History Daily - Saturday Matinee: Famous & Gravy
Episode Date: July 5, 2025On today’s Saturday Matinee, we put on our aprons and open our cookbooks to learn about one of the best culinary personalities in recent history: Julia Child. Link to Famous & Gravy: https://www....famousandgravy.com/ Support the show! Join Into History for ad-free listening and more. History Daily is a co-production of Airship and Noiser.Go to HistoryDaily.com for more history, daily.
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AJ. Tuautteets, Kirste,
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KERAMENTEN SUATTAGTHA MINOWSETI,
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I love to cook,
and that passion was ignited in large part
by the chefs and culinary personalities
I saw on TV growing up.
Martin Yan on Yan Can Cook.
Jacques Pepin on Everyday Cooking,
James Smith on the Frugal Gourmet,
Justin Wilson on Louisiana cooking,
and of course, Julia Child.
On today's Saturday matinee,
we bring you a recipe for fame, adventure, and influence.
The Life of Julia Child,
as told by the podcast Famous and Gravy,
a pop culture history show
that explores the fascinating lives and legacies
of recently deceased celebrities,
icons, and cultural figures.
I hope you enjoy.
While you're listening,
be sure to follow Famous and Gravy.
We put a link in the show notes to make it easy for you.
This is Famousingravy.
Biographies from a different point of view.
To participate in our opening quiz, email us at hello at famousengravey.com.
Now, here's the quiz to reveal today's dead celebrity.
This person died 2004, age 91.
Her father was a wealthy farm consultant and investor.
Her mother was a housewife with a cook and a maid who could not make much more than baking
powder biscuits, codfish balls, and Welsh rarebit.
Wow, this sounds like a Kellogg heiress or something like that.
Not a Kellogg Eras, but good guess.
She attended Smith College at a time when women could be either nurses or teachers, she said,
and she had some vague idea of being a novelist or a basketball star.
Well, there were a lot of interesting people in Smith College at that point in time.
She must have been tall.
After World War II broke out, she signed up for intelligence work.
with the Office of Strategic Services hoping to become a spy,
but was sent off as a file clerk.
Oh, okay, let me think about this.
I don't know. I don't know.
Did she go to law school?
She did not go to law school.
A self-confessed ham,
she became a darling of audiences and comedians
almost from the moment she made her debut on WGBH in Boston in 1963.
Phyllis Diller.
Not Phyllis Diller.
Good guess.
All right.
She was a towering figure on the culinary front for more than 40 years.
Most Americans knew her as the imperturbable host of the long-running PBS television series, The French Chef.
Julia Child!
Julia Child!
Today's dead celebrity is Julia Child.
When you co-wrote mastering the art of French cooking, did you see it as a way to introduce Americans to French cuisine?
Yes, I was tremendously interested in French cuisine.
Yes, I was tremendously interested in French cooking.
French cuisine because it's the only cuisine that has the real rules on how to cook. Because I had
started in quite late. I was in my early 30s when I started cooking. And I found that the recipes
and all the books I had were really not adequate. They didn't tell you enough. And I'm for one,
I won't do anything unless I'm told why I'm doing it. So I felt that we needed fuller explanations
so that if you followed one of those recipes, it should turn out exactly.
Jack be white. My feeling is that once you know everything and it digested it, then it becomes part of you.
Welcome to Famous and Gravy. I'm Michael Osborne. And my name is Michelle Dallenberg. And on this show,
we choose a famous figure who died in the 21st century and we take a totally different approach
to their biography. What didn't we know? What could we not see clearly? And what does the
celebrity's life story teach us about ourselves? Today, Julia Child, died 2004, age
91.
All right.
So Amit is out today and I've invited my friend Michelle to guest host.
Michelle is a producer based in Austin.
We have worked on a ton of projects together.
Right now we're working on a show that Michelle had an idea for called Where Should I Live?
Michelle, what's the sort of like pitch for Where Should I Live?
How would you describe it to people?
Yeah, Where Should I Live is a podcast about how we figure out where we belong.
And it started out because I was trying to figure out whether I should stay here in
Austin or move somewhere new that felt more like home to me. And now it's feeling a lot more relevant
because there's a lot of people trying to figure out, does this place that we live actually feel
safe and welcoming? And can I have the kind of life that I want here? Yeah. Well, and I think that
question is really on people's mind. And I like the way you describe it around belonging. Well,
the other thing about it, too, is there's kind of relationship between that and for me and food.
I mean, part of where should I live is like also speaking to a kind of travel lust, which one of the
criteria for should I move to this city or this town is, is the food good there?
Right.
Does it have the kind of food that I love to eat?
So on this podcast, I explore different cities and narrow down a list of places that I think I could
live.
And then I'm going to go to these cities and have someone local there, give me a tour as a potential
future resident.
So I'm going to imagine what it might be like to live there.
Where would I go get coffee?
What restaurants would I go to?
where my daughter go to school.
Could I have this life?
And it's not that different, actually,
from some of the themes of famous engravy,
like what I want this life.
Totally.
Well, and I like that you're going to be dating cities.
It's like Tinder for life.
Okay.
Cool.
All right.
Well, let's get just right into it.
Category 1, grading the first line of their obituary.
Julia Child, who turned the art of French cooking
into primetime television entertainment
and brought Casulet to a cassero.
culture in the two volumes of her monumental mastering the art of French cooking,
died yesterday at her home in Santa Barbara, California, two days before her 92nd birthday.
Michelle, your reactions.
So my gut reaction to this was, yeah, pretty good.
Yeah, I think it's like somewhere between good and great.
Yeah, I agree.
So what stood out to you?
Well, the turn of phrase, cassoulet to a casserole culture.
And I liked the way no one else can see you, but you kind of had this flare when you said it.
that felt a little fancy, like Casoulet.
I wonder, do you guys ever talk about the people who write these?
Because I wonder if the guy or the gal who wrote this was like, oh, wait, wait, listen to this one I came up with.
I 100% agree.
No, whoever wrote this was a little bit proud of themselves, but I'm kind of good with it, right?
There is charm to that turn of phrase, cassoulet to a casserole culture.
It's got the alliteration, obviously, but it's interesting what it means.
Casuale, I don't think I've ever had Casuale.
I don't know what Casuale is.
Yeah, I don't think I don't think I.
I know where it is either, but casserole culture, I don't know what casserole culture is,
but it sounds bland.
I actually do know what casserole culture is.
Oh.
Sometimes when people say, where are you from?
I say, I am from the land of tuna fish casserole because I'm from Nebraska.
Right.
And also the rise of processed foods.
