Julia Child: Mastering The Art Of Being Loud, Brilliant, And Right

[00:00:01] Kyle Risi: [00:00:00] Julia Childs literally enrols at LaCro Croon Blur, a culinary school that trains already excellent chefs to become world class.

[00:00:11] Adam Cox: Okay.

[00:00:11] Kyle Risi: But Adam, she can even barely open a jar of pickles.

[00:00:17] Adam Cox: So she hasn't gone for beginners. She's literally gone to the best class .

[00:00:21] Adam Cox: I feel like this would be something in between,

[00:00:23] Kyle Risi: By the way, whenever Julius speaks. Imagine Elmo's voice

[00:00:27] Adam Cox: what? Like tickle me Elmo?

[00:00:28] Kyle Risi: Yes.

[00:00:29] Adam Cox: I need to like listen to her.

[00:00:31] Kyle Risi: I read that it takes her one year, just so she can nail down A foolproof recipe for their puff pastry recipe. the rest of the book ends up taking 10 years.

[00:00:40] Adam Cox: 10 years. What is she doing at that time? She's still learning to chop.

[00:00:46] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Maybe And so they decide. They're gonna give her her own cooking show it runs for 10 full years. Adam is extremely comical, extremely whimsical.

[00:00:56] Kyle Risi: She's like, Get a sharp knife. 'cause you can't do nothing without a sharp [00:01:00] knife. oh, now I've done it. I've cut the dickens outta my finger.

[00:01:06] Kyle Risi: She's like, I'm glad this has happened. 'cause now I can show you how to deal with it.

[00:01:10] Kyle Risi: Number one, you must stop the bleeding.



[00:01:40] Kyle Risi: Welcome to the Compendium, an Assembly of fascinating things, a weekly variety podcasts that gives you just enough information to stand your ground at any social gathering.

[00:01:51] Adam Cox: We explore stories from the darker corners of true crime, the hidden gems of history, and the jaw dropping deeds of extraordinary people.

[00:01:58] Kyle Risi: As always, I'm your [00:02:00] ring master for this week, Kyle Reese.

[00:02:02] Adam Cox: And I'm Adam Cox, the magician's rabbit for this week.

[00:02:05] Kyle Risi: God get it.

[00:02:07] Adam Cox: ~Well, ~that's the reason I've been brought in. All the rabbits died.

[00:02:09] Kyle Risi: But you are massive.

[00:02:11] Adam Cox: It's temporary, but after all the lines ate the rabbits. Mm-hmm. Peter came in. And had some words to say to us. So I'm having to stand in for the rabbit.

[00:02:18] Kyle Risi: Peter, the Dolphin.

[00:02:19] Adam Cox: No, no. Peter, you know Peter.

[00:02:21] Kyle Risi: Peter. I thought you meant Peter The Dolphin. The one that got jacked off by that woman.

[00:02:25] Adam Cox: Yeah. No, not

[00:02:25] Kyle Risi: that. Which is my next question because like if they're putting you out of a hat, you don't have ears.

[00:02:29] Kyle Risi: What are they putting you by?

[00:02:30] Adam Cox: Um, what? I've got a little costume. Well, big costume.

[00:02:33] Kyle Risi: Oh, so they're putting it by the costume is

[00:02:34] Adam Cox: mm-hmm.

[00:02:34] Kyle Risi: So not your penis then.

[00:02:35] Adam Cox: That's weird.

[00:02:36] Kyle Risi: Well, I mean, you said Peter, my mind went to Peter The Dolphin.

[00:02:40] Adam Cox: Okay

[00:02:40] Kyle Risi: guys, if you are new to the show and you wanna support us, then of course the absolute best way to support the show and enjoy exclusive perks is to just go ahead and join us over on Patreon because it's completely free and you'll get access to episodes a whole seven days before anyone else.

[00:02:57] Adam Cox: And for as little as $5 a [00:03:00] month, you can become a fellow freak of the show, which will unlock our entire back catalogue of all of our earlier episodes

[00:03:07] Kyle Risi: I see how you've, what you've done there. You've like, you've not kind of said worse episodes.

[00:03:11] Adam Cox: Um,

[00:03:11] Kyle Risi: our amateur episodes,

[00:03:12] Adam Cox: we were still finding our way.

[00:03:14] Kyle Risi: Rummaging around for our confidence.

[00:03:16] Adam Cox: Yeah. We used to like, go on and on about just shit that didn't matter.

[00:03:20] Kyle Risi: But of course, Adam, to be honest, the real reason that anyone signs up to Patreon is because they want access to that dangling glistening compendium key chain.

[00:03:30] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:03:31] Kyle Risi: And the reason for that,

[00:03:32] Adam Cox: They need it near their crotch.

[00:03:33] Kyle Risi: Oh, oh, you, oh, we just dived in there. Yeah. And we didn't roll it out. We weren't seductive about it. We didn't keep them on a cliffhanger. Yeah, just dangle by your crotch, man.

[00:03:40] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:03:41] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Just there.

[00:03:42] Adam Cox: You're not gonna find one of them in top shop.

[00:03:44] Kyle Risi: You're not.

[00:03:44] Kyle Risi: You.

[00:03:44] Adam Cox: And lastly, guys, please follow us on your favourite podcast app and leave us a review. Your support helps others find the show and keeps these amazing stories coming.

[00:03:53] Kyle Risi: It really does, and we do. We love getting the ruse. In fact, I was going through the other day, just like I filtered on my emails of all [00:04:00] form submissions and all the reviews that we've got, and actually, because we get them throughout the week we don't ever get to see them all in one go. Do you know what I mean? Mm-hmm. So we, we filtered upon them in the emails. There's just so many of them. But guys, keep them coming.

[00:04:12] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:04:13] Kyle Risi: But Adam, that is enough of the housekeeping because today on the compendium, we are diving into an assembly of espionage paperwork, Parisian kitchens, and the strange path between them,

[00:04:27] Adam Cox: I'm sensing some kind of French. Uh, chef. That's also a spy.

[00:04:32] Kyle Risi: Where'd you get the chef from?

[00:04:33] Adam Cox: You said the kitchens.

[00:04:34] Kyle Risi: Oh, I did. Yeah. But that could have been like secret tunnel through the kitchens. But Adam, you are right.

[00:04:39] Adam Cox: There's a French chef spy.

[00:04:40] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. 'cause Over the weekend I watched a little film without ya. It's A film that you might know called Julia and Julia. It's the Nora Ephron film starring Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci. Have you seen it?

[00:04:51] Adam Cox: I've do. You know what, I've seen the, thumbnail or whatever of Meryl Streep and it said Julia. Julia. But I had no idea what it's about.

[00:04:59] Kyle Risi: It's actually the [00:05:00] story of a woman called Julia Child. So of course for our American listeners, you will know exactly who she is. But here in the uk she's not that well known, but she's a very important person in kind of like American pop culture. She's how you would describe a national treasure.

[00:05:17] Adam Cox: Is she like Delia Smith?

[00:05:18] Kyle Risi: Yes.

[00:05:19] Adam Cox: Ah,

[00:05:19] Kyle Risi: okay. But even better than Deli Smith. 'cause Deli Smith's got a seriousness about her.

[00:05:23] Adam Cox: Uh, you haven't heard her, like shout to the Norwich football fans?

[00:05:26] Kyle Risi: I have. I have, I don't wanna get into that.

[00:05:30] Kyle Risi: So basically Julie Charles was this American culinary icon who ended up revolutionising home cooking by doing something that was very difficult at the time, especially for an American. And that was demystifying French cuisine through her very famous cookbook, called Mastering the Arts of French Cooking,

[00:05:48] Adam Cox: demystifying French de Cuisine Design.

[00:05:50] Kyle Risi: Yeah, just making it very easy.

[00:05:52] Adam Cox: I I was gonna say so what's so mysterious about French cuisine?

[00:05:54] Kyle Risi: The biggest problem, I'm so sorry, American listeners, is because the American listeners use [00:06:00] imperial measurements, and so when French cooking books were coming out of, France mm-hmm. They were all just in. Metric. Whereas the Americans were like, we use cups and we use spoons and whatever it might be. So it was really difficult to get really exact measurements.

[00:06:13] Adam Cox: Ah, I see.

[00:06:14] Kyle Risi: So what, that's one of the reasons why,

[00:06:15] Adam Cox: what are these people measuring in,

[00:06:18] Kyle Risi: I'll have a desk of Cheez-Its, please.

[00:06:21] Kyle Risi: And at the time, this cookbook was just huge and Adam, it still is. It went on to sell like a hundred thousand copies in its first five years, which for the time is really impressive. And from there, Julia buss out into this national treasure across America.

[00:06:35] Kyle Risi: So the film Julia, and Julia is a sort of a biography about her life but what makes Julia and Julia really special was the way that it told the story. Julia Childs.

[00:06:47] Adam Cox: Okay.

[00:06:48] Kyle Risi: While it's a biopic it's told in a parallel with another story that takes place in New York in 2002.

[00:06:54] Kyle Risi: So on one track you've got Julia Childs in Paris. She's nearly 40 years old. She's about to stumble on the [00:07:00] thing that is going to change her life and make her become Julia Childs as we know it. Right?

[00:07:04] Adam Cox: Okay.

[00:07:05] Kyle Risi: But on the other track, you've got a woman called Julia Powell. She's 29, she's living New York City. It's 2002, and she's trying to build her career. Julia's job is actually processing insurance claims connected to victims of nine 11.

[00:07:18] Kyle Risi: So it is tough work and she often has to obviously sit with these clients through their grief. So it, it's really awful.

[00:07:24] Kyle Risi: But while she cares about her job, she feels there's pressure that's hanging over her. 'cause all of her friends are wildly successful and they're like living in New York. They're achieving big things.

[00:07:34] Kyle Risi: And while she doesn't hate her life, she has this feeling that she can't shake where she feels like she's not working towards something that belongs to her. Mm-hmm. She's doing everything for other people.

[00:07:44] Adam Cox: I see. Yeah.

[00:07:45] Kyle Risi: One day she's brainstorming with her husband and he suggests, why don't you go ahead and write a blog?

[00:07:51] Kyle Risi: And she's like, well, what would I even write about? And he's like, you're quite good at cooking. Why don't you give that a go? And she says, sure. But

[00:07:59] Kyle Risi: like I might [00:08:00] enjoy cooking, but I'm no Julia Childs. And he replies, Julia Childs wasn't always Julia Childs. Right.

[00:08:08] Adam Cox: I see. So this woman in New York, if she just starts her blog, maybe she'll end up like Julia Charles.

[00:08:14] Kyle Risi: Exactly. So Julie decides that she's going to go and cook every single recipe from Julia Child's world famous cookbook, Marshing, the Art of French Cooking.

[00:08:23] Adam Cox: And does she go like, this is terrible

[00:08:25] Kyle Risi: At first. It is, yes. And actually, Adam, she has to cook 524 recipes in 365 days, and she's going to write about the entire process as she goes. And it is completely unhinged, but it's also extremely brilliant.

[00:08:40] Kyle Risi: And as Julie's year spirals into this obsession, the film keeps cutting back to Julia Child's original story. And so that's how this biography is actually told.

[00:08:52] Kyle Risi: And both of these streams are 100% factual. They're both true.

[00:08:56] Adam Cox: Oh, so the person in New York, she's, did she get famous then? [00:09:00]

[00:09:00] Kyle Risi: Yeah. She became famous by doing this exact thing.

[00:09:02] Kyle Risi: So it's so interesting that they've managed to tell the story of Julia Childs this incredible kind of celebrated chef in parallel with this woman that goes off to try and make something that is hers.

[00:09:14] Adam Cox: So what you are saying is, if I start cooking Julia Child's recipes, but putting in a new medium, I could become the next Julia Child.

[00:09:22] Kyle Risi: But here's the thing, right? This is why I'm telling the story today because watching it really hit me in the fields because it's not really a story about cooking, it's a story about becoming, about choosing a thing and committing to it even when you think it's too late in your life to take on something new.

[00:09:38] Kyle Risi: This story proves that it never is. You can, you can do anything that you want at any age, like as Judge Judy said, like she didn't start doing what she did when she was like in her sixties, and look at how successful she is now.

[00:09:49] Adam Cox: She started judging in her sixties,

[00:09:51] Kyle Risi: I wanna say maybe fifties.

[00:09:53] Adam Cox: You don't ask your neck,

[00:09:55] Kyle Risi: but six is too late.

[00:09:57] Kyle Risi: I'm joking.

[00:09:58] Adam Cox: There is a time to just [00:10:00] stop.

[00:10:01] Kyle Risi: Here's the thing though, because watching the film took me back to this podcast origin story. 'cause for us it just started off as a passion project, right? Mm-hmm. Like we knew nothing about setting up a podcast.

[00:10:11] Kyle Risi: But we learned everything as we went. And we're still learning today. Like we don't pretend to be anything other than who we are.

[00:10:17] Kyle Risi: And while some days are incredibly rewarding, especially obviously the amazing community that we've built around us other days are really hard to the point that some days, I think this will literally be the last episode, and this isn't our last episode, disclaimer, I'm not, I'm not saying we're done, but some days are already hard,

[00:10:34] Adam Cox: yeah. It's, it does take a lot of work.

[00:10:36] Kyle Risi: And a lot of patience for your co-host.

[00:10:40] Adam Cox: Wow.

[00:10:41] Kyle Risi: And the weird part is, is like stopping almost does feel like it's just impossible because it's not like a sunk cost fallacy thing that's going on. It's because we prescribe meaning to what we do.

[00:10:50] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:10:51] Kyle Risi: And so part of the reason we started the show, as a lot of our listeners know, is because I, my very good friend Candace died and before she died, she told us that we could [00:11:00] actually do this.

