April 10, 2025 • 47 mins
Today, Samuel joins Betsy to talk about his debut novel, The Death and Life of August Sweeney. This captivating story took five years to bring to life and is deeply rooted in immersive research. Samuel shares how he worked in Michelin-starred kitchens and spent years studying clinical pathology, even assisting with autopsies, to bring authenticity to his characters.
The book follows August Sweeney, a larger-than-life celebrity chef who insists on being autopsied by a specific pathologist, Dr. Maya Zhu. In their conversation, Betsy and Samuel explore the intense world of high-end kitchens, the stress that especially affects women in the culinary and medical fields, and what Dr. Zhu uncovers—not just about August’s body, but also about herself.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, everyone, this is Betsy Worzel, your host of Chatting
with Betsy, my passionate World Talk Radio, a subsidiary of
Global Media Network LLC. When rare mantras to educate and
lighten and entertain, the views of the guest may not
represent those of the station.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
So I'm always excited when I do my show, and
today is no exception.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
I have with me today Samuel Ashworth, who is author
and writer of the incredible, fantastic book The Death and
Life of August Sweeney, a novel. Stanuel Ashworth is a
professor of creative writing at George Washington University. When a
(00:45):
former columnist at The Rumpist, he has don fiction and
non fiction articles and many magazines. He's a native New Yorker,
a two time ghostwriter. This is his first novel, and
I must say my own opinion, how fortunate are the
students that get to have you, Samiel Ashward as a professor.
(01:10):
So I want to welcome you to Chatting with Betsy.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Welcome, Staniel, Thank you so much for having me on.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Oh you are welcome. My pleasure.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
When I had to tell you, Stan, when I received
the press release of your book, I was so excited.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
This is up my alley.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
I liked food shows, I love blood and guts.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Always been a little a cob.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
I never did see an autopsy. I always wanted to,
but to get to see some operations, and I always liked,
you know, blood and guts. And I just thank you
for writing this book. How did you come up with
this amazing story?
Speaker 3 (02:05):
So it kind of came all at once. It started
with a question, and a question that sort of fell
out of my mouth. It was like, I don't know,
about ten twelve years ago, I was bartending in Boston
and I was sitting at a sister bar with a colleague,
and she started telling me about this book called Stiff
(02:26):
by Mary Roach, The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, an
incredible book. I'd never heard of it. And as she
started talking, I heard myself say, well, what if you
could tell a person's life story through the dissection of
(02:47):
their body. This just kind of came out of my mouth,
and then I stared off in the middle distance for
a few minutes. She was like waving her hand in
front of my face because in that moment I realized
I'd said something that I had never heard of anyone
(03:08):
doing before, and suddenly I realized I was also the
one to do it, and in that moment, the whole
book sort of came together, not the particulars, not the
characters or the plot, but the why, the idea that
you could learn to see the life left in the
(03:32):
body after the person inside has left the building, and
that was the guiding light for the whole project, so
I started writing it. I went down to visit the
gross anatomy lab that a friend was in because she
was doing her first year medical school, and I got
(03:56):
very hungry in that lab walking around there's forty cadavers,
and gross anatomy is the first class that you do
in medical school, right, It's how you learn what the
body is, how it works. And you walk into the
room there's forty bodies and various states of dissection, and
(04:19):
my reaction I'd never really seen a dead body before,
and so I didn't know how I was going to
handle it. And it turned out that I got really hungry,
really really hungry, like the kind of hunger that won't
let you go. And it turns out and I've done
(04:40):
I've done some interviews with doctors of medical school since then,
and it turns out this is a very common reaction.
And once I knew that, then I knew exactly who
the body on the table had to be. It had
to be a cook's because whatever this relationship between food
(05:00):
and death, between meat and the human body was, that
was enough to sustain a book like this, And so
that's where it began.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Well, I I couldn't put the book down. I was fascinated,
and I.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Loved how you went from you know, the main characters,
August Sweeney and the medical examiner doctor Maya pronounced named.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Zoo zoo Very. I mean, it was just to me,
it was so intense.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
There's a lot of research you did. How long did
it take you to research for this book? I mean,
because you said some intense the research twelve five years.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
I mean it gone and off. I didn't. I didn't
go into this planning to devote myself to research. But
I've always sort of approached writing the way that an
actor approaches roles. I've always been jealous of actors only
(06:14):
in that they get to go and do things like
learned sensing and like an eight week intensive and again
Olympian to teach them right, or they could you know, trick,
horseback riding, or piano or Daniel d Lewis learned to
sew an entire couture gown for his wife for a
phantom threat. That kind of immersion I've always envied and
(06:38):
I thought was a great approach for fiction too. I
have a very stable marriage, I have a lovely home life.
I have a great relationship with my parents, And which
is all to say, I am a very boring person. Emotional,
I am not. I do not have a fascinating or
compelling life or history of trauma. And that's not to
(07:01):
say that you need those things to create great and
into mid trauma. But for me, I like writing about work.
I am interested in the jobs that people do, especially
the jobs that most of us, or at least me,
can't really imagine ever becoming a routine. And for this
(07:23):
book I had to do actually way more research than
I ever thought possible, and it's a miracle that had
happened at all. I had always worked in restaurants. I
knew I was going to have to learn how to
do two things. I was going to have to learn
how to be a medical student and I was going
to learn have to learn how to be a cook,
a professional cook. What I didn't realize was that I
(07:45):
wasn't going to have to be a med student. I
was going to have to be a full blown doctor.
And I wasn't going to be a cook. I was
going to be a globally famous celebrity chef. Now I'm
obviously neither of those things in my real life, but
I have to, you know, play one in the book.
So I got very lucky in twenty seventeen, which is
really when this book got started. I'd had the idea
(08:07):
years before and tabled it. Sort of two things happened. First,
I realized that making my medical student wasn't going to work.
She wouldn't have the knowledge that I needed her to have.
She is a savant for bodies. She's laceratingly intelligent, and
(08:29):
her job is to read the body the way you
and I read a text. And the basic plot of
the book, to clarify things, is that one night on
the line, to no one's surprised, August Sweeney, who is
a very famous chef who fell into disgrace, dies in
(08:53):
full view of everybody, and it falls to this doctor
Maya Ju to perform his autopsy. What she doesn't know
is that August specifically required that she be the one
to do it. She doesn't know who he is, and
she doesn't know why. So the book unites fifty years
(09:16):
of August's life with one day in hers. And I
think that's why you had that reaction in not really
being able to stop reading it, because it's constantly pinballing
back and forth between their lives. Yes, So once I
knew that she had to be a doctor, I had
to go learn how to actually do that. And I
(09:36):
got very, very lucky because in the summer twenty seventeen,
a friend of mine was doing his residency in pathology
at a hospital in Pittsburgh, and pathologists have to do
autopsies in order to get certified that they're the people
who perform autopsies typically, and he happened to be working
for the only doctor in America just about who would
have led a grad student and journalist into his life.
(10:01):
So I went to Pittsburgh and I spent two weeks
assisting with autopsies. Whatever came in, that's what we had
to work with. And the main rule was I couldn't
touch sharp objects, which was really for my benefit. That
same summer, I also went to be a prep cook
(10:24):
in a Michelin start kitchen. And when I say prep cook,
emphasis is on the prep. There wasn't a lot of
cook That meant learning how to stand there for three
hours and pluck cilantro leaves from their stems, or clean
hundreds of squid or filet and de bone fish, and
(10:48):
really learn the physicality of working in a professional kitchen,
because I alway's working in restaurants, but always in the
front of house. So those two things together really alchemized
into the story that this book tells. But I couldn't
have done it otherwise.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
A Tayak.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Sam, I have come to such an appreciation since doing
my podcast of you know, picking up a book of
what that writer did to.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
Write that book.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
The research and your book, I mean, the research that
you've done just you know, shines through. It is so intense.
I said, Wow, this is your first I'm thinking to
myself as I'm reading this, this is your first novel.
