August 25, 2025 • 43 mins
The former Surgeon General of the United States discusses how loneliness can be understood as a medical condition, and the hot sauce his father made which was so spicy it required a mask. Originally recorded in 2024.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
We have good news. Ruthie's Table four is launching on YouTube,
where you'll find full episodes, clips, and some of my
favorite moments from the series. Guests like Kate Blanchett, Francis
Ford Coppola, Sienna Miller, Zoe Saldana, and many many more.
To watch, go to YouTube dot com slash hat symbol
(00:23):
Ruthie's Table four pod. I can't wait to see you there.
You're listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair.
Across the garden from where Surgeon General Viveq Mufe and
I are sitting, people are having Sunday lunch in the
River Cafe. Walking into the room, you hear the rise
(00:46):
and fall of conversation and laughter, friends and families connecting
over food. At age thirty seven, Viveq was appointed as
the youngest Surgeon General of the United States by President
Obama and is now serving a second term with President Biden.
During COVID. In his gap between terms as Surgeon General,
(01:06):
he might have researched illnesses, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, but
instead he chose what he saw as another epidemic of
our time, loneliness. His book Together The healing power of
human connection in a sometimes lonely world. Tackles loneliness as
a condition seriously detrimental to the health of millions of people.
(01:31):
He is a surgeon General who sees love as a
foundation of policy making. How rare to hear the word
love as a solution to a diagnosis. He says food
is an antidote to loneliness, believing loneliness is like hunger
and like thirst. I am privileged to day to talk
with and listened to the Surgeon General and to hear
(01:55):
how as a doctor, a father, a husband, a child,
and now my friend, food is a connection and food
is love. Yeah, I mean it is also why you're here,
isn't it how you doing a conference? So it is
a global concern now.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
And it's actually why I find that this work around
food to be so powerful, because I think that you know,
people like you, Ruthie, who have been so deeply immersed
in not just the preparation of food, but food is
a cultural force. I think have long recognized that food
has a power to bring us together, to put us
in a place of ease where we can be more
(02:37):
open and talk to one another, Which is why I
think people like breaking bread with one another, and conversation
happens differently over food than it does in a conference room.
But I think that food is also at its best,
you know, a force for love. And I feel that fundamentally,
the question that's before us in society, not just in
(02:57):
the US, but all over the world is do we
want to be society that's driven by fear and with
all that comes with that, anger, anxiety, insecurity. Or do
we want to be a society that's fueled by love
and by all that comes with that, compassion and kindness
and generosity and looking out for one another. And so
that's ultimately what I hope that we can build together.
(03:20):
It's a world fueled empowered by love. And I think
that's a world where we can build extraordinary things, where
we can bring benefits to everyone, where we can overcome
adversity no matter what comes, and where we feel a
sense of optimism and hope. It worries me greatly that
as I travel that so many people feel pessimistic and anxious,
(03:40):
But I also think that what gives us hope during
hardship is our connection to one another. And so that's
what I want us to rebuild you know in our lives,
we have it within us. I think this is actually
our true nature. It's a question of giving voice to
it and coming together around that kind of society. And
I think we can build it.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
We will, Yeah, we will, thank you. So what we
like to do is to read a recipe. And you
chose the recipe of pumpkin soup. Yes, so would you
like to read that recipe? And you can read it
anyway you like.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Sure, So this is a recipe for pumpkin soup. And
I chose pumpkin soup in part because I having grown
up in Miami, Florida, where it's very warm, and then
having subsequently moved to very cold weather places, I was
always craving warmth and soup was the easiest way for
me to find that. And I love pumpkins part because
(04:36):
I love Halloween. So pumpkin soup three tablespoons of extra
virgin olive oil, fifty grams of butter, two cloves sliced scarlet,
twenty sage leaves, a two kilogram pumpkin, peeled, seated, cut
into large cubes. One potato, peeled and cubed, one red chili,
(05:00):
one liter of chicken stock, two tablespoons of grated parmesan
and one tablespoon of crim fresh. Heat the olive oil
and butter, Add garlic and sage and fry for five minutes.
Add the pumpkin and potato. Fry for one minute before
adding chili. Seasoning and season well with salt and pepper.
(05:23):
Poor enough stock to cover the pumpkin and bring to
a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for twenty minutes
until the pumpkin is tender. Strain half of the stock
from the pumpkin into a bowl and set aside. Pouring
what is left into a food processor pulse until the
mixture is very thick. Return the mixture to the pan
(05:47):
and add strained stock and stir. Serve with parmesan and
a drizzle of olive oil and crumb fresh on top.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Is this something you can imagine eating and cutting?
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Yes? In fact, I found myself getting hungry even though
I had a whole meal after reading this recipe. This
is wonderful.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Yeah. So if we begin at the beginning, this is
going to be a long, less conversation about life and
work and loneliness and happiness. Food. Tell me about your family,
were they are they from India came to London to England.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Yeah, my family's originally from India. My mother is from Bangalore,
a city in the south of India, and my father
is from a small farming village about two hours outside
of Bangalore, and they grew up in fairly modest households.
My mother's family was middle class. My father, though, came
from a poor farming community and his family did not
(06:42):
have much at all in the way of resources growing up.
After they got married, they moved to England and they
lived here for seven years, in London for some part
of that time, and then in other parts. They lived
in Leeds, They lived up north in Huddersfield, which is
actually where I was born, my sister was born. They
lived in Wales, Scotland, and then ultimately moved to Canada
(07:04):
and then eventually to the US.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Did they bring the food of India with them? They did.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
They've never They've never left the cuisine they grew up
with behind, and they not only cooked and sought out
that cuisine when they were in England, but even growing up.
The aromas that I remember as a child are of
the Indian food that my parents cooked at home.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
What was it like that. Do you remember they?
Speaker 2 (07:30):
You know, they had very different styles of cooking. So
my mother was a primary cook, but my father cooked
often and he brought great joy to cooking. So my
mother her the hallmark of her food were it was
simple but rich flavors. So she would only cook with
a few ingredients, but she would somehow make all of
them sing and people from the community would often come
(07:54):
and ask her, how did you make that? How do
I have the list of ingredients, but somehow I can't
get quite the same flavor out of it. And she
would always say to me that one of her secrets
was that was her intention when she cooked. She said
she would think of the love that she wanted the
food to represent, and the love she wanted to give
to the person who enjoyed the food, and she would
(08:16):
bring that into her mind and pour it into the food.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
That one of her ingredients.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Yes, love is one of her ingredients. And my father
was an incredibly creative cook. If my mother's a hallmark
was simplicity, his was complexity. So he had often many ingredients.
And if you ask my father, how did you make
that dish? Because it was so good, he'll have a
hard time telling you because he doesn't quite remember the proportions,
(08:41):
and this he doesn't measure. He just adds based on
his instinct. But so he's a creative cook, but an
an equally talented one.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
But did he cook on special occasions or did he
just cook every day?
Speaker 2 (08:52):
He did he when we were growing up, he would
cook on special occasions because he was he was working office.
He was a doctor, and he initially worked in emergency
rooms and in hospitals, then eventually set up his own clinic,
you know, in Miami in nineteen eighty five, when he
continues to work in until this day now alongside my sister,
(09:14):
who's also primary.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Doctors in the family.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Only three more than three three of us yet are
just three of us in the nuclear family. So we
say my mother has is essentially close to a doctor
herself because she she actually ran the medical practice that
my father worked, and she managed the whole operation, and
because there was a small shop, it was just the
two of them seeing patients. A lot of times the
patients would come and talk to her about what they
(09:38):
were going through, and over time she came to sort
of recognize various symptoms and be able to make diagnoses
on the side, so it was very interesting. But yeah, and.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
When you went to Miami, did you live within a
very Indian community or was.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
It When we first got there we didn't know many
people who were Indian. The Indian community was still small
were time is more, as any community grew, that became
an important part of our experience, But initially it wasn't
the case. And I think that's part of the reason
why I, uh, you know, I felt quite different as
a young person growing up. I didn't know a lot
(10:13):
of people in those early years who ate the food
that we ate, or had the customs that we had,
or had names that sounded like ours, and I often
felt like an outsider. And it's interesting. It's funny, you know,
how these early experiences stick with you. And I still
remember that feeling of what it felt like to be
an outsider and to not feel like you belong. And
it's why I have found that in years since, I'm
(10:35):
really sensitive to when other people feel like they're outsiders
because I felt that and it doesn't feel good.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
So did your sister experience that as well? She did? Yeah,
she did? Your parents and your parents did you? Did
your grandparents come with you at all? Did they.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
I wish they had. They did not. They They stayed
in India and and I missed them a lot because
when we were young, during holiday, during Christmas and Thanksgiving,
people would go away and spend time with extended family.
They would come back with these wonderful stories about their
grandparents and about how Grandma gave them this sir Grandpa
took them here. And I often wish that our grandparents
(11:13):
were closer. But they came to visit a few times
when we were younger, and I really treasured those times.