[00:11:00] Kyle Risi: And so giving up on the podcast is almost like giving up on a part of her legacy. Mm-hmm. So that's kind of one of the things that keeps me also doing this as well to kind of preserve her memory.

[00:11:09] Kyle Risi: And that's what this film captured for me when I was watching it, right? it reminded you it's never too late to start a thing that you've always wanted to do. And when you keep going with it, because you refuse to be beaten, it can pay off commercially.

[00:11:21] Kyle Risi: But even if it doesn't, the important lesson is, is that you're still left with something that you have physically built yourself that you can be really proud of.

[00:11:28] Kyle Risi: So Adam today. Anyway, the point is, I'm gonna tell you the story of Julia Child, A woman I never expected to be making an episode about.

[00:11:36] Kyle Risi: I'm gonna tell you about her very comfortable beginnings from her secret government work, her rival in Paris, and of course the post-war years. All while she, of course, pursued this passion for food and all the success that followed.

[00:11:49] Adam Cox: So she started doing secret government work?

[00:11:51] Kyle Risi: Yes. There's this, this theory that she was a bit of a spy at the time.

[00:11:55] Adam Cox: Ah, yeah. Okay. I wanna hear all about her.

[00:11:57] Kyle Risi: Yes. Okay. So let's dive into it. [00:12:00] so Julia, Carolyn McWilliams was born in 1912 in Pasadena, California. so Julia is the youngest of three siblings. Her younger brother was John the third.

[00:12:10] Kyle Risi: Um, her sister was Dorothy. Her mother was Julia. Carolyn, and actually she's an heiress to a paper company, fortune from a very prominent Massachusetts family. Massachusetts.

[00:12:21] Adam Cox: Massachusetts.

[00:12:22] Kyle Risi: Massachusetts. How do they say it? Weird. I guess Americans are entitled to have their own weird kind of pronunciations.

[00:12:28] Kyle Risi: We have like Worcester and Loughborough and Slough.

[00:12:31] Adam Cox: That's true. Slough.

[00:12:32] Kyle Risi: Slough. The point is her mother's side of the family is like Rich, rich money.

[00:12:36] Kyle Risi: And a father, he's a guy called John McWilliams, and he's a successful real estate investor. And so while they were very comfortable to give you a sense of just how comfortable they were in Julius's autobiography titled Julius's Kitchen, she writes about how their family once took a trip to Tijuana in Mexico during the 1920s, it was during the height of the [00:13:00] prohibition era in America.

[00:13:01] Adam Cox: That's when alcohol was banned.

[00:13:03] Kyle Risi: Banned alcohol, no drinking, no cocktails. And so the only legal way to enjoy a couple of drinks was to pop over the border into Mexico.

[00:13:10] Kyle Risi: But a couple margaritas weren't just on the cards. They were also there to specifically meet and eat at Caesar Cardinis restaurant, specifically to try his brand new dish that at that moment in time, was sweeping across the world.

[00:13:27] Adam Cox: What was that?

[00:13:28] Kyle Risi: The Caesar salad?

[00:13:29] Adam Cox: Really? That's Mexican.

[00:13:30] Kyle Risi: Yeah. It's made in Mexico. No, no way. I think, I think Caesar is Italian Uhhuh, but he was working as a chef in Mexico.

[00:13:36] Adam Cox: Ah.

[00:13:37] Kyle Risi: And so to give you a sense of their privilege, this journey allowed them to do that. That's how rich they are. That they're, they jumped over the border to another country just to try a Caesar salad.

[00:13:48] Adam Cox: I mean, a Caesar salad is okay, but to, to travel to another country.

[00:13:53] Kyle Risi: Yeah. But it, like, it's wild to imagine a world where, you know what a Caesar salad is, but you can't get it.

[00:13:58] Adam Cox: Yeah, I guess so.

[00:13:59] Kyle Risi: Isn't that weird?

[00:13:59] Adam Cox: [00:14:00] It's bad. Like

[00:14:00] Kyle Risi: you can't even make it right. So you have to travel just to try it. It's just wild.

[00:14:04] Kyle Risi: And the story of its invention is actually really interesting. Apparently it was invented on a July 4th celebration.

[00:14:08] Kyle Risi: So Tijuana ends up getting overrun with all the Americans hopping over the border just to celebrate because they obviously can't stay in America if they want to drink.

[00:14:16] Kyle Risi: Right, right. And every motherfucker wants a drink. And so Caesar either forgets it's July 4th weekend, or he doesn't anticipate the number of guests that he's going to get. And so as a result, he runs out of ingredients and in a panic, he scrambles to throw a few things together.

[00:14:30] Kyle Risi: He combines romaine lettuce, Parmesan lemons, olive oil, I think eggs, Worcestershire sauce, croutons, what else? Is it milk? I think Garlic

[00:14:39] Adam Cox: and chicken.

[00:14:40] Kyle Risi: No chicken at this moment in time.

[00:14:42] Adam Cox: Oh, so it was just lettuce and cheese?

[00:14:44] Kyle Risi: No, what's the point?

[00:14:45] Adam Cox: And people were crossing the country for this.

[00:14:47] Kyle Risi: Yeah,

[00:14:48] Adam Cox: no.

[00:14:49] Kyle Risi: So he was fearing, like it might be just a little bit too basic. He was like, and s would be like, what the fuck is this? So he jazzes it up a bit by deciding to toss the whole salad at tableside.

[00:14:59] Kyle Risi: So it's a bit of a [00:15:00] show to kind of like cover up the shit. There's no chicken, so if you put chicken in there, you won't need to toss to the tableside.

[00:15:06] Adam Cox: True.

[00:15:07] Kyle Risi: And he is like, voila. The Caar salad is basically born.

[00:15:10] Kyle Risi: Of course, over the years it's been adapted slightly with the introduction of the Caesar dressing and so it didn't even have Caesar dressing.

[00:15:16] Adam Cox: What

[00:15:17] Kyle Risi: I know that's

[00:15:18] Adam Cox: not a Caesar salad.

[00:15:19] Kyle Risi: I know it was then.

[00:15:20] Adam Cox: But I think the thing is these customers, they're all drunk. They probably are not even caring. They're like, oh, this is so good. And they're like stuffing it down their face and he is wow, I've made something good

[00:15:28] Kyle Risi: here. They can't be that drunk for it to then sweep the well and people to come from all over.

[00:15:33] Adam Cox: Yeah. I don't know. I think people just like, they have it and then they reme like the memory of it was better than actually having it.

[00:15:38] Kyle Risi: Oh, do they? I love a good Caesar salad now.

[00:15:40] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:15:41] Kyle Risi: But of course over time they added anchovies, chicken, obviously the Caesar dressing, things like that.

[00:15:46] Kyle Risi: So yeah, that is the origin stories of the Caesar salad, but also gives you an understanding of how privileged Julia Child is as a young woman.

[00:15:55] Adam Cox: I see. You said she had a comfortable upbringing.

[00:15:57] Kyle Risi: She did, yeah.

[00:15:58] Kyle Risi: And so for college, [00:16:00] Julia, she ends up attending Smith College in Massachusetts. She gets stuck into a tonne of different things, theatre, creative writing, and for sports. She makes the woman's basketball team. And that's because she's famously six two, which is very tall, even by male standards.

[00:16:16] Adam Cox: Yeah, that's

[00:16:17] Kyle Risi: for the 1930s.

[00:16:18] Adam Cox: That's very tall. What did she eat? Very

[00:16:22] Kyle Risi: other people

[00:16:25] Adam Cox: I thought of that like spinach or something.

[00:16:26] Kyle Risi: I dunno. She just reads all women.

[00:16:28] Kyle Risi: But eventually in 1934, Julia, she graduates with a degree in history and decides that she wants to move to the big city. She wants to go to Manhattan She's gonna make it as a writer. Who else do we know that's trying to do that?

[00:16:40] Adam Cox: Um, I've forgotten her name.

[00:16:42] Kyle Risi: Nellie Bly?

[00:16:43] Adam Cox: Yeah, that's her.

[00:16:43] Kyle Risi: She moved, was this right at the same time in the 1920s?

[00:16:46] Kyle Risi: Was it 18? That was 1800. 18 hundreds. Yeah.

[00:16:48] Kyle Risi: She manages to land a job as a copywriter in an advertising department for WNJ Sloan, which is a really high-end furniture store. So not quite what she imagines going into. She's just writing [00:17:00] about the kind of Chester drawers and wardrobes and boudoir, I dunno,

[00:17:03] Adam Cox: boudoir,

[00:17:03] Kyle Risi: boudoir b armir is what I'm trying to say.

[00:17:06] Adam Cox: Okay.

[00:17:07] Kyle Risi: But she has to start somewhere. Do you know what I mean? Like We all have really shitty jobs that we've started off. What was yours?

[00:17:12] Adam Cox: Um, oh, call centre. That was pretty bad.

[00:17:15] Kyle Risi: Really? You in a call centre? I thought your first job was that job. I got you in that restaurant.

[00:17:19] Adam Cox: No, I was selling Reader's Digest.

[00:17:21] Kyle Risi: Really?

[00:17:22] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:17:22] Kyle Risi: Did I thought you were selling Reader's Digest door to door with your brother?

[00:17:25] Adam Cox: No, that was the Alton Broad Chronicle I think something like that.

[00:17:29] Kyle Risi: So where did you get those from?

[00:17:30] Adam Cox: Uh, we made it. We printed it. I went door to door. I was a salesman. I was getting money off my neighbours.

[00:17:36] Kyle Risi: How old were you?

[00:17:37] Adam Cox: Like five.

[00:17:38] Kyle Risi: And your brother?

[00:17:38] Adam Cox: Mm, 12.

[00:17:40] Kyle Risi: Did he go with you to the door?

[00:17:41] Adam Cox: No, he waited on the end of the driveway and it was me that had to go to the door,

[00:17:46] Kyle Risi: just sucker you into going off to the door. I guess you were cute and you looked Asian.

[00:17:50] Kyle Risi: So who's gonna say no to an Asian kid?

[00:17:52] Adam Cox: There's a foreign kid at our door.

[00:17:55] Kyle Risi: Father bless.

[00:17:57] Adam Cox: Give him money. He's clearly poor.

[00:17:59] Kyle Risi: The thing is though, Adam [00:18:00] is white as they come, but he looks like Knickknack when he was a kid. So if you don't know who Knickknack is, Google that right now and you'll understand exactly what Adam looked like when he was a kid.

[00:18:09] Adam Cox: Yeah, that's

[00:18:10] Kyle Risi: true. Either that or Russell from up.

[00:18:12] Adam Cox: Yeah. All right. Anyway, back to Julia.

[00:18:14] Kyle Risi: Okay. So in 1937, her mother gets seriously ill and she will eventually pass away. But while she's ill, Julia decides to go back to Pasadena to try and take care of her, and she's absolutely devastated. When she finally dies, it really, really impacts her and obviously the wider family.

[00:18:30] Kyle Risi: And so Julia decides that she's gonna stick around for a couple years just to help support the family and to get them to a position where they're stable before she decides to go back to New York.

[00:18:39] Kyle Risi: She does find a couple different jobs working for different publications, writing copy, but then Adam World War II breaks out and just like many of her peers, she becomes determined to do her part. And so she tries to enlist in the Women's Army Corp or the US Women's Navy waves. So it's W-A-V-E-S, which stands for Women Accepted for [00:19:00] Volunteer Emergency Services. They really jam that in so they could get waves, right?

[00:19:06] Adam Cox: Yeah. Otherwise, what else could they have spelled?

[00:19:08] Kyle Risi: Just, why don't you just call it the Women's Navy?

[00:19:10] Adam Cox: Oh yeah,

[00:19:11] Kyle Risi: yeah. The Women's Navy waves quick. We need nanogram for this.

[00:19:15] Adam Cox: Where you go alter waves.

[00:19:17] Kyle Risi: Yeah. However, she's not accepted because on accounts of her being too fucking tall.

[00:19:22] Adam Cox: I was gonna ask, is it because, yeah, they've got no uniforms that will fit,

[00:19:26] Kyle Risi: do you think? That's it? I thought it's because no people will see you standing on deck.

[00:19:31] Adam Cox: You'll stand out.

[00:19:32] Adam Cox: Yeah,

[00:19:32] Kyle Risi: So she's six foot two, so she's really tall.

[00:19:35] Adam Cox: Yeah, I reckon it's because they didn't have uniform for her,

[00:19:38] Kyle Risi: do you reckon? Mm-hmm. It could be. So instead she decides that she's gonna apply and is accepted to work for the Office of Strategic Services, or as the Americans called it at the time, the OSS, which is essentially the precursor to the CIA today.

[00:19:53] Adam Cox: Oh, really?

[00:19:53] Kyle Risi: Specifically, she's assigned to work for the office of War Information at their Washington DC headquarters as a [00:20:00] typist, which is a modest, but a respectable start for the war effort, right? Mm-hmm. And it really doesn't take long for her experience in her education to set her apart from the other typists that are in the office.

[00:20:09] Kyle Risi: And so by 1942, on account of her being so tall, she's given more responsibility.

[00:20:14] Kyle Risi: Getting the coffee from the top shelf.

[00:20:18] Adam Cox: No, I'm sure she did more than that.

[00:20:19] Kyle Risi: No. She's now reporting directly actually to the head of the OSSA guy called General William J. Donovan. And her job is actually a top secret researcher. And actually what she does is actually very cool.

[00:20:31] Kyle Risi: See, the military have a shark problem at the time, specifically with them interfering with ocean like mines like a landmine, but in the ocean these are like large orbs that sort of float under the water. They're anchored by a rope to the seabed, and they have these spikes that kind of stick out to them. And so whenever a ship comes into contact with the actual mine itself, it'll then explode.