One thing that's so interesting that I didn't really think about before getting ready
for this episode is how much the rise of Julia Child is very different from the rise of
a certain American diet.
at post-World War II. And that one of the things she's doing is countering a very prominent
trend where it was all about convenience and about efficiency and a little bit tasteless. And she
comes in and like reintroduces a love of cooking in the kitchen. And I didn't quite understand
those opposing forces. I don't think I did either. And I want to talk about this more later,
but it's this idea that not only cooking could be something fun and interesting and enjoyable, but
eating itself could be enjoyable.
That's a huge contradiction because casserole, I mean, they're fine.
It's like comfort food, but it's not, I mean.
It's not sexy.
Let's go with that.
The cassoulet is like the steak and the casserole is like hamburger helper.
Right.
Well, okay, let's talk about the rest of it.
I mean, I actually think the art of French cooking, that phrase had to be in here.
I love that they got both the TV show and the book.
I mean, I think that they needed mastering the art of French cooking, very famous book.
and her primetime television entertainment.
And I even like the word monumental.
I wrote that too.
Volumes of monumental.
Yeah, there is something monumental about Julia Child.
Oh, yeah.
Her voice, her personality, her gravitas.
She's monumental.
I mean.
So what do you think is like an omission here?
What's missing?
The only thing, if anything, it could say just a tiny bit more about her exuberant
personality and her voice, but maybe monumental is doing the work there.
I think monumental is more in reference to the book.
I don't know if it captures like her persona.
And I think you're right that she is such a unique personality and figure.
There's not a whole lot of references to that side of her or to who she was.
The way, when you see the word cassoulet, you do kind of want to do a Julia Child impersonation.
We'll save that for later.
You know what I was actually missing from me is that they didn't mention public broadcasting or PBS.
She's such a like figure of public broadcasting that I kind of wanted not just prime time television.
entertainment. I wanted like public broadcasting television entertainment or something, even though she
goes on to do commercial work with Good Morning America and and so forth, she's up there with
Fred Rogers and Reading Rainbow. I mean, she's such a like PBS figure for me. Oh yeah. I think for a lot of
people that I kind of wanted allusion to that. I didn't even think about that, but you were so right.
That's exactly how she started. She was on a book club show basically, like where they talked about
books and she came on to talk about her book and then she makes an omelette.
on TV and it blows everyone's minds, which sounds hilarious to say this today.
It's like, you made an omelet and that changed the world. But it did. Yeah. Yeah, no, it's true.
And otherwise, I think this is very strong. So I don't know, let's go ahead and give our grade.
What would you give this, Michelle? I would say, I'm going to give it an 8.5.
I can't. There's no points. You're going to either go eight. There's no rounding in this.
I'll give it. Now I can't decide. Do I want to go up or down? Do you want me to go for it?
I'm going to give it a nine. I'm going to give it a nine. I'm going to give it. I think a nine. Yeah. I
I think a nine here.
I think this is very, very good.
There's a piece or two missing maybe.
Could you use a little bit more for personality?
Kind of would have liked a scene, PBS.
But this captures a lot.
I think that turn of phrase here,
Casualet to a casserole culture,
it's just so nice to see in the first line
of Julia Child's obituary.
I'm giving extra marks for that.
I like that to you.
And I, yeah, I high five whoever wrote this
in the obit writers room.
Good job.
Okay, nine-nine.
Category two, five things I love about you.
Here, Michelle and I will develop a list of five things that offer a different angle on who this person was and how they lived.
Would you be okay if I let off?
I've got one thing that I'm sort of itching to say.
Yeah, I go for it.
Late Bloomer.
This has come up a bunch on famous and gravy.
The more a figure becomes famous late in life, the more drawn to them I am and the more I feel I learned something important.
So Julia Child was 32 before she ever cooked.
She was a wealthy growing up and had people cook for her and had no experience in the kitchen.
She was 34 when she married.
And this is at a time when a lot of women and men were getting married at much younger ages.
She was 39 when she finished at the cordon blue, which is where she trained as a cook and as a chef.
And then she's 49, almost 50, when the cookbook that she co-wrote is published.
She was on nobody's radar for the first 50 years of her life.
There was nothing before age 50 that would have said she will,
one day be a household name. Not only is that unusual for people. That's unusual for women, and that's
especially unusual for women who are not like bombshells on TV. Like, it's such an unlikely story,
and I love how late in life it is. Her fame, what we know her for, all happened after the age of
51, 52. And even then, it wasn't until she's like in her late 50s that French chef really takes off.
I need to be reminded of that. I am 46 coming up on 47. Sometimes,
I feel like the ship has sailed. It's not even that I want to be famous. It's just that I want
my successes to be in the future. You know, the things I'm hoping for myself, I need to hold
space that they may still happen. I think this is remarked upon with Julia Child in a way,
but after all the research and after thinking about this, like, it's my favorite thing about
her story. So maybe a little generic, but late bloomer. No, I love that. I am also almost 47,
and I thought about that too. Like, what if there's more to do?
Maybe this isn't all there is. Maybe I don't think I'm going to become famous, nor do I want to be. But there's more to look forward to. That's really exciting to think about. And I love that she was doing this work up until she died, basically. Like she had a TV show into her 80s. Amazing. There's a kind of patience with it, too. The fact that she had never stepped into a kitchen, nothing in her story that would have suggested she had this innate talent. It's almost like somebody who's like a musical prodigy.
He doesn't pick up a guitar until they're in their 30s or something.
Yeah.
That's such a hopeful quality.
So, yeah, late bloomer.
That's my thing number one.
I love that.
All right.
What do you got for number two?
She was a promoter of pleasure.
Okay.
Yeah, yeah.
So we talked about this a little bit, the obit line, but she was such a huge contradiction
to this time, you know, this time in the 50s, like we were saying, she wasn't making more casserole.
She was saying, you deserve pleasure.
You deserve beautiful food.
And I'm actually going to argue that she was a pleasure activist.
Oh, I like that.
Pleasure activist.
You know that term?
Yeah.
No, I've never heard that before.
Yeah, yeah.
So that term was coined by Adrian Marie Brown.
She's a queer, black, American writer, organizer, facilitator.
And she wrote a book called Pleasure Activism.
And it's being talked about a lot right now because people are protesting and doing a lot of
activism. And the idea is that centering pleasure is a political act, not suffering, not just
work, work, work, work, work. The idea of taking time to breathe, taking time to have pleasure,
joy, freedom, all of that stuff is actually a resistant act. I think Julia realized this,
that having pleasure, taking pleasure in food, not just, you know, sometimes people think
pleasure activism is about eroticism or sex, but it's also about food and cooking and anything
that we take joy in. And so I think Julia really that opened up for her when she first went to
France and she tries this food for the first time. And she's...
