Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - The Women History Forgets

00:00:00.000 I want to date with Rawls, Carti says. Rawls? Raka asks. This is the love story of real

00:00:07.300 hinge couple Carti and Raka. Written and read by me, Nicola Dynan. Listen to the free audiobook now.

00:00:23.680 Hey all, Jo here and you are listening to Under the Influence.

00:00:26.960 So I just got back from Paris, which was freaking magical. It truly was. I ostensibly went to finish

00:00:36.860 reporting and researching the Parisian heist. I just got copy edits back, and I really wanted to

00:00:44.480 show up for this book, if that makes sense. I wanted to be there one last time to walk the

00:00:53.000 streets to wander through the halls of the Orsay and the Louvre. I did not steal anything. I could

00:01:01.140 have. I'll bet I could have if I wanted to, but I didn't. But I thought about it, thought about how

00:01:07.580 you how you would do it so I could put it in the book. But I did not did not steal anything from

00:01:13.720 the Louvre on this trip. It's not to say that I won't do it when time comes to promote this book,

00:01:20.560 because as y'all know, I'll do anything to sell my books, but not on this trip. I did get to go

00:01:27.900 out to Auvers, probably saying that wrong, which is where Vincent van Gogh lived during his final

00:01:35.720 days and ultimately where he died. He painted more than 70 paintings in 70 days. And I visited

00:01:45.800 all of these incredible sites. I visited these museums dedicated to his work, both in Auvers

00:01:52.180 and then, you know, in the bigger museums in Paris. And I have to say that Jo van Gogh,

00:01:59.080 Vincent's sister-in-law, the woman who ultimately made him famous, who is one of the subjects of

00:02:04.400 Parisian heist, she still gets barely any credit. Any credit. And I'm just so excited for Parisian

00:02:13.580 heist to come out so we can talk more about her story and her role in all of this. I've been

00:02:20.280 thinking a lot lately about the stories we tell about women and the stories that we tell about

00:02:26.060 the past, and it made me really nostalgic for a project that I worked on a long time ago.

00:02:32.260 I've dropped one of these episodes into this feed before, but I want to put some more in

00:02:37.740 because I just loved this show. I love this show. I'm thinking about trying to resurrect it

00:02:44.100 in some form. I've become a huge fan of history podcasts lately. I devour the rest is history.

00:02:53.820 I mean, pretty much on a daily basis. I have the most parasocial relationship ever with the hosts,

00:02:58.600 Tom and Dom. But there's not enough history podcasts out there

00:03:04.320 about badass women that history has forgotten. I made one. I made one, and you're going to hear 0.61

00:03:10.800 an episode of it today. It was called Fierce. I made it with iHeart and Tribeca Studios.

00:03:16.000 And it's a deep dive into these lives of women that you've probably never heard of,

00:03:21.720 but who definitely influenced history in a very powerful way. And yet, we often don't see their

00:03:28.460 names in history books or when we're talking about the ways that they've shaped culture.

00:03:34.320 So today I am dropping an episode of Fierce in your feed. Just as I'm like ruminating on how

00:03:41.780 I want to try to bring this back in some shape or form, this was the pilot episode and we were

00:03:49.540 still figuring out what the show was going to sound like, but I love this subject so freaking

00:03:55.020 much. This episode is about Clementine Paddleford. She is a forgotten food journalist who elevated

00:04:02.420 food writing from dull and mundane, just boring, boring food writing, to the delicious art form

00:04:10.340 that food writing is today. Without Clementine Paddleford, we would not have Ruth Reichel. We

00:04:16.840 would not have Anthony Bourdain. Like, that is how influential she has been on the culture of

00:04:22.700 food writing. I mean, literally, the way we write about food today is largely due to Clementine.

00:04:28.180 She was not just an incredible journalist.

00:04:30.920 I mean, she was this roving reporter who learned how to fly a plane so that she could fly all over the country and report on every aspect of food in America.

00:04:41.440 I just, I can't get enough of her story.

00:04:44.100 I think about her a lot.

00:04:45.800 I still quote her many years after finishing this podcast.

00:04:50.580 And I think you're really going to love hearing about her.

00:04:57.560 I had asked for it, I dived to the ocean floor, the wind rushed at me like a mad bull, I clung

00:05:14.900 to a one rope rail and then down we go, 30 feet down through a steel tube like a chimney built

00:05:20.520 for a slim Santa Claus. The year was 1960. Clementine Paddleford, the food writer for

00:05:27.080 the New York Herald Tribune, was 61 years old when she descended into the 54-square-foot

00:05:32.160 galley kitchen of the USS Skipjack. At the time, it was the world's fastest nuclear submarine.

00:05:38.800 And we're off, five miles into Long Island Sound, operating at 80 to 200 feet below the surface.

00:05:47.180 Now to the galley to see dinner get underway. 0.98

00:05:50.600 Clementine wanted to find out how a Cold War Navy cook churned out 300 meals a day for sailors 1.00

00:05:55.740 living on a submarine 200 feet below the surface of the ocean.

00:05:59.460 There are other challenges taken up by naval ingenuity.

00:06:02.700 Kitchens may be mini-sized, but appetites are traditionally big.

00:06:07.960 I had come aboard to see how America eats

00:06:10.720 in what the crew call our underwater hotel.

00:06:14.040 Every detail is a marvel in efficiency.

00:06:17.020 Beneath the wave, she watched,

00:06:18.760 questioned and furiously scribbled notes and recipes.

