Food is Life with Soleil Ho

This is an I Heart Podcast. Guaranteed Human. I'm Jonathan Goldstein and this spring, Heavyweight revisits some favorite episodes. Yeah, I think I want to know why she made my life so difficult if she had some kind of thing against me. Plus, we check back in with our guests to see what's changed in the years since. How long has it been? Things have transpired. Yeah, the last 10 years, everything's changed. New updates begin March 12th. Listen to Heavyweight, wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everyone. Vergie here. I just wanted to let you know that I might sound a little different in this episode. We recorded this one in my bedroom, where I'm sheltering in place. I also wanted to note in this episode, we're talking about the role restaurants play in our relationship to food. I think it's really important to acknowledge the hard time folks who work in the food, and beverage industry are having right now. If you're able, check out the link in the show notes. It's a good list of organizations helping restaurants, workers, and farmers in this tough time. If you have the ability, consider donating. Here's the show. Growing up, I really dreaded Sunday mornings. It was church day, and church day meant the following. Number one, having to wear pantyhose that chaved my inner thighs and made them red hot and bumpy. Number two, having to listen to grownups talk for hours on end about stuff that didn't make any sense. Number three, sitting still while the pastor gave a sermon. He was the most boring grownup of them all. And number four, all this while having access to literally zero snacks. The only thing that redeemed Sundays was red lobster. Because when church was finally over, my grandfather would pile all of us into the dark blue station wagon. The one with little silver specks on the paint. My grandfather was the breadwinner of the family. He had been a bodybuilder in his 20s and was still pumping iron three or four times a week even then, well into his 50s. He was the head chemist at a factory, a union job. He worked long hours with other men who were big and strong like him. I remember how he puffed out his chest when we rolled up into red lobster for lunch. He grown up super poor and the idea of being able to pay for seven people's worth of seafood was a big fucking deal. My grandmother loved being the fancy lady at his side who never had to reach for her purse when my grandpa was around. She would do her hair up in curlers on Saturday night and pick out her special Sunday outfit. Yes, it was for the church people, but really it was in case we ran into anyone she knew at red lobster. So she could show off her family, well fed and well dressed. For my grandma and grandpa, being able to go out to eat meant something really special and really specific. It meant making it in the best damn country in the world as far as they were concerned. They had come to this country with only two dollars in their pockets and there they were eating crab melts. They were giving their family something better than they had growing up. For that two or three hours at red lobster because trust me, we stretched out lunch. We could leave all our troubles at home and laugh and eat until we were stuffed and alive with the American dream. I'm Virgi Tovar and this is Rebel Eaters Club. We've talked a lot about the private and intimate side of food, but my guest today will walk us from the intimacy of home to the public domain. Where food takes on yet another dimension. So Le Ho is the restaurant critic at the San Francisco Chronicle. I'm delighted that I even got to choose a snack that's such an upgrade from the usual. She's taught me that when it comes to eating out, there's a way more to it than meets the eye. So Le, do you want to tell us the snack that you chose? Right in front of us is a yellow package of Saki Ika, which is prepared shredded squid. You often find this in Asian grocery stores and this was the snack that I would always gravitate to and I was a kid and we were going grocery shopping. I would grab it and just, you know, just throw it in the shopping cart without asking. So to this day, I love it. It's just squid jerky. Sometimes cold fish jerky, sometimes spicy, sometimes not, but it just tastes really sweet and savory and salty and it's so chewy. You really have to work on it. Do you want to do the honors? Okay. And there's a bloom of just fermented squid smell that flies out at you once you open the bag. So perfect. I put way too much of my mouth just now because I was so excited. Yeah, it's got that taste of the sea. And it's so umami, it just makes you salivate. No. Thank you for bringing this for me. Thank you for opening up the package. It was so beautiful and it's delicious. Okay, so we can keep snacking on this delicious stringy, bloomy, aromatic treat. In the meanwhile though, I need to know who are you, who you are, who is Soleil? Sure. I am a restaurant critic. My pronouns are she, her, hers. And I work for the San Francisco Chronicle. I started the job about a year ago. So I'm fairly new to the restaurant critic world. But previously I had a podcast called Races Sandwich, which was all about how food intersected with race and class and gender. And I was a freelance writer. I would do things once in a while as be fit my mood. But my main gig was cooking and working in the restaurant world. I'm going to ask you about a million questions. I remember someone I was dating brought it up. We were driving somewhere and he was like, oh, did you hear that there's this new restaurant critic for the Chronicle? Oh, funny. And she