Has a sensory experience. Oh, yeah. She's like, oh my gosh, what have I been, what have I been
missing out on? So this idea that it's our birthright to have pleasure and to get pleasure from food.
And I feel like, I don't think she would have ever called herself this in her lifetime and that term
didn't exist. But if we think about the way that she, I mean, she has this TV show. She has this
platform. She has these books that sell 3.5 million copies. And she's promoting this idea of
pleasure and joy through food. Again, that was this time that we maybe don't even remember,
realized that this was a time of opening a can of peas for your vegetable and not having
fresh foods and not having beautiful food. You're of a school that says you should really
enjoy your food rather than having to eat a certain balanced diet. Tell us about that.
along to the American Institute of Wine and Food, and our logo is of moderation, small helpings,
and a little bit of everything, because you don't know what you might be missing,
and above all, have a good time.
So you're not pushing away the butter and the cream and all of that?
You should have something of everything, and you should thoroughly enjoy it,
because if you don't, you won't digest well.
So I love that.
When I started thinking it that way, I really, it just opened something up for me.
No, I mean, the thing is, like, some of why we love Julia Child, I think is obvious that she does make an emphatic case over the course of the second half of her life that food is a pleasure and it's part of living and it's joyous and its sensory experiences should be indexed high in anybody's life.
But I guess I'm curious to learn more about this idea of it as a political act.
But it's a really helpful framing for sort of encapsulating her legacy.
I love that.
Pleasure activist.
Okay.
I'll take number three, I guess.
I mean, I feel like we have to talk about the secret agent lady, the fact that she worked for the OSS.
I guess a lot of people who know Julia Child's story knew this part of it.
She was never exactly a spy.
When I first learned that she worked for the OSS, which was the precursor to the CIA, this is how she spent World War II.
This is how she met her husband, Paul, who will talk more about later.
I had really hoped that she was like deep undercover in Russia or something.
I was too.
I was disappointed.
Or, you know, behind the lines in Nazi Germany.
And that was not the case.
But she was working with senior leadership and what became the CIA.
And more than anything, she was like the keeper of secrets.
She knew where the agents were.
And in as much as intelligence work is about trading information, she knew who had what
information.
It's just really cool to imagine Julia Child as a spy.
She kind of like at times downplays this and says, oh, I was more of a file clerk.
But then the agents are like, no, no, no.
She had an unbelievably important role.
and she was mostly in Asia. So she was in Sri Lanka, she was in China and in D.C. for a while.
Anyway, a cool part of her story I had no idea about that I loved.
Did you dive into the shark repellent recipe?
Oh, right. I forgot about that. Why don't you explain what that is?
Okay, so this kind of made into a joke sometimes in her biography, but people will say,
oh, her first recipe was actually that she helped create shark repellent for the Navy.
And so I guess during that time, there would be Navy men who would get attacked by sharks as they were coming down from the planes or whatever.
Yeah, I think it was also like setting underwater bombs.
And they were also under, I heard different stories.
I read different.
I even went to the CIA.gov website to see if I can find out more information.
And they kind of hilariously, and maybe it's because it's a public facing site, but they're kind of like, isn't this cool?
Like even the CIA itself is like, isn't this neat?
Yeah, yeah.
But so it's like some chemical concoction that repelled sharks and keeps them away from the subs and the bombs?
Right.
But some of the information about Julia was declassified apparently over the last, however many years.
And evidently, in the reports, it says that it had a mild deterrent effect.
So it didn't work super well.
But what it did do was it helped the military folks.
It helped them psychologically.
And then I read that Julia would say in interviews,
it's still being used today by NASA when things come down into the ocean or whatever. And the CIA says
they cannot confirm that. They don't know. Oh, interesting. This has been redacted. Like the CIA doesn't know.
Who who's going to know then? I don't know. They may know and just are not telling us. Maybe. Yeah.
Okay. Secret Agent Lady. That was my number three. Love it. What do you got for number four?
I want to talk about her AIDS activism and Planned Parenthood activism. Yeah. And also her willingness
to admit she was wrong because evidently she was, in retrospect, rather homophobic.
Yeah, I saw this a lot. She came up of an age where I think that that was the cultural norm.
Exactly. Yeah. But yet she had a lot of gay friends. And I read, you probably read this too, that
she wouldn't even realize that they were gay because they had girlfriends. And she would say,
oh, I wonder when they're going to get married. And people, you know, do the side-out people. You're like,
Julia, really? Yeah, totally. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or maybe they would have going to get married. Or maybe they
well. And so then her close friend, Bob Johnson, is gay and he succumbs to AIDS in 1986. And this
just galvanizes her. She wakes up. She apologizes for the way that she just talked about
gay people and sexuality. And in the wake of his death, she pours herself into hosting benefits and
raising money to fight AIDS. And I think that's amazing to be able to publicly say, I was wrong.
And I said some things that I shouldn't have said. Not only in my
going to apologize for that. I'm going to put my money where my mouth is, and I'm going to raise
money to help. It's especially unusual for somebody in their 70s. I hate to be like ageist
about it, right? But the older we get, the more rigid we get in our thinking often. And you've mentioned
Planned Parenthood. Yes. I mean, I didn't realize quite what an outspoken Planned Parenthood
advocate she was. She was like, you know, figure number one for that organization. And she took
key for it. And people, and she was such a public figure at that time. It's the 80s. She's hosting benefits
to fundraise. She's making statements that were considered risky. She gets backlash. And she does not care.
She writes in her articles. And she just stands up. She doesn't care of people stop watching her because that's
that important to her. The other thing that I felt was interesting about her political activism is that her
father and her upbringing is completely on the other side. Yeah. He is like extraordinarily
conservative and her mom dies at a fairly young age. And she's the oldest. And her father is like kind of
looms large. That she came to her own politics, like sort of independently is something I admired
about her journey. There was definitely like an independent woman emerging as she grew.
Yeah. Okay. I'm going to take number five if that's okay. I've got one thing. I love her violence.
Whenever like, okay, so I had not watched a lot of Julia Child growing up. That was not on my TV.
Nobody in my family was watching it. When I went back and
watch the clips. The way she'll like take a mallet and start beating something else, it's like,
oh my God, you know, like she's got these like hands where she's like really rubber and she's,
you know, beating the heck out of food. Hold and hard as it should be and you want to beat it.
This is not an actual rolling pin. It's one that my husband made for me out of an old garage
broom handle. And if you cut it right in the right place, if you go through the cartilaginous part
of the vertebrae. You can cut it right through
and you don't have to use a saw.
There's something violent about her
in the kitchen that I really
kind of like. It's like, it's a take control
kind of thing. I'm not a great chef,
but when I do cook, and I'm
getting into it. I like it more. The older I get,
the more I actually enjoy the experience.