Did they cook, yes, well, my grandmother would cook. My
mother's mother and my father's mother had unfortunately passed away
when he was young, when he was ten, but his
father would actually cook as well because he had been
used to cooking for himself. And they all had their
(11:33):
own styles. But the one thing that was common among
all of them is there was a lot of joy
when they were in the kitchen. They were cooking from
a place of happiness. They knew they were going to
be bringing happiness to people with the food. It wasn't functional,
It wasn't ah. I just got a meal on the table.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
If you get the food.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Out, that's right. It was there's some real joy.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Do you think that is specific to Indian cooking that
is more of a group activity or good question?
Speaker 2 (12:00):
And I think other cuisines other cultures have that as well.
But I do worry that in modern living that we've
gotten away from a lot of that, and that food
preparation has become more functional than nurturing and therapeutic, and
that old community style of sitting together and both making
the food and consuming the food. I think there's I
(12:23):
think some of that got lost, perhaps just as life
structures change and in the interests of efficiency, or we
can just get food delivered, or we can pop something
in the microwave, and it does feel like it saves time.
But I think perhaps what may not have been as
as deeply appreciated was how much was lost in terms
of the community that's built. The relaxation also that comes
(12:43):
when you're working with your hands and creating something beautiful
in the form of food that others will enjoy.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
People often say to me, how can you cook for
one hundreds and fifty people and in the restaurant when
it's hard to give a dinner party at home for
twelve people, I can't do a dinner party for twelve
people at home. It's so much easier doing it in
a restaurant because you're collaborating, you know, you have you're cooking.
It is that thing of cooking with other people, sharing
(13:11):
a conversation, tasting each other's food, talking about what you're
going to do, and that community of working in a
restaurant is so nice.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
You know.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
I do, of course cook for twelve people at home,
but it can be very solitary just being in the
kitchen by yourself.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
It can be. Yeah, And that's where I think doing
it together, whether it's as family as friends, really makes
a difference. Some of my best memories growing up or
actually of all of us, my sister and I along
with both my parents actually cooking together. So when we
would have guests over, that was it was stressful at
times because we're going to get everything ready for the
(13:48):
guests in time, et cetera. But the fun part was
that we made things together. So one of my jobs
was to make the list of items that we were
going to cook that day, for sure going to shop
or but actually for cooking also like the dishes that
we were going to make, and then I would be
you know, a sous cheft for my mom, and then
she would help put things together. I would chop, I would,
(14:10):
you know, mix things together. I would watch things on
the stove and roast vegetables or other ingredients, and when
they were done, it was my job to check it
off in the list, and I had to ultimately make
sure that everything was checked off before the guests came.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
So preparation for pure life, maybe even to this day,
when I go home, if we're going to have people over,
my mother so she'll turn to me and say, make
the list, make the liv So I make the list.
It's interesting what you said also about your grandparents, because
people that we've talked to on the podcast, very often,
if especially they've come from another country, from Ghana to
(14:46):
London or from China to London, from wherever they've traveled,
they very often talk about their grandparents almost more than
their parents, because sometimes the mother adapts, you know, the
mother her cooking. The child only sometimes wants to eat
the food of the culture he's moved to, but the
grandmother clings to more to what you know or the grandfather,
(15:12):
I should say, from their country. Did your mother adapt
or did she only cook Indian food? Did she ever
make you hamburgers or meatballs and spaghetti or was all
the food of your home the food of India?
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Yeah, you know, my mother still to this day primarily
cooks Indian food, and almost exclusively, i would say, so
that is what we ate growing up. My father, on
the other hand, has he still makes a lot of
traditional Indian food, but he does a lot of creative
fusion food. So he has an Indian version of spaghetti
that he makes, and of other pastas well. I don't
(15:46):
know what he calls doesn't actually have a name, but
when you eat it, you taste all of these flavorful
Indian spices. And then he does other interesting things too,
Like he'll take jackfruit, which is I'm not sure if
you've had it or not, but it's a it's a
fruit that grows in the tropics. When it's ripe, it's
yellow and rubbery and very sweet. But in its raw
(16:06):
form it can actually be used for savory dishes and
it's quite tender. It can actually mimic a steak. So
he'll chop up, you know, raw jackfruit, and then he'll
drop it into the pasta, and so it almost tastes
like you're eating meat in the pasta, but it's all vegetables,
so he'll do all of these crazy creatives.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Yeah, both of them sound like great cooks.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
They are.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
How did they work all day and then come home?
And did you sit with your sister every night around
the table and your parents after a long day at school.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
We did. And the reason we did that was actually
because my parents were insistent and that we always have
dinner together every night. Sometimes, my sister and I as
kids growing up, we'd get annoyed, you know, we'd say, well,
you know, our friends get to like sit in front
of the TV during dinner time. Why can we do that?
Or you know, why don't you guys have dinner. We're
busy doing something, you know, we're reading this book. Well,
we'll have dinner later. But they were always insistent that
(16:59):
we have to eat together, so much so that when
I was in high school, Ruthie, and when we you know,
sometimes we had a lot of homework and I was
in the middle of like writing an essay and I
didn't want to stop exactly when dinner time was, and
they would just they would just wait for us. And
I still feel guilty, and soone embarrassed to say this,
but like, I still remember many nights in high school
where I was like stressed about an exam and I
(17:20):
was late studying and I didn't feel could quite break
and they would stay up and just wait until and
we would eat at nine or nine thirty or ten
o'clock at night, but they would just wait because they
wanted to have dinner together. I still can't believe I
made them wait that long.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
So I probably didn't mind. I think I can imagine
waiting for my children to finish. I think you know
they probably So was your sister as well, would you?
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Study?
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Yeah, And we were in the same grade growing up,
so we thankfully had a lot of those same assignments
and everything.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
So but yeah, did you go to friends' homes for dinner?
Did you go to other people's houses for dinner?
Speaker 2 (17:53):
We did. Yes, we went to other people's homes. And
and that was always a real source of joy because
it was it was always a family affair, and it
was always always very informal. So it wasn't that there
was a big long table and everyone would sit together
around that table. Usually there was food that was made.
People would often bring food almost public style, all the
(18:14):
dishes would be laid out on a table and everyone
would just noisily, messily gravel plate, you know, put food
on it, and then go to various parts of the
house in small groups and this and that. And as
kids we were, you know, we would just all hang
out in a room together and eat and play and
it was fun. I really enjoyed it. It was community,
it was food, it was entertainment.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Very evocative, very beautiful description of this life at home.
Did that it was at a big break then when
you went off to university, when you went to Harvard,
was a shock to the system that suddenly, yeah, you
were away from that.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
It was it was a shock. It was actually extremely
hard for me, and I struggled a lot, especially during
my first semester away. I felt really I felt just
really disconnected and being a shy, introverted kid, I had
(19:08):
a hard time just making friends off the bat, you know.
It took me a while to get to know people,
and so that was it was very hard. I remember
coming home at the for the first time after enrolling
in college during Christmas break and I had my suitcase
in my hand. The door opened, I stepped in, I
put my bags down, I looked up at the ceiling
(19:31):
of the house in which I had grown up, took
a deep breath, and I said to my father, I
feel like I've just been released from prison. And I
had almost forgotten that I had said that until a
few years ago. He reminded me, and if I brought
back this flood of emotions of what it had felt
like to be just separated from this love that had
(19:51):
nurtured me for so long. And things got a bit
better after that, as I was able to make friends
and build a community. But some years after, when I
was in my residency training in my first year, when
I was working, you know, abob eighty ninety hundred hours
a week, but seeing and working with patients who are
going through some of the most difficult moments of their life,
(20:14):
including people who are my age, you know, at that time,
young people in their twenties who were dealing with metasatic
cancer and only had a few months to live. I
started reflecting them and thought to myself, I never want
to lose my connection to my family. I want to
make sure that every time moment that I have that
I'm spending it with family and friends. You know, whether
(20:35):
that's vacation time, weekend time. I was like, I want
to make that a priority. So after that, I started
going home much more often to see my parents and
to spend time with them, even if it was just
for a weekend. You know, it was worth it because
I always remember those patients I cared for, those young patients,
and it just reminds me that we never We all
don't know how much time we have, and I want
(20:56):
to make sure I'm spending that time with the people
the time I have with the people that I love.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
Did you know The River Cafe has a shop. It's
full of our favorite foods and designs. We have cookbooks,
linen napkins, kitchen ware, toad bags with our signatures, glasses
from Venice, chocolates from Urin. You can find us right
next door to The River Cafe in London or online
at Shopthrivercafe dot co dot uk. When you were growing up,
(21:34):
you describe always eating at home and cooking at home
in the community of a home. But would you go
to restaurants in Miami?
Speaker 2 (21:43):
Would that be a we would from time to time.
