0:05

Hey

0:05

there. It's Steven Dubner, and this is bonus

0:08

episode with Samin Nosrat. She

0:10

is the author of Salt Fat

0:12

Asset Heat, a bestselling book about

0:14

food, and cooking and

0:17

about Samin herself. The book was

0:19

also turned into a four part Netflix series

0:21

you may have seen. Simeon was featured

0:23

in our most recent episode, what's

0:25

wrong with being a one hit wonder? As

0:28

you probably know, for most of our episodes,

0:30

I speak with a variety of guests, parts

0:33

of the conversations make it into the finished episode,

0:35

but the rest gets edited out. Once

0:38

in a while, there's a full interview that's

0:40

so interesting and surprising and we think,

0:43

It's too bad no one else will ever hear

0:45

the whole thing. And that's how we felt

0:47

about this conversation. So we decided

0:49

to go ahead and publish it as

0:51

a bonus episode. It is a

0:53

wide ranging and candid conversation

0:56

about the upsides and downsides

0:59

of living a creative life. It's

1:01

about growing up in an immigrant family

1:03

and feeling out of place and feeling

1:06

additionally displaced after a family

1:08

tragedy. If you have already

1:10

listened to what's wrong with being a

1:12

one hit wonder, there will be a few familiar

1:15

parts and some mean also makes

1:17

a couple references to one of the research

1:19

papers we discussed in that episode. That

1:21

study showed that first time cookbook

1:24

authors who win an award tend

1:26

to not publish another book within

1:28

five years, theoretically because they're afraid

1:31

to diminish their newfound creative

1:33

reputation. As you'll

1:35

hear, There are parts of that

1:37

paper she agrees with and

1:39

others not so much. Anyway,

1:42

I think you'll see why we thought this was

1:44

conversation worth hearing in full.

1:47

As always, thanks for listening.

1:54

Hi.

1:55

My name is Simeon Nosrat. I'm a writer

1:57

and a cook and a

1:59

person. That

2:02

answered one of my questions. The person part

2:04

I knew. I was curious which order

2:06

you think of yourself in

2:07

cook. So is that the order? Is

2:09

that just the way you happen to describe it today?

2:11

No. I definitely think of myself as writer

2:14

first.

2:14

How do you spend your days at

2:17

the moment? Well, right now, I spend most

2:19

of my days crying. I

2:23

might need you to explain exactly what you're crying

2:26

about. Are there a lot of reasons? There are

2:28

multiple reasons. Part of it is my.

2:30

Just general malaise, creative

2:33

Yeah. Part of it is just the state

2:35

of the world and part of it is I recently

2:37

went through a big family trauma,

2:39

my father passed away. And those things

2:41

I think in a lot of ways are related. But,

2:44

you know, in theory, the way I

2:46

should be spending my time. Is

2:51

working on a book. And since that

2:53

book is a cookbook, it's sort of

2:55

part testing recipes and

2:58

thinking about food and how I cook

3:00

it and how people at home might cook

3:02

it. And then writing

3:04

about

3:04

that. So on your website, it

3:06

says, we all know. I am a painfully

3:08

slow writer. So please do

3:10

not write to ask me when the book

3:12

is coming. So so mean, on behalf

3:15

of all your readers and fans of which I

3:17

am one, I loved your first

3:18

book. So on behalf of everyone, I'll

3:20

be the obnoxious one. Uh-huh. When is

3:22

the book? Coming? I actually I don't

3:24

really know. It

3:27

was I think originally supposed to come out

3:29

this year and then COVID

3:31

happened. Are we really

3:33

gonna go through the process of what's

3:34

happened? Absolutely. So

3:36

I wrote a book called Salt Fat Asset Heat.

3:39

That took me a very long time to write. Mhmm.

3:41

And I had the idea for that book probably

3:44

sometime around nineteen ninety nine or two thousand,

3:46

and that book came out in twenty seventeen.

3:48

So

3:48

just another, like, seventeen or eighteen

3:50

year overnight success story. Yeah.

3:52

Totally. And it's not to say I spent all of those

3:54

years writing it. The idea,

3:57

the germination of the idea to the publishing

3:59

of the book. That's how long it took. The active

4:01

writing was about three and a half

4:03

years, maybe. And within that

4:05

sixteen, seventeen, eighteen years,

4:07

were

4:07

there other projects that almost

4:09

turned into books? Yeah. I've always

4:11

wanted to be a writer basically since

4:14

I was in eleventh grade. First,

4:16

I went to college and I was an English major.

4:18

I thought I was gonna go to grad school

4:21

for so many different forms of

4:23

becoming a writer and I'm doing air quotes

4:25

right now. First, I thought it would be

4:27

getting an MFA and poetry and then I realized

4:29

then I would just graduate that

4:31

with ninety thousand dollars of debt and

4:34

no way to make that back. And so then

4:36

I ended up detouring my

4:38

way into a restaurant kitchen when

4:40

you say a restaurant

4:41

kitchen, we should

4:41

say it's kind of a good restaurant. Yes.

4:44

Like an incredibly important restaurant

4:46

in American culinary history. And

4:48

it rhymes with Shamesh Manis?