I can be very timid in the kitchen. And one
thing, she's sort of famously kind of
clumsy in a way, but she's also violent.
So maybe it's boldness in the kitchen
that I'm really speaking to. But it's such
a, like, it's agro, and it's kind
awesome. And I think it's part of what makes her so compelling as a TV figure. Oh, absolutely. And
what popped into my head as you were saying that is chaos Muppet. Because she's bold and she's like,
I'm going to chop this thing. I'm going to do this. And if it ends up on the floor, who cares?
She didn't really drop a chicken on the floor. That is not true. She dropped a potato pancake,
I guess. And it wasn't on the floor. It was onto the stove. But people remember her, oh, she let things fall on the
floor and she's picks them right back up. There's urban myths around some of this. But she does talk
about it also is like it's okay to fail.
That's part of the idea. There is a real forgivingness
to like fear of failure and that
only, that has to be exist with a kind
of gusto that she brings
to like, well, let's beat the hell out of whatever
it is we're making.
Now one thing I think a lot of people are just so
scared of any recipe they see
that says sugar, syrup or caramel
that they do! I won't try
to think like that. And that is
this awful American
syndrome of fear
of failure.
And if you're going to have a sense of fear of failure, you're just never going to learn how to cook because cooking is lots of it is one failure after another.
And that's how you finally learn.
Okay.
Let's recap then.
So number one, I said late bloomer.
Number two, you said pleasure activist.
Is that how you put it?
I love that.
Pleasure activist.
Number three, I said secret agent lady.
Number four, you went with AIDS and Planned Parenthood activism.
And number five, I said violence in the kitchen.
I like Cass Muppet.
Let's go chaos, Muppet.
Okay, awesome list.
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Category
3
One Love
In this category, Michelle and I will each choose one word or phrase that characterizes this person's loving relationships.
First, we will review the family life data.
So she married Paul, who is the love of her life.
In 1946, they met during the war.
Julia was 34 when they married.
Paul died in 1994.
She never married again, so they were married for about 48 years.
They had no children.
So Julia Child was childless.
The other relevant info I put down here was that Paul's mom was named Bertha.
So her name was Bertha Child.
I don't know.
That struck me as funny.
Yeah, her mother-in-law was birth-a-child.
I guess the other thing that is maybe noteworthy, it does sound like she did want to have kids.
And the ship sailed.
I think Paul was less interested in children.
It's hard to know what to make of the Julia and Julia movie, the Merrill Streep and
Adams movie, the way it's portrayed in that, it was something she grieved and was sad about.
And a couple of times she makes reference to like, I would have liked to have children.
At the same time, you know, she's such a teacher that I feel like whatever parenting instincts
she has find their expression in her public life and in her professional life.
And she also has a bunch of nieces and nephews.
And they all describe how she was like a parental figure to them.
She was very loving and caring.
and in fact her grand nephew ends up co-writing her autobiography with her.
Well, and I think before we share our word or phrase,
I think it's worth saying another beat here about Paul.
So they met during the war.
He was in the State Department.
He's the reason they are overseas.
And it's sort of his work that leads them to Europe, Paris,
and then later, I think they're in Marseille and then Oslo.
They fall in love slowly.
It sort of begins really as a friendship during the war.
And then as the war comes to a conclusion and they're separated,
they realize that, you know, have much, much deeper feelings.
When they go to Paris, I mean, that feels like the real, not just honeymoon, but honeymoon
phase of their marriage, right?
That's when she takes an interest in cooking and ends up going to the Cardon Blue and so
forth.
His politics are very left.
And he ends up being a bit of a target for McCarthyism in the late 50s.
And that happens to coincide with her deciding to co-write this cookbook and so forth.
I have more to say on that, but why don't I pause here?
What did you have for a word or phrase?
For my word?
Well, I was really, I don't want to say obsessed.
That's crazy.
But I absolutely loved their love.
I read a bunch about it.
I love the way it's talked about in the documentary.
I love that she co-wrote this entire book called My Life in Paris, all about that time.
Their letters back and forth.
Just all of it.
It was just, yeah.
It's very endearing and very sincere.
Ruth Bitter Ginsburg had a similar sort of relationship.
It kind of reminded me.
that one. Yeah, I agree. It's the thing that like sort of pops out when you get into her story is what a
sort of unusual pair in a way, but also like committed loving, sustained love relationship.
Yes. So yeah, my word was nested spoons. Like big spoon, little spoon. Yeah. Yeah, that's really good.
And I think he was the big spoon to her little spoon, even though he's, she's actually bigger than him. She's six feet of two.
And he's going to say, who gets the larger spoon here, Michigan.
Well, physically, but emotionally, he's the big spoon. She talks about this. We had a happy marriage because we were together all the time. They talk about how they were better together than a part. And there's this quote from her where she says, Paul Child, the man who is always there, Porter, dishwasher, official photographer, mushroom dicer, an onion chopper, editor, fish illustrator, manager, taster, idea man, resident poet, and husband. This guy in a time where men dominated when.
women and women were just relegated to do the household chores.
He is her supporter and he lets her career eclipse his.
And he just unconditionally supports her.
And I was amazed.
It's very ahead of its time, this relationship.
And I love that you said nested spoon because it's going to just be so tempting to use a lot of
cooking.
I had to do it.
I'm telling.
Yeah.
And I was looking for one and I didn't quite come up with something as clever.
I'll tell you what I had.
I wrote it because it's very aligned and very similar in a way.
I just wrote headroom.
And there is a literal part of this.
When they move in together and buy a home in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
one of the things that Paul is proactive about is making sure that the ceilings are a little bit higher
because Julia is so tall that she's bumping her head on all kinds of things.
And they designed her kitchen so that there would be literal headroom.
But the bigger point here is the metaphorical headroom,
that it is sort of incredible how not just support.
but like easy it seems to be for him to say your career is heading somewhere you're becoming a figure with stature it is my job as your husband to love and support and allow for that space because this journey you're on has momentum all of its own for me one of the most hard things about marriage sometimes is allowing your partner to grow like is giving them the space to become a different person that can be uncomfortable right you
make a vow and a commitment at a young age when you're still midstream in life.
And we're all growing and evolving into different people.
And the whole dance of a healthy marriage in some sense is allowing extra space so that you can go where you need to go while still having a relationship.
Headroom is basically what that is all about.
And Paul creates that.
He does not sound like a barrel of laughs, by the way.
No.
Kind of strikes me as a little stiff.
I don't know that I'd want to hang out with Paul.
But that doesn't matter.
But Julia did.
It's one of those things where you look at them and you're like, huh, it's like when you're,
it reminded me of when your friend dates someone that you don't really get, like, huh?
Yes.