This is amazing. I mean, just so detailed. Like I
(11:49):
thought that I was in the kitchen with August. I
thought that I was there when he's cleaning up guts
and animals, and I thought that I was in.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
The the.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Lab with Maya the pathologist, I said, medical examiner before
a pathologist, and being there as she is describing his
body parts and what you know the situation is with
each part and it's just so intense and how you
(12:25):
know he's just this bigger than life character.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Can you explain to the audience in case people don't
know what a Michelin restaurant is?
Speaker 3 (12:34):
Sure, the Michelin Guide is the sort of well, it's
made by the tire company Michelin Guide, Michell and Tyres.
They're the same thing. Many decades ago. I don't exactly
know when it got started, probably around the twenties or
thirties and trance. The Michell entire company started putting out
(12:58):
a book for drivers in which they highlighted local restaurants
along roads because people were starting to dry the road
trip was a new concept, so by highlighting these restaurants,
it kind of gave people a new map of eating
(13:22):
around France, which meant in turn that they would drive more,
which meant in turn that they would use Mitchel entires
and they set up a star system. I don't know
when the star system came into play, but it's out
of three stars, one star is something that a lot
of chefs will work their entire lives to get. One
(13:44):
star means that it is a genuinely exceptional restaurant. Two
stars is great, and these are very very very precise
and stingy, and they send inspectors all over the place.
The inspectors are always anonymous. They're on the road most
(14:08):
of every year. Three Stars designates a restaurant that is,
in their words, worth a special trip, like you get
in your car with your Michelin tires and you drive
to that three star restaurant five hours away. There are
only a handful of these scattered around the world, and
there is also there's now a designation that Michelin does
(14:31):
called a bib Gourmont, which is for a less expensive
restaurant that's still extremely high quality. So people spend their
whole lives in fine dining chasing Michelin Stars. They only
came to America about twenty years ago. They only dained
to enter the American market somewhere around two thousand and
two thousand and three. Well, so that's how the Micheline
(14:54):
system works. But they also, and this is important, they
also protect what they believe find dining to be there
are certain things that you must do in order to
achieve these stars. One of these is, in a two
star restaurant, the diner should never refill his or her
own water class God forbid, right. The service has to
(15:17):
be so attentive that if that water glass tips a
little bit, the server will do it. So it's very fastidious,
it's very controlling, and it it's exceptionally influential even now.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Well, thank you for explaining.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
I was wondering if it had a mitchellan that had
to do with the tire company.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
So thank you.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
It really does explaining that.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
When I was reading your book, it threw me back
to when I was growing up, and I'm aging myself
here when I used to watch Julia Child and the
Galloping Gourmet.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
A Grandma Kerr and I.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Really would enjoy watching that, And then I used to
watch I think that show is Top Chef. I enjoy
watching that show. And people don't realize that unless you've
worked in the industry. I never worked in a restaurant
(16:21):
at McDonald's for two weeks, but I did take commercial
foods in high school.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
And it's a tough job. I mean, it is just tough.
You have to do all that, you know, prepping and
all the things that go on.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Behind the kitchen for your food to come out. It's
it's just really a very high pressure job. I think
it takes a certain type of personality to thrive in
that high pressure environment.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
It absolutely does, and that's I needed to create someone
who would in August. And what's important to know about
August is that he's an immense man. He's like sixty
nine four hundred pounds. He's he creates his own gravity
and brings people into his orbit, and that's part of
his appeal. He's the best time you've ever had. But
(17:19):
what you say is fascinating. You mentioned Juliet Child and
Top Chef, and Juliet Child is actually in the book,
as are a lot of major figures from the culinary world,
because I wanted this book to be set in our world.
In my world, right, Mario Batali is in there, Emerald
Anthony Bourdain, they sort of glance off. Yeah, pot Malashamie
(17:41):
from Top Chef is actually a key character at one point.
And I don't know that if you know this, but
Tom Calichio read the book early on. I didn't know him.
I knew someone who knew him, and I never really
expected to get anywhere with this, but he read it
and he loved it, and he wound up doing the
launch event with me when it came out, and I
(18:04):
had never met the man that night, and I was
very nervous because I've been watching Top Chef pretty religiously
for twenty years. I love that show, and he was
a He was a dream. But I was very nervous
about him reading it because the book is about his world.
August doesn't just become a great chef, he becomes a
(18:24):
celebrity chef. He is part of the beginning of the
Food Network, and he just grows. And so what I
really liked was that at the bookstore event we did together,
he said that August Sweeney was the first thing he'd
(18:45):
ever read or seen about the restaurant industry that didn't
make him cringe once. That it's that accurate. I needed
it to be accurate. I needed it to be true
to life without overly glorifying things. But I also needed
it as much fun as I could possibly make it.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Yeah, I mean, your book contains and so much. I
want to give book away because I want people to
read it, but well, I guess Sweeney in more ways
than one. It is bigger than life. He's just and
people were drawn to him. And I love the you know,
the stories of him, you know from New York and
(19:25):
all the different characters that he comes across and with
the Mob and just.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
You know, meeting so many different types of people.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
And he's drawn to the one co worker, which the
name just went right out of my head, and he
kind of took him under his wing.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
Yeah How he had Yeah How? And I named him
How because August has always been false fast right, the
great drunken gourmet character from Shakespeare, who's also he's the
most engaging villain there is, and he is the he's
(20:12):
like the father figure to Prince Hal who will be
King of England, and then Hal eventually betrays him. So
I needed a how. Well. I'm not giving too much away,
but How is a very important character to August. But
these are two people who don't let others into their
lives much, and that's part of what the arc of
(20:34):
the book is about.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
It is such a good bug. I have to tell
you something funny, Sam.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Yes, my husband, my husband Matt, was very old fashioned chavinistic.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
I guess you could say.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
And they told that our son, Josh, cooking is woman's work,
she told Gosh, And I said, no, it's not.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Because some of your best Jeffer men, it's always been
a male dominated of the.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Old women are just now getting into it because it's
very demanding, long hours, being on your feet. And so
I said, that is that's not true.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
Well, it's interesting you mentioned that. Actually, it's not just
the long hours, right, it's not just the physicality of
the work. It's because of the attitude that you're describing
there first. And this is something I had to really
reckon with in the book. And this is something that
I'm proud of in the book that we America only
got interested in actual cooking about twenty five years ago.
(21:49):
Prior to that, there were fancy restaurants here and there,
and they were almost so with French and you go
there for the special occasions. But this was not a
like a gastronomic culture. This was not a cuisine oriented country.
And then people like you know, Julia Child does her best,
but that's still home cooking. Fundamentally, restaurants really become this
(22:15):
extraordinary thing in America starting around two thousands, and then
there were there were you know, there were great chests
before that here, but really it takes off in the
last twenty five years. But with that comes a lot
of those chefs back in the day are French trained,
so they're trained in this brigade system, this absolutely patriarchal, chauvinistic, brutal,
(22:42):
militaristic way of training chefs, and that it's you either
either you survive it or you break. Those are the options.
And me, when I went into the kitchen, I broke
real fast. And that meant that anybody who didn't fit
that classical mode of the really intense, often abusive male
(23:08):
chef would just get purged out of the system. You
would lose any interest in doing it. And that happened
to a lot of women. And the women who did
come through it, we had to conform to that standard.
If maybe the most famous depiction of this is in
rat Tattooy where the woman who is in the kitchen
(23:30):
in the Pixar movie Ratattoo, she is knife wielding, dangerous, brilliant.
Hadn't talked about how she has to be twice as
good as everybody else, and so that mindset was so
ubiquitous in cooking, right that's how we get people like
Gordon Ramsay making multiple television shows about how he can
(23:53):
solve people's problems by screaming at them enough. And as
I was finishing this book, we realized, we started to
realize what damage that had done, how stupid an approach
that was. And I was finishing this book as the
me too movement was ripping through the culinary world. I
(24:15):
actually I have a friend named Hannah Sellinger whose book
came out last week called Cellar Rat, which is all
about her experience in that world and all the stuff
that got swept under the table. And so as I
was writing the book, I knew that whenever it came out,
restaurant life was going to look a lot different from
(24:36):
whatever it was at the moment I was writing it.
