Julia Gets Wise with Alice Waters
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Hey, listeners, it's me. Julia were back for season three of wise than me, and we have so much more wisdom to share from the legendary older women who have joined me this season. I can't tell you the number of times when i'm having these conversations.

I find myself scrambling for up like a pizza paper or a nap in or whatever I can find in my desk to quickly drop down some nugget that my guest is sharing in our conversation. I mean, you've probably have the same experience, right? Well, guess what problem solved.

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This is a favourite poem of mine is called flash frozen. Here, IT is, my mother grew up in a homemade world. Her mothers stitch sun bonds, one stitch at a time for five little girls Carried pairs, beans, tomato, squash in her April from the garden to the kitchen, where steam ming Mason jars with wide open mouth stood at the ready to receive jars, lined the cool basement shelves like picture books, wild with colour, waiting for another season.

A huge gray pot, quiet on the stove, made soup for the week in winter, root vegetables bounced, softened in water, fragrant with the earth. Clarets birdseye, born in berkley, practice the taxidermy before joining the department of agriculture as a naturalist posted in the arctic. There, he learned a finger to watching the inuit make holes in the ice drop lines and bring up a fish frozen straight through in the blink of an eye.

Clarences brought that fought home in a system that packed food into waxed cardboard cartons, flash frozen, nearly fresh. My mother's freezer was as big as a car. Thursdays were poker night.

SHE could whip up a meal in twenty minutes once SHE unwrapped the box. How about that? So are that was actually written by my mom, judy balls.

And good god, all mighty. I do love that poem. The grandmother, uh, who stitched the sunbonnets and Carried pairs and beans and tomato and squash from her garden to her kitchen was my mom's grandma bessy.

My great grandmother SHE was the original farms tables chef. Well, I mean, I guess everybody, you didn't have a staff and a cook, which is most people, was a farm to table chef not so long ago. My mom and my sisters and I all hold great grammar assy in a kind of magical, sainted place.

We all really want to be a little bit more like gram I bei, especially in the kitchen. I'm very lucky because my little sister laun lives in los Angeles st. And whenever we get together, which is very often making food delicious, food is at the center of what is always a joyful time.

SHE is a Baker, I mean, a crazy great Baker of amazing birds and muffins and bagels. And we are both obsessed with baking deserts. And I make things out of the food that I grow in my garden, like tomato sauce vehicles and James and marmalades.

And it's all pretty god and good if I do say so myself. The thing that my mom catches really so beautifully in that palm m is the physical, tactile contact with the ingredients that make meals so delicious. And the melon colleague in IT is the loss of that contact.

Of course, the poem is about a lot more to family, caring, nourishment and other kinds of loss. You know, i've been thinking a lot about how, as we speed forward and technology dominates more and more of our data day lives, we touch the things that matter less and less. I mean, think about that.

We don't hold the newspaper. We look at IT on a screen. We don't put pen to paper very often.

We don't rest the stereo needle carefully in the group of a of a cherish record album where a step back IT seems from touching things that matter. I mean, life is easier. Yeah sure. But even when we go to a beautiful place now, we immediately stick a phone between us in the sunset. Got, you know, I mean, there's a loss there too.

So maybe that's why cooking beautiful, healthy, yummy meals with my sister and her family, made with vegetables and hand picked fruit right out of the garden or stuff is carefully chosen at the farmers market in spending hours together, you know, working out the menu and working with our hands and our hearts means so, so much to me. food? Mm, yeah, I mean, it's the basic, it's the most basic thing of all. And so how lucky then, that today we get to talk to Alice waters.

I'm Julia li, drive us and this is wiser than me, the podcast where I get schooled by women who are wiser than me.

I remember what american cooking was like before Alice waters. We ate stuff like frozen fish sticks and banquet fried chicken, T, V dinners. And those were treats. I mean, that's what we look forward to. When our parents went out to a party at IT was a dark time for taste buds everywhere, but our guests today knew there was something Better.

He is the founder of the ground breaking shape ese, a berkeley, california base restaurant, where he dove deep into the connections between environment, culture, food and politics by paying close attention to ingredients not just in how they're prepared, but in how they're produced. SHE is a pioneer of the farm table movement. Maybe the pioneer.