But then you're sitting together and you're like, oh, okay, you guys get each other.
It doesn't matter if I understand him.
You understand each other and that's all that matters.
And I have to say this really inspired me as a single, so I'm divorced.
I am a single person.
Yeah.
And I frequently feel, I don't want to say cynical about love, but I don't feel, I don't know.
I feel differently than I did when I was in my 20s.
You know, I feel like...
Right, the whole happily ever after fairy tale is a little bit like there's been some water thrown on that.
No, but I will say, this gave me hope.
It made me feel like it's worth waiting for your spoon or whatever.
Great.
All right.
Nested spoon and headroom.
Good words.
All right.
Let's move on.
Category four, net worth.
In this category, Michelle and I will each write down our numbers ahead of time.
And we're going to talk a little bit about our reasoning.
And then we will look up the net worth number in real time to see whose guess is close.
Finally, will place Julia Child on the net worth leaderboard.
I'll walk you through my thinking really quick, because I wonder if it's very different from yours.
So she's from a fairly well-to-do family.
She's in Pasadena, California.
Her father's an investor and landholder.
Pretty clear she's doing pretty well.
She doesn't have any dependence, which I think it can lead to fairly high accumulated wealth.
It didn't sound like she was making a lot of money from PBS.
And I don't think PBS pays that well.
I think they said $50 a show for a little.
I was like nothing, yeah, but her cookbooks are crazy successful.
So what else did you factor in if anything?
Or is that pretty much a...
It's similar.
I also noted that she donated a lot of money, so that's something.
But what I did was I actually looked up the net worth of other famous female cookbook writers and TV show hosts.
Oh, so you went for some comps for like Rachel Ray?
Yes, so I looked up Palladine, Mary Berry, Ina Garden, and Rachel Ray.
So Paula Dean is worth 14 million.
Mary Berry from the Great British Bakeoff, she's worth 25 million.
Ina Garden is worth 60 million and Rachel Ray is 100 million.
That doesn't surprise me at all, actually.
I think that it's sort of like looking at basketball stars in the 60s compared to basketball stars in the 80s.
Like this becomes a big money-making venture as time goes on.
So I kind of, I was thinking about her and I thought, I think she's more than Paula Dean and more than Mary Berry.
but less than Rachel Ray.
Okay.
I like that you went the comp route.
I thought about this, and then I just didn't bother to look it up.
Okay, so let's reveal.
Michelle Dullenberg wrote down $60 million.
And Michael Osborne wrote $11 million.
Julia Child's actual net worth, $38 million.
All right.
So that's like almost right in between.
Yeah, that's pretty good.
Yeah.
I'm going to say I was way off and you were way closer.
You did better work on this.
Okay, 38 million, gosh, that's a lot of money for somebody who is PBS famous.
It is a lot of cookbooks.
I was way off.
I was way off.
Nicely done, Michelle.
Thank you.
So there is nobody else at the 38 million mark.
This will place her at the 30th position on the famous engraving net worth leaderboard,
just above her at 40 million, included Peter Fonda, Zaja Gabor, Bob Dole, Nora Ephron,
West Craven, and Patrick Swayze.
just below her at 35 million, George Romero, Philip Seymour Hoffman.
That's nice positioning.
Yeah, it seems like she could have a great dinner party with those folks.
What would she cook for George Romero, Josh Agabor, and Philip Seymour Hoffman?
I'd love to know the meal she'd prepare.
I would love to know.
Yeah.
Excellent.
Okay.
Let's move on.
Category 5.
Little Lobowski Urban Achievers.
They're the Little Lobowski Urban Achievers.
Yeah, the achievers.
Yes and proud we are of all of them.
In this category, we each choose a trophy and award, a cameo,
impersonation or some other form of a hat tip that shows a different side of this person.
Why don't you lead off here?
Okay.
Well, I thought about going with the kitchen, right?
So she donates her kitchen to the Smithsonian, which we can talk about.
But I feel like a lot of people know that one.
That her kitchen's in the Smithsonian.
It's so funny.
Like there's like a very active fan base for Julia Child, right?
There are devotees of Julia Child that you'll encounter.
Oh, yeah.
In fact, I found this Reddit thread on the food network that,
said, is it just, am I the asshole or I'm just a little over Julia Child? And then there's this
edit. Yes, I am the asshole. Everyone loves Julie's Child. Like piled on, you cannot say that in the
comments on any Reddit thread. People are like, dude, you can't say that. She is mother.
That's fantastic. All right. So you didn't go with the Smithsonian. So I did, it was, it was just
mentioned in a little line in the New York Times obituary. There is,
an opera that was inspired by Julia Child's show. And it's only 18 minutes long. It's called the
chamber opera, because it's a small opera. It's called Bon Appetit. So it originally, when they did
the first production of it, it featured Gene Stapleton. And then many, many people have performed it
since I found a whole bunch of videos of Metsosopranos performing this. Oh, so you can watch this online.
I watched it. Yes. And I listened to it because it's only 18 minutes long, right? Basically,
it says it's a lighthearted musical monologue that tells the listener how to make a chocolate cake in a roundabout way.
I'm going to have a race between the unlined couple ball and the machine.
All for today.
And the way this was created was the librettist Mark Shulgus, Shulgus.
His partner was Lee Hoiby, who's a contemporary 20th century composer.
I have no idea who these people are.
I, well, I think you might know that I have a background in music. So I have a degree in vocal performance, actually. And Lee Hoyby, the composer, I had a couple of his songs on my senior recital. So I knew this composer a little bit. Okay. So these are known people to you. Got it. Yeah. So I was really interested in this, right, because of my singing background. So basically, Mark creates the text for this by combining the transcripts from two episodes of the French chef. And then his partner, Lee
Koi B puts it to music. And it's so fun. And what the singer is asked to do is create a kitchen
on stage. And she's actually really making a chocolate cake while she's singing. And I obviously
I would so see, I would so go to this. Yeah. Like this actually sounds like such a fun performance.
It's so fun. And so it was often used to open for maybe another show. I guess he wrote another chamber
opera that sometimes they would be performed together. But it's super fun. And I think her, I don't know if you
want to talk about her voice now, but we might as well. I mean, so I think in retrospect,
it's obvious to turn her into an opera because her voice is already so operatic. Yeah. Oh, man,
that's a good call. I mean, this is why it's so fun to do a Julia Child impression because it feels
so good in our bodies to do that. That's what I was going to say. Michelle, I think it's time.
Let's hear your Julia Child impression. Okay. All right. Well, do you want to hear how you do a Julia Child Impression or
Sure, yeah, let's get into the mechanics of it.
You're a voice person, so let's hear this.
Okay.
Did you try to do a Julia Child impression?