[00:20:53] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:20:54] Kyle Risi: The problem is sharks will routinely interfere with them setting them off or dislodging them, and they end up just flexing [00:21:00] away.

[00:21:00] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:21:00] Kyle Risi: So the OSS bring together a couple scientists from the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology and the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, right?

[00:21:08] Kyle Risi: They've got a couple scientists to come together along with Julia. She's gonna be obviously their executive assistant, just assisting them with it, right? Mm-hmm. Because they're scientists, she's their representative from the government, keep an eye on them, making sure they're not like leaking anything off, but she's actually getting involved in the science as well.

[00:21:23] Kyle Risi: They end up testing more than a hundred different combinations of chemical ingredients to create basically a shark repellent.

[00:21:30] Adam Cox: What? Just put that in the water.

[00:21:31] Kyle Risi: They're actually gonna put the repellent inside the water,

[00:21:34] Adam Cox: but then surely that's just gonna float away.

[00:21:36] Kyle Risi: Exactly. So they have to do it every so often.

[00:21:38] Adam Cox: Right.

[00:21:38] Kyle Risi: In the end, they come back with this kind of disc shaped cakes made of a mixture of copper acetate and black dye. Basically, you go off into the shark infested waters where these mines are, and you drop one of these cakes in. It gives us this massive kind of cloud, which mimics actually the smell of rotting shark flesh.

[00:21:56] Adam Cox: Oh.

[00:21:57] Kyle Risi: Which I thought was interesting 'cause you would think of do the opposite, right?

[00:21:59] Adam Cox: Is [00:22:00] that because they'll smell like one of their own and think, oh, someone's died. I'll better stay away. There's danger.

[00:22:05] Kyle Risi: Exactly. So if it smell like rotting anything else, the sharks would be like, mm yum.

[00:22:09] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:22:09] Kyle Risi: But because the smells like one of them, it's like, Ooh, danger kind of thing.

[00:22:12] Kyle Risi: Do you know what I mean? That's

[00:22:13] Adam Cox: pretty

[00:22:14] Kyle Risi: smart. So

[00:22:14] Adam Cox: smart. Do we still use that technology today?

[00:22:16] Kyle Risi: Yes, they do actually. So it wasn't perfect, but it did the job around about 6% of the time. But the only problem was, is it would only keep the sharks away for like several hours. So if you have a really strong current, it would wash it away sooner. So that's what accounts for kind of the success rate of this repellent.

[00:22:31] Kyle Risi: And they still use the same formula today in survival kits, in kind of space capsules. So they'll put the repellent on a lot of the capsules as a reenter orbit, as a plunge into the ocean. It keeps the sharks away long enough. For kind of NASA to then come along to retrieve the capsule,

[00:22:49] Adam Cox: really.

[00:22:49] Adam Cox: So as it's coming into orbit or into our atmosphere mm-hmm. It automatically goes on the capsule.

[00:22:54] Kyle Risi: I don't know if maybe once you enter in as a capsule, like if there's people in it mm-hmm. Like the [00:23:00] Apollo mission and you land in the ocean in their survival kits, so maybe they take out a cake and they drop that into the water.

[00:23:06] Adam Cox: Or

[00:23:06] Kyle Risi: they, but I don't, but I thought they were always locked in there. That's, I thought, dunno how it put it in there. But apparently they use it in, it says here the survival kits on the early US capsules,

[00:23:14] Adam Cox: all I can think of is

[00:23:15] Kyle Risi: capsules.

[00:23:16] Adam Cox: Someone's got like, get out and like rub the

[00:23:18] Kyle Risi: capsule. Yeah. Or the capsule already got a coating on it.

[00:23:20] Kyle Risi: I don't know.

[00:23:21] Adam Cox: That's pretty smart though.

[00:23:22] Kyle Risi: Yeah. But it keeps the sharks away long enough for NASA or whoever to come and retrieve the capsule,

[00:23:27] Adam Cox: that's cool.

[00:23:27] Kyle Risi: So she does that for like a year, but then in 1944, Julia is posted to Sri Lanka where they want her to process a huge volume of classified OSS communications that are sort of coming out of the war effort. So like across Europe, there's like loads of communications going on and seeks being exchanged and like they're intercepting signals and stuff. And she's basically processing all that information.

[00:23:48] Kyle Risi: Weirdly enough, at the time she's actually working under the leadership of Lord Mount Batten.

[00:23:53] Adam Cox: Oh really?

[00:23:54] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Of course. We know him as the great grandson of Queen Victoria. Making him Queen Elizabeth [00:24:00] II's second cousin, I think. Is that how it,

[00:24:02] Adam Cox: ~uh, ~

[00:24:02] Kyle Risi: something like, I think it's second cousin. Yeah,

[00:24:03] Adam Cox: something like that.

[00:24:04] Kyle Risi: So she's basically working directly with him, but then she gets posted to China where she works as a registry Chief

[00:24:10] Adam Cox: Uhhuh.

[00:24:11] Kyle Risi: So doing something basically similar to what she was doing in Sri Lanka. And so at the end of her service, she earns an emblem of. Material civilian service is what they call it, which is the second highest award that can be issued to a civilian employee.

[00:24:23] Adam Cox: Okay.

[00:24:23] Kyle Risi: So she's very good at her job But it's actually here in China where Julia's entire life shifts because she actually meets a man by the name of Paul Child, which as the name suggests, is a man who will later.

[00:24:35] Adam Cox: Will marry her, I guess.

[00:24:36] Kyle Risi: Yeah, yeah. Become a husband. Yeah.

[00:24:37] Adam Cox: So Stanley Tucci.

[00:24:39] Kyle Risi: Stanley Tucci, he's great. It's so weird that they are cast together though. 'cause you don't really put them together as husband and wife.

[00:24:45] Kyle Risi: Do you know what I mean? When you see, imagine, like, think about Devil Wears Prada, right? You've got Meryl Streep and then you've got Sandy Tucci as the assistant. You can't really see that dynamic of them being in the love interest together.

[00:24:55] Adam Cox: I guess not, but hey, they're actors.

[00:24:57] Kyle Risi: They are. But also in real life it's a [00:25:00] perfect matching because she's so tall and he's so short.

[00:25:02] Adam Cox: She's not six foot two though.

[00:25:03] Kyle Risi: Well, actually in the film they do a lot of like trickery with the angles. And so when she's cooking and stuff, she's obviously clearly standing on a box.

[00:25:11] Adam Cox: Right.

[00:25:11] Kyle Risi: Okay. 'cause you always see her like really bending over massively over the table. She's almost like at a 90 degree angle with her spine.

[00:25:18] Adam Cox: Really? And then how tall is Stanley Ucci?

[00:25:19] Kyle Risi: He's very short. Yeah.

[00:25:20] Adam Cox: She just comes up to her chest,

[00:25:22] Kyle Risi: her vagina. Yeah. It's convenient. It's a, it's a marriage of convenience.

[00:25:25] Adam Cox: That's awful.

[00:25:26] Kyle Risi: But Adam, the point is that their love story in the film, they're incredibly in love and it seems to be like the case that throughout their life, in real life they were really in love and they remain so until like literally the end of their lives.

[00:25:38] Kyle Risi: And so Paul also works for the OSS. His job is actually designing and building war rooms for the general in China. So very cool. Paul is like 10 years her senior, Julia at the time is in her early thirties, so that makes him in his early forties, mm-hmm.

[00:25:52] Kyle Risi: They hit it off almost instantly and within a couple of years, Adam, they marry in Pennsylvania and it's a real surprising low key wedding considering like the [00:26:00] wealth that she comes from, it's like a Sunday afternoon at Paul's kind of Twin brothers Riverside Garden.

[00:26:05] Kyle Risi: They have only a few friends and family in attendance. Julia just ends up wearing this really modest but really pretty dress. It's just extraordinarily low key.

[00:26:14] Adam Cox: Yeah, maybe it just, it didn't matter. They're clearly in love. They just wanna get married. I think that kind of thing. Keep her low key. Like how, how wealthy is she at this point in time then?

[00:26:22] Kyle Risi: They're very comfortable.

[00:26:23] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:26:24] Kyle Risi: Like her mom is the Hess or cardboard making factory Adam. That is, that's money. Money.

[00:26:29] Adam Cox: I didn't realise that would pay so well.

[00:26:31] Kyle Risi: I dunno how much it pays, but I hear heiress and I just think wealthy.

[00:26:34] Adam Cox: Well, anyone could be an heiress. I could be the heiress of the kibble downstairs.

[00:26:38] Kyle Risi: Anything you want, I dunno how much money is in cardboard. But you do get the sense, I mean, if they're travelling all the way to Tijuana, which try Caesar salad. That's money. Money.

[00:26:45] Adam Cox: That's all the boxes, the money they've made from all the brown boxes they've made.

[00:26:48] Kyle Risi: Yes. Well that's, yeah, that's what they do. They're selling brown boxes. I don't understand. You make it sound like it's this novelty. It's all the brown boxes that they're selling. Well, yes. It's a carbon manufac factory outta

[00:26:59] Adam Cox: Yeah. [00:27:00] And then when they release their green box line

[00:27:02] Kyle Risi: uhhuh,

[00:27:02] Adam Cox: it went wild.

[00:27:03] Kyle Risi: Okay. Because I must've never seen anything like this before.


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[00:27:07] Kyle Risi: And here's the thing to tell you. Julia's story without Paul. Only kind of tell you half the story because they are incredibly connected and incredibly close throughout her entire life following their marriage.

[00:27:19] Kyle Risi: Their entire life just becomes this cocoon of support and admiration for each other. And Paul's story is pretty interesting.

[00:27:27] Kyle Risi: Their mother was a woman called Birth a Child,

[00:27:30] Adam Cox: sorry I that to ages Tin.

[00:27:34] Kyle Risi: Her name is Bert, a child. And I'm like, yeah, she birthed two children.

[00:27:38] Adam Cox: Wow. What a fun name.

[00:27:39] Kyle Risi: So as I mentioned, and I guess birther, birth two twin boys, Paul and Charlie. Their father ends up dying when they're about six months old. And it's not really referenced how in the film, but it must be like, that must been really tragic for you to lose your husband when you have a 2, 6 month old kids. You know what I mean?

[00:27:54] Adam Cox: Yeah. Two kids, one one's hard enough.

[00:27:56] Kyle Risi: Yeah, exactly. And even though they're twins, they're very different from each other. [00:28:00] Charlie is described as a kind of the brawnier, louder, more charismatic of the two. Whereas Paul, he's more academic, he's more empathetic, he's a lot more sensitive than Charlie is.

[00:28:09] Kyle Risi: And I dunno whether or not the reason Paul is the way that he is, is because when they're kids, Charlie accidentally blinds Paul in his left eye with a fucking sewing needle.

[00:28:22] Adam Cox: What the hell are they doing?

[00:28:23] Kyle Risi: I have no idea. But he ends up blinding him, which is the reason why. Paul doesn't get to serve directly in, in the military because Of course, he gets disqualified.

[00:28:33] Adam Cox: Damn. Maybe it was just accident, but even still,

[00:28:35] Kyle Risi: it doesn't seem like there's any bad blood between them. But it does mean that he has essentially sacrificed an eye in order to meet though silver lining to me, his soulmate. Because of course, if he hadn't been blinded, he would never have met Julia.

[00:28:49] Kyle Risi: the entire life. That's the thing. Sometimes it sets you on a path, right?

[00:28:52] Kyle Risi: That's right. Yeah. Lose an eye. Don't worry. It's for a reason.

[00:28:55] Adam Cox: You'll

[00:28:55] Kyle Risi: get away. Say you'll get away, but it doesn't really hold him back either. Like [00:29:00] he becomes a black belt in Judo. He's a really talented prospective drawer, hence why he's designing literal war rooms for the government.

[00:29:07] Kyle Risi: He's also an incredible photographer as well, but also he's never, ever. Arrogance or overconfident about it. He's just super relaxed. He's super reserved. And in the Julia and Julia movie, Stanley Tucci, he is an incredible casting for Paul

[00:29:22] Adam Cox: yeah. Yeah, he is in a lot of good movies, Stanley Tucci.

[00:29:24] Kyle Risi: But he always plays that chilled calm, collected ~kind of ~kind of character. Which is perfect for who Paul was.

[00:29:30] Adam Cox: Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Even in like Hunger Games, even though when he is that presenter, he's still a smooth presenter, even though Yeah.

[00:29:36] Adam Cox: Like people are going off to their death.

[00:29:37] Kyle Risi: He definitely has that warmth about him, that likability about him. And he's extremely popular and yeah, he excels in everything that he does.

[00:29:44] Kyle Risi: But I do feel bad for Paul because even though they're twins, Charlie is clearly the favourite in the family. So much so that Bert's boyfriend only pays for Charlie's tuition to Harvard. And for Paul, he only gets to go to Columbia, but only for one year. If he wants to continue going. Yes. Come up with a money [00:30:00] himself.

[00:30:00] Adam Cox: And does he?

[00:30:00] Kyle Risi: I'm not quite sure, actually. I think after that he just decides to go travelling.

[00:30:03] Adam Cox: Hmm.

[00:30:04] Kyle Risi: But that's the weird thing though. Like it was Paul who's the one who was blinded in the eye. You would think that would make Paul the favourite. But no, Charlie becomes the favourite. So He was the blinder, not the blind E.

[00:30:14] Adam Cox: Yeah. But just 'cause he is partly sighted doesn't mean he gets automatic sympathy.

[00:30:17] Kyle Risi: I think that, I think that warrants it.