And most importantly, SHE championed the concept that food grown with care and treated with respect in the kitchen could be transformative and, of course, delicious. Our guests have served up everything from delicious Harry coat there and sunrise and peaches to believe in or not, a brazed pair of winner hurt dog boots in a pot of red duck fat. We can talk about that later.

IT blows my mind how many renowned chefs trained with her, basically everybody. The truth is her impact on american cooking is immeasurable, and he doesn't stop in the kitchen. She's a tireless advocate for sustainable agriculture, food justice and education reform.

Through initiatives like the edible school yard project, SHE is provided hands on experiences that connect students to food, nature and each other while addressing the crisis of climate change. Public health and social inequality at its heart is a dynamic and joyful learning experience for every child. And you can actually download the lesson plans.

Alice is the recipient of some of the highest owners in both food and life, including seven James beard awards, the national humanity metal and the french legion of honor. Please join me in welcoming an author, cook, activist, mother and woman who is, oh so much wiser than me. Alice waters, welcome. Alice waters. What a treat to have you with us.

Thank you so much. Wonderful to talk with the you.

I'm happy you're here.

I'm a little tearful about that.

Introduce some oh no, no. Well, it's such a celebration and you have so much to celebrate about yourself. And I personally am honor to talk with you today because i'm a gormless fan of yours. Are you comfortable if I ask your real age.

I just turned amy nice.

And how do you feel.

you know, i've never a sort of bad age as being, you know, something i'm looking forward to or something I look back on. It's strange that when this happened this year, I mean, everybody else was concerned about me. They were very worried that I was getting old.

And I really feel like age is about how you feel about yourself. 嗯， 哼。 And I had a great point. Who lived to a hundred two .

nice and SHE .

was a wonderful inspiration to me my whole life, hot life. And I watched how SHE lived.

So when you so you watch how SHE age your end, what are you witnessing? What are you inspired by?

I guess i'm inspired red about their jarvie yeah they're wanting to be present. They're wanting to communicate what they know with everybody else and I heard so generous with .

that yeah that's so wonderful. I have to tell you how our lives connected um so i'm very close with my sistern law who's a conservative is an environmental is in north in california and SHE did an auction for the trails forever dinner that was thrown by the golden gate national park conservancy and uh one of the prizes being auctioned was um you and I because IT was a hike yeah IT was a hike with me and a picnic by you.

Honestly, i'm going to tell you right now, I don't remember anything about the hike and I love to hike. Okay, i'm a big hike. I don't member thing but I remember that god dem sandwich was so good Alice and IT was a Sparkin prosue IT was on a bag yet there may been butter, there may be a ruga.

This I can't recall, but all we did was talk about the sandwich. I'm not going you. I don't remember a thing about the hike.

And I was a big hike. So then I went home and I tried to recreate IT, and IT was complete crap. What I made .

IT was terrible. Well, I speak, tell me, I think I had I le on garlic, garlic manis. And we make that with wonderful all the world.

And a real sweet garlic. And garlic is a main ingredient not only for a taste, but for health. Have you seen the film garlic as as good as ten mothers? No.

but i'm gna watch IT .

tonight OK less plank made a film called garlic as as good as ten mothers.

It's a great title, so you made a garlic ali. I'm going to now try this again because everything was off, the pursuit to was off. The is was too stringing whatever.

But I did try anyway. This is this, how much i'd loved IT. I have so much work to do today because i'm going to do this garlic man is, you know, um you are known, of course, for making the everyday experience elevated. So I wanted to dig into your daily routine. For example, what do you have for breakfast?

Well, I always have my poverty because I had high cluster, and I asked all my friends what I should do, and I had many of them tell me, drink the fermented party, a chinese, okay, a dark tea, and eat whole grants. And I absolutely was rigidly adhering to that prescription. And my collection o went down a hundred point.

Get the hell out of here. Not really .

and really do.

Wait a minute. Did you take medication too?

No, I didn't want to to take medication.

Fucking god, I can't believe what i'm hearing.

And now i've become kind of a power t sales person.