really made a splash and she sort of a little bit talked about how she wasn't interested in reviewing and revering places like Shea Penise. And he was like, I think it's right up your alley. And I was just one of the things I was like, wait, I have this 30 minute conversation about that. This is when you know you've succeeded when people can have a 30 minute conversation about something that you did through hearsay and it's stimulating. So can you talk about that? What is your day-to-day life like as a restaurant critic? I read a lot of Yelp, which is funny because I'm not supposed to write Yelp reviews basically. Because that's not the style that I do. But it is interesting to me to see what's coming up, what's interesting, what's new. A lot of research because there are more than 7,000 restaurants in San Francisco alone. And there are 365 days in a year. So you really need to choose wisely what's happening here. Often when I go out, it's for dinner. And so I'm probably going out to eat maybe like five times a week. And I usually, if I have to make reservations, I'll make it under a fake name. The anonymity part is just for me to help workers be a little less stressed, at least in the lead up. And just to help me avoid some awkwardness because it gets awkward sometimes. Can I ask about your methodology as a restaurant critic? Sure. So when I started the job, I was always criticizing the food media from the outside. I was always talking about how even for something that is so light as a genre, people don't really take it seriously. It can still perpetuate colonial ideas, fat-shaming ideas. There are really serious things that we engage with through food media, even if we don't acknowledge it. Through other people's cuisines, through talking about food in gendered ways, all kinds of really below the waves kind of stuff. And so when I got this job, which was very unlikely to me that I got this job, but I did, I realized, okay, here's my chance. I have a much bigger platform. Here's a chance to really engage with those things that I was so worried about and worked up about when I was on the outside. And here's how to put it in practice. So how do you write about food and restaurants in a way that acknowledges that there are more than two genders, for instance? How do you write about restaurants in a way that doesn't otherwise people who didn't grow up eating mashed potatoes? You know what I mean? The LA Times' Food Critic, Patricia Escarciga, just released a newsletter about how the LA Times Food Section will no longer italicize foreign words. She used foreign in quotes. She's of Mexican descent. And so she was talking a lot about like, who is being made to feel foreign, just so you can italicize words because it's your style or whatever. And I thought that was really interesting. When I first started the job, I wrote a whole list of words that I wasn't going to use, you know, in my writing. Which I asked what they are. Yeah, it was a little indulgent, but I wanted to also introduce myself, you know, because I was kind of an unknown quantity for a lot of people who subscribed to the Chronicle. The words included things like ethnic, for instance, like what is ethnic cuisine? What do you imagine? Do you imagine a French bistro? Right. Or do you imagine like, you know, Indonesian food or Indian food like crack? I don't use that phrase. Addictive, I don't use that phrase. Guilt. I don't use any sort of language of guilt when I talk about food. Oh, yes. Basic, right? You know, but we get pitched on it all the time, right? As like writers, you know, the guilt-free pasta for almost 2020. Right. Oh, that stuff is just no, no. I was reading the piece that you did on the SF restaurant La Colonia. Am I saying that correctly? I don't know. We're not French. Yes. Oh my god. I always, in my regular life, I intentionally consistently mess up French, like I'll say, "Frites instead of free-," anywho, whatever. Anyway, all that to say, you know, in the piece you're kind of talking about these restaurants that are romanticizing eras that are in fact very violent. And the allure of the restaurant from the person who is dining is that you are the person in power in that experience. Right. Yeah. I think it, a good place to start is thinking about in any context, who is doing the serving and who's being served. And what, in what ways are those demographics, whatever, normalized? And what way are they normalizing hierarchies that are present in that context? Right. So when I think about a restaurant like La Colonia, which is essentially cosplaying French colonial Indochina, which is what they call the Indochina, like Vietnam and Cambodia, you know, the glory days before the revolution, before the uprising, before the French got kicked out. Yeah, it's your prompted to take on the positionality of the colonizer. Right. You know, you are in a place that is kind of rustic, lots of mahogany everywhere. The people serving you are mainly people of color. The furniture is of that era and it's just this moment of peace where everything is so secure locked in, you know, before everything's upended by revolution and war. And to me, that's so troubling. Pleasure is really troubling and maybe that has a lot to do with me and my shit. But anytime I feel like you are asked to or you're lulled into this sense of complacency, of just accepting stimuli, I feel suspicious, you know, because that's when you're the most susceptible to ideology. And restaurants are that place for a lot of people where our senses of gender are reinforced, right? Like there are many restaurants still to this day where women, if