[00:30:18] Adam Cox: Eh,

[00:30:19] Kyle Risi: I think it gets a little bit of sympathy if I get, have to go through being blinded in my left eye. And that doesn't, and I don't get anything for it. No.

[00:30:26] Adam Cox: Hey, it's, that's not how the world works.

[00:30:28] Adam Cox: I'm afraid

[00:30:29] Kyle Risi: it is these days.

[00:30:30] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:30:30] Kyle Risi: Victimhood is victimhood.

[00:30:32] Kyle Risi: So after Paul graduates through the 1920s and the 1930s, he works in Italy and France as a private tutor, and he really refines his skills as a painter and a writer. He even begins writing poetry in the film. They feature some of the letters from Paul to his brother Charlie, and I'll read some of 'em out later.

[00:30:47] Kyle Risi: They are just so beautifully and so effortlessly written for just a basic communication letter. This is just him in his kitchen saying, yeah, I'm watching Julia do some cooking.

[00:30:57] Adam Cox: And they're based on real letters then

[00:30:59] Kyle Risi: they [00:31:00] are actual, real letters that they read out during the film.

[00:31:03] Adam Cox: Does she, maybe she has a way of how she cooks. That's so

[00:31:05] Kyle Risi: do you reckon

[00:31:06] Adam Cox: beautiful and serene?

[00:31:07] Adam Cox: I don't know.

[00:31:07] Kyle Risi: Yeah. But there's some certain things that you do that I watch it and I go, ah, this is making me feel like. I dunno. Serene

[00:31:14] Adam Cox: or nauseous.

[00:31:15] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Is he cooking? There is He put too much salt in there.

[00:31:18] Kyle Risi: But at this point Paul also has a very refined palette. He's really into kind of. All sorts of cuisines from around the world because he's travelled so much.

[00:31:25] Kyle Risi: Right. Which is a huge cause of anxiety for Julia she cannot cook at all, all she wants to do is just to be like the best partner she possibly can be

[00:31:34] Adam Cox: so she's gonna learn,

[00:31:36] Kyle Risi: Yeah. She wants to be a good wife.

[00:31:38] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:31:38] Kyle Risi: But in all honesty Paul doesn't care. Like he doesn't give a shit. At the end of the day, if he wants a nice meal, they'll just go out a restaurant.

[00:31:45] Adam Cox: I thought, I thought you could say do you know what, it's not that bad. No. He will just leave. He will, he'll go eat somewhere else.

[00:31:50] Kyle Risi: Yeah. No, I mean, he would never like turn his nose up, but they have the means at this moment in time, he's working for the OSS, right? Mm-hmm. And they're getting their apartments paid for. They can [00:32:00] go out and eat wherever they want at the finest restaurants.

[00:32:02] Kyle Risi: And so after Paul and Julia get married in 1948, Paul joins the United States Foreign Services. He's assigned to work in the United States Information Agency in Paris.

[00:32:12] Kyle Risi: This is a bloody, wild job, Adam. It's super interesting. He's basically curating and promoting American art exhibitions across France, basically going off to sell all these different galleries to showcase kind of American artists as a form of propaganda,

[00:32:28] Adam Cox: really.

[00:32:28] Adam Cox: So where we're France and Europe facing a lot of art from Russia?

[00:32:33] Kyle Risi: Yeah. I think they were just trying to change sentiments, like to show like, actually,~ um,~ this is what life is like in America. It's all about freedom,

[00:32:41] Adam Cox: right?

[00:32:41] Kyle Risi: So that kind of messaging. But they're actual art galleries and they're really promoting kind of American. Culture.

[00:32:47] Adam Cox: That to me suggests they've got far too much money.

[00:32:50] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:32:51] Adam Cox: Oh, what are we gonna use this money for? Oh, to promote art.

[00:32:54] Kyle Risi: Yeah. It's just wild. And so they moved to Paris. It's new, it's really quaint. They're of [00:33:00] course just married.

[00:33:01] Kyle Risi: So they're deeply in love in this new city. Julia can't cook and so Paul takes her to the finest restaurants Paris has to offer. And her favourite by far is Prita.

[00:33:09] Kyle Risi: Manja

[00:33:10] Adam Cox: really lies in the chain.

[00:33:12] Kyle Risi: Yeah. It's in airport two, terminal one.

[00:33:15] Adam Cox: I see.

[00:33:16] Kyle Risi: No, it's a place called She Georges, but also, LA Grande. I hope I pronounced it correctly.

[00:33:21] Adam Cox: You're probably not.

[00:33:22] Kyle Risi: Well, they're very famous restaurant in Paris at the time. And she describes going there as being like a coronary revolution. It's the first time like she's really into food anyway, but like experiencing kind of fine French cuisine

[00:33:35] Adam Cox: mm-hmm.

[00:33:36] Kyle Risi: Is like eyeopening for her.

[00:33:37] Adam Cox: Do you remember one of the restaurants we went to in Paris? It was really nice. It was an Italian.

[00:33:41] Kyle Risi: Where was that? Was that the one near the bla?

[00:33:45] Adam Cox: No, it was a, I think it was like Mamba Mamas, something like that.

[00:33:49] Kyle Risi: Was that, was that the one where we had a big fight? 'cause I was so full and I didn't want to eat. and We had the arni balls and you were like, oh, you're not gonna eat that? And I was like, no. And then we had this big fight

[00:33:56] Adam Cox: that was in Milan.

[00:33:57] Kyle Risi: Oh crap. I don't know where we [00:34:00] are. That's all to say to me. We have so many fights. I can't remember this one.

[00:34:03] Adam Cox: Where

[00:34:04] Kyle Risi: was it?

[00:34:04] Adam Cox: No, the fact that our best meal in Paris was Italian,

[00:34:07] Kyle Risi: Adam, I cannot remember the meal.

[00:34:09] Adam Cox: Maybe you weren't there.

[00:34:10] Kyle Risi: We've only been to Paris together.

[00:34:13] Adam Cox: Maybe that was with the other Kyle.

[00:34:14] Kyle Risi: The point is mm-hmm. These are the restaurants that she gets introduced for the first time to kind of things like oyster and caviar and things like that. She literally says it was an opening up of the soul and spirit for her.

[00:34:25] Adam Cox: All these taste sensations.

[00:34:26] Kyle Risi: Mm. CI wouldn't, I would never try caviar go Mm. Taste sensation and go, oh my God, I've changed my world. It's like, it tastes like salty spunk and eggs.

[00:34:38] Adam Cox: I'll have another sip.

[00:34:41] Kyle Risi: Could you bring Peter the dolphin? You'll have to listen to our Peter the Dolphin episode to understand that reference guys.

[00:34:47] Kyle Risi: So in Paris, Paul is off doing all these different things for work and stuff. He's really settled himself in. He's going to different galleries. Obviously he's taking Julia and Julia's obviously settling in as well, but she's not doing anything.

[00:34:58] Kyle Risi: And so she really [00:35:00] wants to find something to really occupy her time when Paul is not around.

[00:35:04] Kyle Risi: And Paul suggests June dinner one night, like, why don't you try like hat making? She tries it. She fucking hates it. He then suggests, why don't you try Bridge Club? So she joins a bridge club. She cannot stand any of the women there, so she hates that too.

[00:35:16] Kyle Risi: She then decides to try her hand at cooking, because she wants to do something special for Paul, right? But there's an issue because the only French cookbook, cookbooks that she can get her hands on. All in French. And so she decides that she's going to first learn how to speak French.

[00:35:30] Kyle Risi: But she hates that too.

[00:35:32] Adam Cox: And she's in France. She, I feel like she just needs a positive attitude.

[00:35:36] Kyle Risi: I think it's like, it's too much time. Like, in order for her to do the things she wants to do, like French cooking, she has to learn the language first, but then that's taking too long.

[00:35:44] Kyle Risi: She's not really picking it up. Yeah. So she's like, but I don't wanna have to go through this in order to do this.

[00:35:49] Adam Cox: Is that like a cooking school with a translator?

[00:35:52] Kyle Risi: Exactly, Adam.

[00:35:52] Adam Cox: Really?

[00:35:53] Kyle Risi: So she decides that she's gonna enrol in a cooking class. And I dunno if this is an oversight on her part, or if this is [00:36:00] just if I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this big. Because Adam, she literally enrols at a place called LaCro Croon Blur, which is basically a culinary school that trains already excellent chefs to become world class. And she can even barely open a jar of pickles.

[00:36:20] Adam Cox: But because she's got the money, she, this is why she can afford this kind of school.

[00:36:24] Kyle Risi: Yeah, she can afford it.

[00:36:25] Adam Cox: Uhhuh.

[00:36:26] Kyle Risi: I don't think she knows what she's getting herself into.

[00:36:28] Adam Cox: So she hasn't gone for beginners. She's literally gone to the best class.

[00:36:32] Kyle Risi: Well, she enrols, They do place her in an introductory class for kind of housewives, really wealthy housewives.

[00:36:38] Kyle Risi: And like the level we're talking is, everyone is standing there, they're all eagerly. We've got their little notepads and they listen to the instructor talking and the teacher's like, so this is a spatula.

[00:36:47] Kyle Risi: And they're all like, and they look down the room and Judy's like, what the fuck is this shit? She's like, I, I know what a cooking utensil is. Oh, really? So she goes to the school par [00:37:00] test, like a woman called Mada Elizabeth, and she's listen, you must have something more challenging than just literally boiling an egg.

[00:37:07] Kyle Risi: By the way, whenever Julius speaks. I have to say this. Now imagine Elmo's voice

[00:37:12] Adam Cox: Uhhuh

[00:37:13] Kyle Risi: because she speaks like Elmo.

[00:37:14] Kyle Risi: Her voice is Elmo.

[00:37:17] Adam Cox: What? Like tickle me Elmo?

[00:37:18] Kyle Risi: If you watch any of her cooking videos for American listeners, they'll get it. But for anyone else across the world, Julia Child speaks like Elmo.

[00:37:26] Adam Cox: I need to like listen to her.

[00:37:28] Kyle Risi: Hold it up to the microphone, I guess.

[00:37:30] Julia Childs: If you love good food, but you work all day, take hard. Get a chicken breast and an empty wine bottle and make chicken Kea,

[00:37:41] Adam Cox: salt

[00:37:41] Julia Childs: of chicken

[00:37:43] Adam Cox: only.

[00:37:43] Adam Cox: It does not look appetising.

[00:37:44] Kyle Risi: But you understand what I mean by the voice.

[00:37:46] Adam Cox: Oh my God. That's.

[00:37:47] Kyle Risi: Creepy the Elmo.

[00:37:49] Adam Cox: And I'm, and I'm supposed to trust her cooking.

[00:37:53] Kyle Risi: So Julia's you must have something more challenging than boiling an egg in Elmo's voice.

[00:37:59] Kyle Risi: And [00:38:00] Madam Besa is yeah, we do. But those are top tier kind of classes for men specifically. And Elizabeth is like, plus we don't think that you can afford those classes. It's very expensive. Do you know what I mean? And Julia is like. Bitch try me just how much the fuck is it?

[00:38:16] Kyle Risi: And then in the end, she ends up joining a one year programme with 11 other male students who are all studying to be world class Michelin chefs. And she can't even chop an onion.

[00:38:27] Adam Cox: Hang on. But she's gone from, I want to do something more than boiling an egg.

Mm-hmm.

[00:38:31] Adam Cox: To becoming a world class chef. I feel like this would be something in between,

[00:38:34] Kyle Risi: you think so? Maybe I just didn't have something in between.

[00:38:36] Adam Cox: No. Intermediate course. No,

[00:38:38] Kyle Risi: this is all we've got. So either introductionary, cooking for kind of housewives. We show you, we'll show you how to open up an oven and I'll write down notes. Okay. Oh, open. There's a hinge there. Yeah. Then what?

[00:38:48] Kyle Risi: And then you turn it on. Does anyone know what it does? And they're like, makes things cold. They're like, no. It heats things up like, wow. And they write that down. That's our basic, we're talking.

[00:38:57] Kyle Risi: So she joins us. This class, [00:39:00] her teacher is a guy called Max, nar. Imagine kind of the short head chef from Oui.

[00:39:06] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:39:06] Adam Cox: Him,

[00:39:06] Kyle Risi: but he's got a lovely face rather than having the mean face. Right. And one of her first tasks is prep. And they have to chop a shit tonne of onions with speed and technique, like what you see on tell, right? When you see Shep going, it's like, boom. Done. Mm-hmm. They're all busting through their paths of onions, right?

[00:39:22] Kyle Risi: Julie is there, literally, she's soaring hers. She cannot cut an egg. The other chefs are like, who the fuck is this lady? And remember, she's six foot tall, so she's taller than everyone in this class. So she's towering above them all.

[00:39:35] Kyle Risi: But the point is that by the end of their day, she clearly knows that she's at ~a, ~a massive disadvantage.

[00:39:39] Kyle Risi: And so when she goes home. She's just chopping onions. Oh, to

[00:39:42] Adam Cox: practise?

[00:39:43] Kyle Risi: Yeah. That's it of them. But there's other vegetables. Julia,

[00:39:46] Adam Cox: not only when she's like conquered onion, she needs to do carrots, garlic,

[00:39:49] Kyle Risi: that's exactly right.

[00:39:50] Adam Cox: Ettes.

[00:39:51] Kyle Risi: Exactly right. Yeah.

Oh,

[00:39:52] Adam Cox: right.

[00:39:52] Kyle Risi: So, But the thing is though, like the difference between once you've mastered, like cutting, let's say a carrot is not that difficult [00:40:00] to then master the onion. Right.

[00:40:01] Adam Cox: There's different texture

[00:40:02] Kyle Risi: though. She's, no. Yeah. But it's, it wouldn't be too much difficult.