And so I had to sort of project out how
it would change. And I had to subject to August
to that change too. Yes, and I'm glad it's different.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
Yes, yeah, you mentioned.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
Is It's worth saying this because when I met Tom Calichio,
he told me that he's having a terrible time hiring.
He's like, we can't hire people because people go to
culinary school, they don't really learn the kitchen life, the
restaurant life, which is, even if it's a kinder, gentler atmosphere,
(25:15):
no one's screaming you, it's still physically brutal, right, you
don't need to make it worse, but that kind of
tenacity and like sheer cussedness else to put it, it's
a rare combination in people.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
It's rough. And the same thing with medical school.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
Women, you know, when you go, I mean it's hard
enough sam for you know, men because with medical school
and the things that you say, you know, you're not
supposed to show emotions, supposed to you know, keep it
all in and stuck it up. And the same thing,
you know for women. And it is hard in the
(26:00):
medical field for women. And of course there's a lot
more female doctors out there now, but it was very difficult.
And actually you don't see many female pathologists. I think
that's probably not just.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
Or I think that there are a high number of
women actually who do that was a more of the
pathologists that I know, and this is anecdotal, were women.
I don't know whether that how that shakes up it's
(26:37):
but I agree with you it is a much harder environment.
Is the difference with medical school is you know he'll
make money, whereas in the restaurant, well, there's no guarantee
of it. But Maya is acutely aware throughout the book
of her status as a woman, as a Chinese immigrant,
(26:59):
which he is. She has the sense that her entry
into this world, her admission into this world that she
cares so much about, is provisional, that it can be revoked,
because that's always how she's been brought up to think
that her status as a woman in medicine, as an
immigrant is revocable, and it takes a lot for her
(27:22):
to trust anybody. As a result, she's completely self reliant,
like pathologically so, and part of what the book had
to do was bring her out of that. That's what
August does to her, even though he's dead.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
I like how I get to see how she's very
much loves to be in control, and when the students
come into her pathology room.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
She doesn't like that.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
You get the sense she doesn't like people invading in
on a territory.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
But I have to bring this up, Stam.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
I love of how you brought her father into the
story and that he comes to the hospital and because
she's such.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
A control freak, she's embarrassed. You know, it's like and
who like who?
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Who livesn't if your parents show up at work, right,
But when your father shows up and he may not
be old there mentally, then you're embarrassed and you can't
control it, and she couldn't control it.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
I don't want to get that much of a book away,
but I really like how you zeroed in on that.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
I'm so proud. I'm glad you mentioned that. Actually, well,
because the father was an answer to a problem that
I had. You have a fundamental problem when you are
telling a story that takes place over one day in
a contained space. An autossi labor is a pretty lonely space.
It's usually you and a peck, right, it's two people.
(28:59):
There's not a lot of opportunity for trauma in there.
And so when you have a character in a contained space,
and if you're trying to keep it comic, which is
what I was trying to do, I'm not going to
write a book about death and that makes us funny. Yes,
you have to keep throwing people at that room, and
that's what happens throughout the book. You just keep they
(29:19):
just keep coming right, and they keep adding more people
to there are more people in her lab, more chaos,
and that's the thing that she is most afraid of,
so her father. It's not really it's well that her
father shows up fairly early and she has to deal
with him, and he is not the father that she
(29:40):
that she's used to. He's very changed and she doesn't
know what to do about it. So that kind of
energy I think is vital to making a story like
this keep moving, because otherwise you run the risk of
just being an encyclopedia, write a lecture on this, and
I couldn't have that happened. The hardest thing, if anything,
(30:02):
was keeping the research out and keeping the story tight.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Yes, and I think she was if I remember correctly.
I think she was surprised that her father knew who
August was.
Speaker 3 (30:18):
Yes, that, yes, she is very surprised. She actually at
first thinks he's having the like that he's imagining things
because he's had a stroke. And it's only then that
everyone starts to realize who they are, because when you're
in an autopsy live, you don't use names, at least
(30:39):
when you're in a clinical autopsy. And I think it's
important to clarify because listeners may get a little confused
here because most people do that. There are the autopsies
that most people have seen on television are usually forensic autopsies.
Those are the ones on CSI or Bone or Law
(31:00):
and Order or n CIS or any of the other
half dozen shows that have autopsies at their core and
which completely misrepresent them. The clinical autopsy is the kind
done in cases of quote unquote natural deck or the
kind done in a hospital setting, and they are something
I've come to care a lot about. But with clinical autopsies,
(31:22):
you're not trying to figure out, you know, who shot
somebody or what toxins were in their system. You're trying
to figure out the progression of disease. And so that's
how this goes. But when you do that, you don't
use the person's name. You get a number right for distance,
(31:42):
for professional and remove. And so at first they have
no idea. One person says that he looks familiar, but
they can't place him because he hasn't been on TV
in quite a long time. So that's where it begins,
and it's her father who does. In fact, immediately you
recognize it because it turns out they were friends.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Yes, and you have a lot in your book about
different relationships that August has with his wife and his
estrange from his daughter, the daughter being upset about him
having an autopsy people.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
What I like about your.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
Book, also, Sam is that, you know, I think people
get a wrong impression about autopsies, but they're so important.
They are, it's important. It's important to talk about it
that to find out, you know, why did the person die,
what was going on in their system? And August had
(32:48):
a whole lot going on in his body for sure.
And the way Maya describes it as just I want
to say exquisite because I don't know what else to use,
but it's just magnificent. The way you word everything is
(33:11):
just incredible, and I'm thinking you're a genius to come
up with the story, these characters, the way you write it.
I have great admiration for your work for sure, and
(33:32):
I would read anything any book that you write. If
you have another book in your future, I would definitely
would pick it up and read it and have you
on my show again.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
Excuse me, thank you, thank you very much. Can I
want to put your genius on the book cover? Can
I put that on the cover?
Speaker 1 (33:59):
And I like your book number two of the Body
and the Different Numbers. As I know, no, I do.
Speaker 3 (34:06):
I like it.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
I always want to see an autopsy because I do
like to see the you know, the inside.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
I've always been a weird kid.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
I was where when I was growing up, fascinated with
death and dying, and I'm so I think your book brings.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Out questions that people need to ask.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
You know, it's not wrong, it's not horrible to have
an autopsy done if you really want to know what
is going on or what went on with your loved
When I was reading your book, I sometimes wished I
did have an autopsy done on my husband, he had
(34:53):
sided of early onset Olzheimer's, because I would like to
have known what his brain actually, you.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
Know, looked like. And people might think this is weird,
but my.
Speaker 1 (35:08):
Son and I, Josha, and I sat in that room
after he died. We ate breakfast and until they came
for his body. I thought about donating mathe medical science,
but I knew he didn't want that, so I didn't
want to haunt me, So I am.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
I didn't do that.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Excuse me, But I think it's so important, especially in
situations like like Matt's like, my husband's.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
To really.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
To find out in your book, and I want to
ask you, do they give the pathology report to the
family because I know what the medical science you donated.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
They don't.