How do you spell power? T.

because i'm getting for my husband. E R H H.

Poverty is IT tasty. I think .

IT is that I make IT very dark. I used to be a kind of Frank of file in my breakfast. I drank cafe or lay.

I had a piece of toast with some gem of that kind of of early morning. And now when i'm drinking the tea, I want something savery. So I had this morning. Now I had a little bit of salad, but I scrimp, ed, an egg.

G, do you still cook each day? Do you plan on your meals?

But I always want to have the ingredients at my house so I can cook something if I need to or want to. So I always have selling. I always have great farmers and a lot of this, I just get from shaped ese because I want everything from my organic creator to farmers.

Yes, the things that I have to have at home are and fruit, and I want my lemons. I would tree out back. I, yes, in my backyard.

Yeah, I can always get rose, my stage fright. M, I can always make something taste at the last minute. I have a mire .

elementary to. And IT is such an unusual taste. And I I always have lemon water in the morning.

And if my mor lemons are ripe, I have my mr. Lemon water, which is an elevated lemon water experience. There's just no way around IT.

And I just recently, by the way, going off topic a little, but I just started to make ice cream and I made lemon ice cream. And I know i'm thinking i'm excited to try to make mr. Lemon ice cream because I think that will be yummy, right?

Guess, for fifty three years. So co, no. Fifty two, not. In the first year of japanese, linty, who was the pastry chief at shape veness, started making mr. Lemon ice cream and mired lemon super t.

And I have to say that that was a wake up, not only for us in kitchen, but for everybody who came to shape. And ese IT was the desert that they wanted again. And IT was a long season. So and we got them from people who brought them at work, exchanges them for a lunch of restaurant they would print from their back of three. I loved to god.

I wish I lived near you. I would bring you mia lemons just so that I can eat that. Right now, you describe beauty as an essential life force. By the way, I put my dallies here today for you.

I saw those first.

Glad i'm so happy you noticing .

first thing, I thought, oh, how beautiful.

Thank you. Oh, that makes me happy. Then a mission accomplish because those are from my garden.

And i've just wait every year for those things to pop up. And they're going crazy right now. And i'm going to post a picture of this on our social so people can see.

But you describe beauty as an essential life force. How do you bring beauty into your life every day? What is there a practice that you have?

I think you're very like me. You're very into flowers. But talk to me about .

that well, I always want flowers in my house and of the moment in time I don't want to lips in the middle loop the winter yeah and the lie cks. I want them just in the spring when they're happening and IT keeps me connected exactly the wait for us with where I am and time and place. It's all of those subtle ties that i'm so um connected to.

Have you always been like that?

Well when I was little, my crayon and and my mother used to go out over in the spring and in the fall to look at the trees. And we put drive on roads all in north new jersey and see these glorious explosions of flowering trees and bushes. And we had a head shop line lucks that I always want to.

But yeah, that's kind of, I think, in in my life since I was very little. And of course, body had Victory gardens during the war. And i'm sure that that really gave me a taste for strawberries and corn, automated that on. Never ever forget those are really hot weather vegetable les and fruits and no matter how delicious ours are here, yeah not quite as good as you're chasing.

Isn't IT interesting to how smells can be? So as you're talking about, like the light lacks and the tomatoes and i'm growing tomatoes right now and the smell of tomato play out is very specific. You know, when i'm a nipping the leaves that I don't want there, um my hands get that my hands get that smell and I love that smell.

I think you know i'm a man that sorry teacher. Yes, and i've trained in london in one thousand nine and sixty eight, and SHE, of course, believed way back in the eighteen eighteen that our senses are the pathway into our mind. And I think, of course, in this tech world that we live in that were all censored, ly deprived because we aren't touching and smelling and tasting and listening to things that are beautiful and looking at the worlds, the nature around us.

Yes, totally, totally. There's even more wisdom from Alice waters coming up after this break.

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I was watching you talking on the with Julia child and you made the mushroom and final and uh permai on salad olive oil and women and I thought and I was um at the market yesterday and I thought, oh god, i'm going to try that that the looks so divine and so I I bought the panel and the mushrooms and I took at home and I started to see I don't have a metal, so I started to slice the thin as I could and then I had a bite fender. Oh, should I? I hate fano.