4:50

Yeah. I called Shapanis. And

4:52

I learned how to cook, and

4:54

I saw this pattern in the

4:56

kitchen that I saw wasn't really

4:58

represented in the stack of cookbooks

5:00

that I'd been told to read as a young cook.

5:03

Everything that I was

5:05

learning on a daily basis in the kitchen could

5:07

be distilled into understanding how salt,

5:10

fat, acid, and heat worked. And

5:13

while I'd been given this list

5:15

of thirty important books in

5:17

the history of Shape and Ease to

5:19

familiarize myself with and cook from in

5:21

my free time, these

5:23

concepts were not ever explicitly

5:25

explained in those books. Whereas

5:27

every single day in the

5:28

kitchen, these were the things that we were

5:31

orienting ourselves around. Why do you think

5:33

that was? I guess one could argue

5:35

that, well, these are foundational components

5:37

of how one thinks about

5:39

food and the preparation of food and

5:41

therefore they're baked into everyone

5:44

who is cooking already or, I

5:46

mean, you could go the totally opposite way and

5:48

just say that people never really sat

5:50

down and thought about it that foundationally. Why

5:52

do you think that pattern hadn't been

5:55

recognized the way you

5:55

did? I think it's a little bit of both

5:58

just because of the history of cooking in America

6:01

and how cooking knowledge has been passed down in

6:03

this country. I think a lot of

6:05

knowledge has been forgotten.

6:08

What used to be sort of passed down from

6:10

generation to generation and

6:12

what we call baked in, quote unquote, doesn't

6:14

happen anymore. So then that thing

6:16

that you would pick up a book by MfK

6:18

Fisher or a book in the eighteen hundreds

6:21

and were just basic assumptions that you

6:23

knew. Those things need to be

6:25

spelled out for people now because your grandma's not

6:27

doing that for you. Because probably your

6:29

grandma was really excited to cook with

6:31

margarine. Because that was this new thing

6:33

that was very exciting at that time.

6:35

So you

6:35

recognize this pattern, you're cooking,

6:38

and you were still thinking at that point maybe

6:40

about graduate school for writing?

6:41

Totally. I actually got accepted to

6:44

an MFA program, and I put it on hold.

6:46

But I deferred for a year because I also

6:48

got an invitation from this chef

6:50

in Italy Benedetta Vitale to come

6:53

be her apprentice. And so I was like, okay,

6:55

I'm gonna go to Italy instead, but

6:57

I never let go of right. And I always

6:59

tried to incorporate some sort of intellectual

7:02

or literary pursuit into my cooking.

7:05

And I always had doubts about becoming

7:07

a one hundred percent quicker

7:08

chef. I never was like, oh, I'm gonna have a

7:11

restaurant. That was never my ambition. During

7:13

this long gestation period, which sounds like it

7:15

was an organic station period. Were

7:17

there other books that you

7:20

really went hard at? And what were they? Were they fiction?

7:22

Was it other non fiction? Well, it wasn't so

7:24

much that I went hard. It was just that I

7:26

so desperate to write quote unquote, write

7:28

a book that whenever

7:30

an opportunity seemed within grasp

7:32

that I just, like, desperately reached

7:35

for it. And Nosrat two different points,

7:38

there were chances for me

7:40

to be like a contributor or co author

7:42

to QuickBooks. One was in Italy

7:44

where Benadette who had written one

7:46

beautiful cookbook, and that was actually how I'd

7:48

met her was she had come to Japanese on a

7:50

cookbook tour. And

7:52

so she wanted to write a second book.

7:54

And so she said, oh, well, you can help me with that. And

7:56

I was like, are you kidding me? That's amazing.

7:59

But there really wasn't structure. She was

8:01

busy running a restaurant and also, like,

8:03

trying to wrangle any chef to

8:05

do anything is impossible. And then add

8:07

to that like an Italian person. Mhmm. And

8:09

I was, you know, twenty something, twenty

8:11

two. You can't make anyone do anything.

8:14

So I tried and then eventually

8:16

I didn't have enough money to say in Italy. And so

8:18

it's kind of a heartbreaking thing, but I had to just

8:20

come home. I couldn't do that. And

8:22

what did that feel like in the immediate

8:24

ish aftermath?

8:25

The the year or two aftermath?

8:27

Oh, it was a total heartbreak. So that probably

8:29

was, like, two thousand four

8:31

ish. And then I think around two

8:33

thousand nine, a similar thing happened.

8:35

A friend of mine was like a

8:37

pickle expert. I don't know if you remember this, but

8:39

everyone was canning and pickling everything. Absolutely.

8:42

And so she was approached by an agent

8:45

to write a pickling book. And whereas she

8:47

knew more about the pickling, she knew that I

8:49

was more of the writer. So again, like,

8:51

we're both twenty six years old. We know

8:53

nothing about the publishing world. I'm like,

8:55

yes. This is my opportunity. It's like,

8:57

pickles and jams. This is gonna be great.

8:59

Is it something I deeply care about? No. But

9:01

it's a chance to write a book.

9:04

And so, again, we try to write a

9:06

proposal. And then just remember sitting down

9:08

with this agent. I just was like,

9:10

I get to have a meeting with an agent.