00:06:21.580 She wrote about strawberry shortcake, prime rib, brownies for hundreds.

00:06:25.740 all prepared in a space hardly bigger than a bathroom.

00:06:29.620 Her subsequent article was read by millions.

00:06:34.280 When we talk about the titans of food writing,

00:06:36.960 the names that come up the most are people like Anthony Bourdain,

00:06:40.240 Michael Pollan, Julia Child.

00:06:42.880 Most people have never heard the name Clementine Paddleford.

00:06:45.820 Clementine's legacy on today's food writing is the celebrity chefs

00:06:50.060 and the other passionate personalities who create and write about the food we eat and drink.

00:06:54.980 That's Cynthia Harris, co-author of the book Hometown Appetites, the story of Clementine Paddleford, the forgotten food writer who chronicled how America ate.

00:07:03.320 And also, I'd like to think that part of her legacy is the farm-to-table movement because she wrote so much about how the food reached the table.

00:07:12.100 Before Clementine came along, food writing was dry and boring.

00:07:16.380 It was a science, but never an art.

00:07:19.140 Clementine changed all that.

00:07:20.520 She laid the groundwork for the way every newspaper, every magazine, and the entire Food Network writes and talks about food today.

00:07:28.120 And yet, her name has been mostly lost to history.

00:07:33.000 But once you know her story, you'll start to see her everywhere.

00:07:44.580 From iHeartRadio and Tribeca Studios, this is Fierce.

00:07:49.440 I can't type. 1.00

00:07:50.840 Yes, women workers do present problems, Joe. 1.00

00:07:53.900 A podcast about the incredible women who never made it in your history books 1.00

00:07:57.240 and the modern women carrying on their legacies today. 0.99

00:08:00.260 Here's to the ladies, the fair and the weak. 1.00

00:08:03.040 I can't file. 1.00

00:08:04.020 Women workers don't mind routine, repetitive work. 1.00

00:08:07.720 Will you make a copy of this? 1.00

00:08:09.500 Naturally.

00:08:10.580 Each week, we're bringing you the story of a groundbreaking woman from the past

00:08:13.780 who made huge contributions to the present,

00:08:16.340 but whose name still isn't on the tips of our tongues.

00:08:18.460 for whatever reason.

00:08:21.100 Maybe it's because men wrote most of history.

00:08:26.380 At the end of each episode,

00:08:27.780 I'll be joined by a woman living today

00:08:29.320 who's standing on the shoulders of this historical figure,

00:08:32.140 whether she knows it or not.

00:08:44.180 Clementine Paddleford was a legend in her time.

00:08:47.280 R.W. Apple of the New York Times summed up her influence like this.

00:08:50.500 Clementine Paddleford was the Nellie Bly of culinary journalism.

00:08:54.220 A go-anywhere, taste-anything, ask-everything kind of reporter 0.95

00:08:57.600 who traveled more than 50,000 miles a year in search of stories

00:09:01.220 in a day when very few food editors strayed far from their desks.

00:09:05.420 Clementine was instrumental in shaping how we talk about food the way we do today,

00:09:09.480 with a language infused with delight, passion, and sometimes even lust.

00:09:16.580 But long before that, she was a girl born on a farm in Kansas.

00:09:24.380 Clementine, or Clem as she was known to her friends, was born on September 27, 1898.

00:09:30.820 She spent her early years on a 260-acre farm near Manhattan, Kansas.

00:09:35.860 The family raised pigs and grew staples of the American kitchen, like corn and strawberries.

00:09:40.920 Clementine once wrote about making ice cream out of freshly fallen snow.

00:09:44.060 The Paddlefords were hardy people, descendants of Revolutionary War soldiers.

00:09:50.560 Her mother Jenny came from true pioneer stock right off the bluestem prairies of Minnesota. 0.91

00:09:56.100 Jenny was also an anomaly in her day. 0.99

00:09:58.500 She came from a farming family, but did something very few other women in Kansas were doing at the time.

00:10:03.880 Attended college in 1883, taking classes at Kansas State.

00:10:07.240 clementine rode a horse to school but she spent her early mornings and evenings helping out on

00:10:15.880 the farm that's where she witnessed firsthand the back-breaking labor that both men and women put

00:10:21.240 into growing the food america ate she saw how farmers lived and died by the hand of mother

00:10:26.360 nature it was jenny paddleford who showed clem the true joy of gathering around a table

00:10:31.360 something clementine would later infuse into all of her writing at our supper table there

00:10:36.700 was family togetherness. Plus, supper was a time for laughter. Arguments were forbidden.

00:10:42.860 Jenny had another bit of sage advice for her daughter, growing up on that farm in rural Kansas.

00:10:48.280 Never grow a wishbone, daughter, where your backbone ought to be.

00:10:52.780 It stuck with Clem as a girl, and then as a teenager who longed to be a journalist in a

00:10:57.240 field dominated by men. Clementine grew her backbone. She strengthened it as an editor at

00:11:05.980 college newspaper at Kansas State, earning pocket money freelancing for Kansas newspapers and farm

00:11:10.940 magazines, writing mostly about livestock breeding practices. While she was studying journalism,

00:11:17.820 nobody, I mean nobody, was safe from Clementine Paddleford. Her daily job was to go to the train 0.99

00:11:25.340 depot and write about the comings and goings of the locals. She would also look at her neighbor

00:11:31.580 and say, what happened at your house

00:11:34.440 since the last time I talked to you yesterday? 0.86

00:11:37.120 She was just a busybody. 1.00

00:11:38.620 She was a busybody.