I'd forgotten that. I hate fano. I don't like the tase of liquor.

I know I could get you to love panel, but you need to get a little japanese mandela because that is an an essential, the equipment that I have from my kitchen night, a murdering a peco, and I have a mental, and they're very inexpensive. You have to be careful that you do IT slowly, but it's not like the big french one. It's hard to you said you really could hurt to your self. But when you eat a big track of final, I wouldn't want there. But if you saved finally and mixed with Greens and a great fina, great on IT with gara is delicious like that because it's a little tone of an urb.

I think what's becoming quite clear to me is that is there any house in your neighborhood? Sepia, I have to move next. You have to be my neither.

or I have to come through a house. I need .

a house. Alice can eat a house next to you. Um did did you get to know Julia child.

you know, I did. I knew her from year two and maybe near one of the restaurant and SHE came. And as he had the fixed Price dinner, because that's all we had, IT, again, yes. Three, ninety five, four, four. Course, you.

three dollars and ninety five cents, to be clear. Yes.

yes. And when I came over to the table, SHE said to me, this is not a restaurant. This is like gating and somebody's home.

And I think SHE meant IT a little bit as an himself all no right. But i'm a little bit of what are you doing? And I thought I was the creative comment, the greatest compliment.

And then we became good friends after that, and issue was acted as sort of a big sister to me. And that respect the one show that we did together up. It's just so amper.

As said, I was doing something so foolishly simple, but he was so generous about what so fascinating out of how are you crack and all of open when he knew perfectly well had to, that I didn't. And i'm acting like that is something special, like communicating ing to people. And IT was so tender the way that he took part of me.

I have a Julia, a child confessional story, because I live in seeing a barber where, of course, he lived at the end of her life. Yes, and he was very close friends with our neighbor of the time, don army. And he would often, of course, as i'm sure what happens with you as well, people would send her food.

People would send her meat. And dollar neighbor was a wonderful barba cue. And so he would bring meat to him, and then he would barbecue sea. And so one day our neighbor's said, I would, july is coming over tonight for cocktail.

Come over for a cocktail and I said, oh, okay, this was, by the way, this is quite a long time ago, and our kids were really Young. You know, this, by the way, does not reflect well on me, so just heads up about that. And so then I knew I was around that time, and I was like, oh my god, I can go to somewhere the house. We've got too much to do, the kids and blazer.

and we didn't go. We didn't go.

And I am gna tell you. But if somebody said to me to have any regrets in your life, that would top the list because um we didn't go and we miss a chance to meet that icon and good human being so anyway, i'm i'm confessing to you my my priest always waters and I hope that you are going to tell me that you forgive my son.

I do forgive your because I understand completely about taking care of a child and a family at home around dinner time. And my new grandchild is absolutely adorable, but he takes full time attention. And yes, I want to be there for her, especially around dinner.

And I understand the the issues for parents to live at that time. And I think one of the great things that going on right now are that men are connected with children and are cooking for the family. And I just love IT. It's about sharing the work.

right? Sharing the work. It's not just women's work .

in the house.

absolutely.

That's the beautiful thing that's going on in this next generation. And we're finding out about the patience of each other. And the gardening is the same way. Weren't we all planting factory garden while we planting whereever we can and growing food? By the way, my mother's .

ninety and SHE had her own, very own Victory garden as a little girl. And the word Victory garden is so beautiful, I think I have to make a sign and put that on my garden. That says Victory garden.

I did that during, the neighbors came over and said, how do you keep the deer of weight from your vegetables? And I never had talked to my neighbors before all of a sudden.

How do you keep the deer away? And by the way, how do you keep the bunnies away? The bunnies, these fucking and bunnies here might making .

me crazy. You plant something for them to eat that they like, and that's over there. And so the things that you want are over here.

And what do they like? What do bunnies like? Probably presume I ve never had the problem with funning, so I just had the problem with deer.