9:12

To me, it was like, I was going

9:14

to Hollywood and the red carpet was being

9:16

rolled out. And so this woman we met with

9:18

her, and she was probably in

9:20

her mid fifties, mid sixties, to

9:22

me, like, an adult you respect.

9:24

Right? And she talked about herself

9:26

in the third person. Oh, I

9:27

won't use her name, but let's say her name was like

9:30

McGillicuddy.

9:30

McGillicuddy. So she'd be like, McGillicuddy's

9:33

rules. She has this first speech where

9:35

she was like, McGillicuddy's rule

9:37

number one. McGillicuddy thought he

9:40

was right. And I was like, okay. McGillicuddy is

9:42

always right. Okay. Like, SHE JUST HAD THIS

9:44

WHOLE SPEEL AND I WAS

9:46

TERRIFIED OF

9:46

HER. Reporter: BUT YOU

9:47

BELIEVED IT, I MEAN, YOU WERE WILLING TO BELIEVE IT.

9:49

Reporter: YEAH, DOTALLY AND THEN EVENTUALLY KIND OF

9:51

JUST FELL APART AGAIN. Maybe I

9:53

wrote a sample, but then I just at some point

9:55

was like, am I gonna do this on top of my

9:57

job? It was just

9:58

this thing where I was like, Is

10:01

McGillicuddy, like, I don't know. It didn't feel

10:03

that good.

10:03

A little unwholesome somehow. Yeah.

10:05

Just it didn't feel

10:08

Great. And I have always been a people

10:10

pleaser. It

10:12

didn't feel so good. In

10:15

retrospect, which is always a little bit easier,

10:17

do you look back at certainly the

10:19

pickling experience and

10:21

maybe even the Benedetics experience and

10:23

say, wow, I'm really glad that that

10:25

didn't happen in retrospect. Oh,

10:27

absolutely. Now knowing what I

10:29

know, I'm just like, oh, making a book

10:31

is the truly the worst thing in the world.

10:33

It's the hardest thing in the world. I

10:35

think there are probably other people

10:37

whose relationship to

10:39

writing is different than

10:40

mine. I know there are because I have a lot of

10:43

journalist friends who don't

10:44

Agnys over every single moment. It's

10:46

not agony for them in the same way that it is

10:48

for me. It's a job. And god bless

10:50

them because if there weren't people like that, we wouldn't

10:52

have newspapers to read. I think most

10:55

people have a complicated relationship

10:57

with writing, but most people don't write a

10:59

whole lot. And yet most people still dread it.

11:01

When you talk about the agony or the

11:03

difficulty or whatever, the

11:05

stress of writing Can

11:07

you illustrate that for people

11:09

listening? Sure. I had an entire

11:12

career as a cook before I came to

11:14

writing and a day of work as a cook

11:16

in a restaurant is

11:18

usually much longer than eight

11:20

hours. It's very

11:22

physical. You

11:24

almost always create something

11:26

from beginning to end. It

11:28

has consumed the audience

11:31

consumes it before you're very

11:33

eyes or, like, if not,

11:35

before you're very eyes, then in the next

11:37

room. And then you, like, clean up and

11:39

you go home and you might even do some stuff for

11:41

the next day. You are physically

11:44

exhausted. You are smelly. You

11:46

are often dirty. Your hands are

11:48

dirty. There is a feeling in your body

11:50

of having worked. And

11:52

the ethic is such

11:54

and you are trained by

11:56

people to believe and

11:58

feel that if you have not worked this hard to

12:00

feel this

12:00

way, you're doing something wrong.

12:02

Right. Right. So a day of writing

12:05

looks very very very

12:08

different. A

12:11

really great day of writing may

12:13

quote unquote accomplish I

12:16

don't even know. One page, two

12:18

pages, it may mean I had an

12:20

idea. One idea that one

12:22

day will turn into some paragraphs.

12:25

It may mean that I did some

12:27

research that

12:29

added up to something. It may

12:31

mean that I talk talk people

12:33

or hit a wall and took a

12:35

walk and did some voice notes.

12:38

It may meant that I got so frustrated that I had

12:40

to go swimming so that nobody could

12:42

text me or anything, and my head's

12:44

underwater. And so it took

12:46

me many years and honestly is still taking

12:48

me a lot of time to not be a person who

12:50

beats myself up because that day of

12:52

writing and what,

12:54

quote unquote, a hard day of

12:56

work is so different

12:58

than the old hard day of

12:59

work. To what would you attribute that

13:01

massive difference? Because one could say, well,

13:03

writing is a creative pursuit, but

13:05

chef ing, cooking, you know, there are a lot of

13:07

creative elements of that. What fundamentally

13:10

different about the active writing that makes

13:12

it such a

13:14

multidimensional horror

13:16

show potentially? Well, it's

13:18

mostly in my head, whereas the other one's mostly

13:20

in my body. But the

13:22

fundamental thing that's the same about

13:24

them is that there's

13:26

practice, my

13:29

favorite quote, about

13:31

writing, is actually I'm not sure if

13:33

it's actually said by the

13:34

person. It's either Mark Twain or Oscar

13:36

Wilde or whatever. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's one of those.