00:11:39.720 She knew then when she graduated from Kansas State University in 1921

00:11:43.680 that she was going to go to New York and she was going to be famous.

00:11:50.340 She set off for New York,

00:11:51.780 where she freelanced for The Sun and the New York Telegram,

00:11:54.780 starting her career off writing mostly puff pieces.

00:11:57.800 Today, they'd be called clickbait.

00:12:00.200 One article was entitled,

00:12:01.580 It was embarrassing and unsung work, 0.97

00:12:12.780 but those were the journalism assignments that girls were given, 0.99

00:12:15.620 when girls were given assignments at all.

00:12:18.460 In Clementine's archives, there's this early recommendation letter

00:12:21.700 that a male copy editor wrote for her.

00:12:24.120 Clementine is an able writer of both imaginative and fact material, 0.87

00:12:27.260 a combination of abilities which I have found rare among women writers. 0.98

00:12:31.580 The puff pieces didn't make her any money, so Clem tried other ways to earn cash, from writing press releases and business reports, to babysitting and waiting tables in a theological seminary. 0.92

00:12:42.980 She even slung umbrellas at Gimbel's.

00:12:45.760 She used what little money beyond rent she had to pay for journalism classes at NYU and Columbia.

00:12:51.040 Here's what she wrote to her mother at the time.

00:12:53.400 Sometimes I fairly hate New York.

00:12:55.740 That's producer Anna Stumpf reading Clementine's words from her biography,

00:12:59.500 the one co-written by Cynthia Harris and Kelly Alexander.

00:13:02.540 Quotes in this episode also come from Clementine's own article,

00:13:05.260 How to Cook for a Whole Crew, published in the Herald Tribune in July 1960.

00:13:09.480 Sometimes I hate everything, down to the last banana skin and stray cat.

00:13:13.500 But when I think of leaving it, all of the racket, the dirt, the beauty, the ugliness,

00:13:18.300 all mixed in so comfortably together, I almost revolt at the thought.

00:13:22.100 Even though she had misgivings about New York,

00:13:24.200 she eventually gained a foothold at a magazine called Farm and Fireside,

00:13:28.100 editing their women's pages. 0.98

00:13:31.280 Women's pages.

00:13:34.000 These were distinct from men's pages.

00:13:37.080 Men's pages had news, business, finance.

00:13:40.780 Women's pages contained stories about interior design,

00:13:43.940 curling your hair, mending your shoes, crocheting,

00:13:47.640 how to best clean a refrigerator and a chicken, all in an hour.

00:13:54.740 Clementine was practical.

00:13:56.920 As the country slid into the Great Depression,

00:13:58.880 she realized she'd have to focus her efforts

00:14:00.360 on an area of journalism that would never go away.

00:14:03.480 She thought about what people really needed,

00:14:06.200 even when times were bad.

00:14:08.020 And she landed on two things.

00:14:11.000 Shoes and food.

00:14:14.760 As the situation in the country became more serious,

00:14:17.620 this is how she determined that food writing

00:14:19.220 would be her surest path to a sustainable career.

00:14:24.960 But Clementine was not content with the status quo,

00:14:27.760 with doing things the way they'd been done 0.65

00:14:29.400 just because that's the way they'd always been done. 0.84

00:14:32.060 Clementine decided if she was going to write for women, 0.74

00:14:34.380 she was going to write for real women. 1.00

00:14:36.280 And that meant getting away from her desk 0.94

00:14:37.940 and visiting women all over the country.

00:14:41.200 Of course, she had to convince her bosses,

00:14:43.960 and I can't imagine that conversation was easy. 0.92

00:14:46.880 But in the end, Clementine was as persuasive as she was persistent,

00:14:50.560 and she got the permission to travel,

00:14:52.640 to break away from her desk.

00:14:54.200 Going into homes and kitchens, talking to real people,

00:14:58.100 that's what made these stories come alive off the page.

00:15:01.600 But just as she was gathering steam as a food writer,

00:15:04.660 she suffered a devastating setback.

00:15:06.880 In 1931, at the age of 33, Clementine Paddleford developed throat cancer.

00:15:12.960 She finally went to the doctor who said,

00:15:15.020 yes, you have cancer, and he gave her two options. 0.99

00:15:18.820 They could remove her entire larynx, 0.99

00:15:20.600 and that would eradicate all the cancer. 1.00

00:15:23.640 But then Clementine might never talk again. 1.00

00:15:25.820 Well, that's not so good for a food writer reporter 1.00

00:15:28.720 that needed their voice to talk to people and to interview them.

00:15:32.520 The other option, riskier in a lot of ways,

00:15:35.540 was that they'd remove part of the larynx,

00:15:37.280 but that might not leave her cancer-free.

00:15:40.280 Clem's entire career was based on her voice.

00:15:43.040 She chose the riskier surgery.

00:15:44.860 She would end up having to have a trach tube. 0.60

00:15:47.480 She'd have to put her finger over the hole of the trach tube when she talked,

00:15:50.960 which resulted in a raspy, low-whispery type voice.

00:15:55.320 It took her a year to speak above a whisper.

00:15:57.820 And even then, she needed a special machine inserted into her larynx to allow her to speak.

00:16:02.380 It was made of sterling silver, almost like a piece of jewelry.

00:16:05.960 To hide it, she tied a black ribbon around her neck like a choker.

00:16:09.140 It held the silver voice box in place, and it became a kind of signature look

00:16:13.000 to accompany her new, deep, and crackly voice.

