to say that any writer who is published is in the 2%.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_01: The 1% is populated by Stephen King and John Grisham.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody else,
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_01: if we're lucky to be able to hold a document that has our name on it,
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_01: that's still pretty damn good.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm grateful to be able to say that I've made a career out of it and paid my bills that way.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's harder and harder to do so.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_01: When I talk to younger writers, I'm like, what's your backup plan?
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_01: um,
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_01: the other thing that I tell younger writers is you need to speak more than one
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_01: language and one of those should be contract.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_01: And if you don't speak contract, you are not making as much money as you should.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I agree with that.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, I was thinking, um,
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_00: because you are an author,
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_00: a writer,
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_00: but you have also worked as an editor,
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_00: apart from being your own editor,
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_00: of course,
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_00: as an editor of other people.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_00: How do you combine those two tasks?
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_00: Because obviously they do require different skills,
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: but I'm wondering if they distract you from each other or they complement each other.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_00: If you find something productive about that, thinking about that and how you apply those skills.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there are days when I have just my editor hat on or days when I just have my writer hat on.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_01: The day when I have both hats on are the most complicated and foggy because it's two sets of skills.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll spend a whole day writing a sentence because...
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_01: It takes the whole day to argue about the grammar and the context and word.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_01: Is there a better word?
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it can drive you nuts.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_01: I have to say I'm grateful recently to John McPhee, who wrote a really incredible book.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_01: guide about writing and editing called Draft Four.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things that he does,
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_01: and I've just started to do it,
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_01: is use an actual paper Roger's Thesaurus instead of looking online.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_01: It just helped me...
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_01: you know, search for other words, um, that, that I might not just for nuance.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and for both editing and writing, it's one of the best tools.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_01: It really is.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um,
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_01: so,
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_01: so yeah,
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_01: it,
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_01: it can be hard,
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_01: but also from another standpoint,
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_01: if you have learned how to be an editor,
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_01: it definitely hones you as a writer.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_01: Definitely.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_01: Not necessarily the other way around.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_03: Do you think a career freelance writing is still possible?
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_03: Like for someone starting out,
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_03: I mean,
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_03: someone that's out of college,
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_03: starting out,
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_03: is it still possible in the traditional sense?
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_01: I think so.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_01: I think that the arc is longer.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_01: It takes longer.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_01: I've had students who have reached out to me to say, hey, how did you do it?
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_01: And it's actually still the same process.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_01: In many ways, you start at the bottom and you go to the top if you're lucky.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_01: Very,
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_01: very few people have an extraordinary book floating around in their head that just
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_01: gets picked up out of nowhere,
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_01: which of course that does happen.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_01: People also win the lottery.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_01: But I have told a number of younger writers who do wrestle with this,
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_01: To compare it to a sport, I like to say that writing is a marathon, not a sprint.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_01: And it should be considered something you do over the course of your life.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_01: And you do it for yourself.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_01: You don't do it for anybody else.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_01: There's the writing that pays the bills, but there's the writing that
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_01: you know, keeps your heart beating.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_01: And,
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_01: that's the kind of writing you get to do until you,
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_01: until you go to the library in the sky.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um,
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_01: my feeling is that,
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_01: um,
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_01: the other thing that's interesting that I've found is that the better you get at it,
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_01: the harder it is.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_01: It becomes harder, not easier.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um,
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_01: And finally, I have had so many people say, oh, are you still writing?
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_01: I thought you retired.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, writers don't retire.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_01: My dad was fortunate to drop dead almost with a paintbrush in his hand.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_01: And hopefully I'll be whacking away on the laptop or scribbling notes and doodles.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I can't imagine ever retiring and just like stop writing.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_03: That would be,
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_03: it would be odd,
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_03: unless I like physically could not do it,
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_03: is one thing.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_03: But as long as I'm,
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_03: physically able,
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_03: I couldn't imagine just not,
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_03: yeah,
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_03: writing down notes or just thinking of a story,
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_03: or putting something together in my head.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_01: Well, there are writers who do retire.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_01: Who's the famous essayist who just finally said, I'm done?
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'm blanking.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I mean, there are writers who retire, but it doesn't sync with me, to be honest.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_03: My friend,
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_03: Spanish writer,
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_03: Ignacio Medina,
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_03: who lives in Peru,
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_03: he recently retired,
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_03: but I don't know what that means.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_03: I haven't talked to him directly about it yet, but I'm sure he's still going to write something.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_03: I can't imagine he just...
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_03: I get maybe he's not going to be a columnist or do restaurant criticism anymore for
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_03: a formal publication,
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_03: but I can't imagine he would just...
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_03: Stop telling stories.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_03: It's too much of who he is.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, it's true.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_01: I think if you put it in the context of telling stories, you can tell stories forever.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, there was something recently about...