13:38

Because I haven't been able to, like, find the thing,

13:40

but I think Flow Bear said it. But

13:42

that prose is like hair. It

13:45

shines with comming. And

13:47

so it's just like you have to write it and

13:49

then you go back and edit it and you edit it and

13:51

edit it and do it over and over again. And I

13:53

write about food in general

13:55

and I am trying to think about the

13:57

people that I'm writing for and

13:59

how this thing will

14:01

translate for them in their lives

14:03

and food is about the senses and I'm trying

14:05

to wake up your senses and

14:07

I have to remember how

14:09

I felt when I was either

14:11

cooking something or when I

14:13

was eating something or when I encountered

14:15

something for the first time. And

14:17

that means that I have to make

14:19

myself in my body very, very

14:21

quiet and get as

14:23

close as I can to that memory. So

14:25

that then I can find the right words

14:28

to attach to that memory and

14:30

that feeling so that I can convey that thing

14:32

as clearly as possible to you.

14:34

Like, this is truly bananas, but the way that

14:36

that happens is me

14:38

laying down on the floor in my

14:40

office. I can't do

14:42

it when I'm sitting now. I have to lay down

14:44

and go back in my memory on

14:46

my back. And I'm just closing my eyes

14:48

and I'm like, oh, yeah. Where was I? When was

14:51

it? Wow. Wow. It's my version of a

14:53

meditation. It's a somatic

14:55

practice. And so that takes

14:57

energy and time.

14:59

So this whole practice that you're describing, I

15:01

think to people listening to it, some might

15:03

say, oh my gosh, that

15:05

is so much more

15:08

immersive in every way,

15:10

physically, cognitively, emotionally,

15:13

intellectually and

15:15

therefore, that is wonderful. And I

15:17

could imagine others saying,

15:19

oh, it is so

15:21

immersive in every way, and it just just sounds

15:23

horrible. Like, why would you choose to

15:25

do that? For your

15:27

life. So why do

15:29

you do this? Why is it

15:31

who you are? Well, I can't

15:33

not I don't want to, but

15:35

I can't not. I

15:38

also am very glad

15:40

that I still have the physical part of

15:42

my

15:42

day. I'm glad that I have that cooking part of my day.

15:45

And on days when it's not cooking,

15:47

sometimes it's going in the garden and pulling

15:49

weeds. But it's good you're writing

15:51

about food and cooking because you actually need

15:53

to do those things. Whereas if you were just

15:55

writing about intellectual history, it

15:57

would just be reading and thinking and writing.

15:58

Yeah. And then I would have to be a person who builds walks and

16:01

swims in because I would then

16:03

lose my mind in that way. I

16:05

just happened to build a life

16:07

that has part

16:07

physical, part somatic, mental,

16:10

emotional? Well, you say you just

16:12

happen to. Like, what would a therapist say?

16:14

Therapies would say, oh, yeah.

16:16

That was a fantastic long

16:20

term coping mechanism to give

16:22

yourself a way to not

16:24

drive yourself crazy while doing the thing that you love

16:26

slash

16:26

hate. Yeah, maybe. I don't know

16:28

why I choose to do it, but I do

16:30

know that, like, I just

16:33

can't not. Doing my

16:35

work is about connecting with

16:37

the world in a larger, more important

16:39

way. And as difficult and

16:41

horrible as the writing is

16:43

the writing the way that it shows up

16:45

whether it's on the page or it's in

16:47

a podcast or it ends up on a

16:49

screen, for me, that's a

16:51

way to connect with people. My

16:54

sort of medium right now happens

16:56

to be food. Like, I

16:58

just happened to fall into food. It

17:00

was so so serendipitous.

17:03

But I think

17:06

whatever I would have fallen into, I could

17:08

have and would have used as

17:10

my tool. And I

17:12

may not always be a person who writes

17:14

about food and

17:16

whatever stories I tell, whatever happens to

17:18

me in my life, I find it

17:21

necessary to use

17:23

it as a way to connect with

17:25

people. Because I've also always felt alone in the world.

17:28

And this makes me feel less lonely in the

17:30

world. And that's

17:32

maybe at the heart of it. Coming

17:35

up after the break, Nosrat

17:37

digs up a journal entry from when she

17:39

was

17:39

fifteen. It's so deeply embarrassing. And

17:42

also it explains everything.

17:44

I'm Stephen Dubner. This is a

17:46

bonus episode of Freakonomics Radio. We'll

17:48

be right back. There

17:52

are

17:56

I think a lot of reasons why

17:58

someone like you or anyone could become

18:00

a writer. You connect with

18:02

people. Another way to say it would be

18:04

to become noticed

18:06

or become recognized. Some

18:09

people want to rate to become

18:12

famous. And then there's this paradox because

18:14

if it works, which it almost never

18:16

does, but for you, it did, then

18:18

there's this paradox of like, whoa, what

18:20

have I

18:20

done? So that's what I wanna hear from

18:23

you. Okay. I'd

18:25

really never thought in a million years that I

18:27

would be sharing this thing with

18:29

you. I found this journal

18:31

entry from when I was fifteen. Wow. It

18:33

doesn't exactly answer your question. But

18:35

if you really wanna delve into my psychology,

18:37

oh, boy. Okay.