Speaker 3 (36:00):
That's five the answer is. And I'm so glad you
brought all of that. I'm so glad you told me
that story because I do get very evangelical about the
importance of the clinical autops VP because percent of the time,
when it comes time to ask that question, nobody is prepared,
not just to answer it if you're the family, the
(36:22):
bereaved family, but in many cases the doctors are not
prepared to discuss it. They don't actually know what they're
talking about. They've rarely ever seen one. Most doctors will
never see an autopsy. They're increasingly rare. The autopsy rate
for natural death in the US is south of five percent,
and that becomes a real issue, especially in cases like
(36:45):
what you described dementia. A lot of things get misdiagnosed
as Alzheimer's or there are causes of dementia that are
only diagnosable through autopsy, things like Louis Budy dementia. These
have markers and so they're exceptionally useful. The problem is
autopsies are usually available for free in teaching hospitals, which
(37:11):
are like less than I think an eighth of like
all hospitals nationwide. Beyond that, they're if you want an
autopos if you're not a teaching hospital, they'll tell you
you can use a private service and that runs between
about one to five thousand dollars maybe a little more now,
and that's you know, that's a big expense for people.
(37:33):
But if you are in a teaching hospital, like people
don't know how to ask for it. People and then
when asked, right, it's usually a residence or somebody who
will be will ask, you know, like, would you like
an autopsy? And then the immediate reaction in people's head is, look,
do you you mean you don't know why why he died?
(37:54):
Do you think something was wrong? Did like do you
suspect something? Because they I means it might immediately go
to CSI because that's what autopsies are for. And that's
not how this works. They're incredibly important medical techniques. They
remain the gold standard of diagnosis. And I'll tell you something,
(38:14):
which is that in ten percent of cases, consistently autopsies
reveal mistakes made that would have led to a different outcome. Right,
That means that the person would not have died. Hospitals
desperately need this kind of quality control. Death certificates are
have mistakes in them in the cause of death section
(38:37):
at a rate of about fifty percent because people don't
know how to fill them out. Right, Like a young
doctor is made just write cardiac arrests. Cardiac arrest isn't
the cause of death. Everyone dies of cardiac arrest in
one way or another. The question is what caused that? What?
And it gives the family a narrative of disease, narrative
(39:00):
of death, and it gives you a foothold. And there
are definitely people whom it does make squeamish, and I
can understand that. And there are doctors who also say,
we have such advanced radiological imaging and diagnostic tools that
we don't need autopsies in the same way, but they matter,
they can help. And so yeah, I have become intensely
(39:23):
evangelical about people making plans, people, you know, not just
And I'm sure on your show you talk about things
like advanced directives all the time. Yes, yes, but disposal
of remains. People talk about disposal remains all the time
that this one part of it doesn't really enter into it,
and it should. Yeah, that's my pitch.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
Yes, you know what, I'll tell you. I do.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
I mean a lot of my show is being proactive,
having all your you know, ducks in the row, advance directive,
you know, poa financial medical.
Speaker 3 (39:59):
Give your family exactly.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
Thank you for saying that, because I said that all
the time. Uh, it's good to hear from someone else,
But never did the subject of autopsy come up. You
are the first person to mention that, and that is
and I'm so glad that you did, because well, the
hospital that my husband died at isn't a teaching hospital.
Speaker 2 (40:26):
In in my area.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
But I know that when I did, I had the
paperwork to donate math to medical the medical school near me, and.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
It did say that I would not receive the report.
Speaker 1 (40:40):
And I think, you know, if I wasn't a teaching hospital,
and if someone did ask me, maybe I would have
done that to make sure there was one hundred percent diagnosis.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
And I didn't make.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
Sure that honest that certificate that it was Oldzheimer's as
a cause.
Speaker 3 (41:00):
The anatomical bequests. Oh my god, yeah, yeah, those anatomical
bequests are so valuable. That was that was where it
all began when I went to that auto, when the
anatomy lab that I went to, Those are all gifts
and they are treated with the utmost reverence in medical schools.
(41:22):
Medical students take such protective care of the bodies that
they learn from. They'll never forget them, right, And it's
an opportunity for the body to continue to be of
service and have value. And that's what I loved about it, right.
The whole premise of the book is the human body
has inherent value. And that's true even after the person inside,
(41:49):
you know, shuts the lights off.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
Yes, well, do your student read your book?
Speaker 3 (41:59):
They better.
Speaker 2 (42:02):
Wonderful? All right, you are? What advice do you give
your students?
Speaker 1 (42:06):
I mean, I they must. I can't even imagine how
fortunate they are to be having you as a professor,
and if they read your books, how brilliant you are.
Speaker 3 (42:21):
What do I tell them? I tell them a lot
of stuff. I tell them. Shame doesn't sell books, you
know what? I what do I tell them? The thing
I tell them and this I tell this to anyone
who's interested in writing or being an artist something that
takes a long time to cultivate, and there's a lot
of failure, and there's a lot of rejection, and there's
(42:42):
a lot of difficulty. What I tell people is that
patience is a weapon. And I phrase that really precisely,
that patience is a weapon, because I know better than
anybody the telling an aspiring artist to be patient is
usually like telling someone having a panic attack to calm down.
(43:05):
It doesn't help, right. How can you be patient when
you are terribly waiting to become the thing you know
you were meant to become. What I say patients is
a weapon. What I mean is that it's something that
comes with discipline. You learn how to cultivate your own patients,
To take your time to get things right, to give
(43:26):
people the time that they need to read your work
and appreciate it, To edit something until it's actually right,
To wait for the right agent or editor or representative
to come along, and not just take the first thing
that's offered, because you feel like you're drowning and you're
looking for a floating piece of wood going by. So
(43:49):
that's the thing I try to tell people that you
can learn to when you have to make decisions, and
usually we make decisions based on what we'll get us
something faster. And if you can think of yourself no,
patience is a weapon, you can make a better choice.
And that's the thing that I wish someone had told
me ten, even fifteen years ago.
Speaker 1 (44:11):
Well, thank you Staniel Ashwarth. It was so lovely talking
to you.
Speaker 2 (44:17):
I loved your book.
Speaker 1 (44:20):
Your book just opens up to have so many different
conversations about the world of cooking, fine dining, autopsies, relationships,
just the list just goes on and on. And I
congratulate you for such a wonderful book, The Death and
Life of August Sweeney.
Speaker 2 (44:41):
Where can people purchase the book?
Speaker 3 (44:43):
Sam It's great to request it from your local bookstore
or library, but it's available on bookshop that Org, Amazon
and virtually any bookstore will either they're not carrying it already.
It's really good to request it and they'll have it
for you in the matter of days.
Speaker 1 (45:02):
And do you are you on social media where people
can connect with you?
Speaker 3 (45:07):
I am? I am. The best way is to reach
me are for via my website www dot Samuel Ashworth
dot com. I'm on Instagram at at Samuel dot b
dot Ashworth, and I'm on Blue Sky at at Samuel
ash You look my name up here on Blue Sky,
you'll find it. That's but the best way to get
(45:28):
me is definitely through my website.
Speaker 1 (45:31):
Well, I want to thank you so much. I didn't
cover everything, but I just enjoyed our conversation. And folks,
I'm telling you, I love this book. This book will
make you laugh. I think it even made me cheer up.
It's just a fascinating read. It's a fast read, and
(45:54):
it's a very intense book. And you know that a
lot of research went into it. So again, congratulations, and
I hope it becomes the bestseller.
Speaker 2 (46:02):
I could see it becoming a bestseller. I could see
it becoming a movie. Yeah that is that is a
great so uh that's a.
Speaker 1 (46:18):
Wish is to you on all your future endeavors, and folks,
all the information about Samuel Ashworth will be in the
blog that Jennie White, who station manager, writes and Jenny
produces the show.
Speaker 2 (46:33):
So thank you Jeanie.
Speaker 1 (46:34):
And all of this is possible through literally a Coldwell CEO,
a pastior Rolds at Radio Network, and I want to
thank Lisa Warren who sent me the material about Samuel Ashworth.