Well, I guess i'm going have to plant caris all over mind house because i've actually turned into farmer, my gregor. I mean, i'm thinking like I I got to trap these things and eat them or something. I want to switch girls to ask you a question about motherhood actually specifically because I was really interested in your memory. You talked about your mother's post part of when nobody had would discuss post partum and her help receiving help was considered a taboo and um the arrival of your first period which you felt you couldn't mention even with your pregNancy IT IT struck me how little women we're supposed to know or we're allowed to know about their bodies when you were growing up and i'm wondering how did that um sort of culture effect or influence the way you raised your daughter where there are things that you found you had shame about that you had to find a way to get over. I'm curious about that because I think Frankly, my mother had the same experience about that chAllenge.

Well, I did. I was in berkely in the sixties, yes.

right? So there's .

a that that made up my mind so many way, yes, but I still had those those taboo in me. And I think that you know in some ways fan, his father did not have the those in his life for IT didn't didn't feel that way about naked ness or then just the the parts of of, you know, your body that are just not to be talked about.

And Fanny opened up my mind in a way interesting SHE did he helped me to really accept myself in that? In that way SHE wasn't afraid of those words ah and still can't say them really strange. No, I can't.

I can't say them quite. I can think them, but I can say them. I believe in IT. I believe in having having skeletons that we learn from in our science class. In fourth grade, we had that we don't know anything about anatomy anymore.

Where is our gold platter? I had to ask when i've went to th and talking to, where is that? I mean, why don't we know?

And what is he doing? By the way, what is he? yes.

And what is.

I think people get rid of their goal letter.

Don't say no. We don't know anything. Anything appear. The functioning of our bodies? yes. And I mean, IT was only Kennedy that helped us learn about exercise and what our muscles did and who I encourage us all to exercise. And and and that was the beginning of my my really aren't sort of passion about IT. But you know, waited, we thought and we still do things of exercise as .

hard yeah as opposed .

to just A H yes. I mean, it's like walking at at night and seeing the stars. Yes, watching the sunset even if you're in a city, it's like um you get to move in and breathe a kind of the air that's different.

And I just think that we have such a wrong understanding. Well, he goes with the food too. It's completely misunderstood but is good for us. And what is not .

yeah indeed IT really is. Um I I would love to shift here and talk about your life as a mother. You had your daughter at age forty, which is just phenomenal. By the way, I love the name Fanny.

Can you talk about that transition? Because of course, you have been running shapes ese at that time and then talk about what you did once Fanny was born in how you managed that. I'm going to say transition.

Fanny was a child of the restaurant. I did bring her there very early on, yes, and the way as he would crawl around in the door, and I wrote a book about her when he was ten years old and had making her pizz upstairs in the restaurant with meli and all of those experiences, SHE had had a very early age.

But I won itor to understand that that food works right of the moment and needed to be eaten, you know, from from the card to the table, that experiences. So we had a garden out and back at the house that another crates story, which I might have told one time, was SHE in front run at a blustery pancakes. And I said, this isn't the time.

It's winter time. There's no peep. SHE said, i'm going to go to the story.

I said, organic blue, remember that? So SHE comes back with a little organic label on the paris, I think where did you get that? And in the end, he had to admit that she's stole organic label from another package. And I had put on a, did he confess .

in the moment or or later?

No, it's just a few moments later about now blessing heart.

This is a child rebelling against, that is waters that. Alice, but explain how I mean, as you you as you acknowledge, you know, being at home, at dinner time, putting a child to bed, that does, that doesn't, shall we say, job very well with running a restaurant. So can you talk about that baLance, how you managed IT? Did you step back a little bit.

did you? Well, I I to hit, I knew we were open for six days, and I knew that I couldn't work six days, but maybe I could work three days and have another chef work three days and they would get paid for full time, but they would only work three days. And IT worked so well because they were inspired IT.

They brought another viewpoint to the restaurant that I decided to do that for the cafe chefs and for the pastry chef. And we've done this since I had my daughter enough forty years ago, and I and IT changed the the life of the restaurant because the people who were working on the menus could go out and need, could take care of their families, could go on vacation. The other chef would cover for them, right? And everybody who worked at the restaurant would have several opinions.

You know, they would learn how to make a salad that way and this way with different chefs. And so I am convinced that spending that money in that way is what has kept the restaurant alive for these fifty three years. Well.