18:40

It's so deeply

18:42

embarrassing and also It explains

18:44

everything. At the

18:46

top, it says

18:48

ideas for the future. And you're

18:51

fifteen. This is around fourteen, fifteen, maybe sixteen. And

18:53

then underneath this, it

18:55

says, I wanna be

18:57

famous. Not because

19:02

I'm a doctor. Running kids are all supposed

19:04

to be doctors, lawyers, or engineers.

19:06

So I wanna be famous, not because I'm

19:08

a doctor, but because I'm me. If

19:10

I have my own sitcom, so

19:13

be it. It's

19:17

just

19:17

that I see so many famous people with

19:19

my sense of humor I

19:21

would

19:22

really like to have a, quote,

19:24

fun job. If I have to

19:26

make my doctor job fun,

19:28

so be it. It's not

19:33

that I don't

19:36

wanna be a doctor. I wanna be famous

19:39

too. I want people to

19:41

say, Simeon went to La Jolla High

19:43

School and everyone to GUESS.

19:46

So when I found this, like, two years ago,

19:48

I was like, oh my.

19:54

This is horrible because

19:56

I actually don't remember having

19:58

an obsession with fame, but what I do

20:00

remember is being obsessed with people

20:03

who are really good at what they do, like the best at

20:05

what they do. And

20:07

I'm an Iranian girl with

20:09

a big nose. A

20:11

curly hair who grew up in

20:13

blond white wealthy San

20:15

Diego in a family that actually, like,

20:19

stereotypically, persons have a lot of money, but our

20:21

family didn't. And there was

20:23

just a lot of struggle and trauma in

20:25

our family unit too. It was a

20:27

complicated background. And I think I was

20:29

unseen in my own family. I felt

20:31

very unseen in the community

20:33

at large. And so I just had

20:35

this desire to be scene.

20:37

Right? That's I think what the famous thing was.

20:39

But I also have

20:41

this thing where actually the minute

20:43

somebody starts to see me. I'm like, don't see me. Don't

20:45

look. Don't look. Like, why are

20:48

you looking at me? Please don't stop looking

20:50

at me. And so then, of course, what

20:52

happens? I go and I put my head down

20:54

and I work hard as I

20:56

possibly can for the next twenty years. And

20:59

I survey the landscape of publishing,

21:01

of cooking, I under

21:04

stand uniquely that this thing doesn't

21:06

exist, and I'm gonna make this

21:08

thing. I'm so patient. I

21:10

understand that I'm gonna make an illustrated

21:12

cookbook where illustrated

21:15

cookbooks are not a thing. Right? And I

21:17

make an argument that my illustrated

21:19

cookbook can be a thing because I'm gonna work

21:21

with this brilliant Illustrator and we're gonna

21:23

make a funny beautiful thing that

21:26

it's needed and we're gonna

21:28

break all the rules and it's gonna

21:30

work. And even though I'm a

21:32

nobody, even though

21:34

nobody's ever heard of me, and I'm a

21:36

brown person and brown people don't write

21:38

general cookbooks. The only general cookbooks that

21:41

exists are the joy of cooking by a

21:43

white I somehow

21:45

do it. Right? I win the James Beard award.

21:47

My book's on the New York Times bestseller list for

21:49

fifty weeks. I get the column, the New

21:51

York Times magazine. I do all

21:53

the things and then everyone's looking me and I'm like, can you

21:55

please not look at me? And

22:03

then I find this thing, and

22:05

I'm like, oh my god. What does

22:07

it say? It says, I wanna be famous

22:09

just for being me. And I'm

22:12

so sad for the young me when I see that

22:14

because I know what it means. Nobody

22:16

accepted me for who I was, and I

22:18

still feel that. Because in a

22:21

way, I made this book as a

22:23

gift to the world because I wanted to be

22:25

your friend in the kitchen who could give you

22:27

this thing that I felt like people

22:29

don't have. And I wanted to be a voice you could

22:31

trust. And I feel like people really do

22:33

see that and they see that part of me, but now they feel

22:35

like they know me and they feel like they have a

22:37

relationship to me and they sometimes

22:39

overstep and feel like they own me. And

22:41

I'm like, no, I'm just like a depressed,

22:44

grumpy

22:44

person. Leave me alone. So if I'm on

22:47

Team Cemine, I wanna

22:49

protect you from the bad

22:51

parts of this fame. But

22:53

I also want you to get all the

22:56

benefits that you want from the good

22:58

parts of it. That's complicated.

23:01

So what's the best way to do that? Like, writing another book

23:03

the right answer? Because I know that's what you're

23:05

doing.

23:05

Yeah. And I do wanna make another book. It's just that's

23:07

a big part of why I

23:09

said, please don't ask me how long and that's a big part of why it's taking a

23:11

while and it's a big part of why. The book

23:14

has changed a few times in the course

23:16

of the making. It's

23:18

taking a little while, but it's coming.