I tried in my car.
Okay, I was driving around like, Julia Child.
There's a, there's a, it's like, I hear it up here where she's talking about
beef bergenio.
The way it kind of is like, hi, hi, hi, hello is all I was able to do.
But then I also realized how awful I sound trying to do this.
I do not have a voice that lends itself to a Julia Child impersonation.
So I think you just got my best effort there.
No, that was great.
That was good.
So you're right.
It's this, do you know, the hard palette?
It's sort of like high in the head.
It's high in the head.
So there's your hard palate inside your mouth.
And then your soft palate is behind it.
So you have to lift that up like, hmm, hmm, to get to get to it, right?
And then I was looking up like, where did her voice come from?
And people were saying that they think that no one really knows why she speaks this way.
Someone wrote, and I thought this was really interesting.
She's super tall.
She's kind of a manly figure.
And they wondered if she might have taken on this voice to sound a little more feminine.
That's interesting because it does feel like it's all like upper half of the body and mostly in the head.
Like it's not the whole trunk, right?
It's not torso.
It's all, you know, it's all.
It's all here and every now and then goes down.
Yeah.
So people are also saying that she may have been influenced by the transatlantic accent.
Do you know that?
What is that?
So I think Catherine Hepburn, the way that people used to talk in the,
This very, you know, I can't really do it, but this heightened way.
The time to make up your mind about people is never.
And I think that's Julia Child.
So here's my impression. Ready?
Okay.
Welcome to Famous & Gravy.
I'm Julia Child.
Biographies from a different point of view.
I need to work on that.
That's really good for sure.
Shell.
Do you like your show?
Yeah, it's good.
I'm going to have to start doing it at the top of the episode.
This is Seamus and Gravy.
Imagine if your show was in the 1950s on PBS.
Yeah, exactly.
We'd be talking about Albert Einstein today on the show.
All right, let me give you my little Babowski Urban Achiever.
This probably should have come out by now.
But I went with kind of the easy route, the Dan Aykroyd impersonation,
1978 or 79.
I was a big fan of early SNL.
They would show it on reruns at Nick at night when I was growing up.
And I think this was actually the first time I learned who Julia Child was.
So people probably know this moment.
It's Dan Aykroyd playing Julia Child.
He accidentally cuts his finger.
And then it becomes, it's kind of my point about violence in a way.
All of a sudden, blood is spurting everywhere.
And he's talking about, like, feeling a little bit of fate.
Rock the finger.
Here's why I love it.
It's not just the impersonation.
She's one of these figures where everybody wants to do an impersonation.
What I loved about this one was how much she loved it.
She kept a tape of it.
And when people would come over, she'd say, check this out.
I got to show you Dan Aykroyd impersonating me and blood spurting all over the place.
And isn't this the most hilarious thing you've ever seen?
I love the humility of that.
Because I've always thought it's got to be an interesting thing to be so famous, to be impersonated.
Was your relationship to the impersonation?
I feel like people on SNL have had to kind of like make peace with it.
But this actually sounds like she delighted in it.
A little bit the same way James Lipton and Alex Trebek liked watching Will Farrell impersonate them.
It must be so fun.
And I think that that speaks to something that we haven't talked about yet as much, but her sense of humor.
She's so freaking funny.
Well, in the opening quiz, isn't there a line about how she's a ham?
Yeah, a self-confessed ham.
So she's a self-professed ham, right?
So I think she knows.
I think she knows she's funny.
I think, well, and she's also at times described as a flirt.
Oh, yes.
I read about that.
Yeah, she's a flirt.
And you see that in some of her public appearances that she's flirting.
She loves to tease them.
She loves to close to them.
Especially as she's an older woman.
She's an elder.
And she's flirting with these hosts of like Good Morning America or whatever.
It's just awesome.
Yeah.
Okay.
Let's pause for another break.
AJ.
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Yeah, yeah, it's right.
Kriended, take away.
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Category 6,
Words to Live by.
In this category,
we each choose a quote.
These are either words
that came out of this
person's mouth
or was said about them.
Actually, before we do this,
I wanted to call out
a listener, Mary,
who sent an email
the other day.
She was talking
about the Roger Moore
episode.
One of the things
we said we loved
about Roger Moore
was Charm,
and she said,
her grandmother used to say,
Charm will get you
anywhere,
manners will keep you there.
Which I loved.
And I was like,
oh, Mary,
going to say that on the show. I thought this would be a good moment for it because Julia Child has good
manners and she's charming. So thank you, Mary, for writing in. Okay. What did you have for,
where did she live by here, Michelle? I had, the sky can fall, omelets can go all over the stove.
I'm going to learn. I shall overcome. It's from her cooking show. It's, I have the video,
and it's a longer clip where she's talking about failure, which you referenced earlier. She's saying,
I mean, who cares if the omelet goes all over the stove? Pull some more eggs out and do it again. Learn, overcome. And I think it also speaks to what you were saying earlier about doing things later in life. Like maybe it's not as easy to do this or that or whatever. It speaks to so many things in life, not just cooking. Don't be afraid to experiment to mess things up. I love that, Michelle. And I got to say, just spark something for me. I've really been on a few episodes recently I've been talking about this, how much I really struggle with patience.
of the time when I'm telling myself like self-instruction, Michael, be patient. What I'm really
saying is repress your emotions, suck it up, and try not to be self-centered. But I really like
the idea that part of what patience is is allowing failure and is allowing self-forgiveness,
right? That being patient is also about learning, which I'd never quite put together in my head
before just now. And I think she's an excellent example of that. And maybe there's patience for
other, you know, if you're trying to cultivate patience, it's like patience for yourself that you
don't, you're not always patient. I'm learning to be patient, but also patience for other people.
Like I think I think of my young daughter and you have young children too. It's like, you have to have
so much patience with kids sometimes. And you have to allow them to fail too. I mean, these ideas
really go together. Yeah. Well, that's really good, Michelle. I love that one. Okay. I'll tell you what I had.
I had drama is very important in life. You have to come on with a bang. You never want to go out with a
whimper, everything can have drama if it's done right, even a pancake.
I think my favorite part of that was the last line, even a pancake, because it sounds so
grandiose.
But I mean, she understood as an entertainer that, like, we have to make cooking dramatic.
You have to come on with a bang.
You never want to go out with a whimper.
Everything can have drama if it's done right.
There is a balance that we have to strike in life between making sure it's interesting,
that the story of our lives have ups and downs that have some drama to them without being
drama queens, right?
So I really like the last part of this quote.
Everything can have drama if it's done right, even a pancake.
I want to see the episode where she makes a dramatic pancake.
Oh, I've made dramatic pancakes before.
I have to ask you, when you were researching Julia Child, did you get hungry?