00:16:15.840 It never slowed Paddleford down.

00:16:18.320 One day, she met a lady who said that her son had a trach tube,

00:16:22.000 and Clementine wrote this woman a letter and said,

00:16:25.860 the only thing that the trach tube stops is me playing tennis and swimming.

00:16:31.380 Tennis, I get out of breath, and swimming, if I'd swim, I would drown.

00:16:35.660 She says it meant she had to be more charismatic, seductive, winsome, and charming,

00:16:40.220 all with just her eyes.

00:16:42.500 The recovery beat her down, but eventually she'd laugh about the surgery,

00:16:46.920 and the voice box.

00:16:48.800 She'd come to see it as an asset.

00:16:50.700 Because of my voice,

00:16:52.900 people never forget me.

00:16:55.680 We'll be back with more of Clementine's story

00:16:57.760 right after this quick break.

00:17:00.680 I didn't like what you said,

00:17:02.880 Odin pauses,

00:17:04.120 about the future.

00:17:06.020 This is the love story

00:17:07.380 of real hinge couple Odin and Edward,

00:17:10.240 written and read by me, Curtis Garner.

00:17:12.980 Listen to the free audiobook now.

00:17:16.920 By working hard and simply being better at her job

00:17:25.960 than any other food writer at the time, 0.97

00:17:28.140 Clementine made herself a household name.

00:17:30.560 In 1936, she began to write for the New York Herald Tribune.

00:17:34.480 She subsequently picked up a regular column

00:17:36.300 in the newspaper supplement this week.

00:17:38.640 Her continued travels ended up taking her to every single state.

00:17:43.300 Ohio, to cover three-cornered poppy seed turnovers,

00:17:46.380 Perfect for Purim or a Bridge Club supper.

00:17:50.000 Missouri to cover a family who kept a melting pot of cheese going for 16 years.

00:17:56.520 Hawaii in a trip that helped put Hawaiian food on the map.

00:18:01.600 Dropping into the far corners of the country made Clementine an expert.

00:18:04.900 Maybe the country's first expert on regional food. 1.00

00:18:08.120 Tell me where your grandmother came from and I can tell you how many kinds of pie you serve for Thanksgiving. 0.61

00:18:12.940 She was known to say. 0.76

00:18:15.780 She had a knack for embellishing even the lowliest of foods,

00:18:18.820 so they seemed like taste delights.

00:18:21.740 In Clementine's prose, mushrooms became the elf of plants.

00:18:26.320 Or pixie umbrellas.

00:18:29.760 Picture that for a moment.

00:18:31.780 And think about how delightful it is. 0.99

00:18:33.940 A sprightly pixie holding a truffle or a chanterelle 0.92

00:18:36.600 to shield themselves from a misty drizzle. 0.90

00:18:39.880 Here's how Clementine felt biting into an apple.

00:18:42.740 The teeth crack into the brittle flesh.

00:18:44.960 A whiny flavor floods the mouth, the soul of the apple blossom distilled.

00:18:51.680 Staring at a perfect strawberry shortcake.

00:18:54.580 The juice ran in rivulets, making a crimson lake on the plate.

00:18:59.980 She once found a chili with...

00:19:01.500 Rib-sticking qualities that make you young beyond your time.

00:19:05.240 On coffee.

00:19:06.600 Good coffee makes the meal.

00:19:08.780 At least it makes the good meal perfect and the poor meal possible.

00:19:12.820 Coffee, reheated, gives an evil cooking liquid

00:19:16.220 that might have been brewed out of the Dead Sea

00:19:18.220 after a recipe left by the Witch of Endor.

00:19:22.340 One of my favorite lines of Clem's

00:19:24.400 is about a hot and comforting clam chowder.

00:19:27.780 Chowder breathes reassurance.

00:19:30.620 It steams consolation.

00:19:38.700 So much of Clementine's magic 0.98

00:19:40.500 was focusing on the people behind the food. 0.75

00:19:43.280 That's commonplace now.

00:19:45.000 Profiles of chefs, farmers, competitive eaters.

00:19:48.200 But it wasn't back then.

00:19:49.960 Back then, food was written about

00:19:51.480 as if it was something cooked up in a lab,

00:19:53.680 not something dreamed up by human beings.

00:19:56.140 And one of the most remarkable things Clementine did 1.00

00:19:58.620 was using food as an entryway 0.99

00:20:00.560 into every other story of the day.

00:20:02.520 Food writing in Clem's day,

00:20:04.520 before she started innovating it,

00:20:06.240 was pretty much precise

00:20:08.100 and the how-to, step-by-step instructions.

00:20:11.320 They didn't tell you anything about the history of the food

00:20:15.080 or anything like that.

00:20:18.800 Clem covered the 1940 Republican National Convention

00:20:22.000 by writing about the importance of scrapple.

00:20:24.680 Scrapple, for those of you who don't live in Philadelphia,

00:20:27.080 is a sausage-adjacent dish made from slaughterhouse leftovers.

00:20:31.040 Here's what Clem wrote about it.

00:20:33.100 It's Philadelphia scrapple that offers the first warm welcome of the day

00:20:36.460 on breakfast plates.

00:20:38.100 A strengthener for delegates who need a hearty breakfast under their belts

00:20:41.080 to tide them through the bedlam and oratory of the opening of the National Republican Convention.

00:20:46.800 When America entered World War II in 1941,

00:20:50.320 Clem made it her job to report on how the war was affecting real Americans at their kitchen tables.