23:20

So my father passed

23:22

away recently. And actually, I

23:24

think it was the day he passed away. I was

23:26

talking to a family member who

23:28

I don't know super well. And

23:30

so I was telling her some things

23:32

about my childhood and

23:34

She was like, oh, I didn't really know all of that. I

23:36

didn't really know all of that pressure that you

23:39

felt as a kid. And part of what I was

23:41

explaining to her was that I had an older

23:43

sister who was

23:45

one and a half when I was born. And when

23:47

my mom was pregnant with me, she

23:49

was diagnosed with cancer. My sister was diagnosed with

23:51

cancer. A terminal brain tumor. And

23:53

when she was three, she died. So

23:56

basically, my entire

23:59

infancy was spent my

24:01

parents like losing their minds, trying to figure out how do we

24:03

save this baby, which is totally

24:05

understandable. And this is a big

24:07

part of what I've been unpacking in

24:09

the last couple of years, I had sort of repressed

24:11

it. I don't think I really even understood this

24:13

because in our culture and definitely my family,

24:15

nobody talks about anything.

24:17

I didn't really feel like that loss was even

24:20

mine to grieve, and

24:22

it didn't even strike me because

24:25

until a little while ago, I

24:27

live kind of in this little courtyard of homes.

24:30

And in twenty twenty one, my

24:32

friend who lives across the way had a one and a

24:34

half year old. So every morning, this one and a

24:36

half year old would come over and say

24:38

hi, and wanna play with my puppy,

24:40

and he was just so alive

24:42

and vibrant. And he's

24:44

so in love with his older sister. And

24:46

a little while later, I was like, wait a minute,

24:48

he's one and a half. I was under

24:50

the impression that when I was one and a half, I was just

24:52

a lifeless block. But actually, you

24:55

see this baby who's like,

24:57

if his older sister just disappeared and

24:59

nobody ever talks about it

25:00

again, he would be devastated.

25:02

So you started to appreciate how much suffering

25:05

you absorbed as a child? Totally.

25:07

I went and read studies about what

25:09

how to families when they lose an infant

25:11

and what happens to the remaining sibling

25:14

and there's just a lot of

25:16

psychological stuff that happens especially

25:18

in our culture. There's not a lot of

25:20

trust in therapy and psychology.

25:22

And so we didn't get a

25:24

lot of help. So that led to a

25:26

lot of pain and sadness. And how that

25:28

showed up for me is I internalized

25:31

this idea that I had to

25:33

be two kids worse of

25:36

something. And I

25:38

basically tried my whole life

25:40

to be worth me

25:42

and my sister my

25:43

parents. Oh, that's how you get doctor

25:45

and starring on a sitcom for instance.

25:48

Exactly. So be it. So be

25:50

it.

25:51

So I have basically just spent

25:54

my life trying to do the

25:56

very best and the very most.

25:59

And make the best book and make the best everything.

26:01

Like, I did it and I'm

26:03

proud. And also after

26:05

it all happened, I

26:08

was still sad. I had gone to enough therapy

26:10

to know it wasn't all

26:12

gonna magically make me happy. But

26:15

there was just this way where I was like, oh,

26:17

wait a minute. I could win the Nobel Peace Prize

26:19

and it wouldn't make my parents happy. Like, there's

26:21

nothing I can do

26:23

that's gonna fix this thing for them because

26:25

it's in them, it's not in

26:27

me. And so I'm telling this to

26:29

this relative who I'm talking to on the

26:31

day my dad died. And

26:33

she just said to me, this thing was one of

26:35

the most beautiful things anyone has ever Samin. she

26:37

said, I know you're working on this book

26:39

and I don't know what it's about. I know you worked

26:41

really hard in your first book and she was like,

26:44

well, if your first book was

26:46

the Samar, which was my sister's

26:49

name, May your second book be the Samin, which

26:51

Samin it was that you were trying to be good enough

26:53

to be your sister on the first book,

26:55

know that just being yourself.

26:58

Is enough. Make something worth

27:01

just being you is enough. And

27:03

as I've basically gone through

27:06

to different ways of figuring out what I'm making in

27:08

this book. They've essentially just

27:10

been simplifying, like

27:12

deambitious ink. And realizing,

27:14

a, I can't make another saltad. I

27:16

said, he'd already did that. And b, I don't

27:18

have to. Like, I'm enough

27:21

And what I have to say is enough. And that's

27:23

okay. It's just a thing for me to

27:25

the world, and it's like a gift. You

27:27

can take it or you don't, and

27:30

that's all. It's an

27:31

offering. Can

27:36

you talk for a moment about just in the years

27:39

since the first book was published? Talk

27:41

about the practical distractions

27:43

and other components of

27:46

success that might conspire to slow you

27:48

down a little bit on your second

27:49

book? So before the book was

27:52

published, I was already working on

27:54

the TV series, then a

27:56

year after the book was published, the

27:58

show came out. I basically spent a year

28:00

and a half promoting the show

28:02

and somewhere in there I wrote the

28:04

proposal for and sold the second book. And

28:07

then the producer, who

28:09

was my Netflix executive, he's like,

28:11

now is the time to strike while the iron hot

28:14

we need to develop and try to sell

28:16

another show now. So

28:18

then I basically went down this rabbit

28:20

hole of trying to another

28:23

show, which that's a major

28:25

distraction that took a lot of time

28:27

and energy and

28:29

for a complicated host of reasons that

28:31

didn't happen. And in retrospect, you

28:33

regret that effort. Do you think it was a

28:35

bad use of your brain and time?