I get a lot of clients from Lisa Warren of
Lisa Warren Pey Arm, So thank you Lissa. I want
(46:57):
to thank you the audience. Please subscribe the check with
Betsy's for free on Spotify, Spreaker, Amazon Music to name
a few, Tell your friends about it, and you can
follow me on Facebook Betsye Worzel w or Ze l
And if you're looking for support, group hashtag kick Olzheimer's
Ass Movement. And as I always say at the end
of my show and the world do you could be anything,
(47:20):
Please be kind and shine. You're life right because we
need it now more than ever before. Thank you once
again for listening. This is Betsy Worzel. You're a host
of Johnny with Betsy Pastick. Roll Talk Radio, a subsidiary
of Global Media Network LLC by by Now
Hello, everyone, this is Betsy Worzel, your host of Chatting
with Betsy, my passionate World Talk Radio, a subsidiary of
Global Media Network LLC. When rare mantras to educate and
lighten and entertain, the views of the guest may not
represent those of the station.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
So I'm always excited when I do my show, and
today is no exception.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
I have with me today Samuel Ashworth, who is author
and writer of the incredible, fantastic book The Death and
Life of August Sweeney, a novel. Stanuel Ashworth is a
professor of creative writing at George Washington University. When a
(00:45):
former columnist at The Rumpist, he has don fiction and
non fiction articles and many magazines. He's a native New Yorker,
a two time ghostwriter. This is his first novel, and
I must say my own opinion, how fortunate are the
students that get to have you, Samiel Ashward as a professor.
(01:10):
So I want to welcome you to Chatting with Betsy.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Welcome, Staniel, Thank you so much for having me on.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Oh you are welcome. My pleasure.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
When I had to tell you, Stan, when I received
the press release of your book, I was so excited.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
This is up my alley.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
I liked food shows, I love blood and guts.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Always been a little a cob.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
I never did see an autopsy. I always wanted to,
but to get to see some operations, and I always liked,
you know, blood and guts. And I just thank you
for writing this book. How did you come up with
this amazing story?
Speaker 3 (02:05):
So it kind of came all at once. It started
with a question, and a question that sort of fell
out of my mouth. It was like, I don't know,
about ten twelve years ago, I was bartending in Boston
and I was sitting at a sister bar with a colleague,
and she started telling me about this book called Stiff
(02:26):
by Mary Roach, The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, an
incredible book. I'd never heard of it. And as she
started talking, I heard myself say, well, what if you
could tell a person's life story through the dissection of
(02:47):
their body. This just kind of came out of my mouth,
and then I stared off in the middle distance for
a few minutes. She was like waving her hand in
front of my face because in that moment I realized
I'd said something that I had never heard of anyone
(03:08):
doing before, and suddenly I realized I was also the
one to do it, and in that moment, the whole
book sort of came together, not the particulars, not the
characters or the plot, but the why, the idea that
you could learn to see the life left in the
(03:32):
body after the person inside has left the building, and
that was the guiding light for the whole project, so
I started writing it. I went down to visit the
gross anatomy lab that a friend was in because she
was doing her first year medical school, and I got
(03:56):
very hungry in that lab walking around there's forty cadavers,
and gross anatomy is the first class that you do
in medical school, right, It's how you learn what the
body is, how it works. And you walk into the
room there's forty bodies and various states of dissection, and
(04:19):
my reaction I'd never really seen a dead body before,
and so I didn't know how I was going to
handle it. And it turned out that I got really hungry,
really really hungry, like the kind of hunger that won't
let you go. And it turns out and I've done
(04:40):
I've done some interviews with doctors of medical school since then,
and it turns out this is a very common reaction.
And once I knew that, then I knew exactly who
the body on the table had to be. It had
to be a cook's because whatever this relationship between food
(05:00):
and death, between meat and the human body was, that
was enough to sustain a book like this, And so
that's where it began.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Well, I I couldn't put the book down. I was fascinated,
and I.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Loved how you went from you know, the main characters,
August Sweeney and the medical examiner doctor Maya pronounced named.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Zoo zoo Very. I mean, it was just to me,
it was so intense.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
There's a lot of research you did. How long did
it take you to research for this book? I mean,
because you said some intense the research twelve five years.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
I mean it gone and off. I didn't. I didn't
go into this planning to devote myself to research. But
I've always sort of approached writing the way that an
actor approaches roles. I've always been jealous of actors only
(06:14):
in that they get to go and do things like
learned sensing and like an eight week intensive and again
Olympian to teach them right, or they could you know, trick,
horseback riding, or piano or Daniel d Lewis learned to
sew an entire couture gown for his wife for a
phantom threat. That kind of immersion I've always envied and
(06:38):
I thought was a great approach for fiction too. I
have a very stable marriage, I have a lovely home life.
I have a great relationship with my parents, And which
is all to say, I am a very boring person. Emotional,
I am not. I do not have a fascinating or
compelling life or history of trauma. And that's not to
(07:01):
say that you need those things to create great and
into mid trauma. But for me, I like writing about work.
I am interested in the jobs that people do, especially
the jobs that most of us, or at least me,
can't really imagine ever becoming a routine. And for this
(07:23):
book I had to do actually way more research than
I ever thought possible, and it's a miracle that had
happened at all. I had always worked in restaurants. I
knew I was going to have to learn how to
do two things. I was going to have to learn
how to be a medical student and I was going
to learn have to learn how to be a cook,
a professional cook. What I didn't realize was that I
(07:45):
wasn't going to have to be a med student. I
was going to have to be a full blown doctor.
And I wasn't going to be a cook. I was
going to be a globally famous celebrity chef. Now I'm
obviously neither of those things in my real life, but
I have to, you know, play one in the book.
So I got very lucky in twenty seventeen, which is
really when this book got started. I'd had the idea
(08:07):
years before and tabled it. Sort of two things happened. First,
I realized that making my medical student wasn't going to work.
She wouldn't have the knowledge that I needed her to have.
She is a savant for bodies. She's laceratingly intelligent, and
(08:29):
her job is to read the body the way you
and I read a text. And the basic plot of
the book, to clarify things, is that one night on
the line, to no one's surprised, August Sweeney, who is
a very famous chef who fell into disgrace, dies in
(08:53):
full view of everybody, and it falls to this doctor
Maya Ju to perform his autopsy. What she doesn't know
is that August specifically required that she be the one
to do it. She doesn't know who he is, and
she doesn't know why. So the book unites fifty years
(09:16):
of August's life with one day in hers. And I
think that's why you had that reaction in not really
being able to stop reading it, because it's constantly pinballing
back and forth between their lives. Yes, So once I
knew that she had to be a doctor, I had
to go learn how to actually do that. And I
(09:36):
got very, very lucky because in the summer twenty seventeen,
a friend of mine was doing his residency in pathology
at a hospital in Pittsburgh, and pathologists have to do
autopsies in order to get certified that they're the people
who perform autopsies typically, and he happened to be working
for the only doctor in America just about who would
have led a grad student and journalist into his life.
(10:01):
So I went to Pittsburgh and I spent two weeks
assisting with autopsies. Whatever came in, that's what we had
to work with. And the main rule was I couldn't
touch sharp objects, which was really for my benefit. That
same summer, I also went to be a prep cook
(10:24):
in a Michelin start kitchen. And when I say prep cook,
emphasis is on the prep. There wasn't a lot of
cook That meant learning how to stand there for three
hours and pluck cilantro leaves from their stems, or clean
hundreds of squid or filet and de bone fish, and
(10:48):
really learn the physicality of working in a professional kitchen,
because I alway's working in restaurants, but always in the
front of house. So those two things together really alchemized
into the story that this book tells. But I couldn't
have done it otherwise.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
A Tayak.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Sam, I have come to such an appreciation since doing
my podcast of you know, picking up a book of
what that writer did to.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
Write that book.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
The research and your book, I mean, the research that
you've done just you know, shines through. It is so intense.
I said, Wow, this is your first I'm thinking to
myself as I'm reading this, this is your first novel.
This is amazing. I mean, just so detailed. Like I
(11:49):
thought that I was in the kitchen with August. I
thought that I was there when he's cleaning up guts
and animals, and I thought that I was in.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
The the.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Lab with Maya the pathologist, I said, medical examiner before
a pathologist, and being there as she is describing his
body parts and what you know the situation is with
each part and it's just so intense and how you
(12:25):
know he's just this bigger than life character.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Can you explain to the audience in case people don't
know what a Michelin restaurant is?