00:20:55.020 During World War II, there was a battle on the home front, too.

00:20:58.700 The tussle with ration books, tokens, and stamps.

00:21:01.880 Supplies were short, and everything from shoes to gasoline was doled out.

00:21:05.740 No stamps, no soap.

00:21:08.780 She began writing about the kinds of food people were eating in wartime America,

00:21:12.480 but she knew it was important to chronicle heroism and enterprise at home.

00:21:16.240 Let the American people read about themselves for once,

00:21:19.040 while everyone else was covering what was happening abroad.

00:21:22.500 She showed her readers how to cook beaver, muskrat, bear, snake, whale, and turtle,

00:21:28.180 all to substitute for rationed beef.

00:21:30.540 Clem wrote,

00:21:31.040 Turtle meat is...

00:21:33.040 Red meat in color tastes something like veal with an underlying flavor distinctly its own.

00:21:39.580 One local chef invited her to try tasting beetles.

00:21:42.320 That seemed like it was going too far.

00:21:45.080 These articles brought people together, showed them what they had in common through their culinary ingenuity.

00:21:50.580 When Winston Churchill visited Fulton, Missouri in 1946, Clem described the meal served,

00:21:56.500 while everyone else droned on and on about the Iron Curtain.

00:21:59.280 It was, of course, a very big day in the history of Fulton, Missouri,

00:22:02.880 when President Truman and Winston Churchill paid their visit.

00:22:06.600 Churchill enjoys home-cooked Missouri meal, screamed Clementine's headline.

00:22:11.040 She wrote that the buffet included ham plastered with a paste of mustard mixed with brown sugar,

00:22:15.720 fried chicken, twice-baked potatoes, asparagus canned not fresh, and angel food cake with ice cream.

00:22:22.320 She didn't focus on Churchill, exactly, but rather the wife of the college president who was preparing the meal.

00:22:29.280 Of her demeanor while cooking for one of the leaders of the free world,

00:22:33.660 Clementine insisted the home cook was the alpha and omega of studied calmness.

00:22:43.800 Clem was everywhere at this point.

00:22:46.340 James Beard once said she was surely the most getting-aroundest person he'd ever known. 0.56

00:22:51.180 Besides, of course, Eleanor Roosevelt.

00:22:52.920 Between 1948 and 1960, she logged more than 800,000 miles over land and by air.

00:23:02.120 That's enough miles to circle the globe 30 times.

00:23:05.640 Her contemporary Susan Delight noted that she thought nothing of using a weekend to fly to the West Coast.

00:23:10.860 Or, in one instance, Europe.

00:23:15.180 Clem was making good money at the Herald Tribune, and also at This Week.

00:23:19.060 She was churning out stories like nobody's business.

00:23:21.960 But traveling on other people's schedules took time.

00:23:25.200 She often went by commercial airplane, train, car, and sometimes even mule.

00:23:30.220 But she had so many stories she wanted to cover.

00:23:33.780 How could she get where she wanted to go even faster?

00:23:37.220 By learning to fly.

00:23:39.820 Her own plane. 0.98

00:23:43.100 In her 50s, Clem began studying to learn how to fly a plane,

00:23:46.520 taking navigation classes at night and on weekends at NYU.

00:23:49.160 you. Learning to fly gave her freedom. No one could tell her she couldn't go somewhere,

00:23:55.540 not when she was the one flying the plane. Clementine was thoroughly modern and thoroughly

00:24:01.620 her own person in every sense of the word. She found ways to liberate herself in both

00:24:06.880 her professional and personal lives. She did get married. She actually married quite young,

00:24:12.540 but she kept it a secret so she wouldn't have to abandon her slew of admirers. This

00:24:17.780 was a radical move. Women during Clem's time not only lived with their husbands, but they lived 0.70

00:24:23.780 for them. Clem's husband was like a garnish to her life, like parsley. He was never the main course. 0.95

00:24:32.280 She eventually divorced him, but they remained close. After that, she had a regular roster of

00:24:37.560 dates that she'd schedule around her first priority, work. It's even rumored that she once

00:24:42.740 made one of her male suitors try out an extremely experimental form of the birth control pill.

00:24:48.280 She never had her own children.

00:24:50.620 But when a close friend died of cancer, she took in her 12-year-old daughter,

00:24:54.640 adopted her, and finished raising her on her own.

00:24:57.300 She didn't blink an eye. 0.59

00:24:59.300 And it never slowed down her career. 0.67

00:25:04.980 We'll be back with more of Clementine's story right after this quick break.

00:25:14.500 You matched on Hinge. You're vibing.

00:25:16.920 then her energy completely changes what do you do i'm raven smith and i wrote and read a real

00:25:23.880 love story about this exact sitch listen to the free audiobook now whether life serves you an ace

00:25:32.180 or an unexpected backhand the high protein yogurt oikos pro is there to feed your strength and help

00:25:38.180 you turn every challenge into a smash oikos pro helps build strong muscles and support muscle

00:25:43.620 recovery with high protein and contains no added sugar. Because true strength isn't about being

00:25:49.080 able to take the hits. It's about being able to bounce back. Oikos Pro. Feed your strength.