28:37

No. I am of the belief that all of these

28:39

things add up into the next

28:41

thing. But that was certainly like time that I

28:43

wasn't working on the book. Oh, I

28:45

also got invited to work with missus

28:47

Obama on her

28:49

kids cooking show. And then I spent a

28:51

ton of time and energy promoting that show.

28:54

And then it was COVID, so then my friend wished she wanted

28:56

to make a podcast so that we're spending all his time

28:58

and energy making a podcast. And

29:00

then everyone's, like, Well, do you wanna be in these meetings about these other shows?

29:02

Do you wanna executive produce? And that's a

29:05

whole learning

29:05

curve. Right? So that's just time, time,

29:07

time, time, time, time.

29:09

And also, it's

29:10

getting your brain out of the gear in

29:12

which Yeah. I was still writing my

29:14

monthly column for four years. I wrote my monthly column

29:16

at the times. I would say

29:18

one thing that I think contradicts

29:21

their pragmatic argument is

29:24

financial, which clearly has academics. They don't

29:26

understand the fight says of the book

29:28

world, when you have a book, your book

29:30

itself doesn't necessarily make you

29:32

a lot of money and

29:35

when you have these other things, they don't

29:37

necessarily make you a lot of money. But what they do

29:39

is they give you a platform to

29:41

sell the thing that you're selling,

29:43

which is your book. Like, what happened for me was Netflix

29:45

series essentially became a twenty four

29:47

seven commercial for my book. If I didn't

29:49

get paid a gigillion dollars, to

29:53

make my show, and

29:55

I didn't get paid one gazillion dollars

29:57

to write my book. But because

30:00

my series was essentially this

30:03

wonderful advertisement in

30:05

two hundred and twenty countries for my

30:07

book that was ongoing over

30:09

a million copies of my book

30:11

told. Also, that gives you

30:12

an opportunity to Sell a

30:14

second book. So why would you stop after

30:16

one book? Like, you wanna sell

30:18

a second book. And write a second book

30:20

and make more stuff if you have

30:23

a big success. Of course, I'm a generator.

30:25

I'm a generative person. I'm

30:27

a creative person. I wanna make stuff and share it with the world.

30:30

It was so funny and I really was like,

30:32

I am never ever gonna write a

30:34

regular cookbook with recipes. I was

30:36

just like, And at some point, I have

30:38

an American agent and a British agent. And my

30:40

British agent had suggested to my

30:42

American agent, you know, Sumeet makes things really hard

30:44

for herself. Her

30:46

recipes are so simple and so good. Why doesn't

30:48

she just write a collection of the

30:50

recipes? And so then when my American

30:52

agent told me this, that

30:54

like my British agent had suggested this,

30:56

I lost my shit. I was like,

30:58

are you fucking kidding me? Has

31:00

she ever met me before? I would

31:02

never do that. Well, that's a worst idea in

31:04

the world. One week later,

31:06

one week later, I'm

31:08

making this cabbage slaw that I'm

31:10

always making. It was just this go to thing

31:12

where I was basically trying to reverse engineer

31:14

this thing from this fancy prepared food shop

31:16

near my

31:16

house. It's just like a miso

31:19

Sesame cabbage slime.

31:19

Yeah. And you can use one cabbage. It

31:22

takes not that long in the last five days in

31:24

your fridge. It's so simple and

31:26

so good. And I literally think

31:28

to myself, oh man. If

31:30

only I had a way to share this with

31:32

people, and then I

31:34

was like, Samin it. Damn

31:37

it fuzzy. Like, she

31:39

was right. I mean, are you using it in the next

31:41

book? That was like the base recipe for the new

31:44

proposal, but I know myself. I

31:46

was like, I have to sit with this quietly for a while

31:48

because my thing is normally I have the idea and I

31:50

need to make four hundred phone calls until everybody

31:53

is this a good idea? What do you think? And was like, okay. What if I

31:55

don't do that this time? That's why I also right now,

31:57

I don't wanna, like, tell you too much. You know what I mean? Like, because

31:59

normally, I would tell you everything in the whole world.

32:01

But why I was like, what if I just sit with this for

32:04

a couple

32:04

months? Wow.

32:05

Where do you think that instinct

32:07

or ability came from? Therapy.

32:10

I think I can try to learn to trust

32:13

myself a little bit. They're like, let me call

32:15

everybody and see. Do you like this idea? Do you like

32:17

this idea? That's the part of me that may

32:19

be the study is talking to.

32:21

So when the responder is like,

32:23

oh, I'm too afraid, so I probably

32:25

shouldn't write a book. They're talking to that

32:27

part of me. Right? But then the part of me that

32:29

can say, oh, you know what? Let's be quiet for

32:31

a little while and sit with this and see

32:33

what we feel, like, what

32:35

I feel deep inside and what's useful

32:38

for myself to make. That's my real

32:39

self. As my therapist would

32:41

say, that's your long

32:44

term self or that's your real self of

32:46

recent vintage.

32:47

No. That's my real long term self.

32:49

Has

32:49

always been. Yes.