Speaker 3 (12:34):
Sure, the Michelin Guide is the sort of well, it's
made by the tire company Michelin Guide, Michell and Tyres.
They're the same thing. Many decades ago. I don't exactly
know when it got started, probably around the twenties or
thirties and trance. The Michell entire company started putting out
(12:58):
a book for drivers in which they highlighted local restaurants
along roads because people were starting to dry the road
trip was a new concept, so by highlighting these restaurants,
it kind of gave people a new map of eating
(13:22):
around France, which meant in turn that they would drive more,
which meant in turn that they would use Mitchel entires
and they set up a star system. I don't know
when the star system came into play, but it's out
of three stars, one star is something that a lot
of chefs will work their entire lives to get. One
(13:44):
star means that it is a genuinely exceptional restaurant. Two
stars is great, and these are very very very precise
and stingy, and they send inspectors all over the place.
The inspectors are always anonymous. They're on the road most
(14:08):
of every year. Three Stars designates a restaurant that is,
in their words, worth a special trip, like you get
in your car with your Michelin tires and you drive
to that three star restaurant five hours away. There are
only a handful of these scattered around the world, and
there is also there's now a designation that Michelin does
(14:31):
called a bib Gourmont, which is for a less expensive
restaurant that's still extremely high quality. So people spend their
whole lives in fine dining chasing Michelin Stars. They only
came to America about twenty years ago. They only dained
to enter the American market somewhere around two thousand and
two thousand and three. Well, so that's how the Micheline
(14:54):
system works. But they also, and this is important, they
also protect what they believe find dining to be there
are certain things that you must do in order to
achieve these stars. One of these is, in a two
star restaurant, the diner should never refill his or her
own water class God forbid, right. The service has to
(15:17):
be so attentive that if that water glass tips a
little bit, the server will do it. So it's very fastidious,
it's very controlling, and it it's exceptionally influential even now.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Well, thank you for explaining.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
I was wondering if it had a mitchellan that had
to do with the tire company.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
So thank you.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
It really does explaining that.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
When I was reading your book, it threw me back
to when I was growing up, and I'm aging myself
here when I used to watch Julia Child and the
Galloping Gourmet.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
A Grandma Kerr and I.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Really would enjoy watching that, And then I used to
watch I think that show is Top Chef. I enjoy
watching that show. And people don't realize that unless you've
worked in the industry. I never worked in a restaurant
(16:21):
at McDonald's for two weeks, but I did take commercial
foods in high school.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
And it's a tough job. I mean, it is just tough.
You have to do all that, you know, prepping and
all the things that go on.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Behind the kitchen for your food to come out. It's
it's just really a very high pressure job. I think
it takes a certain type of personality to thrive in
that high pressure environment.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
It absolutely does, and that's I needed to create someone
who would in August. And what's important to know about
August is that he's an immense man. He's like sixty
nine four hundred pounds. He's he creates his own gravity
and brings people into his orbit, and that's part of
his appeal. He's the best time you've ever had. But
(17:19):
what you say is fascinating. You mentioned Juliet Child and
Top Chef, and Juliet Child is actually in the book,
as are a lot of major figures from the culinary world,
because I wanted this book to be set in our world.
In my world, right, Mario Batali is in there, Emerald
Anthony Bourdain, they sort of glance off. Yeah, pot Malashamie
(17:41):
from Top Chef is actually a key character at one point.
And I don't know that if you know this, but
Tom Calichio read the book early on. I didn't know him.
I knew someone who knew him, and I never really
expected to get anywhere with this, but he read it
and he loved it, and he wound up doing the
launch event with me when it came out, and I
(18:04):
had never met the man that night, and I was
very nervous because I've been watching Top Chef pretty religiously
for twenty years. I love that show, and he was
a He was a dream. But I was very nervous
about him reading it because the book is about his world.
August doesn't just become a great chef, he becomes a
(18:24):
celebrity chef. He is part of the beginning of the
Food Network, and he just grows. And so what I
really liked was that at the bookstore event we did together,
he said that August Sweeney was the first thing he'd
(18:45):
ever read or seen about the restaurant industry that didn't
make him cringe once. That it's that accurate. I needed
it to be accurate. I needed it to be true
to life without overly glorifying things. But I also needed
it as much fun as I could possibly make it.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Yeah, I mean, your book contains and so much. I
want to give book away because I want people to
read it, but well, I guess Sweeney in more ways
than one. It is bigger than life. He's just and
people were drawn to him. And I love the you know,
the stories of him, you know from New York and
(19:25):
all the different characters that he comes across and with
the Mob and just.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
You know, meeting so many different types of people.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
And he's drawn to the one co worker, which the
name just went right out of my head, and he
kind of took him under his wing.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
Yeah How he had Yeah How? And I named him
How because August has always been false fast right, the
great drunken gourmet character from Shakespeare, who's also he's the
most engaging villain there is, and he is the he's
(20:12):
like the father figure to Prince Hal who will be
King of England, and then Hal eventually betrays him. So
I needed a how. Well. I'm not giving too much away,
but How is a very important character to August. But
these are two people who don't let others into their
lives much, and that's part of what the arc of
(20:34):
the book is about.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
It is such a good bug. I have to tell
you something funny, Sam.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Yes, my husband, my husband Matt, was very old fashioned chavinistic.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
I guess you could say.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
And they told that our son, Josh, cooking is woman's work,
she told Gosh, And I said, no, it's not.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Because some of your best Jeffer men, it's always been
a male dominated of the.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Old women are just now getting into it because it's
very demanding, long hours, being on your feet. And so
I said, that is that's not true.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
Well, it's interesting you mentioned that. Actually, it's not just
the long hours, right, it's not just the physicality of
the work. It's because of the attitude that you're describing
there first. And this is something I had to really
reckon with in the book. And this is something that
I'm proud of in the book that we America only
got interested in actual cooking about twenty five years ago.
(21:49):
Prior to that, there were fancy restaurants here and there,
and they were almost so with French and you go
there for the special occasions. But this was not a
like a gastronomic culture. This was not a cuisine oriented country.
And then people like you know, Julia Child does her best,
but that's still home cooking. Fundamentally, restaurants really become this
(22:15):
extraordinary thing in America starting around two thousands, and then
there were there were you know, there were great chests
before that here, but really it takes off in the
last twenty five years. But with that comes a lot
of those chefs back in the day are French trained,
so they're trained in this brigade system, this absolutely patriarchal, chauvinistic, brutal,
(22:42):
militaristic way of training chefs, and that it's you either
either you survive it or you break. Those are the options.
And me, when I went into the kitchen, I broke
real fast. And that meant that anybody who didn't fit
that classical mode of the really intense, often abusive male
(23:08):
chef would just get purged out of the system. You
would lose any interest in doing it. And that happened
to a lot of women. And the women who did
come through it, we had to conform to that standard.
If maybe the most famous depiction of this is in
rat Tattooy where the woman who is in the kitchen
(23:30):
in the Pixar movie Ratattoo, she is knife wielding, dangerous, brilliant.
Hadn't talked about how she has to be twice as
good as everybody else, and so that mindset was so
ubiquitous in cooking, right that's how we get people like
Gordon Ramsay making multiple television shows about how he can
(23:53):
solve people's problems by screaming at them enough. And as
I was finishing this book, we realized, we started to
realize what damage that had done, how stupid an approach
that was. And I was finishing this book as the
me too movement was ripping through the culinary world. I
(24:15):
actually I have a friend named Hannah Sellinger whose book
came out last week called Cellar Rat, which is all
about her experience in that world and all the stuff
that got swept under the table. And so as I
was writing the book, I knew that whenever it came out,
restaurant life was going to look a lot different from
(24:36):
whatever it was at the moment I was writing it.