00:25:55.200 Visit oikos.ca for more details. At the height of Clem's fame in the 1950s and early 60s,

00:26:04.440 more than 12 million households were reading her columns. Her piece de resistance was the

00:26:09.400 Christmas 1960 publication of How America Eats, a comprehensive cookbook featuring 800 recipes

00:26:15.240 gathered into a state-by-state tour. She researched it for more than 12 years, interviewed more than

00:26:20.540 2,000 cooks, and ate every single recipe in the book. She was a phenom. So why don't we know the

00:26:27.640 name Clementine Paddleford? There are a few reasons. Personally, I think she was a product 0.51

00:26:34.320 of her time. That was one. Second of all, she had throat cancer, so she couldn't do radio and

00:26:40.860 television. The third reason, William I. Nichols, her editor at This Week magazine, had offered to

00:26:48.160 buy her name, similar to like Dear Anne or Dear Abby, and Clementine refused. Maybe that wasn't

00:26:55.420 a bad thing because Clementine died in 1967, and This Week magazine did not last many more years

00:27:01.700 after that, so she would have probably

00:27:03.600 been lost to history anyway.

00:27:12.460 Clementine Paddleford is relevant 1.00

00:27:13.980 to any woman working in any field

00:27:15.980 today, not just food writing.

00:27:18.720 To me, Clem's this incredible

00:27:20.200 example of how if you take your career

00:27:21.860 into your own hands, you can make anything

00:27:23.940 happen. You can build your own success

00:27:26.180 just by being unabashedly

00:27:27.980 yourself.

00:27:31.700 You can't open Instagram, turn on the TV, walk into a bookstore, or open a magazine without stumbling on someone carrying on Clem's legacy.

00:27:40.320 The legacy that gave food writing life, humor, and relevance.

00:27:44.800 Today, there are so many people writing in Clem's spirit, and they don't even realize it.

00:27:49.220 Like my guest, food writer Yasmin Khan.

00:27:52.780 Yasmin's the best-selling author of two books, The Saffron Tales, which focuses on Persian food, and Zaytun, which celebrates Palestinian cuisine.

00:28:02.300 Like Clem, Yasmeen was inspired by her family's farm.

00:28:05.680 Only hers was in northern Iran.

00:28:08.020 After a decade working for human rights nonprofits in the Middle East,

00:28:11.120 Yasmeen realized there was another way she could bring people together,

00:28:14.460 that she could help them find common ground through food writing.

00:28:18.160 Along with recipes, both her books reveal the humanity of a region through cuisine.

00:28:23.040 Yasmeen's writing, like Clementine's,

00:28:26.140 elevates food as a vital point of personal connection,

00:28:29.120 sparking empathy that can lead to social change. 0.96

00:28:31.700 And yet, Yasmeen didn't know anything about Clementine when we started our conversation. 0.88

00:28:36.740 She had no idea she was carrying on Clem's legacy.

00:28:39.940 We caught up with Yasmeen in a studio in London.

00:28:43.180 All right. Hey, welcome to Fierce.

00:28:45.980 Hi, how you doing? 0.95

00:28:47.500 So had you heard of Clementine Paddleford before we reached out to you?

00:28:50.400 I had not, but I really wish I had. 0.75

00:28:52.800 I mean, doesn't it say at all about kind of women's erasure in history that, you know,

00:28:57.000 I feel like I'm pretty well read about, you know, pioneering women in this genre.

00:29:00.980 and no, I hadn't heard of her. I mean, she sounds so brave and empowering and inspiring.

00:29:07.800 She was. She really was. I want to ask you a little bit about how you got into food writing

00:29:12.460 in the first place. How did you choose food as your beat?

00:29:15.840 It kind of happened by accident. I did a law degree. I spent about a decade working for

00:29:20.600 non-profits. And then, as is very common in the industry, I became, you know, quite burnt out by

00:29:26.520 a lot of the work I was doing and the stories I was seeing because so much of it related to

00:29:30.740 conflict in the Middle East that I took a bit of time out. Then as part of that trip of trying to

00:29:35.160 recover from my burnout, I went and spent some time on my family's farm in northern Iran, which

00:29:40.820 is this beautiful green landscape filled with rice paddies, tea plantations, you know, incredible

00:29:47.660 fruit trees such as pomegranates and kiwis and apples and oranges, as well as all the vegetables

00:29:53.140 you'd want to eat. And surrounded by that incredible produce, I sat and kind of thought

00:29:59.040 about, OK, well, maybe I don't want to go back into the world of nonprofits, but maybe there's

00:30:02.960 something I can do to share the story of Iran through a different medium. So it was kind of

00:30:08.340 there in my grandmother's kitchen in 2012 when really intense U.S. sanctions were hitting Iran

00:30:14.300 and we thought there was going to be a war. I thought, hey, maybe I can write a book that

00:30:18.560 humanizes the people of Iran and shares ordinary stories through food.

00:30:23.420 It's really interesting because Clementine also came from a family of farmers.

00:30:27.120 Oh, really? 0.94

00:30:27.620 She did. Yeah, she came from a family of farmers in Kansas and happened upon food by accident.

00:30:33.240 So I think that that's a really fascinating connection between the two of you.

00:30:36.100 Well, you end up having a lot of reverence and respect for food.

00:30:40.260 I think when your family are literally like toiling in the fields to grow things in order to make their living,

00:30:48.720 you really become aware of the elements and how nature affects livelihoods.

00:30:53.540 But you also have a lot of fun.

00:30:54.900 I mean, one of my earliest food memories is like milking a cow.

00:30:58.800 Now looking back, I feel really lucky that I had that experience.

00:31:02.060 I think when you have that intimacy with food, you can't help but love it even more.

00:31:07.160 There's something about just being able to go down to the garden and literally dig out an onion and put it in a stew or a casserole that there's something kind of magical about it.