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_01: manuscripts, unfinished manuscripts.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_01: And someone basically said that,
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_01: there's going to be an unfinished manuscript on your desk when you go.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I think if that happens, I will feel lucky.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_01: I do sometimes feel the clock ticks.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_01: When I interviewed,
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_01: when I was just starting out writing about food for Savor when Savor started back
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_01: in the 90s,
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_01: the mists of the 90s,
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_01: one of my first assignments for Savor was to interview Karin Hess,
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I essentially walked into Kitchen Arts and Letters to pick up a copy of her book,
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_01: which I still have floating around here somewhere about the Carolina Rice Kitchen.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I talked with Matt Sartwell, and I said, how do I reach Karen Hess?
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, I happen to have her phone number.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, oh, wow, please, please share.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so I called her out of the blue and I explained what I was doing.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, would you mind if I interviewed you?
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_01: And she said, yes.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_01: She was very gracious.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_01: She was working on a book at the time about Jefferson and Monticello.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, it was supposed to be really significant.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_01: And then a couple of years later, I called her back and she wasn't really doing very well at that point.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Ms.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_01: Hess, how's your book going along?
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_01: How's your book doing?
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_01: Are you near finished?
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_01: And she said, you know, I don't think I'm ever going to finish it.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_01: I just don't have the energy.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_01: And that has just been in the back of my head for decades.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_01: So you might be running a marathon, but run the important part of the marathon while you still have legs.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, I know.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_03: I think...
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_03: For me, at least, the pandemic was a bit of a wake-up call.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_03: Just sitting there and not actively telling the stories I wanted to go research and
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_03: things like that was definitely a wake-up call.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_03: As soon as I was able, it was okay.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_03: I got to start putting the things together to make this work because something else is going to happen.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_01: Well,
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_01: and you,
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_01: you're headed to a place that's not easy to get to and not easy to navigate for
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_01: your next project.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_01: And that's, that's, that's, that's hard.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's not like you can sit there and make up fairy tales during the pandemic and
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_01: expect to expect to,
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_01: always be able to do that.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_01: The kind of writing and reporting that you do requires you to be in that place.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_01: The same for me.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_01: I am now a huge...
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_01: I have Waffle House menus memorized because I spend so much time in those areas.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_03: Did you learn anything about making this book?
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_03: Let me rephrase that.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_03: Did you learn anything after the first book,
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_03: Far Field,
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_03: that you didn't want to repeat with the second book?
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_01: I've been really fortunate in that people like the way I write enough to let me
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_01: write about what I want to write.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't have that hurdle that a lot of people have through the pitch process and
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_01: the editorial process and all of that.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_01: I think what I did learn,
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_01: though,
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_01: between the two different books,
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_01: and I'm so grateful to Penguin Random House for believing in that project.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_01: But that project was another eight or nine years of work.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_01: And that project wouldn't have gotten done if I hadn't done a lot of the work in advance.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_01: On the other hand, with this project, with this project, I realized I was better working with
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_01: An independent press, small press, Bitter Southerner is small.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_01: Penguin Random House is the biggest in the world.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_01: But I got as much care and possibly even more care with this manuscript because of that.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_01: I got to work with editors of international caliber on all of the stories I did for this book.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's something that I felt was slightly different.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_01: It was very intimate.
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_01: It was very fast.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_03: I guess they were already edited once a little bit for this book.
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_03: Actually, the very earliest essays had no editing.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was very, very, very just overview kind of editing.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_01: No line editing.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_01: Bitter Southerner evolved.
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they've come into their place.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I celebrate that.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_01: We, you know...
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_01: We got fact-checkers on some of the last stories.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_01: But I will say,
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_01: Juliana,
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_01: you were asking about the process,
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_01: the difference between an editor and a writer.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_01: I was also a fact-checker.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_01: I spent a big chunk of time in between editing and writing being a fact-checker, and that paid the bills.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_01: That really did pay the bills.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um,
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_01: so,
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_01: so all that being said,
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_01: I had to fact check myself a lot on the earlier pieces,
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_01: but,
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_01: but coming into the stories as,
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_01: as they were being prepared for the book,
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_01: um,
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_01: it,
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_01: it really required a lot of speed.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_03: What's, what's next?
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_03: What's next?
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_03: You've spent 10 years on the South.
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_03: Is it still more south?
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_03: What is it, Iceland?
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_03: I know you go there.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_03: You've been there a lot.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_03: We have lots of common friends.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_01: I know, I know.
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_01: God bless all the Vikings.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_01: I love them.
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I don't know that I can say what's next, but I will say that...