[00:40:06] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:40:06] Kyle Risi: She's starting with an onion, which means that she's gotta cut through hundreds of different onions and then be like. Crying all the time, which you could start with the carrots and then move to the onions and go, okay, so just need to adapt my technique here and there. Maybe 10 onions and then you mastered it, right?

[00:40:22] Adam Cox: Yeah.

But

[00:40:22] Kyle Risi: she started with onions and there's hundreds of them.

[00:40:25] Adam Cox: Yeah, but it's a French cos of course they're gonna start with onions.

[00:40:27] Kyle Risi: Start with the carrot.

[00:40:28] Adam Cox: Carrots and ettes are not French.

[00:40:31] Kyle Risi: The point is Adam, she's literally in their apartment. She can barely even see. She's just crying, right? Stanley Tucci comes home, he's overcome with fumes. He can't even stay in the house because she's just like, why do you have for dinner? And he is like, I'm getting outta here. That must just literally, yeah, that stink did stink.

[00:40:49] Kyle Risi: But she keeps going until she mastered this technique of chopping an onion. When she goes back to school, it's prep day again. She'll just blast her onions in one go, and then she'll be like, I win.

[00:40:58] Adam Cox: And like, now you've actually [00:41:00] gotta

[00:41:00] Kyle Risi: be cook. Yeah. Like calm down bitch. It's like, that's prep. So many other things we need to do now as well, because now, like I said, she now has to learn how to, Julie carrots as an example, like into little matchstick.

[00:41:10] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. So now it's back to square one.

[00:41:12] Kyle Risi: But the thing is though, the point is that when she goes off and she masters how to Julianne a carrot or whatever it might be, she really goes all out to the point where she really thrives at being underestimated and being told that you can't do this. And so she'll go off and she'll practise and she'll come back and then she'll like get this massive sense of satisfaction by showing everyone that they were wrong.

[00:41:33] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:41:33] Kyle Risi: In a way, and maybe it's just the way her brain is wired, very mathematical, but she treats almost everything. Like it's a paint by numbers.

[00:41:41] Kyle Risi: If she knows exactly what to do, when to do it and how to do it, then she can execute it almost flawlessly.

[00:41:47] Kyle Risi: And when that doesn't work, it's almost never because she can't do it, it's because one of those three pieces is missing or is muddled, right? Mm-hmm. It's either the what, the when, the how.

[00:41:56] Kyle Risi: But most of the time it's a failure point that she, [00:42:00] that gives her the clarity. The science hasn't been explained cleanly. She then goes away, she masters the logic for herself, and then she's right back a kind of painting between the lines again, if you will.

[00:42:10] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:42:10] Kyle Risi: So she's really incredible in that sense that she applies a methodical approach to literally everything that she does. Which is a basically Adam, it's a recipe.

[00:42:18] Adam Cox: Yeah, she's got like a blueprint or she,

[00:42:19] Kyle Risi: yeah, she thinks like a recipe works in a way. I

[00:42:23] Adam Cox: see. Yeah.

[00:42:24] Kyle Risi: When the end result of the recipe doesn't work out, it's because the recipe is wrong. And this is why her recipes are so good, because she really masters every single step from the technique to the ingredients to how much the when, the how, the whatever

[00:42:35] Adam Cox: to make it really simple for people to understand.

[00:42:37] Kyle Risi: Exactly. And this is how she's able to succeed. Because even in general life, it's follow the recipe, whether or not it's like cutting an onion or kind of going into a French kind of patisserie ordering something. Follow the recipe and you'll be successful. Mm-hmm.

[00:42:51] Adam Cox: Do you know what I mean? Yeah.

[00:42:52] Kyle Risi: At some point, Julia ends up joining an all women's gourmet club in Paris. It's kind of created in response to the fact that women aren't allowed in these kind of [00:43:00] exclusive men clubs or culinary kind of classes that she's attending.

[00:43:04] Kyle Risi: She ends up meeting two women, a woman called Simone Beck and Bertoli. And they're both in the process of writing a French cookbook for Americans specifically.

[00:43:13] Adam Cox: Oh really?

[00:43:13] Kyle Risi: Yes.

[00:43:14] Adam Cox: They think there's obviously a market for this though.

[00:43:16] Kyle Risi: They want to tap into that market. Yes, for sure. They end up bonding over what, like a bitch. The school's proprietor is like Madame Elizabeth, like they don't go to the school. But Elizabeth has this kind of mean reputation around the gastronomy world and they become really good friends and it leads them actually to open up a school. Which translates to the school of the three hearty eaters.

[00:43:38] Adam Cox: Okay.

[00:43:39] Kyle Risi: And so she's still learning how to cook at this point. Like she's doing well but she's opened up her own fucking cooking school.

[00:43:45] Adam Cox: Like what is she, what's she gonna be able to teach?

[00:43:48] Kyle Risi: Oh, specifically they want to teach women how to cook.

[00:43:51] Adam Cox: Okay. Fine. Like cheese on toast.

[00:43:52] Kyle Risi: Yeah, cheese on toast. Or how to cook a flambe or whatever.

[00:43:55] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:43:55] Kyle Risi: And I think that is definitely something that you have to step back and ad admire just for a second. Right. This is a [00:44:00] woman who did not know how to chop an onion one year ago. Now she's here teaching people how to cook.

[00:44:06] Adam Cox: Yeah. Although she's basically ripped off another cooking school and be like, I can sell this. It's like the people online that kind of sell those online courses.

[00:44:13] Kyle Risi: Yeah. But the thing is, I think about her experience that she's had as a woman, right? Mm-hmm. Being told even by the proprietor of the school who is a woman herself, being told that you will never make it as a chef,

[00:44:23] Adam Cox: mm-hmm.

[00:44:23] Kyle Risi: So I think what she's trying to do is like, yeah, I'm gonna rip it off, but I'm gonna make it approachable. There are people out there that want to learn how to cook for whatever reason, it doesn't matter. Why should you have to gate, keep cooking French cuisine behind being a male?

[00:44:37] Adam Cox: That's true.

[00:44:37] Kyle Risi: And again, it's one of those things that really resonates with me, right? Like we knew nothing about podcasting or writing, but it's not something that ever stopped us, right? We just was like, let's just do it. Let's just see what happens.

[00:44:47] Kyle Risi: And so what they're doing is they're committed to making the school accessible to everyone. They only charged like a few dollars, so it's barely even enough to cover their costs at first.

[00:44:57] Kyle Risi: But Julia is loving it. She's pumping money into kind [00:45:00] of essentially her passion.

[00:45:01] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:45:01] Kyle Risi: And so this goes on for a while.

[00:45:03] Kyle Risi: Meanwhile, Simone and LT are still busy working on their cookbook. But then they get the news that their book is actually rejected on account of the publishers not thinking it was clear enough for an American audience, but the language is a bit off. It, again, uses metric measurements, which of course the Americans don't use.

[00:45:21] Kyle Risi: And because Julia obviously has a background in copywriting, they approach her and ask her if she'll help them rewrite it.

[00:45:28] Kyle Risi: Of course she agrees and she gets to work.

[00:45:30] Kyle Risi: And I think the best way to describe her contribution is that she injects the science into kind of the recipes in the cookbook.

[00:45:38] Kyle Risi: A lot of the measurements in the recipes are described as just kind of just vibes. Like Oh, like a dash of oil. Oh, or like a sprinkle of salt or put some flour in there.

[00:45:48] Adam Cox: That annoys me because I'm always like, no, I need to know the exact measurements.

[00:45:51] Kyle Risi: Exactly.

[00:45:52] Kyle Risi: And remember, Julia's six foot tall, right? So when the recipe says a bunch of tar, that's a lot of tar.

[00:45:59] Adam Cox: She's got [00:46:00] big hands.

[00:46:00] Kyle Risi: Exactly. Like to her a bunch is a bushel.

[00:46:03] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:46:03] Kyle Risi: So Julia points us out to them and Simone and LT are like, that doesn't matter. It doesn't really affect the outcome. And Julia's, like you already have women that are already intimidated by French cooking, right? If they pick up this book and they fail because of a vibe, You risk. Leaving them feeling deflated and they may not even try again.

[00:46:22] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:46:22] Kyle Risi: So you need to be extremely exact. And also every recipe needs to be thoroughly tested to make sure that the method is extremely precise.

[00:46:31] Adam Cox: And so when she was learning cooking in France, were they using exact measurements? I'm sure they weren't using like dashes and things, right?

[00:46:37] Kyle Risi: I think they were, yeah. I think like when you are a chef, right? You have this instinct and a lot of the time you're not following recipe as a chef, right? You're creating your own dishes. And so it's that translating from inside the chef's mind onto paper that isn't really done very well. So like it's more of like an instinct for a lot of these people.

[00:46:55] Adam Cox: Yeah, 'cause I guess a chef can probably tell that's a tablespoon of olive [00:47:00] oil. But these other women are going, oh, it's a dash.

[00:47:02] Kyle Risi: Exactly. Yeah. And so she goes off and she starts testing all the recipes in this cookbook. I read that it takes her one year, apparently, just so she can nail down A foolproof recipe for their puff pastry recipe.

[00:47:15] Adam Cox: It takes her a year to

[00:47:16] Kyle Risi: do that, just to do that bit to master it, because she was like, well, I followed all the instructions. It didn't really work, or This didn't work, or that didn't work. And so she's going through working out the exact science of making the perfect puff pastry.

[00:47:26] Kyle Risi: And she's like, okay, now I've got that nailed down. Now you go ahead and follow those instructions, and then they get it nailed down first time. So she's like, it does all matter.

[00:47:34] Adam Cox: I see. Yeah.

[00:47:34] Kyle Risi: Do you know what I mean? But even though Adam, it takes a one year to kinda really refine the puff recipe, the rest of the book ends up taking 10 fucking years.

[00:47:43] Adam Cox: 10 years. What is she doing at that time? She's still learning to chop.

[00:47:48] Kyle Risi: Maybe it just it is just made even more difficult because of port's contracts. It ends up coming to an end and so they have to obviously leave Europe. They end up travelling around.

[00:47:57] Kyle Risi: This means that all their collaboration on the book [00:48:00] is all done through posts. And remember mm-hmm. They can't just photocopy a set of pages and send them, that has to be all typed out. So it's, everything's extremely slow.

[00:48:08] Kyle Risi: The thing that they've got that can really speed things up is like the carbon paper. So when they're typing on the typewriter, they can make two copies of it, but that is it.

[00:48:15] Adam Cox: Right. You

[00:48:16] Kyle Risi: can't make infinite copies.

[00:48:17] Adam Cox: And so she's, sharing it with these other women, but it's taking, I, it feels like it's obviously not that.

[00:48:22] Adam Cox: Primary focus. It feels a bit like a hobby at this point.

[00:48:25] Kyle Risi: Yeah, it's probably not their main priority, but it ends up taking them 10 years and this 10 year period is really sad for Paul.

[00:48:32] Kyle Risi: His job seems to be the only thing that gives him purpose, but it's also what affords them their current lifestyle that they have in Paris. It's because of his job that they end up staying in the finest French apartments. End up socialising with kind of the elites of Paris. Mm-hmm. Eating in the finest restaurants.

[00:48:48] Kyle Risi: Right.

[00:48:49] Kyle Risi: But after the war, lots of people stop being investigated by the US government for being USSR Spice. And Paul actually is one of them.

[00:48:59] Kyle Risi: And [00:49:00] so Julia and Paul, they're order back to the SA where he ends up getting investigated.

[00:49:04] Adam Cox: why do they suspect him then?

[00:49:05] Kyle Risi: He's accused of supplying the Chinese with secret files, and it's because he likes photography and painting, they even accuse him of like vague homosexual tendencies, like Yeah. And interrogating him and saying do you enjoy the company of men? Or like, because basically because he's

[00:49:19] Adam Cox: artistic.

[00:49:19] Kyle Risi: Exactly, exactly. Basically, he is in charged, but they do lose their entire lifestyle. And in the end they end up living in just this really modest little house in Cambridge, Massachusetts. So it's goodbye to Paris.

[00:49:34] Adam Cox: So they lose their money then, or

[00:49:36] Kyle Risi: they just don't have a salary coming in anymore. Right. I, I see. Like he was getting paid really well before.

[00:49:41] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:49:41] Kyle Risi: And so that also makes this whole process of refining this cookbook over their 10 year period even harder because now she has to essentially live in the United States away from Louise, and Simone.

[00:49:54] Adam Cox: Yeah. Although I thought she came from money, so maybe not that much money

[00:49:57] Kyle Risi: Like her mother had all the money. Of course she died, but [00:50:00] maybe she has to wait for her father to die before she can unlock that money.

[00:50:02] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. I like, they're not poor, they're not destitutes, but they're certainly not living. In the elite areas. Yeah. Of like Paris, there's nothing compared to that.

[00:50:11] Adam Cox: And not fine dining on a Tuesday.

[00:50:13] Kyle Risi: Exactly. They're living in this little, small, little town in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

[00:50:16] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:50:17] Kyle Risi: It's really sad because you also get a sense of how important Paul's work was to him. And what it allowed him to do and how happy he was. And so you just feel like his glory days are kind of over in a way. And it's really sad because Paul is really wonderful. So you can't help but feel like, feel bad for him.

[00:50:33] Adam Cox: Yeah. But does this, it sounds like at this point in time, it's now Julia's time to

[00:50:37] Kyle Risi: shine. It's Judi's time is exactly that. Like, all this free time basically means that he can invest that time in supporting Julia through this, essentially this 10 year period.

[00:50:47] Kyle Risi: The whole time. She's like, she's testing recipes, she's writing them up, she's having to mail the manuscripts across the world.