I think it's interesting because IT kind of IT really does overlap with what you are saying earlier. And that is the connection to the people with whom you're working the almost ensemble work that you're doing as a restaurant. And that is, of course, um there is so much respect built into that a way of working that IT IT is so ingrained there is nothing but respect there and people respond to that people IT brings out the best in someone and um and that's a great life lesson IT can be applied to so many things IT certainly I can I do apply that to the work that I do when i'm working in an on sample, which is my favorite thing in the world to do and that kind of give and take the ability to listen and the ability to share in a moment it's a great life lesson. It's time to take another break will be right back with our waters in just a moment.

Before we stopped talking today, but I would like to talk you for hours and hours.

thanks.

yes. Well, you must. And I want you one thing i'd love for you to tell is the the venner hurt tag story with the boot. Would you mind explaining the genesis of that is such a good story?

Well, it's a story about two filmmaker. It's a for her dog, an iron. Or as they were, both people. I, you, because of my deer's friend tom learning, yes, and he came. He used japanese, says, dining room.

So I met no George lucas copa and and cause and everybody came to share because of them and tom, uh, encouraged A A film to be made about venner her side making a bet with a mars, referring to a firm that aroma was going to make. Vern said, if you do make this film eron mars, I will eat my shoe then tom luddy said, oh, well, alex, well, well, cook the ship. Alice will cook the ship and for that brings by A, A, A walking boot that he, a big old, tough thing and I said, for I, i'm not sure I can cook that.

He said, cooking. And I study with girls and tied at all opening, I figured IT was a little bit like cooking a duck coal fee. Cook IT in the fat, cook IT in da and .

assume IT was leather.

IT was letter. Oh god, yes.

yes, you're not clicking some sort of a gore tex situation. Yes.

you. But yeah. Anyway, I started cooking IT and cooking IT and cooking IT and cooking IT. And funny, tom came body at the shoot.

Take over to the auditorium where fer, what's going to eat the shoe because aral, mate, the film, and I could not really make IT help. But finer and his enthusiasm started to eat the ship. I watched him him about. He had a very sharp scissors that he cut up with, and he did you without, and he didn't need all thing, but he he did a good job.

And did he go straight to the emergency room after that?

No, but I think .

that is so remarkable.

It's testimony to really believe in what you're doing. yes. And believing in film to that degree, to understanding the value of a certain filmmaker, knowing is important. Hit the films he smoke and that, yes, I guess the way I would feel too, i'm not sure I have a the issue, but I might have to do something that I didn't like because I want IT to show people that IT was that important to me .

yeah I I get IT. I have to say that was an extraordinary story. And speaking of tom luddy, I know that he passed away last year, very sadly, for our listener's. Tom luddy was a film producer who cofounded the telly ride film festival. And I wanted to ask us, actually, you don't mind about the things that change as we age.

And i'd like to talk about how you deal with grief and mass because you're so community oriented in the most healthy and magical way, really, how do you rebuild the community as you move through grief, as you have lost people? I mean, this is a part of life. And how, what? How do you do?

IT? Well, I bought. I have believed that I could do IT really. I was afraid of death. And I had my four dear friends die within six months, four hours, four offer.

Tom, lady, who, who was my friend of fifty years, fifty five years, I had fit, strive, book every book with me, wrote every letter to A, A president for me, he, what with me every morning, and I haven't been able to imagine my life without him. And then Steve, commonly, who was the first way to its shape, ese. He was ahead of the cafe at the top of the stairs for everyone.

He was shane's. And the fourth went was, of course, David goins. And David had a trigger, and he was paralysis. And David is somebody who always did things the way he want coffee with color, you know, that kind of person always new, but he wanted and there he was in the hospital parallel and I knew he wouldn't be there long.

And even though his sister store of an attempt to to um still love and goes through, we have he said, I want to go home said to his best friend, british from the printing press days, I want a blueberry muson and a right whisky. He ate the blue brain, nothing, drank a rive whisky and tight I learned so much about now some did IT poorly that they couldn't help, but I didn't plan for IT. They didn't think I was going to have them.