Yes.
Not only that, I also was like, all right, you know what?
I'm going to add some recipes.
I'm going to expand my repertoire.
Same.
Because I've got, you know, I've got a handful of things I do very, very well, and I've gotten a little stagnant.
I came away inspired.
And I think I've never really dug into the mastering the art of French cooking.
I think I'd really like, Alison and I have done a few recipes.
Allison loves to, I mean, she won't cook it without doing her beef, borgignon, impersonation.
But having researched this, like, she is infectious that way.
She is somebody who makes you want to, like, spend some hours in the kitchen.
and absorbing the aromas and hearing the sounds.
And like I said, I didn't grow up with her.
But I came away inspired to be a better cook.
That's her superpower.
Absolutely.
I am since such a rut with food and I'm so busy right now that I feel like food is just like a box I have to check off.
And I hate that.
I really want to enjoy food.
Yeah, you're succumbing to casserole culture.
I am in casserole culture and I want to be in casselais culture.
Yeah.
Well, you know what?
We should add a casselais restaurant.
To the show notes.
We'll make sure to get it down.
Okay.
Let's move on.
Category 7, man in the mirror.
This category is fairly simple.
Did this person like their reflection, yes or no?
This is not about beauty, but rather a question of self-confidence versus self-judgment.
I went back and forth a little bit on this one.
How'd you reason this one out?
My gut reaction was, yes, absolutely.
And then I dug a little more into it.
And I looked at, you know, things she'd said about herself or other people had said about her.
And it's very difficult to find a lot of places where she is very open to talking about how she feels about herself.
I didn't find a lot of that.
And her physique in particular.
And her physique, yeah.
But I did find, remember I mentioned her grand nephew who co-wrote her autobiography.
And he said, before she met Paul and lived in France, she considered herself too tall, too loud, too unsophisticated.
I saw that too.
I think before she finds Paul, there's a lot of self-doubt.
And she is six, too.
She is, you know.
It's kind of awkward.
I saw the word gawky.
That's at the beginning.
But then she meets Paul and he absolutely adores her.
And these letters back and forth between the two of them are just to die for.
They're just so passionate.
And also sounds like especially in France, but really throughout that, there's allusions to a very healthy sex life.
Absolutely.
And that makes sense.
This is, you know, a woman who is building a career and is a voice of sensory pleasure.
Yeah.
So I kind of was happy.
to see that and expect it, but it does sound like a quality that was discovered.
Yes.
And now she loves to be up in front of people.
She's so confident.
She loves, we just talked about the, you know, she's showing this video where she's mocked
for her voice and her appearance and she loves it.
I think the only place I read where she doubted her appearance is after she has breast cancer.
So it's in the 60s and she has a mastectomy.
And in her recovery period, she tells Paul, how can you ever love me like this?
And he has this great quote that you probably saw to you where he says,
I didn't marry you for your breasts.
I married you for your legs.
Yeah.
Which is the perfect thing to say.
That is.
I saw that one.
And I had the same reaction.
So, okay.
So did?
I think that she did.
I think that she was someone who was proud of herself.
She was a great business woman.
She had so much success.
I don't think she,
if she didn't feel good about herself,
I don't think she would have kept going on television into her 80s.
I agree.
That's where I landed to.
And I basically had the same.
same journey. I think ultimately she likes her reflection in the mirror and is at peace with it.
And I have to say that is so refreshing. And I was telling you this offline, you know, that it's just
such a contradiction to the times we're living in right now to be able to study and learn about
such an exuberant, happy, grounded person. And like, body positive too. I mean, one thing,
she comes into criticism a lot for cream and butter and a high fat diet. And she talks about dieting.
in all things in moderation.
And something else I love about her,
which we haven't really talked about,
but I love her relationship with food,
not just like how pleasurable it can be,
but she has a sense of nutrition as well.
She has a sense of variety,
and everybody has a complicated relationship
with how they eat in as much as there is an ideal.
I actually think she embodies that ideal.
And she has this great quote.
She says,
if you don't feel comfortable with butter, use cream.
Yeah, I love that.
You doesn't care.
She's like, stop.
Doing this to yourself, you can enjoy food in moderation.
You don't have to eat heavy meals for every meal, but enjoy things.
Try the desserts.
Totally.
Okay.
Next category, coffee, cocktail, or cannabis.
This is where we ask, which one would we most want to do with our dead celebrity?
I'll kick us off here.
Is it too obvious to say a glass of wine in the kitchen?
So I made this sort of more public on the show.
I don't drink anymore.
I'm retired from drugs and alcohol.
Same.
But I do have very fond memories of drugs.
drinking while cooking. And having a glass of wine while working on, one of my favorite things
to make is a chili. And I will reduce it for hours and hours, any kind of reduction recipe,
where you're kind of like checking in on it periodically and but you're seeing it bubbling on the stove.
That with like a glass of wine and Julia Child, that sounds like such a delightful afternoon to me.
Maybe that's obvious, but that's the scene I want. And I will say in as much as this category is about
questions I would like to pose to her. I don't know. It's probably the thing that we were just
talking about, relationship with food. I mean, I do think that this is such a hard question.
Our food environment, especially in America, is filled with junk food. It's filled with variety.
It's filled with all kinds of complicating psychological factors of how do we eat, how do we
eat better, what should we eat? This is like a central conflict in everybody's life.
And somebody who says, well, let's start with pleasure. Let's be a pleasure activist to use
your phrase, and then let's go from there.
I almost like want to write that down.
I almost want to capture that.
So I don't know that I have anything I really want to like poke and prod her on in terms
of her life story.
More what I want to do is sort of absorb the wisdom and the attitude.
And any time I'm asking myself, should I eat this or should I eat that, I should
ask myself, what would Julia Child say?
So I'd like to have that conversation with a glass of wine and some kind of, you know,
reduction recipe.
Maybe we could get you a little, one of those bracelets made that's like,
WWGCD.
As long as we're clear on who the J.C.
Yeah.
I think it's a great idea.
It's a great idea.
You know, maybe I will get that bracelet.
And then if anybody asks about it, I'll say,
Julia Chowell, that's what I mean.
I think that's great.
So, all right.
So what did you go with for coffee, cocktail cannabis?
Oh, man.
I had a really similar reaction.
And I started with the glass of wine.
I also don't drink.
So I'll paint this picture of the scene here.
So we're in her kitchen, just like you were.
And she has just shown me how to make a chocolate cake.
And it's in the oven.
And we're having coffee.
And we're sitting at her table and we can smell the cake.
And there's dishes around because Paul's going to do them later probably, right?
Because he's the assistant, right?
And we're sitting at her table and she's showing me pictures from Paris.
And we've got them on the table.