[00:50:52] Kyle Risi: It's really stressful. They're arguing. One of the women lt, she isn't doing anything essentially. So they're like planning on cutting her [00:51:00] out. It's politics babe.

[00:51:01] Adam Cox: Okay. So Julia only writes to fame because, not because of the other women, but with the help of the other women. It's not all her of them,

[00:51:09] Kyle Risi: Yeah. So her cooking book itself is credited with Julia Childs Louisette and Simone, like all their names are on it.

[00:51:17] Kyle Risi: At one point they question whether or not they would even just like have smaller writing for Louise's name because like she ends up, I think she goes through a divorce or something and she's always nipping out.

[00:51:27] Kyle Risi: Like they'll be in class together or they'll be having a meeting, she'll be there for 10 minutes and she has to go off.

[00:51:31] Adam Cox: Right.

[00:51:32] Kyle Risi: And then she leaves them to do all the work.

[00:51:33] Adam Cox: So just 'cause she was there at the, ideas inception. Yeah. She's still hanging on to this clinging. It's my idea. You can't do this without me.

[00:51:39] Kyle Risi: Exactly. But I think in the end, all three of the names are on the book, but in the second edition of the cookbook, it ends up just being Simone's and Julia Child on there. Interesting. And then Julia goes off and does her own stuff, so

[00:51:50] Adam Cox: Right.

[00:51:50] Kyle Risi: Yeah.


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[00:51:51] Kyle Risi: But by this point, Julia's literally pushing 50 years old. Paul is in his sixties. They don't have a huge amount of money, but he's dead set on building [00:52:00] Julia a kitchen.

[00:52:01] Kyle Risi: Remember Julia is six foot two, right? So she's always in all the shots in this film. She's always bending over, like literally breaking her back 90 degree angle wind every time she's chopping something.

[00:52:13] Adam Cox: I see. And I remember actually, even my mom and dad's, their kitchen worktops are lower than ours. So I'm just trying to think back to like kitchen worktops. 'cause I feel like they've grown over the decades.

[00:52:23] Kyle Risi: Yeah. People have gone bigger. Yeah. Could be.

[00:52:25] Adam Cox: And so he wants to build a kitchen because the kitchen that they've got is just too small.

[00:52:29] Kyle Risi: I think what he wants actually is, I think he wants to build like a European style kitchen. 'cause now they're back in America, right? Mm-hmm. And she's mastered kind of the art of French cooking. But he's like, well, okay, we can do this. Right? ' cause also, when she's stirring right, literally the pot of sauce is by her vagina. So she's like, oh, oh, never stir anything when you're naked.

[00:52:48] Adam Cox: Is that what she says?

[00:52:50] Kyle Risi: No. But as you imagine,

[00:52:52] Adam Cox: I mean, you could have just said near her waist.

[00:52:54] Kyle Risi: Well, that's what it said in the notes in her vagina.

[00:52:57] Adam Cox: That's,

[00:52:57] Kyle Risi: So Paul, what a lovely afternoon of [00:53:00] love making. Let's go make her some tomato soup. She runs to the kitchen, grabs the pot out. She's still butt naked.

[00:53:05] Adam Cox: I dunno what to

[00:53:06] Kyle Risi: splash herself with hot onion soup.

[00:53:08] Kyle Risi: She said. Oh,

[00:53:09] Adam Cox: I dunno what, what kind of image this is

[00:53:12] Kyle Risi: Judy Chance.

[00:53:13] Adam Cox: Mm.

[00:53:14] Kyle Risi: So of course Paul sets about designing the perfect kitchen. He makes sure all the counters and the cupboard are raised higher. He studies how she moves through the kitchen. Like one of his favourite things to do is kind of just sit and watch her move through this kitchen.

[00:53:26] Adam Cox: Whilst it's too small for her, just like lumbering about

[00:53:29] Kyle Risi: credit? No, I just think, I imagine her like the flailing spaghetti person as well, because she's quite animated as well.

[00:53:34] Adam Cox: Okay.

[00:53:35] Kyle Risi: Is it the fate, the flailing spaghetti,

[00:53:38] Adam Cox: inflatable tube men?

[00:53:39] Adam Cox: family guy.

[00:53:40] Kyle Risi: Ah, family guy. That's it. Yeah. I imagine her like that. She's very tall and lanky and just like, woo, like

[00:53:47] Adam Cox: Mrs. Delphi.

[00:53:49] Kyle Risi: Yeah, even worse than that, skinnier and more flay. But basically he's studying her because he wants to ensure that everything is organised specific to her flow.

[00:53:57] Kyle Risi: But there she also likes plenty of hanging space as well, so [00:54:00] she can physically see all of her pots and pans and utensils around the kitchen. She also likes to see all of her knives as well, so he has to build something where all of her knives can be on display.

[00:54:10] Kyle Risi: Adam, the bitch loves a knife.

[00:54:12] Adam Cox: Why does she like to see her knives on display?

[00:54:14] Kyle Risi: I don't know. She just wants to know where her knives are.

[00:54:17] Adam Cox: Is she expecting Paul to steal one

[00:54:22] Kyle Risi: and like I said, his favourite thing to do is just watch her cooking. And it is like this slapstick comedy. She's also super clumsy, but also in this very unapologetic way. Like she'll flip an omelettes and it'll just crash to the floor and she'll be like, like, scoop the whole thing up.

[00:54:36] Kyle Risi: And she'll be like, pretend like no one saw it.

[00:54:37] Adam Cox: What? She's gonna serve an an omelette that's been on the floor.

[00:54:40] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Paul saw it though.

[00:54:41] Kyle Risi: But even when she's on tell as well, like it will fall on the floor and she'll scoop it up. She's like, no apologies.

[00:54:46] Adam Cox: And then she like makes it for the cameramen. They've got like reluctantly come round like, oh, there's a hair in the blet.

[00:54:51] Kyle Risi: Yeah. And so here is one of those letters.

[00:54:54] Kyle Risi: So imagine Paul sitting in his kitchen watching her cook, right? Mm-hmm. Watching her flailing about, he [00:55:00] writes a letter to his brother Paul about watching Julia Cook. And Adam, like I said, it is so beautifully and so effortlessly written for what it is now as I read it. Remember, imagine a tall Elmo in a kitchen.

[00:55:12] Adam Cox: Got you.

[00:55:12] Kyle Risi: Dear Charlie. Julia in front of her stoves has the same fascination for me as watching a kettle drummer at a symphony, the oven door opens and shuts so fast. You can hardly notice the dense thrust of a spoon as she dips it into the casserole, and up to her mouth for a taste check, like a perfectly timed double beat of the drums.

[00:55:31] Kyle Risi: Then with her bare fingers, she snatches out the canon out of the pot of boiling water. As she cries, Dan, these things are as hot as stiff cocks,

[00:55:40] Adam Cox: what she actually means, penises.

[00:55:44] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:55:44] Adam Cox: And so she's using her hands in boiling water.

[00:55:46] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:55:47] Adam Cox: What the hell is going on?

[00:55:48] Kyle Risi: But that's what she says. These canon is like Stiff Cox,

[00:55:54] Adam Cox: then they need more time.

[00:55:58] Kyle Risi: Uh, so anyway, [00:56:00] eventually she gets her kitchen, she finishes the book. The book is now ready and they start approaching publishers, right?

[00:56:07] Kyle Risi: The trouble is they can't really get through the door and it's really frustrating for them. But then Julia remembers an old friend of hers called Avis Devotee who might be able to help get them through the door. The trouble is they've never actually met before.

[00:56:20] Adam Cox: So what? They're like pen pals or something?

[00:56:22] Kyle Risi: Exactly. That. They are pen pals because in 1952, Julia's reading an article in a magazine by a guy called Bernard Deto.

[00:56:29] Kyle Risi: So that's Avis husband, right? And it's all about kitchen eyes, which. Julia fucking loves a kitchen knife. It's very, very dull. It's talking about how terrible like American steel knives are in comparison to European carbon steel.

[00:56:41] Kyle Risi: Julia ends up brightening back and she says, I agree with everything you said.

[00:56:46] Kyle Risi: And at the time, like Avis is acting as her secretary, and she's the one who ends up replying, right? Mm-hmm. Which ends up sparking this lifelong pen pal friendship between them, right?

[00:56:56] Adam Cox: All over knives,

[00:56:57] Kyle Risi: well, I mean, the knives were her and Bernie [00:57:00] thing. They obviously get onto more personal stuff between Avis and Julia, but apparently in their first two years they exchanged over a hundred fucking letters.

[00:57:07] Adam Cox: So she is able to do a hundred letters in a couple of years, but she can't write a recipe book in a year.

[00:57:13] Kyle Risi: Remember? She's mastering it.

[00:57:14] Adam Cox: I don't feel like she's focusing.

[00:57:17] Kyle Risi: So when Avis learns that they're struggling to get their book seen by publishers. Avis offers to help using her connections in the publishing world, and she gets him a meeting with a company called Horton Mifflin.

[00:57:30] Kyle Risi: Which I love that word. Mifflin.

[00:57:31] Adam Cox: And what are they able to do for them?

[00:57:33] Kyle Risi: Well, they love the book, basically. And their concern, though is that it's 700 pages.

[00:57:38] Adam Cox: My God.

[00:57:39] Kyle Risi: That's why it took them 10 years.

[00:57:41] Adam Cox: That's like Harry Potter book.

[00:57:44] Kyle Risi: And Julia and Simone. By the way, at this point, they're in the process of booting out Louisette. They're like, we envisioned that the book would be like seven volumes, right? You could split them out. You could have sauces, you could have, poultry, fish, meat, vegetables, desserts, and then in an entire volume [00:58:00] dedicated to X.

[00:58:01] Adam Cox: No, I'm sorry. You do not need a whole book on saucers.

[00:58:05] Kyle Risi: You don't need a whole book on eggs.

[00:58:07] Adam Cox: You've got a book on eggs.

[00:58:09] Kyle Risi: That's true. I love that book. You do need a whole book on eggs. No, because a big thing in French cooking is sauce.

[00:58:18] Adam Cox: I get that, but ugh. I dunno. A whole, a whole volume.

[00:58:22] Kyle Risi: Yeah, that's it.

[00:58:23] Kyle Risi: The publishers, they're very patronising because they say like, um, yeah, we don't want an encyclopaedia. We thought this book was intended for housewives.

[00:58:32] Adam Cox: Yeah, they, they've got time for that.

[00:58:34] Kyle Risi: So rude.

[00:58:37] Adam Cox: No, but they haven't got time for seven vol. They haven't got, I just need to read through the sauce before I even get to making bread.

[00:58:42] Kyle Risi: I dunno. I read that very differently. I found that very sexist for them to say there's 700 pages here. We don't want an encyclopaedia. We thought this book was intended for housewives.

[00:58:51] Adam Cox: The bit that I get for that, it needs to be quite practical, right?

[00:58:54] Kyle Risi: Sure. That's,

[00:58:54] Adam Cox: they need to be able to get in there, make the recipe, because they're running

[00:58:58] Kyle Risi: off.

[00:58:58] Kyle Risi: I don't know, it just rubbed me the wrong way [00:59:00] because this is a bunch of men in this boardroom telling these women what women want.

[00:59:04] Adam Cox: That I understand. Yes. Yeah.

[00:59:06] Kyle Risi: They're probably right, actually. I don't know, but it just came across really sexist.

[00:59:10] Adam Cox: And so what was the outcome then?

[00:59:11] Adam Cox: How did

[00:59:12] Kyle Risi: Oh, yeah. They rejected it.

[00:59:13] Adam Cox: And so what did Julia do?

[00:59:14] Kyle Risi: They have to literally start from scratch. They have to rewrite all the recipes, make it a little more condensed down, but it's still very important for them. Mm-hmm. To make sure all the recipes are exact. They decide that the only module that they can keep is the desserts one.

[00:59:28] Adam Cox: Yeah. That makes sense.

[00:59:29] Kyle Risi: Yeah. So obviously this ends up taking a few more years, right? A

[00:59:32] Adam Cox: few more years.

[00:59:33] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Oh, sorry. This whole period is 10 years.

[00:59:35] Adam Cox: Oh, okay.

[00:59:36] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:59:36] Kyle Risi: Eventually they send out the manuscripts to a bunch of new publishers. Again, it gets rejected again and again. Mostly on the basis that it's gonna be too expensive for them to physically produce the actual book.

[00:59:46] Kyle Risi: But then one day they receive a letter from a company called Koff, K-N-O-P-F.

[00:59:52] Adam Cox: Oh, pf?

[00:59:53] Kyle Risi: Yeah,

[00:59:54] Adam Cox: because there is a brand

[00:59:56] Kyle Risi: Koff.

[00:59:56] Adam Cox: There's a food brand. Who was Justno?

[00:59:58] Kyle Risi: Oh, it might be. It might be the same [01:00:00] one.

[01:00:00] Adam Cox: Well, I thought it double F.

[01:00:01] Kyle Risi: Oh, it might be,

[01:00:03] Adam Cox: I don't know.

[01:00:03] Kyle Risi: I don't know. Might type this up. Anyway, the letter says Adam.

[01:00:06] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[01:00:06] Kyle Risi: Dear Mrs. Child, we have read your Superb French cookbook, studying it, cooking from it, estimating it, and so on, and we have come to the conclusion that it is a unique book that we'll be very proud to publish.

[01:00:20] Kyle Risi: We believe that your book will do for French cooking in America what the joy of cooking did for standard cooking, and we will sell it that way.

[01:00:29] Adam Cox: Okay. I guess that other book was a big deal then.

[01:00:32] Kyle Risi: Massive deal. Like it really kind of standardised kind of the whole art cooking. They were like, we can sell the same book but for French cooking in the same way that the joy of cooking can do.