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm evolving into another space.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'm still looking at narrative nonfiction as my home.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_01: But instead of essay-sized pieces, I'm working on something that's very big.
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_01: That will probably take a few more years and a few more Waffle Houses.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, interesting.
• 59:37
  SPEAKER_03: That could be a lot of things.
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, God.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, just a curiosity.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_00: There is something you have discovered food-wise,
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_00: like a product or a dish that you are thrilled about,
• 59:57
  SPEAKER_00: like a variety of a product or something that it's like,
• 1:00:00
  SPEAKER_00: wow,
• 1:00:01
  SPEAKER_00: this is really new for me or not.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_01: Boy, narrow it down a little, please.
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like in the last month.
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_01: Ah, in the last month, huh?
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_01: I am a huge fan of hot sauce, and my husband is not.
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_01: His heritage is German, Scottish, and Dutch, and none of those cultures can manage any heat.
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, I come from romance cultures and, you know, just pour it all over my head.
• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I've been exploring a lot of different hot sauces just to see which he can handle and which I love.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_01: And we've settled on a couple.
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_01: Valentina is one of my favorites.
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's just so easy to pick up in the store and
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_01: it ain't Tabasco.
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:01:12
  SPEAKER_00: But you, you should read Nick's story about, um, touching hell up.
• 1:01:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I was going to ask.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_03: Do you ever, uh, chop chili peppers and forget to wear gloves?
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but it doesn't really, it doesn't really bother me until I take my contact lenses out.
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then, yeah.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_03: I, I had an issue.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_03: Like I was chopping a lot of chilies and I, I didn't wear gloves and, uh,
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_03: Like, my hands burned for, like, two days.
• 1:01:41
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, my God.
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, wow.
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_03: Sorry.
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_03: No, I mean, I managed, but it was, yeah, it was uncomfortable for a couple of days.
• 1:01:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the good thing is that a story came out of that.
• 1:01:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, of course.
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and it depends on what chilies you were chopping.
• 1:01:56
  SPEAKER_01: Just jalapenos?
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_03: They were habaneros.
• 1:02:01
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay.
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, they were intense chilies, but...
• 1:02:06
  SPEAKER_03: But it was my undone fault.
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_01: Well,
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_01: I will say,
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_01: Juliana,
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_01: you do ask an interesting question because before I started doing this book,
• 1:02:21
  SPEAKER_01: I really wasn't that knowledgeable about chilies.
• 1:02:27
  SPEAKER_01: It was only when I spent a lot more time in small corner stores and
• 1:02:35
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, um,
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_01: refugee camps and also sort of seasonal labor camps that I started really
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_01: understanding the complexity of Chili's because a lot of people were actually
• 1:02:55
  SPEAKER_01: bringing their own Chili's along because they couldn't get them here.
• 1:03:00
  SPEAKER_01: And there was one particular woman who I met who picked tomatoes.
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_01: who taught me a lot about different chilies.
• 1:03:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 1:03:11
  SPEAKER_01: she gave me a recipe for her mole and suddenly the world opened and I walked into
• 1:03:17
  SPEAKER_01: these little corner stores and go,
• 1:03:19
  SPEAKER_01: Oh,
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_01: that one and that one and that one.
• 1:03:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so, so I now have a huge collection of dried chilies.
• 1:03:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I grow, I grow my own cayennes as well now.
• 1:03:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's, that's kind of,
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_00: it seems that they can open a lot of doors,
• 1:03:39
  SPEAKER_00: not only flavor-wise and taste-wise,
• 1:03:42
  SPEAKER_00: but just,
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_00: oh,
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_00: that's a great example.
• 1:03:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know.
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_01: I now throw it into everything.
• 1:03:52
  SPEAKER_01: Desserts, cakes.
• 1:03:56
  SPEAKER_03: Cakes?
• 1:03:57
  SPEAKER_03: How do you throw chilies into cakes?
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_01: Oh,
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_01: I'll use like ancho,
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_01: dried anchos,
• 1:04:04
  SPEAKER_01: ground,
• 1:04:05
  SPEAKER_01: because it has a sense of,
• 1:04:07
  SPEAKER_01: there's a sensibility of chocolate to it.
• 1:04:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I'll add that, for instance, if I'm making, you know, like there's an apple cake I like to make.
• 1:04:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'll add just a little bit of the ancho.
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_01: I prefer that to cinnamon.
• 1:04:25
  SPEAKER_01: For some reason, I've developed a distaste of cinnamon lately.
• 1:04:31
  SPEAKER_01: Who knows why?
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_01: But, yeah, I prefer to throw the chilies in.
• 1:04:37
  SPEAKER_03: What do you think is going to happen with the election?
• 1:04:42
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, my God.
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'm awake at night, every night.