Oh, this is this.
And this reminds her of this story.
And she's just telling me stories.
And I think what I'm wanting to get out of this is inspiration about love and life.
Because I think that's what I need right now.
Tell me that I can have this beautiful life because, you know, life can feel like a grind sometimes.
And I don't want it to feel like a grind.
So tell me, contradict the grind for me.
Help me inspire me.
I need reassurance.
I need a gratitude list.
I need to direct my attention to the things that are available to me that I can experience.
and that bring me joy.
Yeah, pleasure.
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, that's beautiful.
So coffee, coffee and cake.
Coffee and cake.
All right.
We've arrived.
Final category, the Vanderbeek,
named after James Vanderbeek,
who famously said in Varsity Blues,
I don't want your life.
In that varsity blues,
seen James makes a judgment
that he does not want
a certain kind of life
based on a single characteristic.
So here we form a rebuttal
to anybody skeptical
of how Julia Child lived.
We found it useful
to start with a counterargument, why would you not want this life?
There's not a lot of great reasons.
I do think the fact that she never had children is an actual regret.
I had that one.
Yeah, but we can make way too much of that.
And our society is way too judgmental about this question in general.
Why would you not want this life?
What else is in the counterargument category?
I mean, is there anything strike you about that?
I wrote down a small list of things, but they're all things that I think are survivable.
Like I wrote down, I wouldn't want to have had breast cancer and a mastecta.
me, but people do. People do all the time and they survive and it's very common. So, I mean,
would I choose to have it? No, but that wouldn't keep me from wanting her life. I wouldn't have
wanted her uncaring conservative father, but that wouldn't keep me from wanting her life. Yeah,
yeah, right. No, and it's mostly things that you don't have a choice around. Yeah. Right. I mean,
a lot of the way the counter argument plays out is, did you have a say in the first place? No. And we don't
have a say with cancer and we don't have a say with who our parents are. We don't have a say in a lot of
things. So, I mean, it's sort of how you played the cards. And I guess that's actually how I would
start with the argument for why you do want this life. She played the hand of life really, really
well. She's sort of like it's starting off with such the right ideas, patience, an ability to
forgive, authenticity, self-determination. It really does sound like it was during the war when
her eyes were open to the world when she was spending time with diplomats and academics
and that she began to be attracted to a life of the mind, that she discovered Chinese food.
It was like it looked like her first love.
There is such a journey that involves the sort of companionship of travel and food.
Adventure.
An adventure.
She was this in this waspy upbringing, there was this secret adventure trying to get out.
And it's not until she goes with the OSS.
And she becomes a spy or tries to become a spy.
She works alongside spies and makes shark repellent.
She realizes there's this whole world.
There's this quote that I didn't read, and I don't have it right in front of me.
But it's basically her saying, if I had had to live the life that my family wanted, I would have been playing tennis and I would have become an alcoholic.
Yeah, I saw that.
There's nothing for her there.
This is all about self-determination.
Yeah.
Reason number one is a self-determined life.
I'd say reason number two, I can't get.
it over the late bloomer thing.
Yeah. Maybe that's part of the patience. It's such a hopeful message to me that you keep moving
in life and following your passions. And if it's going to break your way, it may, that can happen
at any time. It's such a lesson for me. What else would you put on this list, Michelle?
Why else would you want this life? I was just thinking about this quote. She says,
I don't think about whether people will remember me or not. I've been an okay person. I've learned a lot.
I've taught people a thing or two. That's what's important.
Here's the part of the quote I really like.
Sooner or later, the public will forget you.
The memory of you will fade.
What's important is the individuals you've influenced along the way.
And so I think she influenced so many people.
So I want to say she was one of the first influencers before Instagram, before all of that.
But in many ways, she influenced people in terms of, you know, I use this term pleasure activism.
That changed the world.
She changed the way women thought about themselves.
She influenced, we didn't talk about this, but she influenced so many women to become chefs.
Yes. She helped make being a chef and being a cook reputable, like desirable profession.
Yeah. In some way, she even destigmatized it. She destigmatizes it. So I guess I would say she has a lasting
legacy. But you know what I also hear in that that I think is really resonant? It's if you want to
keep it, you got to give it away. Like her whole thing of like identifying as a teacher, first and foremost,
I'm a teacher. That's why I wound up on PBS and that is my mission in life. The more you are generous with your gifts and the more
you are empowering other people, the more you open up space in your own heart and soul to, like,
have meaning and joy in your own life. I love that. I think the other thing to add in here is Paul.
Yes. She's got a soulmate. Right. And that this looks like,
this kind of what we all want on some level. This is love. She's this deep, inspiring,
beautiful love. She seems to have had wonderful friends and family. It seems like wherever she went,
people loved her. Relational wealth is the term I would use. Yeah.
Absolutely. Okay, so let's recap these arguments. So number one, and we eventually got to self-determination. Number two, the late bloomer thing and hope, more than anything else, the way hope is at the center of her story. What did you say for number three?
We were talking about how she was a teacher, and I said this is, she influenced, she was the first influencer, but she influenced a positive way.
Yeah, and I understand that as generosity, as an opening up space in your heart and soul.
Yeah. Number four, we also said Paul.
I think four was Paul, but also all the wonderful relationships that she had.
Paul and relational wealth.
Yeah.
So with that, James Vanderbig, I'm Julia Child, and you want my life.
All right.
Plugs for past shows.
Michelle, is there a famous and gravy episode that this Julia Child conversation reminds you of?
Well, it made me think of the Shirley Temple Black episode, and I went back and re-listen to it.
And I wouldn't say that it's so much because they're the same story at all, but it's two great
women who might surprise you, especially Shirley Temple. You know, we think of her as this little girl,
but there's so much more to her. And she also has this service component to her, this activist
component to her that I think will surprise people. We re-released that one. That's number 81,
Dimpled Ambassador. I was going to go with, I think Ruth Beder Ginsburg. There's something about
the late in life, the love story, the kind of unlikely fame. And there's some interesting parallels there.
So that was episode 20, notorious dissenter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
So if you enjoyed this episode, you might enjoy those.
Here is a little preview for the next episode of Famous and Gravy.
His American-born wife was his business partner and on-screen co-star.
Oh, okay.
So this tells me he's not American.
Otherwise, I don't know why we would have said that.
And so, Famous and Gravy listeners, we love hearing from you.
If you want to reach out with a comment, question, or to participate in our opening quiz, email us at hello at famousengravey.com.
In our show notes, we include all kinds of links, including to our website and our social channels.
Famous and Gravy is created and co-host by Ahmed Kapoor and me, Michael Osborne.
This episode was produced by Ali Arizona with original music by Kevin Strang.
Thanks and see you next time.
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