[01:00:40] Adam Cox: I see.

[01:00:41] Kyle Risi: And they end up giving her like an advance of $1,500, which is huge. I think that's the equivalent of $16,000 today.

[01:00:47] Kyle Risi: And then they go on to say, when we meet, which we hope will be very soon, we especially want to talk about the title of the book because it is of the utmost importance that the title distinguishes book from the other [01:01:00] cookbooks that are on the market.

[01:01:01] Kyle Risi: And I think the original title of the cookbook was, um, so Shit, what's Cooking in France?

[01:01:10] Kyle Risi: So they were like. The title Shit. He's a better title than,

[01:01:14] Adam Cox: and what do they land on,

[01:01:15] Kyle Risi: Adam? In the end, they decide on mastering the arts of French cooking, which you should write. No, I've said it like five times. Oh, I,

[01:01:21] Adam Cox: yeah, I don't know. This book has been going on for like 15 years.

[01:01:25] Kyle Risi: I've lost track of the title, and Adam almost overnight becomes an instant bestseller. Despite the fact that NF like does a minimal promotion of this book, right? Mm-hmm. If they'd done any promotion on it, it would've been even bigger. I think they sell like a hundred thousand copies in this first five years, which apparently is unhinged,

[01:01:42] Adam Cox: unhinged,

[01:01:43] Kyle Risi: unhinged.

[01:01:44] Kyle Risi: It's like well ahead of every single French cookbook on the market at the time. And it comes down to their unique blend of the simplicity, the approachability, but also the pretty pictures, because it wasn't really something like that. You got massively at that time in these cookbooks.[01:02:00]

[01:02:00] Kyle Risi: It's actual

[01:02:00] Adam Cox: photos,

[01:02:00] Kyle Risi: actual photographs, colour photographs of the beautiful foods and stuff like that in the cookbook, which everyone loves a picture.

[01:02:06] Adam Cox: Yeah. Now it's like almost pretty common.

[01:02:08] Kyle Risi: And in the 60 years since it was published, Adam, it has never been outta print.

[01:02:13] Adam Cox: Really?

[01:02:13] Kyle Risi: Isn't that crazy? I read in total that sold more than 1.5 million copies of the book across all of its editions. Mm-hmm. So it is a fucking big deal. This cookbook.

[01:02:23] Kyle Risi: Like even celebrity chefs all over the world have literally credited this book with inspiring them to get into cooking.

[01:02:28] Kyle Risi: Like martha Stewart said like the entire book inspired her entire career and she still uses the references from the book even today.

[01:02:35] Adam Cox: Really? Wow.

[01:02:36] Kyle Risi: That's big.

[01:02:36] Adam Cox: That is,

[01:02:36] Kyle Risi: that's Martha Stewart, man,

[01:02:37] Adam Cox: that's like, I don't know, that's, there's certain books like, um, Charles Dickens and stuff like

[01:02:42] Kyle Risi: that. Oh, you're gonna say Playboy

[01:02:44] Adam Cox: Dunno.

[01:02:44] Adam Cox: In terms of just like these ones that always stand out, this is what I guess cookbook is.

[01:02:49] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Like one of the classics, right? Mm-hmm. A reference book or just always used And it is, I hear it always today. People reference it in pop culture, like mastering the arts of French cooking or people have plays on, on the [01:03:00] title for their own stuff because they're emulating the success or how. Big of a classic. The book is, do you know what I mean? Mm-hmm.

[01:03:06] Adam Cox: What about French people? Did they like read it and go that's not French cooking?

[01:03:10] Kyle Risi: No, I think they were pretty impressed by it.

[01:03:12] Adam Cox: Brilliant.

[01:03:13] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[01:03:13] Adam Cox: It's not like when we have Chinese now, it's like that's not actually what they eat in China.

[01:03:16] Kyle Risi: No. I think very authentic cooking is what she came up with. All the recipes are, I mean, remember they were French people, like Louisette and Simone. They were French anyway. Right? Sure. She didn't come up with these recipes. She only just refined them. Tweaked them.

[01:03:31] Adam Cox: Translated them.

[01:03:32] Kyle Risi: Exactly. She did all that work.

[01:03:33] Kyle Risi: Auntie Bourdain, he says Julia's book was revolutionary for him making French cooking accessible without dumbing it down, like calling her pure genius. And that was the other big thing about it, was making something that was seemingly very unapproachable. Mm-hmm. As French cooking. Feel very approachable.

[01:03:51] Kyle Risi: And Adam, this is just the start of her career. Like at this moment in time, she's just hitting 50, right?

[01:03:57] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[01:03:58] Kyle Risi: And so following the book's release, everyone wants [01:04:00] to interview her. The thing that catapults her television career is when, in 1962, she appears on like a channel called, like in America, they've got these weird names for their channels, like W-G-B-H-T-V in Boston,

[01:04:13] Adam Cox: Yeah. Really weird acronyms or something.

[01:04:15] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Really strange. And then they like call her in to discuss a book and there's just something about her, like her carefree, unapologetic kind of sort of attitude. Like she's like, don't ever try and make things perfect. it just ends up really resonating with the people, the viewers.

[01:04:31] Kyle Risi: And so they decide. They're gonna give her her own cooking show and it ends up being called the French chef. It debuts like a year later. It runs for 10 full years. And as well as being educational, Adam is extremely comical, extremely whimsical.

[01:04:45] Kyle Risi: After I watched Julia and Julia, I just sat and watched all these old clips of Julia Child's cooking, and it is. Comedy gold. Why was she doing Adam? She's clumsy. Like lots of flailing, remember? She sounds like [01:05:00] Elmo as well.

[01:05:01] Adam Cox: She's sticking her hand in boiling water. Yeah. Like no health and self safety.

[01:05:05] Kyle Risi: It's just her personality and her character on screen.

[01:05:08] Kyle Risi: It's just something that you just cannot forget. And it's not always like this. It's not a constant slapstick from the start to finish. There are just moments in it that if you condense it down, you could have a perfect reel of a slapstick comedy.

[01:05:22] Adam Cox: I have got this impression of like her banging her head on things.

[01:05:26] Adam Cox: Um, like setting fire to her cardigan or something.

[01:05:29] Kyle Risi: Exactly. So actually there is this SNL skit that perfectly captures what she is like.

[01:05:35] Kyle Risi: It's Dad Aykroyd pretending basically to be Julia Child. And he's in the process of preparing a chicken and he's like,

[01:05:42] Kyle Risi: get a sharp knife. 'cause you can't do nothing without a sharp knife. And like he's de-boning the chicken basically. And he accidentally cuts his finger and he's like,

[01:05:51] Kyle Risi: oh, now I've done it. I've cut the dickens outta my finger. And like there's blood pouring out. It's sloshing all over the me it's spraying [01:06:00] up her dress all over her face.

[01:06:01] Kyle Risi: And she's like,

[01:06:03] Kyle Risi: I, in a way, I'm glad this has happened. I dunno why I'm British. Why am I British? She's I'm glad this has happened. 'cause now I can show you how to deal with it. Number one, you must stop the bleeding.

[01:06:18] Kyle Risi: She's like, put pressure on it. Like so. And she like grabs the teeter and she puts pressure on it.

[01:06:23] Kyle Risi: Like the teeter, it doesn't work at all. She's

[01:06:26] Adam Cox: still gushing blood.

[01:06:27] Kyle Risi: It's still gushing blood. She's like, oh dear. She's like, I now recommend natural coagulates, like chopped liver or something like that. And so she grabs some liver and she puts it on there.

[01:06:36] Kyle Risi: It doesn't work. It's still spraying everywhere. She's now stumbling and she's slurring her words and she's like, Ooh, if you feel woozy, try to tighten the to at, then you should probably call for emergency services, call for help.

[01:06:51] Kyle Risi: There's not much time. Then she says every kitchen should have an emergency number written on it somewhere. She picks [01:07:00] up the phone, she's like, this one doesn't, she starts dialling and blood is all splattering all over the walls and the phone. And she's oh God, this phone's just a prop. It doesn't work.

[01:07:12] Kyle Risi: And then she's like, why are you all spinning? And everyone's spinning around and then she's I think I'm going to go to sleep now. And then she just passes out. And now that's just a parody. But Adam, it gives you an excellent flavour for who she is.

[01:07:25] Adam Cox: I mean, did that, like how much of a parody is that?

[01:07:29] Kyle Risi: Not much. Like what I'm saying is you can always see that glimmer. Of that type of personality, when you condense it down, when you concentrate it, you can see's something gonna get

[01:07:38] Adam Cox: wrong.

[01:07:38] Kyle Risi: Yes. Yeah. But in real life she'll frequently do like really erratic things. She, like I said, she'll flip the omelette and it will just fall on the floor.

[01:07:45] Kyle Risi: She'll scoop it up or she'll like reveal the cake and it looks like shit and she'll just pretend it looks amazing. And she's always about it doesn't have to be perfect. Don't ever apologise. Right. If you don't tell anyone this is wrong, they're not gonna know.

[01:07:59] Adam Cox: [01:08:00] Um, look, we saw you drop it on the floor and put it back on the plate.

[01:08:04] Kyle Risi: Oh, bless her. I think at one point she even sets fire to the kitchen.

[01:08:07] Adam Cox: That sounds about

[01:08:08] Kyle Risi: right. And it's still going on in the background and the crew like trying to put it out.

[01:08:12] Adam Cox: Well, Yeah. 'cause I guess she's got very precise minutes right to, to cook this recipe.

[01:08:16] Kyle Risi: Yes. And of course every episode she signs off with her very famous catchphrase where again, in Elmo's voice, she'll be like, see you next week. Born up petite.

[01:08:25] Kyle Risi: And then like, it'll sign off. And then, oh yeah, that was her thing. And her show becomes Adam the first educational programme to win an Emmy award. Like really the first of their category as well, which makes the award even bigger because to be the first, like, this is so good that we are gonna create an entire category for us.

[01:08:43] Kyle Risi: And you are the first recipient. Nice. That's big.

[01:08:46] Adam Cox: Yeah. And is she just spending 10 years just going through her same cookbook? Was she like coming up with new recipes?

[01:08:51] Kyle Risi: Oh, no. Like Adam, her career is catapulted now. She's writing books left, right and centre. Like this period marks the start of a string of cookbooks, [01:09:00] many of which are actually illustrated by Paul through his skills, through kind of photography and stuff.

[01:09:04] Kyle Risi: Each book is just as successful as the one that came before it's, but mastering the arts of cooking always remains like the jewel in the crown. Mm-hmm. I think there's three volumes in it now. She's winning awards left, right, and centre. It's literally impossible to keep up with her at this point, but her awards include like a Peabody Award in 1965.

[01:09:21] Kyle Risi: She of course, wins her Emmy in 1966. She wins the National Book Award in 1988, a daytime Emmy in 1996, and again in 2001.

[01:09:32] Kyle Risi: In 2000 I think like she earns the French Legion of Honour Award as well. In 2003, she gets like awarded the US Presidential Medal of Freedom.

[01:09:43] Adam Cox: Wow. Just for like cooking beef Bong

[01:09:47] Kyle Risi: Bong.

[01:09:48] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Yeah. She's also given several Ory doctorates as well from Harvard University, Johnston and Wales University, university Smith College. I think even Brown University gives her an award as well.

[01:09:59] Kyle Risi: You can [01:10:00] literally barely keep up with all the honours and awards that she gets,

[01:10:03] Adam Cox: and this all kind of happened or kicked off for her, like in midlife, which is amazing.

[01:10:08] Adam Cox: Like she

[01:10:09] Kyle Risi: crazy.

[01:10:09] Adam Cox: She had quite an impressive first. Part of her life, right?

[01:10:12] Kyle Risi: Yep.

[01:10:12] Adam Cox: And then all this fame and fortune later.

[01:10:15] Kyle Risi: But it also, like she spent 10 years sorting out this cookbook before the success came.

[01:10:20] Adam Cox: I mean, it makes sense. Calling it mastering the art of French cooking. Right, exactly.

[01:10:23] Adam Cox: Because she really did take that.

[01:10:25] Kyle Risi: She really did. Yeah. And I think if she had failed, I don't think it would've been this awful thing for her because she was doing something really passionate, right?

[01:10:34] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[01:10:35] Kyle Risi: And so at least if she didn't get the commercial success, she would've still been left with something that she could be really proud of. She learned how to cook. She did write a cookbook regardless of whether or not it was successful. Do you know what I mean?

[01:10:46] Adam Cox: Yeah. No way would she probably gone into that. Thinking, oh yeah, I'm gonna have a TV show and all this.

[01:10:50] Kyle Risi: And in total, she ends up publishing out 20 books under her name and obviously in collection with other people.

[01:10:55] Kyle Risi: Again, it is such an incredible achievement for a woman who only got [01:11:00] started in her forties. She becomes one of the most famous cooks in the country. Like I said, she just is like an actual treasure, a bit like, I dunno, who's a national treasure. The, every time someone says National Treasure, I can only think of two people.

[01:11:12] Adam Cox: James,

[01:11:12] Kyle Risi: Dave, Judy, gen, and uh, the male equivalent is you gonna say

[01:11:17] Adam Cox: Ian Macallan?

[01:11:18] Kyle Risi: I was gonna say Steven Fry.

[01:11:20] Adam Cox: Uh, Ian Macallan for me.

[01:11:21] Kyle Risi: Really? But he's a Hollywood actor.

[01:11:24] Adam Cox: Yeah, but he's still a national treasure.

[01:11:25] Kyle Risi: I think if I'd asked you to pick the male first, you would've picked Steven Fry. I. But because I said Dave Judy Dench. 'cause there's also connected. That's the reason why you picked her.