And some had partners, ses, who helps them really be with their friends right to the end, who had their favourite musicians come and play music and find shape anees sent to their house. And then there were people that wants to do what in private, that did a, when they're partner, you know, left on a trip, you and they were also different. yeah.

And I solved what I was like, when you don't have your wishes written down and notorious before you die, you can count on friends and family to do that, because they may be stricken with grief, and they have families that want to do something other. One, cremation. I've already told, funny that, you know, i've got ta backup for you. You don't do what I want, and i've want to be barred in in the crowd because .

of .

with trees. I want to be part of free, tentative agriculture. I want to nourish the soil. Don't want to test just in there. And I I can't ably do IT in my backyard so he could have a LED this garden there. But um I really think it's important. Just think of the way that people have been buried since the pick ending of time and i'm sure that that was part of of what cats soil. So so rich with all of the new trend is the barriers.

It's interesting isn't IT that, you know, we all haven't common in the fact that we've been born mystically magically born in this moment, and we all have in common that we're all gonna go, yes, but isn't IT interesting that people really push away that fact? yes. And to your point about, can we say dying? Well, that there's a denial in place that is an obstacle to dying. Well.

I think there is huge style. Even the people that are very, very committed about IT, somebody's got questions for them that they can answer. And IT goes in different directions.

But I I saw that that I I need to prepare myself and not just mentally, but physically. And and I I just appreciate the cultures that care about this. Guess like the japanese culture particular, i'm so interested in the way they treat children and schools and and how they treat older people and they care for them.

I always want to come in right to the end, for my friend. I promised from the time I was thirty, I just thought, what if we all just live together? Yeah, until we go. And ruth recha was asking about where the economy .

and was today yeah and .

maybe a sana power maybe .

can I join that part away if you put IT? Oh thanks. I'd love to be in IT. I'd love to be in IT. Um I want to ask you quick little questions um before we go is there is something you go back and tell yourself when you are twenty one.

pause a don't just tear a through your life so quickly. I mean, I was hard you know of the free speech movement, you know the whole drinking and living in the sexual freedom times to stop the war, I mean, and what we were, so what kind of start for connection with each other. But it's very difficult to do when we aren't really encouraged and talk in college about what the bigger of world is about. And that was something that mario savio taught me at bercy during the free speech. He said, we need to learn from other people who have other way .

of living. Pause and pay attention.

Pay and pay attention. Now, of course, i'm running like crazy right now. Try to change the world.

I know, I know i'm running too, but is something I have to tell myself as well. In fact, yesterday I was taking my dog for a walk, and we walk into the garden, and I was actually admiring some plant sider and bloom. And then I saw a hummingbird land on a little tiny, tiny brand of the this particular plant.

And I just stood there watching IT. And IT was clear that this is a bird who's guarding in us, cannot see the us. You know how tiny of these things are? And I thought, i've got, I have to take the dog to the bird.

I've got to meet with this person. But I just stayed there and I serve thinking about that ever since, just sort of watching the hummer bird sit. And so I take I I am thinking about your that advice. I think we would all benefit to pause and pay attention much more often than we do, particularly in this country.

Well, that's exactly the kind of work I take every morning. I'm just looking at us growing, and i'm just fascinated by IT, and it's happening everywhere. I mean, you don't have to go to a central park. No, I mean, the burden are everywhere, right? And flowers are everywhere and they're changing all the time.

Yeah, of course.

And so you you noted things even in the Daniel lines that are in the the little space between the sad folk. And this trip I was.

I wanted show you the picture of the hummingbird that I took yesterday. Can can you see that? Oh.

I love IT. I've got some pictures just like that for you.

Yeah, it's pretty fun to see them. Just hang. And an incredible, isn't that, dear?

Yes, yes, yes. Alice .

waters, I can't thank you enough for generously giving us so much of your time today. I'm indebted to you. I hope that someday we get to spend time together.

Now there is always a cede for you of bless you.

Thank you for everything today.

Thank you for asking.

Well, well, what a beautiful conversation that works with Alice. I just can't wait to talk to my mom about this one. Lets get on a zoom or right away.