It's interesting that I do. I remember that my parents
because they liked spicy food in particular and some stories
I can tell you about spice and my father and
the crazy he made some special yes he makes He
makes a series of different hot sauces from different types
(22:06):
of peppers, including some are from habanero peppers, some are
from special Jamaican hot peppers, some are from ghost peppers.
He's like extremely spicy, saw so much so that when
he makes them, we all have to leave the house.
When he makes the sauce these, we have to step
outside because and he wears something that's equivalent to a
(22:26):
gas mask when he makes it, because the fumes a
is so incredibly overpowering. But once he's made it and
put it in a bottle, you add a little bit
to your food. It tastes incredible as long as you
can tolerate the spice. So but you know, and I
generally I eat a lot of spice, but that level
of spice is even hard for me to tolerate.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Would he find a restaurant that could serve him the equivalent.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
So we would always be in the lookout for them,
And so I remember many times going to Chinese restaurants,
for example, and he would ask them like can you
make it spicy? And there was always a cadence of
this conversation. First question, can you make it spicy? They
would say yes, Second question, how spicy can you make it?
They would say, well, we have a five star scale
and we can make it one to five. Then the
third question would say can you make seven stars? Can
(23:13):
you do get six? And then they would get scared
because they didn't want something to happen against you. But
then he would go through trying to convince him that
he really could take this spice. So generally when we
went out to eat, it was often in restaurants where
they hope people could make the food spicy. Chinese restaurants,
Thai restaurants, yeah, you know, food cuisines of that sort.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
And when you were in university, did you what was
the food like? There was that a shock as well,
just sitting down to the kind of food they serve
at school.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Did you go out it was? I actually lost a
lot of weight in college. You know, I think I'm
a fairly normal weight now, but I actually, if you
can picture this, I weighed forty pounds less when I
was in college.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Did anybody notice, I mean, did anybody notice that there
was a student in his freshman year home, sick, losing
weight and lonely. Do you think was there any.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
You know, no one ever asked me that question. I
outside of my family, I don't think anyone noticed, you know.
And but it was painful to my family. See, they
were there, clearly knew something was wrong. I wasn't feeling happy,
et cetera. But yeah, what I used to do is
because I missed the food of home. Also is I
had a little packet of spicy powder that I would
(24:27):
take with me to the dining hall and I would
sprinkle it on everything, anything and everything you'd fine, I
would just like spice it up. And so even people
who didn't know me knew that I was I was
a kid with a spicy powder, you know who.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
I have a friend who travels with chili's. Yeah, she
always travels with some chili that she can put on
yeah food. I don't know whether she's afraid of having
inconsequential food or whether she just loves it with spicy,
but she Well.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
I learned that actually from my parents, because when we
would go out to restaurants I couldn't make food spicy.
Sometimes they'd be really disappointed. So they would always have
their own like powder that they would add it. I
remember a few times going out at that time. As kids,
we loved pizza and we wanted to eat pizza, and
we didn't make pizza at home, but we alwys wanted
to go to Pizza Hut or something, so sometimes it
would be grudgingly go and they would dutifully bring the
(25:13):
spicy powder and sprinkle it all over the pizza so
that they looked like red pizza.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
You know, you in Harvard and Boston and Cambridge, did
you have lobsters or did you try the local food
from from the cave?
Speaker 2 (25:25):
I had some of the local some of the Italian
food I had in the North End.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Was that a revelation or had you had at Miami?
It was?
Speaker 2 (25:32):
It was much better in the North End. I think
the limited past side I had in Miami was it
wasn't as authentic, you know, as what the North Ends was.
So that was that was quite quite extraordinary. And then
the pastries also, like the Italian pastries, were just incredible.
I had never had anything like that before.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
I don't know. Indian desserts are they quite based? Am
I saying that right? So?
Speaker 2 (25:54):
Some of them are are dairy based, yeah, and a
lot of them are not. The Indian sweets tend to
be tend to be quite rich, you know, and also
quite sweet as well, which is why some people love them.
Some people really don't like them.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
Do you like them?
Speaker 3 (26:08):
I do?
Speaker 2 (26:08):
I mean, look, I have like thirty two sweet teeth,
so I have. I just love a love desserts, which
is part of the reason I try to eat them
very sparingly, because otherwise I would just eat dessert all
day long. But I used to when I was growing up,
I would I learned to make one of the sweets
in particular that became.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
So it was.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
It goes by different names, but in our family we
called it Ksey bath, and it's also called sheeta and
other parts of India. But it's a very it's sort
of my mom's type of dessert. It's very simple in
terms of the ingredients and involved. Basically, what you do
is you take a pen, you put let's say two
cups of cream of wheat, you know, and or something
(26:45):
equivalent to that. You roast that with some clarified butter
or ghee, and you put some raisins in there to
roast as well, So you're roasting that for a while
until you start to smell like the wheat, you know,
sort of aroma come to your nose, and once it's
slightly brown. Then which you do is that you actually
add You can add a couple of things. You can
start by adding a little bit of sugar, right about
(27:05):
a quarter a cup or a half cup of sugar,
just to you start to see a glisten in the
sugar melt. And then what I used to do is
I would actually slice bananas and add them to it
as well. And then you crush cardamom, you know, with
the morning pestle, and then you sprinkle the cardameom on top,
and then you mix it all together and then let
the water evaporate until you have something that's very silky smooth,
(27:26):
and you just the combination of the sugar, the fruit
and the cardamom just really brings the dessert to life.
So I used to make that, you know, when I
was growing up. Yeah, I just made it a couple
of weeks ago.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
From my kids, it seemed very like recent, was the
way you were describing it. Was it something that's just
always stayed in your mind.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
It's always set in my head, Like I made it
two weeks ago for the first time in probably ten years,
and it brought back all these wonderful memories.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
Yeah, do you cook at home now?
Speaker 3 (27:55):
Now?
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Very little, you know, which I regret. I used to
cook a fair amount up until I finished my medical
training and then and then it just sort of fell off.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
I did you put when you were doing your medical education?
Speaker 3 (28:09):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (28:10):
Did you have a family then or you? I did,
so put everything into into your studies.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
Yeah. I got married later in life, when I was
thirty eight years old. In fact, I got married and
then now I have two wonderful kids. But in those days,
I was a bachelor doing my own thing in the kitchen.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
What did you study in medicine? What was your specialty?
Speaker 2 (28:29):
So I ended up studying internal medicine, which is the
care of adults, and I ended up specializing in hospital
based medicine. So when people were admitted to them, if
there's sick enough to be admitted to the hospital, then
I was the doctor who would take care of them there.
So that's that's the And yeah, I was grueling.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
Would you would you be working?
Speaker 3 (28:47):
They were long?
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Again, I'm thinking about how you did you Did you
manage to cook? You said, you did cook when you
were I.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Did cook, yeah, but it wasn't I mean I had
to like cook a bunch of food and then like
eat it over several days because they were and sometimes
you would come home at three in the morning, and
then you'd have to leave two hours later, five in
the morning to go and start the next days around.
So there wasn't a lot of time to cook. So
I would try to cook in advance, you know, and
have some food, but sometimes it wasn't easy, and so
I ended up having to eat out or eat in
(29:15):
the hospital cafeteria a lot, which was we could talk
about hospital food.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
Yeah, that is such an issue now. The way we
feed our children and the way we feed sick people
in our society, I think tells us about how we
care for people.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
No, I think it's very astutely said, and I think
you're right. I think one thing, if you look at
the list of medicines that we prescribe, there's one thing
that's missing from that list, and it's food, right, because
food is medicine, and food helps us heal in many
direct and indirect ways. Yet somehow it does feel that
the food we give people in hospitals and the food
(29:53):
that we even give kids in school. I think about
the cafeteria, you know, in my school growing up, and
like what we used to eat eat, and it's not
the kind of I think food we would want to
give children and get people who are ill if we
fully understood just how powerful food is in healing and
how vital it is for our well being in sustenance.
(30:13):
And I do worry that what has happened in part
over the years is that we've allowed and i'm you know,
my primary experiences with the United States, but I do
think sadly this is happening in many other parts of
the modernized world. I do think we've allowed our food
supplied to become poisoned in a sense by foods that
are overly processed and that are filled with excessive amounts
(30:34):
of salt and sugar, and we've gotten away from, I think,
some of the healthier food that we that we all need.
And it starts really early, you know. I think if
children had the opportunity to experience healthy food, I mean
for only, I think it would make a big difference.