they are in mixed company, they receive menus that don't have prices on them. And so many people realize, you know, their bodies don't fit the restaurant either, the chairs or the floor plan or whatever and they're treated like furniture. So they're not only sense places of pleasure, but they're also places where who gets to feel pleasure, you know, there's there are assumptions based on who they are, like what you bring to the place. So, you know, they're not ideologically empty places restaurants. You know, for many people with power, pleasure is derived from hierarchy and it's derived from people being in the places that they're supposed to be. And sometimes that means not in your presence. Yes. Yes. Well, I'm just letting that soak in. Yes. On the other hand, recently I went to a restaurant in the mission for the first time called Prebetsu, which is Chamorro for Bonapetit, essentially. And it is a Guamani restaurant. And the chefs are really clear about how colonialism informs the food that they serve. Because Guam has been colonized, taken over, whatever, occupied by the U.S., the Spanish, Japanese, and had a lot of influence from the Philippines and China as well. So the food that they make, you know, the Chamorro, like the indigenous people, is very much full of spam and Chinese vegetables and sausages and all kinds of things from all of these people. Yes. And it is a similar thing. Filipino food is a very, very similar thing. Indigenous American food has a lot of those sorts of, you know, like with fry bread, those hallmarks of, this is what we received. Yes. And this is what we're going to do with it. You know, and this is how we survive. In that way, I find those stories so empowering and so interesting. You know, that even when you are in this kind of culture that is treating you as something to be trampled underfoot, you will still find ways to make something beautiful and sustaining and fulfilling for you and your family or your loved ones. And in that way, you know, you can even under conditions of extreme duress, like create something amazing. And I just love that. So for me, every article that I write or every review is an opportunity to really think about that and wrestle with that and try to change things just slightly. And that's the sphere that I can influence. You know, as a food writer, I can't influence everything and everyone all at once. But if I can change this little thing, I can maybe die happy. So lay as a radical presence in the food media world for a lot of reasons. For one, she shifts the perspective of the critic. There's this concept I first learned about in graduate school. It's called positionality. It's the acknowledgement that who you are influences how you think. Food media has for a long time been dominated by wealthy white men's voices. As a result, we've been taught to think about food the way they think about food. As if their positionality is the default way of seeing the world. But most of us aren't wealthy white men. And acknowledging that frees us up to see that every single dish has a history and a context and that those things matter. That seems pretty obvious to me, but that simple acknowledgement is immediately seen as political. And what So Lay is doing, writing about how colonialism has affected Guamanyan food, for example, makes some people feel very uncomfortable. More on that after the break. Listen to Heavyweight wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. Before the break, we were talking about how So Lay is disrupting business as usual with her food writing. There's a perception that I'm bringing politics into the genre. But the reality is politics have always been present. Just in ways that weren't acknowledged as nails sticking out of the board in the same way. I would also say that a lot of people kind of consider my positionality as inherently radical. And you hinted at that. But I think that what is more interesting, I think, because you can be like me and you can look like me and you can want to have sex with people that I want to have sex with. But you might want to just uphold the old ways of doing things anyway. Yeah. So for me, I'm always wrestling with like, how do I maintain my politics, maintain like the way that I see the process and technique going and the way it should go? Well, also not resting on my identity as like the inherently interesting thing about me. Because that's also the critique that I get from people who are in bad faith, but also there's a hint of truth there who say like I'm a diversity hire. And I don't ever want to pretend or to just kind of shrug backwards into that. Yeah, I do know what you mean. Can we go back into your background? Like what was food like growing up for you? So my family is Vietnamese. They're Vietnamese refugees. I'm the first of the first generation to be born in the US. My grandmother raised me when I was very young in Illinois where my family was put. And then my mom moved my sister and I out to New York to go into fashion, which was very exciting. And she was a single mom for most of the time. And a lot of our meals were simple, like TV dinner type things, but then once in a while it would be delivery. Because in New York we lived in Manhattan. Yeah. Everybody delivered. McDonald's delivered in the 90s, which is nothing now. Do not know that. That's amazing. Continue. There's a number you could call that would route you to the nearest McDonald's and it was two and two three through seven fast. And they actually remembered our orders after a while. Which is really embarrassing. What was your order? I think I would get like a cheeseburger