[01:11:35] Adam Cox: No, I'd also gone with David Attenborough.

[01:11:38] Kyle Risi: Ah, yes, of course. Yeah. Same Friday. David Borough.

[01:11:41] Adam Cox: So also, so she did this in her forties. I'm coming up to my forties, although not this year.

[01:11:45] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[01:11:45] Adam Cox: Soon. Soon, soon. And so yeah, I could still make it big.

[01:11:49] Kyle Risi: You can, you are making it big as the co-host of the compendium.

[01:11:53] Adam Cox: Yeah. We'll workshop it.

[01:11:56] Kyle Risi: But it's like, yeah. Had to find some [01:12:00] criticism. Like she's a bit like Dolly Parton. Everyone can get behind the fact that she's amazing. No one has anything bad things to say about her, but the criticism that she does get is that she's absolutely obsessed with butter,

[01:12:10] Adam Cox: which everything's got butter.

[01:12:11] Kyle Risi: Everything has got butter in it. Which they do obviously give nod to in the film as well. So look out for that if you do watch it. But like you open up the fridge and there's, it's just butter. There's no other ingredients. But her argument is, is like everything that is delicious in this world has a lot of butter in it.

[01:12:28] Kyle Risi: But when critics push back on her, she's like, we should enjoy food and have fun. But also it's in a cookbook. we are not gonna put shitty recipes in the cookbook. So you can make mundane things. It's only gonna be the great things inside a cookbook.

[01:12:43] Adam Cox: And was back then like olive of oil like thing, was it always just cooked with butter?

[01:12:47] Kyle Risi: Yeah, exactly. I dunno, she's like, one of the simplest and nicest pleasures in life is like butter. So just go with it.

[01:12:53] Adam Cox: Just eat it.

[01:12:54] Kyle Risi: But throughout the 1980s, she's a regular online, good Morning America. She travels to [01:13:00] Italy. She does like a five part miniseries on Italian food. The number of letters the channel receives just off the basis of kind of her Italian cooking show is just off the charts from people telling her how much she's transformed their confidence in cooking, just generally right.

[01:13:16] Kyle Risi: Made it so approachable.

[01:13:17] Kyle Risi: In 1991, she works with a Boston University to launch a master's of liberal arts degree in gastronomy.

[01:13:23] Kyle Risi: So she's physically pioneering whole courses on how to teach cooking based off the back of her cookbook.

[01:13:29] Kyle Risi: Yes. She's incredible.

[01:13:30] Adam Cox: She's got like an empire almost.

[01:13:32] Kyle Risi: Yeah. In 1993, she's inducted into the Culinary Institute of American Hall of Fame. Mm-hmm. Whatever that means.

[01:13:39] Adam Cox: She's just famous.

[01:13:40] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Is it like I dunno, it's like you're having your own star on the ground, like the Hollywood Walk of Fame,

[01:13:45] Adam Cox: Uhhuh.

[01:13:46] Kyle Risi: But this is

[01:13:46] Adam Cox: wooden spoons.

[01:13:48] Kyle Risi: Do you reckon

[01:13:49] Adam Cox: she's got her wooden spoon and some cement?

[01:13:51] Kyle Risi: Yeah, maybe.

[01:13:52] Kyle Risi: But basically that makes her the first woman. This is 1993. She's the first woman to be inducted into that hall of fame. Mm-hmm. And it's 90, [01:14:00] 93. I think that's a bit late. A little bit too late, but also good going.

[01:14:04] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[01:14:04] Kyle Risi: But sadly, in 1994, Julia's whole life ends up being turned upside down. When Paul passes away at the age of nine two, apparently it's a really long illness too.

[01:14:14] Kyle Risi: She knew it was coming for like nine years or so, but still, like it never really prepares you for when it eventually happens.

[01:14:20] Kyle Risi: Apparently in 1974, I think he suffered like mild brain damage after he got deprived of oxygen during a heart operation or something, which ended up leading to his decline.

[01:14:30] Kyle Risi: But eventually in 1989, Julia's forced to put him into a care home.

[01:14:35] Adam Cox: Oh, right.

[01:14:35] Kyle Risi: Because she just can't take care of him. She's also getting old herself.

[01:14:38] Adam Cox: I guess that's good innings though. 92 years old

[01:14:41] Kyle Risi: it is. Very good innings. Yeah. But apparently he just kept wandering off. Which is sad, which down the

[01:14:46] Adam Cox: street.

[01:14:46] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[01:14:47] Adam Cox: Dementia then.

[01:14:48] Kyle Risi: Yeah. I think the brain damage course dementia sail in.

[01:14:51] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[01:14:51] Kyle Risi: But yeah, so she puts him ~in, ~in a care home, but then he ends up dying in 1994, and she's absolutely heartbroken in her cookbook. The French chef cookbook. She [01:15:00] writes, the man who is always there. Porter dishwasher, official photographer, mushroom onion chopper, editor, fish illustrator, manager, taster Ideal man. Resin, poet, and husband

[01:15:13] Adam Cox: did a lot then.

[01:15:14] Kyle Risi: Yeah. But she put the most important thing at the end.

[01:15:16] Adam Cox: Yeah. Sweet.

[01:15:17] Kyle Risi: Yeah. After 10 years, on the 13th of August, 2004, Julie Orsa dies of kidney failure. Unfortunately, just two days before her 92nd birth.

[01:15:26] Adam Cox: So similar age to her husband.

[01:15:28] Kyle Risi: Yeah. They lived pretty much exactly the same number of years, pretty much. And what I love about her story is that when she's asked what her favourite meal was, which is also one of her last meals, she chose, uh, French onion soup

[01:15:42] Adam Cox: from all the onion she's been cutting.

[01:15:43] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Not a French souffle or duck olive, orange or anything like that. Just french onion soup.

[01:15:49] Adam Cox: I guess it's easier to digest

[01:15:51] Kyle Risi: it is. But to me, I think kind of gives you, a sort of poetic undertone to it. Like she's made something that is very [01:16:00] inaccessible accessible. Mm-hmm. Right. For through our whole career.

[01:16:03] Kyle Risi: Like she's ripped out all of the snoots. And yet her favourite meal is like a stable of the working class of the French kind of peasants of the day, right? Mm-hmm. French onion soup. So like. I like that she's brought something really prestigious to ordinary people, but yet her favourite meal out of all of that is something that a poor person would eat, which makes her so much more relatable.

[01:16:26] Adam Cox: Yeah. She's not all about like, I feel like the

[01:16:29] Kyle Risi: caviar.

[01:16:30] Adam Cox: Yeah. And all like the glitz and glam and stuff like that. She likes things basic and straightforward.

[01:16:35] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Crazy, isn't it?

[01:16:36] Adam Cox: Mm.

[01:16:36] Kyle Risi: And Adam, that is the story of Julia Childs

[01:16:40] Adam Cox: the crazy Elmo chef.

[01:16:43] Kyle Risi: Yeah. She's nuts. I could sit and watch clips of her all day. She's so funny.

[01:16:47] Adam Cox: I'm interested to see what it's like, days or the years before Gordon Ramsey.

[01:16:52] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[01:16:52] Adam Cox: You had Julia Child.

[01:16:53] Kyle Risi: Yeah. I would definitely, and I hope our listeners do watch Julia. And Julia. The film is just incredible. [01:17:00] It's by far one of the most original autobiographies I've ever watched in my life.

[01:17:04] Adam Cox: Give it, what is it on, Netflix?

[01:17:05] Kyle Risi: On Netflix? If you hear in the uk, I dunno About America.

[01:17:08] Adam Cox: Uh, it's on one of them. I'm

[01:17:09] Kyle Risi: sure it's on one of them. Yeah.

[01:17:10] Kyle Risi: But it's also unique in the way that it's told in this parallel storyline through this other woman called Julie Powell.

[01:17:18] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[01:17:18] Kyle Risi: And the impact that her cooking, has had on Julie. Mm-hmm. Do you know what I mean? Mm-hmm. Which emulates or kind of mirrors the impact that Julia Charles has had on so many people across the world. Even across generations. Right. Not just in the fifties when the book was released. Mm-hmm. But even today, like in the two thousands.

[01:17:35] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[01:17:36] Kyle Risi: Just very, very unique.

[01:17:38] Adam Cox: She's earned her place in cooking history.

[01:17:41] Kyle Risi: That's right. Yeah. And like I said, Judy Powell's story is completely true, by the way. she did write this blog. It did become really massive. She really did cook all 524 recipes across an entire year.

[01:17:53] Kyle Risi: And the point is that doing that gave her a purpose that she felt that she didn't have before, and [01:18:00] she turned a passion project into an entire career because off the back of that, she was lucky enough to be approached by a bunch of journalists to do other work, write a book about it.

[01:18:08] Kyle Risi: Do you know what I mean? Okay.

[01:18:09] Kyle Risi: So through this parallel story, it gives us a very key message, And that is, it's never too late to just give it a go. Like you are coming up to 40, you can try something different, but not when you're 60.

[01:18:19] Adam Cox: No. 60 is too late. Too late. 40. You've, I mean, think about Morgan Freeman. He became like an actor late on in life. Yeah.

[01:18:26] Kyle Risi: Ah, so it wasn't like, he doesn't have a young Morgan Freeman career.

[01:18:29] Adam Cox: I dunno if he had an amateur like background, but in terms of acting, I'm pretty sure.

[01:18:32] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[01:18:33] Adam Cox: It was later in life. But

[01:18:34] Kyle Risi: like, I don't think he even existed as a young man.

[01:18:36] Adam Cox: It's, he's always been old.

[01:18:37] Kyle Risi: He just was born a Morgan Freeman old guy.

[01:18:39] Adam Cox: Yeah. But no, it's impressive. It's good. It's don't give up hope. You can turn a passion project into something bigger, yeah.

[01:18:45] Kyle Risi: Yeah. For sure. And if you're passionate enough about it, it almost doesn't matter if you fail commercially. Mm-hmm. Because I don't think that would've been a deal breaker for someone like Julia Charles. Right. Because you'd still be fulfilled by the passion for doing the thing.

[01:18:59] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[01:18:59] Kyle Risi: But [01:19:00] apparently you can still go and visit Julia Child's kitchen. The one that obviously Paul built for all those years ago.

[01:19:04] Kyle Risi: She ended up donating the whole thing to the Smithsonian Museum back in like 2001.

[01:19:10] Kyle Risi: And it is complete with like 1,200 different items, like her pots and her pans, her cooker, her knives set up exactly the same way that she had it when she was alive.

[01:19:19] Adam Cox: And it still has all the blood from all the cuts and stuff like that, that she'd have.

[01:19:23] Kyle Risi: Well, yes, I hope not. I hope she didn't actually cut herself like the, that aroy Yeah. Uh, skit. Can you imagine? But yeah.

[01:19:31] Adam Cox: So shall we do some member shoutouts?

[01:19:33] Kyle Risi: Well, actually we don't have any member shout outs this week, Adam.

[01:19:37] Adam Cox: Oh, so the no one loves us?

[01:19:39] Kyle Risi: No, because we're actually gonna shake things up a little bit.

[01:19:41] Adam Cox: Okay. What do you mean?

[01:19:42] Kyle Risi: So, I have built a little website for you guys, where you guys can go off and you can browse through all of our available job listings that we have for the circus. And you can pick your own job.

[01:19:53] Adam Cox: Oh. So how do I go about doing this?

[01:19:55] Kyle Risi: If you just follow the link in the show notes, you can click onto find a job, and that will [01:20:00] actually take you to all of our available listings on the compendium job board.

[01:20:04] Adam Cox: Yeah. So some jobs that are available right now are the head of clown to clown diplomacy role.

[01:20:11] Kyle Risi: Oh, we've got the, this one's rehiring, the Chief Ticket Stamp Authenticity Inspector. Click onto that and see why we are rehiring for that one.

[01:20:19] Kyle Risi: It says, oh, the previous post holder attempted to resolve a lie related dispute using introspective mediation rather than submitting Form L seven lion related arbitration request. the lion, considered this as an emission of guilt. I see. So that's why we're rehiring.

[01:20:38] Adam Cox: Yeah. So there's loads of roles that you can go search for on there. So it should be a little bit of fun.

[01:20:43] Adam Cox: And you can feel a part of the surface.

[01:20:45] Kyle Risi: Yes. You can also go ahead and submit your job description directly from that. Or if you've already got a position, then you can click onto the field positions. As long as you know your job description, which will be on the job listing and the email address that you signed up to Patreon with, you'll be able to [01:21:00] access that and give us a bit of an edit and we'll read the best ones on a future episode.

[01:21:04] Adam Cox: Right? Shall we do the outro?

[01:21:06] Kyle Risi: Let's do it.

[01:21:08] Kyle Risi: So that brings us to the end of another fascinating foray into the compendium and assembly of fascinating things.

[01:21:13] Adam Cox: If today's episode has spark your curiosity, then please do us a favour and follow us on your favourite podcast app.

[01:21:19] Adam Cox: It truly makes a world of difference and it helps more people discover the show

[01:21:23] Kyle Risi: and for our dedicate it freaks out there. Don't forget, the next week's episode is ready waiting for you on our Patreon, and as always, it's completely free to access.

[01:21:31] Adam Cox: And don't forget, if you want even more, then you can join our certified Freaks Tier to unlock our entire archive. You get to delve into exclusive content and you get a sneak peek at what's coming next.

[01:21:41] Kyle Risi: We drop new episodes every Tuesday and it's until then, remember, it's never too late to begin, but it is always too early to apologise for not being allowed about it.

[01:21:51] Adam Cox: Well,

[01:21:51] Kyle Risi: we'll see you next time.

[01:21:52] Adam Cox: See you. [01:22:00]