And I do believe, just from a moral perspective, that
(30:54):
no child should ever have to go hungry. No child
should ever have to eat food that is bad for
them just to survive. Yet that is a reality that
so many families are living right now. And I do
think it comes from just a failure from a policy
perspective to understand the vital importance of healthy food in
(31:16):
raising our children and making sure that society is healthy
and whole.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
And its interesting to think of how that happened and
when that happened, you know, the path to not being
concerned about feeding our children.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
I think that the paradox is that we've somehow made
unhealthy food cheap and made healthy food expensive, which has
put health out of the reach of so many people
in society. And that is what we have to flip
because if we don't do that, then I worry that
this rise in chronic illness that we're seeing, heart disease, diabetes, cancer,
(31:51):
significant amount of which is driven by diet, that we
will see those trends continue unless we manage to get
back to the root of what's driving it, which is
in large part our diet.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
And so you're going from describing being the person that
people met in hospital and working with patients, and how
did that segue from that until how do you become
a surgeon general? You know, people who are listening who
might not know whether the two words surgeon general comes from,
can you.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
Tell us absolutely? Well? In the United States, the position
of surgeon General is designated to be an individual who's
sometimes informally called the nation's doctor, but whose responsibility is twofold.
And one is to make sure that the public has
the best possible information about health so that they can
make good decisions for themselves and their families. And the
(32:41):
second is to oversee one of our eight uniformed services
in the US government, which is called a US Public
Health Service Commission Corps. People are familiar with the Army,
the Navy, the Air Force. Well, one of our services
is the Public Health Service as well, and we focus
entirely on protecting the health of people, not just in
the United States, but also extending that mission outside the
(33:03):
US as well. So those are the responsibilities I have
as surgeon general.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
And how did you go from being a doctor in
a hospital to being the surgeon general?
Speaker 2 (33:12):
Well, you know, I don't entirely know, to be honest
with you, and I'll tell you how it happened. But
after I finished my medical training, I was teaching at
a hospital, I was practicing medicine and caring for patients.
I was doing that for a good chunk of my time.
And then on the side, I was actually building a
technology company that I hope would help to accelerate medical
research to help bring treatments and cures to people more effectively.
(33:37):
And I had gotten involved probably in two thousand and seven,
two thousand and eight, I think around that timeframe, also
in health policy work. So I was doing that hodgepodge
of things like that you know, at the time, but
never actually thought of working in government. But then one
day I happened to be, you know, actually picking up
my dry cleaning that day from the dry cleaners, and
(33:57):
my hands were full, and my phone rank and it
was a two two area code, which is the Washington DC.
I lived in Boston at the time, and I didn't
recognize the number, so I didn't pick it up. But
then finally I decided, let me just take the number,
and that happened to be a call from the White
House at that time, asking if I'd be interested in
being considered for this position. And what I came to
understand later is that the President Obama and his team,
(34:20):
we're looking to modernize the Office of the Surgeon General.
They recognized this was a new age that we were
coming into where people receive their information differently, they learned
about health issues differently, and there's a whole new dimension
of health threats that we were facing, including the opiate
epidemic and the fentanyl crisis. So anyway, they seemed to
think that I might be a good fit for that role,
(34:41):
so they reached out at that time, and that's how
the whole journey began.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
When you had that break between the Surgeon General with
President Obama and then now your position with President Biden,
tell me what did you do and how did that
lead to your interest in loneliness.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
Well, to be honest with you, Ruthie, I was quite
lost in the beginning. And I know, I was coming
off of serving as Surgeon General for about two and
a half years or so, and my identity had become
wrapped up in that role, and I was abruptly as
civilian again and trying to figure out a bunch of questions.
(35:28):
And one of the things I was struggling with in
the process was that I had really lost any sense
of community during those few years that I served in government,
I had largely, you know, I sort of told myself,
I think, a familiar story that many people tell themselves
perhaps when they have jobs for a short period of time,
which is, I got to put everything I have into
this job, and I'll have time to do the right
(35:50):
catch up with life afterward. And as a result, I
had not caught up with friends. I had not kept
up with even family members at times, and when I
was with my parents or my wife or you know,
my sister, I was distracted often, you know, I was
going through my inbox, trying to clear out messages, keeping
up with the news that was relevant to my work,
and that just led to this real profound sense of
(36:12):
isolation and loneliness when I came out, and so I
struggled with that for quite a bit of time. And
in the process, one of the things that I was
digging into was recognizing that that experience of loneliness that
I was having, that it wasn't unique to me. I
was like reflecting more and more on conversations I had
had even when I was in office. The social connection
(36:33):
that I was missing and that I found was missing
for so many others, was not just a good feeling.
It was actually something that was really vital to our
physical health and our mental health, and it's why, well, ultimately,
when I wrote about loneliness, it was about that profound
health impact around the recognition that when we struggle with
being disconnected from one another, that actually has an impact
(36:54):
on our mortality. And the mortality impact actually of loneliness
and isolation are similar to the mortality impact we see
it's smoking, and even greater than that which we see
with obesity. So this is a real issue, but it's
also one that's deeply felt, and I certainly felt it
a lot during that time. So coming back the second
time to serve felt very different than the first time,
(37:16):
in part because the country in the world was in
a very different place with COVID, but also because I
realized I really wanted to focus in on this deeper
mental health crisis that was running under the surface and
that was impacting so much of our lives, and that
was particularly impacting kids with rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide.
That we're all going in the wrong direction. And so
(37:37):
that has been really where I have focused much of
my time these last three years is on addressing loneliness
understanding the deeper roots of this mental health crisis, and
thinking about and honesty in a very personal context, not
just in terms of me, butters of my own kids.
You know, my kids are now six and seven, and
I want them to grow up in a world where
(37:57):
they feel happy they don't, where they feel connected to
other people, where they feel connected to other cultures. And
I want them to know that if they mess up
or do something wrong, that there are people who will
forgive them and wh will lift them up. And I
want to know that they will do that for other
people as well. But that means creating a world that's
(38:19):
more kind and compassionate, more forgiving and understanding, more connected
and invested in one another. But that's ultimately I think
the work that I feel is really essential for us
to do.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
Now, would you also add trust to that? If you
have trust, then you trust that there will be that
support system or that people are not there to do
you harm that you then might accept more.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
Yes, that is the right word. Trust.
Speaker 1 (38:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
And the thing is trust Trust can't be manufactured, and
it also doesn't come about overnight. It comes through relationship, right.
It's like when we get to know people and understand them,
then we come to try us them. And when we
trust people, we can also tolerate disagreement because we recognize
that that we're more than our opinion on a single issue, right,
(39:10):
that there's something deeper that binds us together, some common
hopes and dreams or shared humanity. But when that gets lost,
when we can't see each other as human beings, but
we only see each other as posts that that we
write on social media, or as positions on a particular
controversial issue, then it becomes very hard to build trust.
It becomes hard then to move together in the face
(39:31):
of adversity. And that's why a key part of not
just preparing for better health, but also preparing for the
next pandemic has to involve rebuilding our ties with one
another and the trust that we have in society.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
One of my favorite stories is of they were looking
into a happy community and happiness factors, and it was
this town in Denmark, and they interviewed people about why
they were happy, and it was to do with trust.
And they told the story about Danish woman who had
what I remember, had taken her baby to New York
(40:04):
and she went inside to made my Balthazar. One of
the you know, cafes there and left the baby outside
in a pram and she went in to eat because
that's what she would do in her town in Denmark.
You know, she thought that actually that's what they would do,
they would leave the baby outside. You know, she was
(40:25):
able to watch it. And she was arrested for you know,
being whatever you call irresponsible towards an infant because she'd
left a baby outside, you know. But that was to
do with trust. And I think that what you're doing
is so you know, was so inspiring and so important,
and you are actually in a position to make change.
People were saying in the River Cafe, thank you, So
(40:47):
as an American, I would add myself to those thanks
and to ask you, as our last question, if food
is something that helps loneliness, If food is the way
you cook for your own children and the experience of
taking them places. Food is also comfort, So what would
be your comfort food search in general?
Speaker 2 (41:10):
My comfort food, well, there is a it's something my
mother makes and it's a particular dish. It's almost like
a spicy broth water that's called russam r a s
a M. And traditionally you would mix it with rice
(41:30):
to eat it, and it's beautiful, spicy, flavorful as curry
leaves in it, as pepper, has all kinds of spices
and very ripe tomatoes. But you can also pour it
in a cup and drink it. And when I do that,
I feel like it's almost like an elixir that I'm having.
It sort of fills me with warmth literally, but also
(41:53):
with these beautiful memories I have of my mother. You know,
I had a professor once who said to me, he said, lo,
He said, food is the calories you put in your body.
Food is the love your mother gave you as a child.
And I have thought about that so often because that's
where to me makes comfort food. Comfort food. It's the
food that reminds me of love. Thank you, Thank you
(42:14):
so much, Ruddy.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
You'll see you again very soon.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
I hope, so I as well have this love.
Speaker 1 (42:23):
Thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table for in partnership
with Montclair.
Speaker 3 (42:36):
Ruthie's Table four is produced by Atamei Studios for iHeartRadio.
It's hosted by Ruthie Rogers, and it's produced by William Lensky.
This episode was edited by Julia Johnson and mixed by
Nigel Appleton. Our executive producers are Faye Stewart and Zad Rogers.