happy meal. My sister would get the chicken nuggets. And so every time we would do it, my mom would fan out the menus. Was there a physical menus back then? Yes. And she would ask to do I want Indian, Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, like what do you want? My palate was developed from that. You know, it wasn't just American or Vietnamese, but it was all of this stuff because I wanted to try, you know, Pollock Paneer or, you know, a burrito or all this stuff. It was really cool in that way. Was food, was there a point where food became fraught for you? Hmm, hmm, hmm. I can't think of the point. My mom was always on a diet, like my whole life. And she would joke that we did it to her pregnancy. You know, she was always trying to lose that weight. And she was always much smaller than me. And so, at the point at which I outpaced her in size, that's when I was like, oh, should I be worried about this? You know, right. And she never compelled me to go on a diet or anything like that. But it was more just the, I was in a typical family where talking about weight was kind of a constant thing. Yeah, it was just a way for people to make fun of you. So yeah, that was a contradictory, like, weird part of my upbringing that I think a lot of people probably could relate to. Yeah. Where you're just, people are always talking about fat people and you're always afraid of fat people. The spectra of fatness is always chasing you. And as they give you like that second helping of noodles or whatever. Yes. Just like whatever, guys. And so you realize over time, like, that this isn't about food. I luckily kind of escaped any sort of disordered feeling about food. Because it was my primary thing of interest besides video games. It was a thing. So if I lost that, I don't know what else I would tell you. I think I tried to go on a diet once and I was just like a total failure because like, I didn't want to do it. Couldn't do it. Yeah, I mean, they pretty, they suck pretty bad. Yeah. Yeah, they do. You know, you're like, you literally have a person's salaries worth of that's your budget for eating for the year, right? So you have this incredible array of food experiences. Many of them are sort of in these traditionally referred to as like fine dining establishments. Can you kind of talk about the role of fat phobia and food anxiety in those spaces? It's really interesting when people who are trying to insult me or whatever, because that happens. People get really heated over restaurant reviews. They talk about my weight, which is just like funny to me. What do you expect? When you eat for a living, like you're not going to be quite a pal tro. Well, I mean, but there is this kind of mythology because our idea of a foodie is a thin person. Right. Our idea of sort of somebody who's like this aspirational gourmand is consistently, I mean, not only like a cisgender man, but also a thin person. And I kind of want to unpack that. Yeah. Well, I think it's the perception of the restaurant critic or the foodie or whatever is that they are an expert. And when you're an expert, you don't consume to excess, right? And like when you have a body that's larger, that is a symbol of excess, right? It's a symbol that of you not having control, whereas like expertise is the ultimate control. Yes. So like how do you square that circle? Oh, so like yes. Yes. I think it's also kind of a function of, do you, are you willing to respect a fat person? For a lot of people who don't think very hard about it, probably not. Right. You know, right? Like the fat person is a joke. They're not someone you listen to. But you know, it takes a lot of work to taste all this food. Like you're not just taking one bite and like, okay, that was pretty good. And then like move on. Right. You know, like that is a very shallow way of engaging. And you don't, you also wouldn't trust someone who only ordered one thing and left and then like wrote a whole article about it, right? Right. It's real work. It's a real job. Yes. So for someone to insult me based on how I look or whatever is just completely like, what do you try? Like it's nonsensical. You know, insult me for what I do. My emergence as someone who became interested in food in a nerdy way was highly connected with my experience of fat phobia. And essentially rate like, I'm in high school, I'm horny, I'm a nerd. I desperately want a boyfriend and no one will date me because I'm a fat pariah, right? And I turn to, you know, a phone personal service. Essentially I started talking to older business men. All that to say, right, like my first experiences going on dates were actually at fine dining establishments in San Francisco. Food became a site or a location of a lot of tension for me because I saw, I began to see not only these people like these white business men as these sort of heroic figures because I could tell from how they were being treated by others that they were respected. In my mind, there's this sort of cross wiring that occurred around like white masculinity, fine dining, getting away from my roots. Do you know what I'm talking about that kind of like circuitry that begins to occur? Yes, it's called ideology. I mean, do you have experience with this? I'm just curious like, what is your wiring like? Oh God, that's a hell of a question. I think a lot of the way I think has very much been informed by really not liking myself. And I still don't really like myself. I never really like myself. I dissociate constantly, you know, and it's a very exercised muscle. My ability to kind of feel like an alien. In later life, I've been able to use that to