00:31:16.640 And so you decided that you were going to write a food and travel book to make the stories of the people in Iran come alive.

00:31:23.440 and you launched a Kickstarter project.

00:31:25.640 Could you tell us a little bit about that?

00:31:27.100 Kickstarter had just started

00:31:28.460 and so I thought, well, you know,

00:31:30.120 why not test this

00:31:31.080 and see if people would be interested in it?

00:31:33.360 I feel, again, so grateful for this.

00:31:35.140 I think I hit my fundraising target,

00:31:37.260 hit 50% of it in the first 24 hours.

00:31:39.900 I was funded by 300 very generous people

00:31:42.660 from all over the globe,

00:31:44.080 many of them non-Iranian, 1.00

00:31:45.520 who were just, I think,

00:31:46.820 connected to this mission that I had

00:31:48.820 of challenging stereotypes of Iran

00:31:50.860 and using food as a way of celebrating our common humanity.

00:31:55.080 And why did you think that food would be able to accomplish that?

00:31:57.820 I was trying to find a point that would be relatable

00:32:00.800 between someone sitting in New York City and someone sitting in Tehran.

00:32:07.040 So I thought, well, hey, Persian food's amazing.

00:32:10.060 There's a story to be told about Iran.

00:32:11.920 Maybe I can combine them both.

00:32:13.300 And what was the reaction?

00:32:14.400 I think it did what I wanted it to do and much more.

00:32:16.640 Actually, you asked me that and I think I just welled up a little bit

00:32:19.360 because it's really interesting at this point in my career to look back

00:32:22.020 and think that just a little idea that I had has kind of spawned a genre.

00:32:26.700 I mean, the New York Times, The Guardian, you know, the BBC kind of all called it

00:32:30.560 the Wall Street Journal, all said it was one of the cookbooks of the year,

00:32:33.940 which for a debut author is quite incredible,

00:32:36.400 especially a debut author without a background in food.

00:32:38.820 And one of the most beautiful things is that, you know, I go on Instagram now

00:32:42.740 and people send me pictures from Berlin or Brisbane or Brooklyn,

00:32:47.580 pictures of food that they've made perhaps a regional recipe from the area where my family

00:32:52.300 are from and they're making it for their friends they're making it for their family they're building

00:32:57.420 this connection they're sharing like the joy and the beauty of the rich tapestry of persian food

00:33:02.980 with people around them and yeah i can't even tell you what that makes me feel i was just getting

00:33:07.760 chills listening to you because that's exactly what clementine did she went into real kitchens 0.93

00:33:14.100 she talked to real people with real stories. How did you think that the stories behind the food 1.00

00:33:20.200 and the humans behind the food would be the thing that would connect people, not just the recipes?

00:33:25.760 In terms of Iran and throughout the Middle East, I think there's a big gulf between what most

00:33:31.100 ordinary Americans think of Iran and what the reality was, that if I could just offer a window

00:33:36.300 into that, I knew that people would be hooked. It wasn't easy by any chance. You know, I didn't

00:33:41.300 have a fixer. This is all kind of stuff that I spent long periods of time researching. But that

00:33:45.520 meant that I could get people's trust, go out for a cup of tea with them and explain what I was

00:33:49.780 doing. And then these people I met were so generous. You know, I got invited into the homes

00:33:54.820 of teachers and fishermen and hip hop artists and yoga teachers and designers, businesswomen. I mean,

00:34:03.860 it was just so varied. And I just felt that sharing those stories could be such a valuable

00:34:08.920 thing to do. Did you find that when you told people you wanted to write about food that they

00:34:13.560 lit up in a different way? You have absolutely hit the nail on the head. Many people in the

00:34:18.460 Middle East feel over-researched, another journalist coming to talk to them about how

00:34:22.140 terrible things are. But if you get someone talking about the food that they love, their

00:34:28.300 favourite recipe, maybe sharing food memories, people light up. But also you forge a connection

00:34:34.100 with the interviewee and sharing how their communities act, how their infrastructure

00:34:40.440 acts, how their environment is. And you get this really deep sense of who a person is.

00:34:46.320 In your travels and in your writing about your travels, have you found food to be the

00:34:49.900 great unifier?

00:34:51.080 Well, it's very disarming food, even if you're in a kind of tense situation or if you're

00:34:56.420 talking to someone about something that's, you know, a little bit fraught. It's really

00:35:00.660 hard to keep that emotion whilst you're eating something delicious.

00:35:04.100 Your second book, Zaytun, it's recipes and tales from the Palestinian kitchen.

00:35:09.000 Talk to me a little bit about how you think food writing and food broadcasting can help

00:35:12.300 bring about social change.

00:35:13.920 The starkest examples, maybe, is when on my tours or in my books, I talk about the situation

00:35:18.860 in Gaza and I talk about this unique food culture that exists in Gaza filled with green

00:35:23.660 chilies and dill and lots of garlic.