Our production manager is Caitlin Paramore and our production coordinator
(42:56):
is Bella Cellini. Thank you to everyone at The River
Cafe for your help in making this episode.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
Mm hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm mhm
We have good news. Ruthie's Table four is launching on YouTube,
where you'll find full episodes, clips, and some of my
favorite moments from the series. Guests like Kate Blanchett, Francis
Ford Coppola, Sienna Miller, Zoe Saldana, and many many more.
To watch, go to YouTube dot com slash hat symbol
(00:23):
Ruthie's Table four pod. I can't wait to see you there.
You're listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair.
Across the garden from where Surgeon General Viveq Mufe and
I are sitting, people are having Sunday lunch in the
River Cafe. Walking into the room, you hear the rise
(00:46):
and fall of conversation and laughter, friends and families connecting
over food. At age thirty seven, Viveq was appointed as
the youngest Surgeon General of the United States by President
Obama and is now serving a second term with President Biden.
During COVID. In his gap between terms as Surgeon General,
(01:06):
he might have researched illnesses, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, but
instead he chose what he saw as another epidemic of
our time, loneliness. His book Together The healing power of
human connection in a sometimes lonely world. Tackles loneliness as
a condition seriously detrimental to the health of millions of people.
(01:31):
He is a surgeon General who sees love as a
foundation of policy making. How rare to hear the word
love as a solution to a diagnosis. He says food
is an antidote to loneliness, believing loneliness is like hunger
and like thirst. I am privileged to day to talk
with and listened to the Surgeon General and to hear
(01:55):
how as a doctor, a father, a husband, a child,
and now my friend, food is a connection and food
is love. Yeah, I mean it is also why you're here,
isn't it how you doing a conference? So it is
a global concern now.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
And it's actually why I find that this work around
food to be so powerful, because I think that you know,
people like you, Ruthie, who have been so deeply immersed
in not just the preparation of food, but food is
a cultural force. I think have long recognized that food
has a power to bring us together, to put us
in a place of ease where we can be more
(02:37):
open and talk to one another, Which is why I
think people like breaking bread with one another, and conversation
happens differently over food than it does in a conference room.
But I think that food is also at its best,
you know, a force for love. And I feel that fundamentally,
the question that's before us in society, not just in
(02:57):
the US, but all over the world is do we
want to be society that's driven by fear and with
all that comes with that, anger, anxiety, insecurity. Or do
we want to be a society that's fueled by love
and by all that comes with that, compassion and kindness
and generosity and looking out for one another. And so
that's ultimately what I hope that we can build together.
(03:20):
It's a world fueled empowered by love. And I think
that's a world where we can build extraordinary things, where
we can bring benefits to everyone, where we can overcome
adversity no matter what comes, and where we feel a
sense of optimism and hope. It worries me greatly that
as I travel that so many people feel pessimistic and anxious,
(03:40):
But I also think that what gives us hope during
hardship is our connection to one another. And so that's
what I want us to rebuild you know in our lives,
we have it within us. I think this is actually
our true nature. It's a question of giving voice to
it and coming together around that kind of society. And
I think we can build it.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
We will, Yeah, we will, thank you. So what we
like to do is to read a recipe. And you
chose the recipe of pumpkin soup. Yes, so would you
like to read that recipe? And you can read it
anyway you like.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Sure, So this is a recipe for pumpkin soup. And
I chose pumpkin soup in part because I having grown
up in Miami, Florida, where it's very warm, and then
having subsequently moved to very cold weather places, I was
always craving warmth and soup was the easiest way for
me to find that. And I love pumpkins part because
(04:36):
I love Halloween. So pumpkin soup three tablespoons of extra
virgin olive oil, fifty grams of butter, two cloves sliced scarlet,
twenty sage leaves, a two kilogram pumpkin, peeled, seated, cut
into large cubes. One potato, peeled and cubed, one red chili,
(05:00):
one liter of chicken stock, two tablespoons of grated parmesan
and one tablespoon of crim fresh. Heat the olive oil
and butter, Add garlic and sage and fry for five minutes.
Add the pumpkin and potato. Fry for one minute before
adding chili. Seasoning and season well with salt and pepper.
(05:23):
Poor enough stock to cover the pumpkin and bring to
a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for twenty minutes
until the pumpkin is tender. Strain half of the stock
from the pumpkin into a bowl and set aside. Pouring
what is left into a food processor pulse until the
mixture is very thick. Return the mixture to the pan
(05:47):
and add strained stock and stir. Serve with parmesan and
a drizzle of olive oil and crumb fresh on top.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Is this something you can imagine eating and cutting?
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Yes? In fact, I found myself getting hungry even though
I had a whole meal after reading this recipe. This
is wonderful.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Yeah. So if we begin at the beginning, this is
going to be a long, less conversation about life and
work and loneliness and happiness. Food. Tell me about your family,
were they are they from India came to London to England.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Yeah, my family's originally from India. My mother is from Bangalore,
a city in the south of India, and my father
is from a small farming village about two hours outside
of Bangalore, and they grew up in fairly modest households.
My mother's family was middle class. My father, though, came
from a poor farming community and his family did not
(06:42):
have much at all in the way of resources growing up.
After they got married, they moved to England and they
lived here for seven years, in London for some part
of that time, and then in other parts. They lived
in Leeds, They lived up north in Huddersfield, which is
actually where I was born, my sister was born. They
lived in Wales, Scotland, and then ultimately moved to Canada
(07:04):
and then eventually to the US.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Did they bring the food of India with them? They did.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
They've never They've never left the cuisine they grew up
with behind, and they not only cooked and sought out
that cuisine when they were in England, but even growing up.
The aromas that I remember as a child are of
the Indian food that my parents cooked at home.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
What was it like that. Do you remember they?
Speaker 2 (07:30):
You know, they had very different styles of cooking. So
my mother was a primary cook, but my father cooked
often and he brought great joy to cooking. So my
mother her the hallmark of her food were it was
simple but rich flavors. So she would only cook with
a few ingredients, but she would somehow make all of
them sing and people from the community would often come
(07:54):
and ask her, how did you make that? How do
I have the list of ingredients, but somehow I can't
get quite the same flavor out of it. And she
would always say to me that one of her secrets
was that was her intention when she cooked. She said
she would think of the love that she wanted the
food to represent, and the love she wanted to give
to the person who enjoyed the food, and she would
(08:16):
bring that into her mind and pour it into the food.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
That one of her ingredients.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Yes, love is one of her ingredients. And my father
was an incredibly creative cook. If my mother's a hallmark
was simplicity, his was complexity. So he had often many ingredients.
And if you ask my father, how did you make
that dish? Because it was so good, he'll have a
hard time telling you because he doesn't quite remember the proportions,
(08:41):
and this he doesn't measure. He just adds based on
his instinct. But so he's a creative cook, but an
an equally talented one.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
But did he cook on special occasions or did he
just cook every day?
Speaker 2 (08:52):
He did he when we were growing up, he would
cook on special occasions because he was he was working office.
He was a doctor, and he initially worked in emergency
rooms and in hospitals, then eventually set up his own clinic,
you know, in Miami in nineteen eighty five, when he
continues to work in until this day now alongside my sister,
(09:14):
who's also primary.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Doctors in the family.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Only three more than three three of us yet are
just three of us in the nuclear family. So we
say my mother has is essentially close to a doctor
herself because she she actually ran the medical practice that
my father worked, and she managed the whole operation, and
because there was a small shop, it was just the
two of them seeing patients. A lot of times the
patients would come and talk to her about what they
(09:38):
were going through, and over time she came to sort
of recognize various symptoms and be able to make diagnoses
on the side, so it was very interesting. But yeah, and.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
When you went to Miami, did you live within a
very Indian community or was.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
It When we first got there we didn't know many
people who were Indian. The Indian community was still small
were time is more, as any community grew, that became
an important part of our experience, But initially it wasn't
the case. And I think that's part of the reason
why I, uh, you know, I felt quite different as
a young person growing up. I didn't know a lot
(10:13):
of people in those early years who ate the food
that we ate, or had the customs that we had,
or had names that sounded like ours, and I often
felt like an outsider. And it's interesting. It's funny, you know,
how these early experiences stick with you. And I still
remember that feeling of what it felt like to be
an outsider and to not feel like you belong. And
it's why I have found that in years since, I'm
(10:35):
really sensitive to when other people feel like they're outsiders
because I felt that and it doesn't feel good.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
So did your sister experience that as well? She did? Yeah,
she did? Your parents and your parents did you? Did
your grandparents come with you at all? Did they.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
I wish they had. They did not. They They stayed
in India and and I missed them a lot because
when we were young, during holiday, during Christmas and Thanksgiving,
people would go away and spend time with extended family.
They would come back with these wonderful stories about their
grandparents and about how Grandma gave them this sir Grandpa
took them here. And I often wish that our grandparents
(11:13):
were closer. But they came to visit a few times
when we were younger, and I really treasured those times.