my advantage as an analytical kind of mode. Yes, I relate. And I think it also made me feel very judgmental. But so like trying to figure out, okay, what's the line between my personal sense of pettiness and actually rigorous kind of study and thinking about how things are connected? For me, that's been my struggle. And also like, why would I be judgmental if I'm shit? You know, like that doesn't make any sense, right? See, this is me talking to the therapist I don't have. Thank you. But the thing is, there's so much that is kind of pulled into that because there's like, you know, me being the child of refugees who don't really belong. And also not being able to speak to them in Vietnamese and not feeling like I belong with my family either. And I'd be the only out queer person in my family. Like all of this stuff. Yeah, I mean, I kind of want to talk about this theme of belonging because I mean, as I've been talking to people, I've been thinking a lot and hearing a lot of stories about how food can be this locus of alienation or of belonging or of faking it or, you know what I mean, or of feeling like you're passing or and it has all of these meanings. What is it? What does it have for you? I love food. I love eating food. I love like tasting new things. At the same time, it's a reminder that pleasure hides so many things behind it. So for me, it's an embodiment of that anxiety of just like, I can't trust this feeling of good because there's always something behind it. Which is true though. It's not just paranoia. It's so true. Right, but it's like the privilege is really the not having to have that thought. Yes. I find it really fascinating as the food critic because, you know, the things that a food critic is thought to like are very much, you know, demographically based, right, to say it nicely. So the things that I like are very different, right? And like it is a lot of people's jobs to figure out what I like, me personally, right, what I enjoy. And so often when I see the dissidents in that, I'm just like, oh, wow, this is so interesting. When they try to appeal to me as if I were an old white man, I'm just like, oh, the easiest example is like when I went to the French laundry, right? Yes. And the chef owner, Thomas Keller, took me and my friend, a colleague to On a tour. He showed us the wine room where they have like the tens of thousands bottles of wine. And I was like, oh, that's cool. It's a lot. Then then in the wine room, there's this humidor. And then like they offered me a cigar. But I'm never smoked a cigar in my life. And I was like, why? What? Like, first of all, I think of them as really gross. And when anyone smokes a cigar near me, I'm just like, ugh, what? What are you? So I'm like, political cartoon. Like what is this? I would never offer anyone a cigar unless I knew for a fact like, oh, yeah, this guy is a garf-reek. Just had a baby. Like, yeah, let's do it. You know, but like, so it was very much that felt like an imposition that was strange. Like, are you offering this to someone who's not here? Like a ghost that's hovering behind me? Like, what is this? Yes. And that way I felt like they were trying to appeal to someone that I wasn't. Like, I don't even know if this is a question, but I'm kind of thinking about like this idea of you being a tastemaker, you do your relationship to food has this entire, this utility that's really fascinating. Well, yeah, in a lot of ways, I'm trying to change other people's relationships to food. Yes. You know, we know that taste isn't universal when we think about cilantro people, for instance. Yes. For them, they taste soap. So in that way, taste is very much personal. Like for so many people, taste is a personality. Whether you're talking about star wars or Italian wine or, you know, anything else, right? And that's when things get dangerous, I think. Any sort of critique of that thing is going to drive you into a rage, you know, because that is an attack on you personally. So that's one aspect of it that I've experienced this year. Yes. You represent to maybe the person who's been reading the San Francisco Chronicle for a long time and reading the food section. And, you know, you represent, would you call it a threat to their worldview or like, what would you call that? I think for some, yes. I think that's the only reason why people would send hate mail, right? It's like, oh, obviously they feel threatened or they're scared or they feel violent objection to like whatever I'm doing. That's the explanation that I have at least. Because you've invested so much money and time and travel or whatever and developing your sense of taste. If the person who is a taste maker doesn't care about some or all of those things, then where does that leave you? And, you know, I think anyone who tries to kind of shake the foundation of like, for instance, like French food being superior or American food being superior, whatever to the Mongol race food of brown people. You know, that's going to be seen as an attack. Yes. Well, I mean, right? It seems to maybe to the average person, it would seem kind of extreme for someone to write hate mail to a restaurant critic. Yeah, you think. But they all claim to be normal people. So, right, right. I guess, and this is sort of a theoretical, essential question, but those are my favorite. What are you coming for? What do they feel like you're coming for when they're writing this mail to you? Oh, God. I don't know. I mean, I think there's a portion of it that is like a generational kind of conflict, I think, where I am just another millennial coming for boomers. Yes, or I'm just a hater, and they can't abide that. Although, why are you reading a restaurant review if you don't want to read any criticism of anything? Right. And, you know, for me to talk about things that are facts like colonialism to use the word white, there's seen as like extremely radical, you know. Yes. Sure, it's inherently political, but everything is. If I can change the way people think about, for instance, Vietnamese food, and like why, why we consume it, why it looks the way it does, all of that stuff, and maybe the next time they get a bun me, they think about it, they think about colonialism, they think about like, oh, wow, like the resilience of these people for making this kind of food under the feet of French colonizer, that's so interesting. To me, that's, that's really important. You know, yes, totally. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Thanks for all the squid. Recently, I went into this little bookshop down the street from my house. I was looking for a gift from my boyfriend's niece, Adeline. Adeline has long hair, a dandruff or waist, loves the movie frozen, and pronounces my name, Voguey. She was turning four, and we wanted to find her something for the burgeoning feminist. And as I was browsing, I picked up a book called "Fry Bread, a Native American Family Story" by Kevin Noble Moulard. It goes, "Fry Bread is food, fry bread is time, fry bread is sound, fry bread is us." And then there's this page. "Fry Bread is history, the long walk, the stolen land, strangers in our own world, with unknown food, we made new recipes from what we had." And I stood there in the shop thinking about fry bread and soleil. And I felt so grateful for this beautiful little book, summed up everything I hope to get at in Rebel Eater's Club. I've spent this entire season talking with amazing people about food from different perspectives. Mia and I talked about how food is family, Bailey and I talked about how food is healing. Deb and I talked about how food is fun. Chef Fresh and I talked about how food is land. She and I talked about how food is comfort. And so Lay and I talked about how food is political. The food we have access to and how we prepare it has a history, sometimes a violent one, of turning wars, struggle, famine, resiliency and hope into craft, into something nourishing, celebratory, connective, delicious. I hope this season of Rebel Eater's Club so far has helped you see food as more than calories or a commodity. We've talked about Diet Culture too, that thing that gets in the way of understanding how complicated and powerful food is. It takes away the healing, the fun and the potential that can come from our relationships with ourselves too and with each other. I hope this season of Rebel Eater's Club has helped you begin the breakup with Diet Culture. It is long overdue girl because we are masses of Stardust who have the limitless capacity to experience and share pleasure, connection, healing, delight, difficulty and comfort all on a full stomach. This week's prompt, write a contract with your inner Rebel Eater. Maybe you have some thoughts about how you'd like to change your relationship to food but you haven't put them into practice yet. Maybe you've decided to stop using moralizing language around food. Maybe you've realized that commenting on your weight is not a practice that works anymore. Write these things down. This can be a living document. It can be a contract with yourself that you look back on and add to whenever you want. If you want to show your thoughts, you can send them to us at Rebel Eater's Club at gmail.com or leave us a voicemail at 8.62-231-5386 and your story could make it onto the show. When you're done, don't forget to give yourself the merit that you earned, the food is life badge. You can print it out on our website rebeleatersclub.com and show us what you're eating. Tag us on social with #RebelEatersClub or @transmitterpods. We'll be back next week with an episode recorded live at our San Francisco launch event and more of your voicemails. I wanted to share this one this week from Jordan in New Jersey. I just finished listening to the episode with Chef Fresh who I love. It's just made a such a wonderful story and it really made me think about a lot. I'm reflecting on my current challenge with food right now, which is what is good nutrition separate from diet culture? What is my truth about my body separate from diet culture? I don't fucking know what to be eating without thinking what is going to make me fat and what is going to make me fat. That fucking pushes me off because it's just been ruling my whole life and I hate it. That's my great gut letter. That's the one I want to write because most of my life diet culture and white supremacy and colonialism and capitalism have been writing the narrative of what my truth is around my body. I will happily hear the next podcast when it comes out. Thanks so much. Rumble Eaters Club is an original podcast from Transmitter Media, the podcast company that's like finding a stash of chocolate that you forgot you saved for yourself. I'm Virgie Tovar. The show is produced by Lacey Roberts and Jordan Bailey. Our editor is Sarah Nix. Reddit Cohen is our executive producer. Like what you hear on the show and want to sponsor us, send us a note at Rumble Eaters Club at gmail.com and let us know. And please head to your favorite podcast app and give us a review. It will help us grow the club. See you next week. I'm Jonathan Goldstein and this spring, Heavyweight, revisits some favorite episodes. The last 10 years, everything's changed. New updates begin March 12. Guaranteed Human.