32:50

Has always been will always be that's

32:53

my real creative self. That's my

32:55

real voice. How does that real self

32:57

get scared off? Or I don't mean to

32:59

make it such a negative image. No. It's

33:01

fine. What are the factors that

33:03

make that real self

33:05

less secure or kind of

33:08

disappear. Instagram, like

33:12

comparing myself to what everyone else

33:14

in the world is doing. I'm trying to

33:16

figure out how do I make the thing

33:18

that makes everyone happy when I

33:20

know there's actually nothing that's gonna make

33:22

everyone happy. And so actually, the

33:24

only thing I can do is make the

33:26

thing that I need to make from the

33:28

inside of my

33:28

heart. A success like yours, which is

33:31

really does create this

33:33

almost impossibly elevated

33:36

expectation for what's next. So

33:38

not only was your first book very, very successful,

33:41

but you personally are just

33:43

beloved. I've never read or

33:45

heard anyone say anything

33:47

other than wonderful.

33:49

People love you. Mhmm. So

33:51

if we know anything from history, very

33:53

few people go their entire

33:56

lives being only beloved. Unfortunately.

33:59

Totally. And with a

34:01

success like yours, you know, matching

34:03

or exceeding or even getting in

34:05

the neighborhood, is not necessarily so easy.

34:07

I don't mean to jinx or put a negative

34:09

-- Not a component on

34:10

this. -- trust me. You're not saying anything that has

34:12

an arch trust me. But I

34:15

don't sense that your creative identity is so

34:17

fragile that you won't produce another book.

34:19

I have no doubt that

34:22

you will But I could imagine can

34:24

think oneself into that sort of

34:25

trouble. Yeah? Yes. Absolutely. I

34:28

think that's entirely a thing

34:30

that happens.

34:32

I think one thing that you were sort of heading toward with what

34:34

you were just saying about me

34:37

is something I think about

34:39

sort of lament privately to

34:41

myself all the time is that,

34:44

like, I'm the product and I think

34:46

that increasingly

34:48

when you're an author. And certainly, a cookbook author

34:50

of any kind, you become

34:53

the product. Like, in a

34:55

way that I think

34:57

wasn't true twenty, thirty,

34:59

sixty, eighty, two hundred years ago? Because

35:01

of the nature of how media

35:03

and exposure work. Mean? Yeah. And when you go to the store

35:05

right now, there are so many cookbooks

35:08

where the person's face is

35:10

on the

35:12

cover. Yours is not. I've ensured that. And

35:14

you know how I ensured that by

35:16

having an illustrated cookbook?

35:20

There's that parashocial relationship. I totally understand

35:22

that I am the subject of people's

35:24

parashocial relationship. You're saying you

35:26

understand that because you felt that way about

35:29

people before. Because I have that with other people

35:31

on TV and the Internet too, like who I

35:33

adore and love even though I've never met them. So

35:35

I totally under stand what it is

35:37

to feel that way about somebody you've never met. And I don't

35:40

fault people or blame them or anything.

35:42

And also,

35:44

it's really hard to be that person.

35:46

It takes an emotional drain

35:48

and it's a complicated thing.

35:51

It's just another part of the

35:54

psychological challenge of making.

35:56

It's just another variable added to

35:58

the creative process that probably wasn't

36:01

twenty years ago. And also probably isn't

36:04

for my friends who are

36:06

novelists or write science books

36:08

or something. Because they're not

36:10

the product. Exactly. It's a

36:12

weird world that's developing before

36:14

a very eyes, and

36:16

it's a complicated and

36:18

weird

36:18

thing. Because it's this new time. It would have been so much

36:20

easier just to be

36:21

honest with calm or a doctor in

36:23

retrospect. It would have been

36:25

so be it. So

36:28

be

36:29

it. Can I just say I

36:32

am so

36:34

grateful and honestly, in awe of your

36:36

generosity in candor and just having a

36:38

real conversation, like a real human. Oh,

36:40

thank you so much. So even though

36:42

you listed and is number

36:44

three. I would put it like two b

36:46

maybe. I'm very very

36:48

happy for all your success and I know that

36:50

you will navigate this next a bit well because

36:52

you've plainly thought it through

36:54

it. I'll just be cheering.

36:56

Thank you. Nice to talk to you too.

36:58

Thank you.

37:00

Frickonomix radio is

37:03

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37:05

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37:07

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37:12

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37:16

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37:18

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37:20

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37:22

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37:24

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37:35

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37:37

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37:39

Our theme song is mister Fortune

37:41

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37:44

the other music is

37:46

composed by Luis Guerra. As always, thanks for listening. Sure. is

37:54

a mineral that makes food

37:57

oh

37:57

my god. Do I even remember what

37:59

these things do? Salt

38:04

enhances the flavor of food.

38:06

Fat is fat, fat, fat,

38:08

fat. Oh my god. I don't even remember

38:10

what they do. I haven't done this spieling

38:12

so long. Fat. Oh

38:14

my god. Oh my

38:16

god. This is I can't

38:19

believe your ass I'm stumped you're

38:22

stumping myself on my own. Oh my god.

38:24

Oh my god. That's a medium

38:26

in which we cook food and

38:30

it Also, like, depending on which fat you choose, that

38:32

affects how the food

38:35

pays, acid enhances Oh

38:39

my god. This is so embarrassing.

38:41

This is funny tape that you should probably

38:43

use on this. The

38:52

Freakonomics Radio Network,

38:54

the hidden side of everything.

39:00

Stitcher.