Did they cook, yes, well, my grandmother would cook. My
mother's mother and my father's mother had unfortunately passed away
when he was young, when he was ten, but his
father would actually cook as well because he had been
used to cooking for himself. And they all had their
(11:33):
own styles. But the one thing that was common among
all of them is there was a lot of joy
when they were in the kitchen. They were cooking from
a place of happiness. They knew they were going to
be bringing happiness to people with the food. It wasn't functional,
It wasn't ah. I just got a meal on the table.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
If you get the food.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Out, that's right. It was there's some real joy.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Do you think that is specific to Indian cooking that
is more of a group activity or good question?
Speaker 2 (12:00):
And I think other cuisines other cultures have that as well.
But I do worry that in modern living that we've
gotten away from a lot of that, and that food
preparation has become more functional than nurturing and therapeutic, and
that old community style of sitting together and both making
the food and consuming the food. I think there's I
(12:23):
think some of that got lost, perhaps just as life
structures change and in the interests of efficiency, or we
can just get food delivered, or we can pop something
in the microwave, and it does feel like it saves time.
But I think perhaps what may not have been as
as deeply appreciated was how much was lost in terms
of the community that's built. The relaxation also that comes
(12:43):
when you're working with your hands and creating something beautiful
in the form of food that others will enjoy.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
People often say to me, how can you cook for
one hundreds and fifty people and in the restaurant when
it's hard to give a dinner party at home for
twelve people, I can't do a dinner party for twelve
people at home. It's so much easier doing it in
a restaurant because you're collaborating, you know, you have you're cooking.
It is that thing of cooking with other people, sharing
(13:11):
a conversation, tasting each other's food, talking about what you're
going to do, and that community of working in a
restaurant is so nice.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
You know.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
I do, of course cook for twelve people at home,
but it can be very solitary just being in the
kitchen by yourself.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
It can be. Yeah, And that's where I think doing
it together, whether it's as family as friends, really makes
a difference. Some of my best memories growing up or
actually of all of us, my sister and I along
with both my parents actually cooking together. So when we
would have guests over, that was it was stressful at
times because we're going to get everything ready for the
(13:48):
guests in time, et cetera. But the fun part was
that we made things together. So one of my jobs
was to make the list of items that we were
going to cook that day, for sure going to shop
or but actually for cooking also like the dishes that
we were going to make, and then I would be
you know, a sous cheft for my mom, and then
she would help put things together. I would chop, I would,
(14:10):
you know, mix things together. I would watch things on
the stove and roast vegetables or other ingredients, and when
they were done, it was my job to check it
off in the list, and I had to ultimately make
sure that everything was checked off before the guests came.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
So preparation for pure life, maybe even to this day,
when I go home, if we're going to have people over,
my mother so she'll turn to me and say, make
the list, make the liv So I make the list.
It's interesting what you said also about your grandparents, because
people that we've talked to on the podcast, very often,
if especially they've come from another country, from Ghana to
(14:46):
London or from China to London, from wherever they've traveled,
they very often talk about their grandparents almost more than
their parents, because sometimes the mother adapts, you know, the
mother her cooking. The child only sometimes wants to eat
the food of the culture he's moved to, but the
grandmother clings to more to what you know or the grandfather,
(15:12):
I should say, from their country. Did your mother adapt
or did she only cook Indian food? Did she ever
make you hamburgers or meatballs and spaghetti or was all
the food of your home the food of India?
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Yeah, you know, my mother still to this day primarily
cooks Indian food, and almost exclusively, i would say, so
that is what we ate growing up. My father, on
the other hand, has he still makes a lot of
traditional Indian food, but he does a lot of creative
fusion food. So he has an Indian version of spaghetti
that he makes, and of other pastas well. I don't
(15:46):
know what he calls doesn't actually have a name, but
when you eat it, you taste all of these flavorful
Indian spices. And then he does other interesting things too,
Like he'll take jackfruit, which is I'm not sure if
you've had it or not, but it's a it's a
fruit that grows in the tropics. When it's ripe, it's
yellow and rubbery and very sweet. But in its raw
(16:06):
form it can actually be used for savory dishes and
it's quite tender. It can actually mimic a steak. So
he'll chop up, you know, raw jackfruit, and then he'll
drop it into the pasta, and so it almost tastes
like you're eating meat in the pasta, but it's all vegetables,
so he'll do all of these crazy creatives.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Yeah, both of them sound like great cooks.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
They are.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
How did they work all day and then come home?
And did you sit with your sister every night around
the table and your parents after a long day at school.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
We did. And the reason we did that was actually
because my parents were insistent and that we always have
dinner together every night. Sometimes, my sister and I as
kids growing up, we'd get annoyed, you know, we'd say, well,
you know, our friends get to like sit in front
of the TV during dinner time. Why can we do that?
Or you know, why don't you guys have dinner. We're
busy doing something, you know, we're reading this book. Well,
we'll have dinner later. But they were always insistent that
(16:59):
we have to eat together, so much so that when
I was in high school, Ruthie, and when we you know,
sometimes we had a lot of homework and I was
in the middle of like writing an essay and I
didn't want to stop exactly when dinner time was, and
they would just they would just wait for us. And
I still feel guilty, and soone embarrassed to say this,
but like, I still remember many nights in high school
where I was like stressed about an exam and I
(17:20):
was late studying and I didn't feel could quite break
and they would stay up and just wait until and
we would eat at nine or nine thirty or ten
o'clock at night, but they would just wait because they
wanted to have dinner together. I still can't believe I
made them wait that long.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
So I probably didn't mind. I think I can imagine
waiting for my children to finish. I think you know
they probably So was your sister as well, would you?
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Study?
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Yeah, And we were in the same grade growing up,
so we thankfully had a lot of those same assignments
and everything.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
So but yeah, did you go to friends' homes for dinner?
Did you go to other people's houses for dinner?
Speaker 2 (17:53):
We did. Yes, we went to other people's homes. And
and that was always a real source of joy because
it was it was always a family affair, and it
was always always very informal. So it wasn't that there
was a big long table and everyone would sit together
around that table. Usually there was food that was made.
People would often bring food almost public style, all the
(18:14):
dishes would be laid out on a table and everyone
would just noisily, messily gravel plate, you know, put food
on it, and then go to various parts of the
house in small groups and this and that. And as
kids we were, you know, we would just all hang
out in a room together and eat and play and
it was fun. I really enjoyed it. It was community,
it was food, it was entertainment.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Very evocative, very beautiful description of this life at home.
Did that it was at a big break then when
you went off to university, when you went to Harvard,
was a shock to the system that suddenly, yeah, you
were away from that.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
It was it was a shock. It was actually extremely
hard for me, and I struggled a lot, especially during
my first semester away. I felt really I felt just
really disconnected and being a shy, introverted kid, I had
(19:08):
a hard time just making friends off the bat, you know.
It took me a while to get to know people,
and so that was it was very hard. I remember
coming home at the for the first time after enrolling
in college during Christmas break and I had my suitcase
in my hand. The door opened, I stepped in, I
put my bags down, I looked up at the ceiling
(19:31):
of the house in which I had grown up, took
a deep breath, and I said to my father, I
feel like I've just been released from prison. And I
had almost forgotten that I had said that until a
few years ago. He reminded me, and if I brought
back this flood of emotions of what it had felt
like to be just separated from this love that had
(19:51):
nurtured me for so long. And things got a bit
better after that, as I was able to make friends
and build a community. But some years after, when I
was in my residency training in my first year, when
I was working, you know, abob eighty ninety hundred hours
a week, but seeing and working with patients who are
going through some of the most difficult moments of their life,
(20:14):
including people who are my age, you know, at that time,
young people in their twenties who were dealing with metasatic
cancer and only had a few months to live. I
started reflecting them and thought to myself, I never want
to lose my connection to my family. I want to
make sure that every time moment that I have that
I'm spending it with family and friends. You know, whether
(20:35):
that's vacation time, weekend time. I was like, I want
to make that a priority. So after that, I started
going home much more often to see my parents and
to spend time with them, even if it was just
for a weekend. You know, it was worth it because
I always remember those patients I cared for, those young patients,
and it just reminds me that we never We all
don't know how much time we have, and I want
(20:56):
to make sure I'm spending that time with the people
the time I have with the people that I love.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
Did you know The River Cafe has a shop. It's
full of our favorite foods and designs. We have cookbooks,
linen napkins, kitchen ware, toad bags with our signatures, glasses
from Venice, chocolates from Urin. You can find us right
next door to The River Cafe in London or online
at Shopthrivercafe dot co dot uk. When you were growing up,
(21:34):
you describe always eating at home and cooking at home
in the community of a home. But would you go
to restaurants in Miami?
Speaker 2 (21:43):
Would that be a we would from time to time.
It's interesting that I do. I remember that my parents
because they liked spicy food in particular and some stories
I can tell you about spice and my father and
the crazy he made some special yes he makes He
makes a series of different hot sauces from different types
(22:06):
of peppers, including some are from habanero peppers, some are
from special Jamaican hot peppers, some are from ghost peppers.