00:35:27.020 But alongside that, I say, well, you know, we can't talk about Gaza cuisine and this

00:35:30.400 holy trinity of ingredients they have and their unique seafood without actually also talking about

00:35:35.140 the blockade the fact that for the last almost 12 years now the people of gaza have been living

00:35:40.280 under siege how 97 of the water is undrinkable there according to amnesty international about

00:35:46.580 how 80 of people who live there are dependent on un food aid just to survive but you know someone

00:35:52.480 picking up an article and reading that in the news section maybe then might not want to do it but

00:35:57.680 if you approach it through culture I think this is where the power of the arts is so strong

00:36:02.020 it just enables these subjects that can be quite tough to feel more digestible and that's where I

00:36:07.480 think the really power of it comes and I think one of the things that has really struck me is 0.99

00:36:12.340 actually the different approach that we're seeing now that we have more women involved I think up

00:36:17.760 until Ruth Reichel food writing and the mainstream anyway was much more about the slightly elitist

00:36:24.820 kind of slightly snobby, critiquing of restaurants or dishes. You know, it felt very

00:36:30.460 distant from ordinary people's lives. Whereas what we've seen, I think, in the last few decades is

00:36:36.220 the genre really developing and being like, hey, actually, no, we're going to look at the whole

00:36:40.620 totality of the human experience, but we're just going to look at it through food. It's a really

00:36:46.320 exciting community to be part of at the moment. Tell me a little bit about your advice for women

00:36:51.720 who want to break into food writing today. 1.00

00:36:53.580 What is your advice for getting to do what Clementine did

00:36:55.960 and what you're doing now?

00:36:57.260 I always recommend people the book

00:36:59.120 We'll Write for Food by Diane Jacob.

00:37:01.540 If you're even thinking broadly

00:37:03.240 of getting into the food writing world,

00:37:05.040 then you really want to start with that.

00:37:07.380 And then my other thing is,

00:37:09.100 I believe that anybody can become good at anything,

00:37:12.440 but you just really have to put their practice in.

00:37:15.160 I, when I was transitioning over to being a food writer,

00:37:18.260 I sat and did lots of exercises,

00:37:20.220 lots of writing exercises,

00:37:21.720 really kind of trying to find my voice, got some coaching, you know, really invest in that. I think

00:37:27.340 there is a little bit of a tendency to think, especially with social media culture, oh, I'm

00:37:32.520 just going to post lots of pictures and become an Instagram star. And then that's my way into

00:37:36.360 a food writing legacy. But I don't think actually there's a legacy necessarily in that. So you have

00:37:41.600 to really find your voice and your contribution first. And from there, you just, yeah, you have

00:37:46.300 to dream big. Because if there's one thing I've learned from my Kickstarter and my transition is

00:37:50.980 that, you know, really anything is possible in this world.

00:37:53.720 You just have to believe that you can do it.

00:37:59.360 Thanks so much to our guests,

00:38:00.980 biographer Cynthia Harris and author Yasmeen Khan.

00:38:04.180 Fierce is hosted and written by Joe Piazza,

00:38:06.180 produced and directed by me, Anna Stumpf.

00:38:08.180 Our executive producers are Joe Piazza,

00:38:10.400 Nikki Itor, Anna Stumpf,

00:38:11.940 and from Tribeca Studios, Leah Sarbib.

00:38:14.820 Male voices in this episode by Hamilton Lighthouser.

00:38:17.860 This episode was co-produced by Michelle Lanz,

00:38:20.000 edited and soundscaped by Anna Stumpf.

00:38:22.360 Our associate producer is Emily Marinoff.

00:38:24.820 Fact-checking by Austin Thompson,

00:38:26.380 researched by Lizzie Jacobs.

00:38:27.940 The fierce theme song was written by Hamilton Lighthouser

00:38:30.020 and Anna Stumpf.

00:38:31.340 Our very sincere thanks to Mangesh Hatikador

00:38:33.520 for making this series possible.

00:38:35.560 And we want to mention that there have been multiple moments

00:38:37.420 as we've made this series where one thing or another

00:38:39.120 that we wanted to do looked like it was going to be impossible,

00:38:41.800 and it was Nikki Etor who always came through

00:38:43.700 and made those things happen.

00:38:45.180 And for that, we will be forever grateful.

00:38:47.640 Sources for this episode?

00:38:48.700 Hometown Appetites

00:38:50.000 The Story of Clementine Paddleford

00:38:51.480 The Forgotten Food Writer

00:38:52.560 Who Chronicled How America Ate

00:38:53.900 By Kelly Alexander and Cynthia Harris

00:38:55.820 How to Cook for a Whole Crew

00:38:57.480 By Clementine Paddleford

00:38:58.600 From the New York Herald Tribune

00:38:59.820 July 1960

00:39:00.940 Vast Drive and Courage

00:39:02.560 Spark Career of Famed Food Editor

00:39:04.240 By Susan Delight

00:39:05.320 For the San Diego Union

00:39:06.500 February 1959

00:39:07.760 A Life in the Culinary Front Lines

00:39:10.280 By R.W. Apple

00:39:11.180 For the New York Times

00:39:12.060 November 2005

00:39:13.220 The Great American Cookbook

00:39:15.360 500 Time-Tested Recipes

00:39:17.120 Favorite Food from Every State by Clementine Paddleford,

00:39:20.300 a reprint of the original How America Eats, edited by Kelly Alexander.

00:39:24.200 A panel sponsored by the Food Studies Program at the New School in New York City

00:39:27.540 titled Clementine Paddleford, America's First Food Journalist,

00:39:30.740 which took place in June of 2010.

00:39:33.000 Clementine Paddleford's obituary in the New York Times from November of 1967

00:39:36.280 titled Clementine Paddleford is Dead, Food Editor of Herald Tribune.

00:39:41.220 Thank you for listening.

00:39:42.820 For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

00:39:45.720 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

00:40:15.720 Rocker asks, this is the love story of real hinge couple Carti and Rocker, written and read by me, Nicola Dinan.

00:40:23.780 Listen to the free audiobook now.

Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - November 19, 2025

The Women History Forgets

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