And she has shown us that rigorous scholarship and advocacy don't have to live in separate worlds, that you can do your homework, know the evidence, speak clearly, and still fight

like hell for a better system.

Next we have Ruth Reichel, an author and the former editor-in-chief of Gourmet Ruth.

Okay, I think I'm hitting the right spot here.

So the other day I made the terrible mistake of looking at Marian's Wikipedia page.

It is a daunting document.

I've always had huge admiration for Marian.

She is one of the very first Americans to understand in a serious way that food and nutrition are about so much more than something to eat.

But I think we understand your tone and, and you always look at your work with generosity in mind.

Um, so I really didn't wanna write about my mother's being bipolar, which was the source of all of that m- mad craziness of hers.

But Anne said about that chapter, you know, "I feel..." About the first chapter, which n- is called The Queen of Mold.

And Anne said, "I feel like there's something you're not telling us in this book.

There's something about your relationship with your mother that is off." And um, I said, you know, "Well, you know, she, she was bipolar.

She was no longer alive.

She was bipolar and I really don't feel comfortable writing that.

... newspaper style column inches.

But you've got the Marc Meneau meal, which was one of the incredible restaurants in the world.

One of the great things about Paris is that the heart of Paris doesn't change very much, but it is a really different city now than it was in 1983, and certainly in terms of food.

I mean, now there are Italian restaurants and Korean restaurants.

In 1983, there were French restaurants.

There were maybe two Vietnamese [laughs] restaurants.

There were Algerian restaurants, and that was it.

Ce n'est pas Francais was something that you heard over and over and over again.

Mm-hmm

And, and so- and we should just describe who Si Newhouse is.

Si Newhouse was a very eccentric billionaire.

His father had originally bought Condé Nast as a bauble for his wife's birthday in the '50s.

But he had a yen to be in the magazine business, and at that time, he, you know, he owned The New Yorker, and Vogue, and GQ, and lots of very high-end magazines.

And so I go off to lunch with him, having absolutely no idea what to expect.

And here is this man who is dressed...

Si was almost always dressed in a sort of green-gray sweatshirt.

You did David Foster Wallace, going to a Maine lobster festival and writing a piece that was not really [chuckles] about, about the sumptuous taste of the food.

Mm-hmm.

And I told her that I had gotten this job offer and I was gonna turn it down.

And she said, "You take that job.

You are polishing every word you write as if it were a gem, and you need the experience of going to a newspaper where an editor says to you, 'I need 15 inches and I need it in an hour.' And you do it, and it's not the best thing you ever wrote, but it's good enough, and tomorrow it's gonna be lining someone's birdcage.

And you just need...

Y- you need that experience.

You, you need to learn to write fast and to not have it be perfect."

(laughs)