And so I had to sort of project out how
it would change. And I had to subject to August
to that change too. Yes, and I'm glad it's different.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
Yes, yeah, you mentioned.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
Is It's worth saying this because when I met Tom Calichio,
he told me that he's having a terrible time hiring.
He's like, we can't hire people because people go to
culinary school, they don't really learn the kitchen life, the
restaurant life, which is, even if it's a kinder, gentler atmosphere,
(25:15):
no one's screaming you, it's still physically brutal, right, you
don't need to make it worse, but that kind of
tenacity and like sheer cussedness else to put it, it's
a rare combination in people.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
It's rough. And the same thing with medical school.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
Women, you know, when you go, I mean it's hard
enough sam for you know, men because with medical school
and the things that you say, you know, you're not
supposed to show emotions, supposed to you know, keep it
all in and stuck it up. And the same thing,
you know for women. And it is hard in the
(26:00):
medical field for women. And of course there's a lot
more female doctors out there now, but it was very difficult.
And actually you don't see many female pathologists. I think
that's probably not just.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
Or I think that there are a high number of
women actually who do that was a more of the
pathologists that I know, and this is anecdotal, were women.
I don't know whether that how that shakes up it's
(26:37):
but I agree with you it is a much harder environment.
Is the difference with medical school is you know he'll
make money, whereas in the restaurant, well, there's no guarantee
of it. But Maya is acutely aware throughout the book
of her status as a woman, as a Chinese immigrant,
(26:59):
which he is. She has the sense that her entry
into this world, her admission into this world that she
cares so much about, is provisional, that it can be revoked,
because that's always how she's been brought up to think
that her status as a woman in medicine, as an
immigrant is revocable, and it takes a lot for her
(27:22):
to trust anybody. As a result, she's completely self reliant,
like pathologically so, and part of what the book had
to do was bring her out of that. That's what
August does to her, even though he's dead.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
I like how I get to see how she's very
much loves to be in control, and when the students
come into her pathology room.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
She doesn't like that.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
You get the sense she doesn't like people invading in
on a territory.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
But I have to bring this up, Stam.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
I love of how you brought her father into the
story and that he comes to the hospital and because
she's such.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
A control freak, she's embarrassed. You know, it's like and
who like who?
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Who livesn't if your parents show up at work, right,
But when your father shows up and he may not
be old there mentally, then you're embarrassed and you can't
control it, and she couldn't control it.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
I don't want to get that much of a book away,
but I really like how you zeroed in on that.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
I'm so proud. I'm glad you mentioned that. Actually, well,
because the father was an answer to a problem that
I had. You have a fundamental problem when you are
telling a story that takes place over one day in
a contained space. An autossi labor is a pretty lonely space.
It's usually you and a peck, right, it's two people.
(28:59):
There's not a lot of opportunity for trauma in there.
And so when you have a character in a contained space,
and if you're trying to keep it comic, which is
what I was trying to do, I'm not going to
write a book about death and that makes us funny. Yes,
you have to keep throwing people at that room, and
that's what happens throughout the book. You just keep they
(29:19):
just keep coming right, and they keep adding more people
to there are more people in her lab, more chaos,
and that's the thing that she is most afraid of,
so her father. It's not really it's well that her
father shows up fairly early and she has to deal
with him, and he is not the father that she
(29:40):
that she's used to. He's very changed and she doesn't
know what to do about it. So that kind of
energy I think is vital to making a story like
this keep moving, because otherwise you run the risk of
just being an encyclopedia, write a lecture on this, and
I couldn't have that happened. The hardest thing, if anything,
(30:02):
was keeping the research out and keeping the story tight.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Yes, and I think she was if I remember correctly.
I think she was surprised that her father knew who
August was.
Speaker 3 (30:18):
Yes, that, yes, she is very surprised. She actually at
first thinks he's having the like that he's imagining things
because he's had a stroke. And it's only then that
everyone starts to realize who they are, because when you're
in an autopsy live, you don't use names, at least
(30:39):
when you're in a clinical autopsy. And I think it's
important to clarify because listeners may get a little confused
here because most people do that. There are the autopsies
that most people have seen on television are usually forensic autopsies.
Those are the ones on CSI or Bone or Law
(31:00):
and Order or n CIS or any of the other
half dozen shows that have autopsies at their core and
which completely misrepresent them. The clinical autopsy is the kind
done in cases of quote unquote natural deck or the
kind done in a hospital setting, and they are something
I've come to care a lot about. But with clinical autopsies,
(31:22):
you're not trying to figure out, you know, who shot
somebody or what toxins were in their system. You're trying
to figure out the progression of disease. And so that's
how this goes. But when you do that, you don't
use the person's name. You get a number right for distance,
(31:42):
for professional and remove. And so at first they have
no idea. One person says that he looks familiar, but
they can't place him because he hasn't been on TV
in quite a long time. So that's where it begins,
and it's her father who does. In fact, immediately you
recognize it because it turns out they were friends.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Yes, and you have a lot in your book about
different relationships that August has with his wife and his
estrange from his daughter, the daughter being upset about him
having an autopsy people.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
What I like about your.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
Book, also, Sam is that, you know, I think people
get a wrong impression about autopsies, but they're so important.
They are, it's important. It's important to talk about it
that to find out, you know, why did the person die,
what was going on in their system? And August had
(32:48):
a whole lot going on in his body for sure.
And the way Maya describes it as just I want
to say exquisite because I don't know what else to use,
but it's just magnificent. The way you word everything is
(33:11):
just incredible, and I'm thinking you're a genius to come
up with the story, these characters, the way you write it.
I have great admiration for your work for sure, and
(33:32):
I would read anything any book that you write. If
you have another book in your future, I would definitely
would pick it up and read it and have you
on my show again.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
Excuse me, thank you, thank you very much. Can I
want to put your genius on the book cover? Can
I put that on the cover?
Speaker 1 (33:59):
And I like your book number two of the Body
and the Different Numbers. As I know, no, I do.
Speaker 3 (34:06):
I like it.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
I always want to see an autopsy because I do
like to see the you know, the inside.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
I've always been a weird kid.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
I was where when I was growing up, fascinated with
death and dying, and I'm so I think your book brings.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Out questions that people need to ask.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
You know, it's not wrong, it's not horrible to have
an autopsy done if you really want to know what
is going on or what went on with your loved
When I was reading your book, I sometimes wished I
did have an autopsy done on my husband, he had
(34:53):
sided of early onset Olzheimer's, because I would like to
have known what his brain actually, you.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
Know, looked like. And people might think this is weird,
but my.
Speaker 1 (35:08):
Son and I, Josha, and I sat in that room
after he died. We ate breakfast and until they came
for his body. I thought about donating mathe medical science,
but I knew he didn't want that, so I didn't
want to haunt me, So I am.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
I didn't do that.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Excuse me, But I think it's so important, especially in
situations like like Matt's like, my husband's.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
To really.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
To find out in your book, and I want to
ask you, do they give the pathology report to the
family because I know what the medical science you donated.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
They don't.
Speaker 3 (36:00):
That's five the answer is. And I'm so glad you
brought all of that. I'm so glad you told me
that story because I do get very evangelical about the
importance of the clinical autops VP because percent of the time,
when it comes time to ask that question, nobody is prepared,
not just to answer it if you're the family, the
(36:22):
bereaved family, but in many cases the doctors are not
prepared to discuss it. They don't actually know what they're
talking about. They've rarely ever seen one. Most doctors will
never see an autopsy. They're increasingly rare. The autopsy rate
for natural death in the US is south of five percent,
and that becomes a real issue, especially in cases like
(36:45):
what you described dementia. A lot of things get misdiagnosed
as Alzheimer's or there are causes of dementia that are
only diagnosable through autopsy, things like Louis Budy dementia. These
have markers and so they're exceptionally useful. The problem is
autopsies are usually available for free in teaching hospitals, which
(37:11):
are like less than I think an eighth of like
all hospitals nationwide. Beyond that, they're if you want an
autopos if you're not a teaching hospital, they'll tell you
you can use a private service and that runs between
about one to five thousand dollars maybe a little more now,
and that's you know, that's a big expense for people.