• 1:04:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm dim-scrolling every day.
• 1:04:48
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I look at this from a perspective of knowing that
• 1:05:00
  SPEAKER_01: We have, as a nation, been through great conflict and disagreement.
• 1:05:11
  SPEAKER_01: I grew up during the Vietnam War.
• 1:05:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the two publications that my parents brought into the house were Life and National Geographic.
• 1:05:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's what they subscribe to.
• 1:05:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so even as a little kid, I was looking at those horrific photographs in Life magazine of Vietnam.
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I had four uncles in Vietnam.
• 1:05:40
  SPEAKER_01: And my parents were pacifists.
• 1:05:43
  SPEAKER_01: And so the conversations were very complex, but they were always civil.
• 1:05:52
  SPEAKER_01: And what I see now is so not civil that it does concern me.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_01: I do have to say I don't know what will happen next week, but I know that we have a lot of
• 1:06:10
  SPEAKER_03: work to do to get back to being civil yeah that's that's totally my feeling and I
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_03: don't think it's just one side either sadly I think it's it's all of us yeah yeah
• 1:06:23
  SPEAKER_01: no I have I have family and friends who are definitely not going to vote the same
• 1:06:29
  SPEAKER_01: way I'm going to vote um but I try I try to still have dialogues with them um
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_01: There was a woman who was waiting a table this summer.
• 1:06:46
  SPEAKER_01: We were in a restaurant.
• 1:06:47
  SPEAKER_01: And one of my friends is a lawyer.
• 1:06:49
  SPEAKER_01: And she said, you know, can you explain why you're going to vote for the person you're going to vote for?
• 1:06:59
  SPEAKER_01: And the server said, you know, I really appreciate you talking to me like I'm not stupid.
• 1:07:06
  SPEAKER_01: Because people have been yelling at me.
• 1:07:09
  SPEAKER_01: about who I'm going to vote for.
• 1:07:11
  SPEAKER_01: And we had a really interesting conversation.
• 1:07:14
  SPEAKER_01: And that was the important thing,
• 1:07:17
  SPEAKER_01: was having the conversation rather than picking up a gun or,
• 1:07:23
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 1:07:24
  SPEAKER_01: burning down the house.
• 1:07:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's a great way of setting the boundaries of the conversation too, right?
• 1:07:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I'm willing to share, but don't call me stupid.
• 1:07:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:07:38
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah, no, you know, let's hope we all get some sleep next Tuesday.
• 1:07:45
  SPEAKER_03: I hope it's over that quick.
• 1:07:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:07:53
  SPEAKER_01: If the fates allow.
• 1:07:55
  SPEAKER_01: Get out and vote.
• 1:07:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, please.
• 1:08:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:08:01
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 1:08:02
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, Shane, it was an absolute pleasure to, uh, to speak with you.
• 1:08:07
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 1:08:07
  SPEAKER_00: It really was.
• 1:08:08
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
• 1:08:11
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you everyone for listening.
• 1:08:13
  SPEAKER_03: I hope you enjoyed that interview with Shane Mitchell.
• 1:08:17
  SPEAKER_03: It's right now it's Halloween and the election's happening soon.
• 1:08:23
  SPEAKER_03: It's a chaotic time in the world.
• 1:08:25
  SPEAKER_03: I hope you all just go out and vote and,
• 1:08:28
  SPEAKER_03: Anyone that's in the U.S., please, or wherever you are, just please go vote and vote your conscience.
• 1:08:35
  SPEAKER_03: But whatever happens, please, we have to find a way to all move forward together.
• 1:08:42
  SPEAKER_03: And we'll see what happens.
• 1:08:46
  SPEAKER_03: My fingers are crossed, though.
• 1:08:48
  SPEAKER_03: And... Yeah, that's it.
• 1:08:51
  SPEAKER_03: And...
• 1:08:52
  SPEAKER_03: Shane's great.
• 1:08:53
  SPEAKER_03: Please buy her book, The Crop Cycle, and find it at The Bitter Southerner.
• 1:09:03
  SPEAKER_03: And if you haven't subscribed to the newsletter,
• 1:09:05
  SPEAKER_03: please go to newworlder.com or search for New Worlder on Substack.
• 1:09:09
  SPEAKER_03: We're at episode 98.
• 1:09:11
  SPEAKER_03: We're getting up there.
• 1:09:13
  SPEAKER_03: Episode 100 is going to be a special one, so look out for that.
• 1:09:18
  SPEAKER_03: And as always,
• 1:09:19
  SPEAKER_03: thank you to my friend Pat Buzzard for providing the song at the beginning of the
• 1:09:24
  SPEAKER_03: show and what I'm about to play now.
• 1:09:26
  SPEAKER_03: See ya.