He's like extremely spicy, saw so much so that when
he makes them, we all have to leave the house.
When he makes the sauce these, we have to step
outside because and he wears something that's equivalent to a
(22:26):
gas mask when he makes it, because the fumes a
is so incredibly overpowering. But once he's made it and
put it in a bottle, you add a little bit
to your food. It tastes incredible as long as you
can tolerate the spice. So but you know, and I
generally I eat a lot of spice, but that level
of spice is even hard for me to tolerate.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Would he find a restaurant that could serve him the equivalent.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
So we would always be in the lookout for them,
And so I remember many times going to Chinese restaurants,
for example, and he would ask them like can you
make it spicy? And there was always a cadence of
this conversation. First question, can you make it spicy? They
would say yes, Second question, how spicy can you make it?
They would say, well, we have a five star scale
and we can make it one to five. Then the
third question would say can you make seven stars? Can
(23:13):
you do get six? And then they would get scared
because they didn't want something to happen against you. But
then he would go through trying to convince him that
he really could take this spice. So generally when we
went out to eat, it was often in restaurants where
they hope people could make the food spicy. Chinese restaurants,
Thai restaurants, yeah, you know, food cuisines of that sort.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
And when you were in university, did you what was
the food like? There was that a shock as well,
just sitting down to the kind of food they serve
at school.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Did you go out it was? I actually lost a
lot of weight in college. You know, I think I'm
a fairly normal weight now, but I actually, if you
can picture this, I weighed forty pounds less when I
was in college.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Did anybody notice, I mean, did anybody notice that there
was a student in his freshman year home, sick, losing
weight and lonely. Do you think was there any.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
You know, no one ever asked me that question. I
outside of my family, I don't think anyone noticed, you know.
And but it was painful to my family. See, they
were there, clearly knew something was wrong. I wasn't feeling happy,
et cetera. But yeah, what I used to do is
because I missed the food of home. Also is I
had a little packet of spicy powder that I would
(24:27):
take with me to the dining hall and I would
sprinkle it on everything, anything and everything you'd fine, I
would just like spice it up. And so even people
who didn't know me knew that I was I was
a kid with a spicy powder, you know who.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
I have a friend who travels with chili's. Yeah, she
always travels with some chili that she can put on
yeah food. I don't know whether she's afraid of having
inconsequential food or whether she just loves it with spicy,
but she Well.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
I learned that actually from my parents, because when we
would go out to restaurants I couldn't make food spicy.
Sometimes they'd be really disappointed. So they would always have
their own like powder that they would add it. I
remember a few times going out at that time. As kids,
we loved pizza and we wanted to eat pizza, and
we didn't make pizza at home, but we alwys wanted
to go to Pizza Hut or something, so sometimes it
would be grudgingly go and they would dutifully bring the
(25:13):
spicy powder and sprinkle it all over the pizza so
that they looked like red pizza.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
You know, you in Harvard and Boston and Cambridge, did
you have lobsters or did you try the local food
from from the cave?
Speaker 2 (25:25):
I had some of the local some of the Italian
food I had in the North End.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Was that a revelation or had you had at Miami?
It was?
Speaker 2 (25:32):
It was much better in the North End. I think
the limited past side I had in Miami was it
wasn't as authentic, you know, as what the North Ends was.
So that was that was quite quite extraordinary. And then
the pastries also, like the Italian pastries, were just incredible.
I had never had anything like that before.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
I don't know. Indian desserts are they quite based? Am
I saying that right? So?
Speaker 2 (25:54):
Some of them are are dairy based, yeah, and a
lot of them are not. The Indian sweets tend to
be tend to be quite rich, you know, and also
quite sweet as well, which is why some people love them.
Some people really don't like them.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
Do you like them?
Speaker 3 (26:08):
I do?
Speaker 2 (26:08):
I mean, look, I have like thirty two sweet teeth,
so I have. I just love a love desserts, which
is part of the reason I try to eat them
very sparingly, because otherwise I would just eat dessert all
day long. But I used to when I was growing up,
I would I learned to make one of the sweets
in particular that became.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
So it was.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
It goes by different names, but in our family we
called it Ksey bath, and it's also called sheeta and
other parts of India. But it's a very it's sort
of my mom's type of dessert. It's very simple in
terms of the ingredients and involved. Basically, what you do
is you take a pen, you put let's say two
cups of cream of wheat, you know, and or something
(26:45):
equivalent to that. You roast that with some clarified butter
or ghee, and you put some raisins in there to
roast as well, So you're roasting that for a while
until you start to smell like the wheat, you know,
sort of aroma come to your nose, and once it's
slightly brown. Then which you do is that you actually
add You can add a couple of things. You can
start by adding a little bit of sugar, right about
(27:05):
a quarter a cup or a half cup of sugar,
just to you start to see a glisten in the
sugar melt. And then what I used to do is
I would actually slice bananas and add them to it
as well. And then you crush cardamom, you know, with
the morning pestle, and then you sprinkle the cardameom on top,
and then you mix it all together and then let
the water evaporate until you have something that's very silky smooth,
(27:26):
and you just the combination of the sugar, the fruit
and the cardamom just really brings the dessert to life.
So I used to make that, you know, when I
was growing up. Yeah, I just made it a couple
of weeks ago.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
From my kids, it seemed very like recent, was the
way you were describing it. Was it something that's just
always stayed in your mind.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
It's always set in my head, Like I made it
two weeks ago for the first time in probably ten years,
and it brought back all these wonderful memories.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
Yeah, do you cook at home now?
Speaker 3 (27:55):
Now?
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Very little, you know, which I regret. I used to
cook a fair amount up until I finished my medical
training and then and then it just sort of fell off.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
I did you put when you were doing your medical education?
Speaker 3 (28:09):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (28:10):
Did you have a family then or you? I did,
so put everything into into your studies.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
Yeah. I got married later in life, when I was
thirty eight years old. In fact, I got married and
then now I have two wonderful kids. But in those days,
I was a bachelor doing my own thing in the kitchen.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
What did you study in medicine? What was your specialty?
Speaker 2 (28:29):
So I ended up studying internal medicine, which is the
care of adults, and I ended up specializing in hospital
based medicine. So when people were admitted to them, if
there's sick enough to be admitted to the hospital, then
I was the doctor who would take care of them there.
So that's that's the And yeah, I was grueling.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
Would you would you be working?
Speaker 3 (28:47):
They were long?
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Again, I'm thinking about how you did you Did you
manage to cook? You said, you did cook when you
were I.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Did cook, yeah, but it wasn't I mean I had
to like cook a bunch of food and then like
eat it over several days because they were and sometimes
you would come home at three in the morning, and
then you'd have to leave two hours later, five in
the morning to go and start the next days around.
So there wasn't a lot of time to cook. So
I would try to cook in advance, you know, and
have some food, but sometimes it wasn't easy, and so
I ended up having to eat out or eat in
(29:15):
the hospital cafeteria a lot, which was we could talk
about hospital food.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
Yeah, that is such an issue now. The way we
feed our children and the way we feed sick people
in our society, I think tells us about how we
care for people.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
No, I think it's very astutely said, and I think
you're right. I think one thing, if you look at
the list of medicines that we prescribe, there's one thing
that's missing from that list, and it's food, right, because
food is medicine, and food helps us heal in many
direct and indirect ways. Yet somehow it does feel that
the food we give people in hospitals and the food
(29:53):
that we even give kids in school. I think about
the cafeteria, you know, in my school growing up, and
like what we used to eat eat, and it's not
the kind of I think food we would want to
give children and get people who are ill if we
fully understood just how powerful food is in healing and
how vital it is for our well being in sustenance.
(30:13):
And I do worry that what has happened in part
over the years is that we've allowed and i'm you know,
my primary experiences with the United States, but I do
think sadly this is happening in many other parts of
the modernized world. I do think we've allowed our food
supplied to become poisoned in a sense by foods that
are overly processed and that are filled with excessive amounts
(30:34):
of salt and sugar, and we've gotten away from, I think,
some of the healthier food that we that we all need.
And it starts really early, you know. I think if
children had the opportunity to experience healthy food, I mean
for only, I think it would make a big difference.
And I do believe, just from a moral perspective, that
(30:54):
no child should ever have to go hungry. No child
should ever have to eat food that is bad for
them just to survive. Yet that is a reality that
so many families are living right now. And I do
think it comes from just a failure from a policy
perspective to understand the vital importance of healthy food in
(31:16):
raising our children and making sure that society is healthy
and whole.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
And its interesting to think of how that happened and
when that happened, you know, the path to not being
concerned about feeding our children.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
I think that the paradox is that we've somehow made
unhealthy food cheap and made healthy food expensive, which has
put health out of the reach of so many people
in society. And that is what we have to flip
because if we don't do that, then I worry that
this rise in chronic illness that we're seeing, heart disease, diabetes, cancer,
(31:51):
significant amount of which is driven by diet, that we
will see those trends continue unless we manage to get
back to the root of what's driving it, which is
in large part our diet.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
And so you're going from describing being the person that
people met in hospital and working with patients, and how
did that segue from that until how do you become
a surgeon general? You know, people who are listening who
might not know whether the two words surgeon general comes from,
can you.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
Tell us absolutely? Well? In the United States, the position
of surgeon General is designated to be an individual who's
sometimes informally called the nation's doctor, but whose responsibility is twofold.