(37:33):
But if you are in a teaching hospital, like people
don't know how to ask for it. People and then
when asked, right, it's usually a residence or somebody who
will be will ask, you know, like, would you like
an autopsy? And then the immediate reaction in people's head is, look,
do you you mean you don't know why why he died?
(37:54):
Do you think something was wrong? Did like do you
suspect something? Because they I means it might immediately go
to CSI because that's what autopsies are for. And that's
not how this works. They're incredibly important medical techniques. They
remain the gold standard of diagnosis. And I'll tell you something,
(38:14):
which is that in ten percent of cases, consistently autopsies
reveal mistakes made that would have led to a different outcome. Right,
That means that the person would not have died. Hospitals
desperately need this kind of quality control. Death certificates are
have mistakes in them in the cause of death section
(38:37):
at a rate of about fifty percent because people don't
know how to fill them out. Right, Like a young
doctor is made just write cardiac arrests. Cardiac arrest isn't
the cause of death. Everyone dies of cardiac arrest in
one way or another. The question is what caused that? What?
And it gives the family a narrative of disease, narrative
(39:00):
of death, and it gives you a foothold. And there
are definitely people whom it does make squeamish, and I
can understand that. And there are doctors who also say,
we have such advanced radiological imaging and diagnostic tools that
we don't need autopsies in the same way, but they matter,
they can help. And so yeah, I have become intensely
(39:23):
evangelical about people making plans, people, you know, not just
And I'm sure on your show you talk about things
like advanced directives all the time. Yes, yes, but disposal
of remains. People talk about disposal remains all the time
that this one part of it doesn't really enter into it,
and it should. Yeah, that's my pitch.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
Yes, you know what, I'll tell you. I do.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
I mean a lot of my show is being proactive,
having all your you know, ducks in the row, advance directive,
you know, poa financial medical.
Speaker 3 (39:59):
Give your family exactly.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
Thank you for saying that, because I said that all
the time. Uh, it's good to hear from someone else,
But never did the subject of autopsy come up. You
are the first person to mention that, and that is
and I'm so glad that you did, because well, the
hospital that my husband died at isn't a teaching hospital.
Speaker 2 (40:26):
In in my area.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
But I know that when I did, I had the
paperwork to donate math to medical the medical school near me, and.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
It did say that I would not receive the report.
Speaker 1 (40:40):
And I think, you know, if I wasn't a teaching hospital,
and if someone did ask me, maybe I would have
done that to make sure there was one hundred percent diagnosis.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
And I didn't make.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
Sure that honest that certificate that it was Oldzheimer's as
a cause.
Speaker 3 (41:00):
The anatomical bequests. Oh my god, yeah, yeah, those anatomical
bequests are so valuable. That was that was where it
all began when I went to that auto, when the
anatomy lab that I went to, Those are all gifts
and they are treated with the utmost reverence in medical schools.
(41:22):
Medical students take such protective care of the bodies that
they learn from. They'll never forget them, right, And it's
an opportunity for the body to continue to be of
service and have value. And that's what I loved about it, right.
The whole premise of the book is the human body
has inherent value. And that's true even after the person inside,
(41:49):
you know, shuts the lights off.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
Yes, well, do your student read your book?
Speaker 3 (41:59):
They better.
Speaker 2 (42:02):
Wonderful? All right, you are? What advice do you give
your students?
Speaker 1 (42:06):
I mean, I they must. I can't even imagine how
fortunate they are to be having you as a professor,
and if they read your books, how brilliant you are.
Speaker 3 (42:21):
What do I tell them? I tell them a lot
of stuff. I tell them. Shame doesn't sell books, you
know what? I what do I tell them? The thing
I tell them and this I tell this to anyone
who's interested in writing or being an artist something that
takes a long time to cultivate, and there's a lot
of failure, and there's a lot of rejection, and there's
(42:42):
a lot of difficulty. What I tell people is that
patience is a weapon. And I phrase that really precisely,
that patience is a weapon, because I know better than
anybody the telling an aspiring artist to be patient is
usually like telling someone having a panic attack to calm down.
(43:05):
It doesn't help, right. How can you be patient when
you are terribly waiting to become the thing you know
you were meant to become. What I say patients is
a weapon. What I mean is that it's something that
comes with discipline. You learn how to cultivate your own patients,
To take your time to get things right, to give
(43:26):
people the time that they need to read your work
and appreciate it, To edit something until it's actually right,
To wait for the right agent or editor or representative
to come along, and not just take the first thing
that's offered, because you feel like you're drowning and you're
looking for a floating piece of wood going by. So
(43:49):
that's the thing I try to tell people that you
can learn to when you have to make decisions, and
usually we make decisions based on what we'll get us
something faster. And if you can think of yourself no,
patience is a weapon, you can make a better choice.
And that's the thing that I wish someone had told
me ten, even fifteen years ago.
Speaker 1 (44:11):
Well, thank you Staniel Ashwarth. It was so lovely talking
to you.
Speaker 2 (44:17):
I loved your book.
Speaker 1 (44:20):
Your book just opens up to have so many different
conversations about the world of cooking, fine dining, autopsies, relationships,
just the list just goes on and on. And I
congratulate you for such a wonderful book, The Death and
Life of August Sweeney.
Speaker 2 (44:41):
Where can people purchase the book?
Speaker 3 (44:43):
Sam It's great to request it from your local bookstore
or library, but it's available on bookshop that Org, Amazon
and virtually any bookstore will either they're not carrying it already.
It's really good to request it and they'll have it
for you in the matter of days.
Speaker 1 (45:02):
And do you are you on social media where people
can connect with you?
Speaker 3 (45:07):
I am? I am. The best way is to reach
me are for via my website www dot Samuel Ashworth
dot com. I'm on Instagram at at Samuel dot b
dot Ashworth, and I'm on Blue Sky at at Samuel
ash You look my name up here on Blue Sky,
you'll find it. That's but the best way to get
(45:28):
me is definitely through my website.
Speaker 1 (45:31):
Well, I want to thank you so much. I didn't
cover everything, but I just enjoyed our conversation. And folks,
I'm telling you, I love this book. This book will
make you laugh. I think it even made me cheer up.
It's just a fascinating read. It's a fast read, and
(45:54):
it's a very intense book. And you know that a
lot of research went into it. So again, congratulations, and
I hope it becomes the bestseller.
Speaker 2 (46:02):
I could see it becoming a bestseller. I could see
it becoming a movie. Yeah that is that is a
great so uh that's a.
Speaker 1 (46:18):
Wish is to you on all your future endeavors, and folks,
all the information about Samuel Ashworth will be in the
blog that Jennie White, who station manager, writes and Jenny
produces the show.
Speaker 2 (46:33):
So thank you Jeanie.
Speaker 1 (46:34):
And all of this is possible through literally a Coldwell CEO,
a pastior Rolds at Radio Network, and I want to
thank Lisa Warren who sent me the material about Samuel Ashworth.
I get a lot of clients from Lisa Warren of
Lisa Warren Pey Arm, So thank you Lissa. I want
(46:57):
to thank you the audience. Please subscribe the check with
Betsy's for free on Spotify, Spreaker, Amazon Music to name
a few, Tell your friends about it, and you can
follow me on Facebook Betsye Worzel w or Ze l
And if you're looking for support, group hashtag kick Olzheimer's
Ass Movement. And as I always say at the end
of my show and the world do you could be anything,
(47:20):
Please be kind and shine. You're life right because we
need it now more than ever before. Thank you once
again for listening. This is Betsy Worzel. You're a host
of Johnny with Betsy Pastick. Roll Talk Radio, a subsidiary
of Global Media Network LLC by by Now
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