Hi, mom. Nice, sweet mom. okay? I just had the most wonderful conversation with Alice waters. What an extraordinary woman he is.

but what a huge impact that she's had on this world.

Yes, we have to thank for the farm to table movement and regenerated farming and sustainability. You know.

SHE brought that into the four. Absolutely got away from.

yeah, got away from OS and spaghettis and banquet fried chicken dinners. We'd love that. I happened to mention that in my intro of her. But don't worry.

mom, it's all good. It's all fine. yeah. Well, look.

OK, I hope so far so good. SHE talked about her parents Victory garden. And just to be clear, the Victory garden idea was brought about a by president roseveldt mom, right? During a world war two, he encouraged people to plant gardens and call them Victory gardens in support of the war effort.

Can you talk about your Victory garden? What was the idea behind IT sort of nationally? And then what was your thinking about IT when you were .

a little girl? Oh, I mean, I thought I was dragged. I mean, that if you plan if your vegetables and you had your family eat them, that you would win the war.

IT was just that and was a Victory. And every family will never have to go to the store because you had all your own vegetables and made your independent and and IT may just win the war. So I, I had a really small path without the side door was a good, suddenly, corner of our house, the backyard.

And you were about seven.

seven or eight, right? exactly. So I got hold of seeds, but I planted them way to close together. I didn't Better understand how much space each one needed. Well, at any rate, not too much happened in that garden, except very carts.

And, uh, I remember very well one day riding my bike up the side driveway and seeing is little Green hops coming. yeah. And I thought, oh, is we're winning the war so great? I was so excited and I tried to keep watching, but I got too excited.

So I started to pull them out, tell you they were like little hair characters, like little that, I mean, you could barely see them. They were so darn, uh, so anyway, then I tried to leave some in there, but I just kept getting excited. Every time I looked at them, did my harvesting way too early?

So they were like little tiny, like heroines coming out. Herpes, I bet they were tasted because they were so baby.

yes, right first week. But um all those things that we did, the scrap metal and ten cans that you gathered and then you took him to the scratch metal center and uh you bought case stamps and all those small things that we did seem to me to be crucial. And I really, as I had my red wagon, I was gathering up tin kins. I was convinced that that was going to win the war.

mom, and wasn't. They're rationing to.

yeah, there was rationing of sugar and butter. We didn't get. We got my White stuff and then you yellow die to IT. Oh dear, I was just, there was an awful.

And the what was the idea of the Victory garden? Just what was the idea politically? Why did he suggest that people plant gardens?

I don't know. Somehow I think probably I am imagine that was elenor rosing about yeah because he was very influenced the work in coral and cornell. What was the place that I had, the first really home economics that was not just stupid, I mean very a scientific so here's .

what um my exterior brain, my phone is telling me about why americans were asked to planned Victory garden. Officials reminded americans that a well planned Victory garden was not only patriotic, but could provide a family with nutritious and tasty food.

AmErica had a reputation as a land of plenty, but world war to chAllenge the nation's ability to grow and distribute food, because obviously, the distribution of food is an expensive undertaking. So that's a really fascinating idea. And I know that was such a formative part of your life, and IT was a formative part of all his life as well, which is just so, so interesting.

Anyway, I hope that our powers across again because I really, really like Alice. She's just a lovely person all right. Um so you're lovely too. And now i'm going to say goodby e to you.

Okay, I will say goodbyes to you too. I love you. Thank you for talking to her and talking to me.

Okay, love you, mom. Have a wonderful day.

Okay, thanks you too. but.

There is more wise with me with lemonade premium on apple, you can listen to every episode of season three, add free subscribers, also get access to exclusive bonus interview excerpts from each episode. Subscribe now by clicking on the wiser than me podcast logo in the apple podcast APP and then hitting the subscribe button, make sure you're following wiser than me on social media.

We're on instagram and tiktok at wiser than me, and we're on facebook at wiser than me pocket wider than me as a production of lemon auto media created and hosted by me. Julia li drives this show is produced by criss peace, ja ara Williams, alex michelin and oho. Brad hall is a consulting producer, Rachel neel is VP of new content, and our S, V, P of weekly content and production is Steve Nelson.

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