And one is to make sure that the public has
the best possible information about health so that they can
make good decisions for themselves and their families. And the
(32:41):
second is to oversee one of our eight uniformed services
in the US government, which is called a US Public
Health Service Commission Corps. People are familiar with the Army,
the Navy, the Air Force. Well, one of our services
is the Public Health Service as well, and we focus
entirely on protecting the health of people, not just in
the United States, but also extending that mission outside the
(33:03):
US as well. So those are the responsibilities I have
as surgeon general.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
And how did you go from being a doctor in
a hospital to being the surgeon general?
Speaker 2 (33:12):
Well, you know, I don't entirely know, to be honest
with you, and I'll tell you how it happened. But
after I finished my medical training, I was teaching at
a hospital, I was practicing medicine and caring for patients.
I was doing that for a good chunk of my time.
And then on the side, I was actually building a
technology company that I hope would help to accelerate medical
research to help bring treatments and cures to people more effectively.
(33:37):
And I had gotten involved probably in two thousand and seven,
two thousand and eight, I think around that timeframe, also
in health policy work. So I was doing that hodgepodge
of things like that you know, at the time, but
never actually thought of working in government. But then one
day I happened to be, you know, actually picking up
my dry cleaning that day from the dry cleaners, and
(33:57):
my hands were full, and my phone rank and it
was a two two area code, which is the Washington DC.
I lived in Boston at the time, and I didn't
recognize the number, so I didn't pick it up. But
then finally I decided, let me just take the number,
and that happened to be a call from the White
House at that time, asking if I'd be interested in
being considered for this position. And what I came to
understand later is that the President Obama and his team,
(34:20):
we're looking to modernize the Office of the Surgeon General.
They recognized this was a new age that we were
coming into where people receive their information differently, they learned
about health issues differently, and there's a whole new dimension
of health threats that we were facing, including the opiate
epidemic and the fentanyl crisis. So anyway, they seemed to
think that I might be a good fit for that role,
(34:41):
so they reached out at that time, and that's how
the whole journey began.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
When you had that break between the Surgeon General with
President Obama and then now your position with President Biden,
tell me what did you do and how did that
lead to your interest in loneliness.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
Well, to be honest with you, Ruthie, I was quite
lost in the beginning. And I know, I was coming
off of serving as Surgeon General for about two and
a half years or so, and my identity had become
wrapped up in that role, and I was abruptly as
civilian again and trying to figure out a bunch of questions.
(35:28):
And one of the things I was struggling with in
the process was that I had really lost any sense
of community during those few years that I served in government,
I had largely, you know, I sort of told myself,
I think, a familiar story that many people tell themselves
perhaps when they have jobs for a short period of time,
which is, I got to put everything I have into
this job, and I'll have time to do the right
(35:50):
catch up with life afterward. And as a result, I
had not caught up with friends. I had not kept
up with even family members at times, and when I
was with my parents or my wife or you know,
my sister, I was distracted often, you know, I was
going through my inbox, trying to clear out messages, keeping
up with the news that was relevant to my work,
and that just led to this real profound sense of
(36:12):
isolation and loneliness when I came out, and so I
struggled with that for quite a bit of time. And
in the process, one of the things that I was
digging into was recognizing that that experience of loneliness that
I was having, that it wasn't unique to me. I
was like reflecting more and more on conversations I had
had even when I was in office. The social connection
(36:33):
that I was missing and that I found was missing
for so many others, was not just a good feeling.
It was actually something that was really vital to our
physical health and our mental health, and it's why, well, ultimately,
when I wrote about loneliness, it was about that profound
health impact around the recognition that when we struggle with
being disconnected from one another, that actually has an impact
(36:54):
on our mortality. And the mortality impact actually of loneliness
and isolation are similar to the mortality impact we see
it's smoking, and even greater than that which we see
with obesity. So this is a real issue, but it's
also one that's deeply felt, and I certainly felt it
a lot during that time. So coming back the second
time to serve felt very different than the first time,
(37:16):
in part because the country in the world was in
a very different place with COVID, but also because I
realized I really wanted to focus in on this deeper
mental health crisis that was running under the surface and
that was impacting so much of our lives, and that
was particularly impacting kids with rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide.
That we're all going in the wrong direction. And so
(37:37):
that has been really where I have focused much of
my time these last three years is on addressing loneliness
understanding the deeper roots of this mental health crisis, and
thinking about and honesty in a very personal context, not
just in terms of me, butters of my own kids.
You know, my kids are now six and seven, and
I want them to grow up in a world where
(37:57):
they feel happy they don't, where they feel connected to
other people, where they feel connected to other cultures. And
I want them to know that if they mess up
or do something wrong, that there are people who will
forgive them and wh will lift them up. And I
want to know that they will do that for other
people as well. But that means creating a world that's
(38:19):
more kind and compassionate, more forgiving and understanding, more connected
and invested in one another. But that's ultimately I think
the work that I feel is really essential for us
to do.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
Now, would you also add trust to that? If you
have trust, then you trust that there will be that
support system or that people are not there to do
you harm that you then might accept more.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
Yes, that is the right word. Trust.
Speaker 1 (38:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
And the thing is trust Trust can't be manufactured, and
it also doesn't come about overnight. It comes through relationship, right.
It's like when we get to know people and understand them,
then we come to try us them. And when we
trust people, we can also tolerate disagreement because we recognize
that that we're more than our opinion on a single issue, right,
(39:10):
that there's something deeper that binds us together, some common
hopes and dreams or shared humanity. But when that gets lost,
when we can't see each other as human beings, but
we only see each other as posts that that we
write on social media, or as positions on a particular
controversial issue, then it becomes very hard to build trust.
It becomes hard then to move together in the face
(39:31):
of adversity. And that's why a key part of not
just preparing for better health, but also preparing for the
next pandemic has to involve rebuilding our ties with one
another and the trust that we have in society.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
One of my favorite stories is of they were looking
into a happy community and happiness factors, and it was
this town in Denmark, and they interviewed people about why
they were happy, and it was to do with trust.
And they told the story about Danish woman who had
what I remember, had taken her baby to New York
(40:04):
and she went inside to made my Balthazar. One of
the you know, cafes there and left the baby outside
in a pram and she went in to eat because
that's what she would do in her town in Denmark.
You know, she thought that actually that's what they would do,
they would leave the baby outside. You know, she was
(40:25):
able to watch it. And she was arrested for you know,
being whatever you call irresponsible towards an infant because she'd
left a baby outside, you know. But that was to
do with trust. And I think that what you're doing
is so you know, was so inspiring and so important,
and you are actually in a position to make change.
People were saying in the River Cafe, thank you, So
(40:47):
as an American, I would add myself to those thanks
and to ask you, as our last question, if food
is something that helps loneliness, If food is the way
you cook for your own children and the experience of
taking them places. Food is also comfort, So what would
be your comfort food search in general?
Speaker 2 (41:10):
My comfort food, well, there is a it's something my
mother makes and it's a particular dish. It's almost like
a spicy broth water that's called russam r a s
a M. And traditionally you would mix it with rice
(41:30):
to eat it, and it's beautiful, spicy, flavorful as curry
leaves in it, as pepper, has all kinds of spices
and very ripe tomatoes. But you can also pour it
in a cup and drink it. And when I do that,
I feel like it's almost like an elixir that I'm having.
It sort of fills me with warmth literally, but also
(41:53):
with these beautiful memories I have of my mother. You know,
I had a professor once who said to me, he said, lo,
He said, food is the calories you put in your body.
Food is the love your mother gave you as a child.
And I have thought about that so often because that's
where to me makes comfort food. Comfort food. It's the
food that reminds me of love. Thank you, Thank you
(42:14):
so much, Ruddy.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
You'll see you again very soon.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
I hope, so I as well have this love.
Speaker 1 (42:23):
Thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table for in partnership
with Montclair.
Speaker 3 (42:36):
Ruthie's Table four is produced by Atamei Studios for iHeartRadio.
It's hosted by Ruthie Rogers, and it's produced by William Lensky.
This episode was edited by Julia Johnson and mixed by
Nigel Appleton. Our executive producers are Faye Stewart and Zad Rogers.
Our production manager is Caitlin Paramore and our production coordinator
(42:56):
is Bella Cellini. Thank you to everyone at The River
Cafe for your help in making this episode.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
Mm hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm mhm
Host
Ruth Rogers
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