From The Archive: Vivek Murthy

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2:11We have good news. Ruthie's Table 4 is launching on YouTube, where you'll find full episodes, clips, and some of my favorite moments from the series. Guests like Cate Blanchett, Francis Ford Coppola, Sienna Miller, Zoe Saldana, and many, many more. To watch, go to youtube.com slash at symbol Ruthie's Table 4 pod. I can't wait to see you there. You're listening to Ruthie's Table 4 in partnership with Montclair. Across the garden from where Surgeon General Vivek Muthi and I are sitting, people are having Sunday lunch in the River Cafe. Walking into the room, you hear the rise and fall of conversation and laughter, friends and families connecting over food.

3:01At age 37, Vivek was appointed as the youngest Surgeon General of the United States by President Obama and is now serving a second term with President Biden. During COVID, in his gap between terms as Surgeon General, he might have researched illnesses, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, but instead he chose what he saw as another epidemic of our time, loneliness. His book, Together, The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World, tackles loneliness as a condition seriously detrimental to the health of millions of people. He is a Surgeon General who sees love as a foundation of policymaking.

3:46How rare to hear the word love as a solution to a diagnosis. He says food is an antidote to loneliness, believing loneliness is like hunger and like thirst. I am privileged today to talk with and listen to the Surgeon General and to hear how, as a doctor, a father, a husband, a child, and now, my friend, food is a connection and food is love. I mean, it is also why you're here, isn't it? Are you doing a conference? So it is a global concern now. And it's actually why I find that this work around food to be so powerful because I think that people like you, Ruthie, who have been so deeply immersed in not just the preparation of food, but food as a cultural force, I think have long recognized that food has a power to bring us together, to put us in a place of ease where we can be more open and talk to one another, which is why I think people like breaking bread with one another and conversation happens differently over food than it does in a conference room.

4:56But I think that food is also, in its best, a force for love. And I feel that fundamentally, the question that's before us in society, not just in the U.S., but all over the world, is do we want to be a society that's driven by fear and with all that comes with that, anger, anxiety, insecurity, or do we want to be a society that's fueled by love and by all that comes with that, compassion and kindness and generosity and looking out for one another? And so that's ultimately what I hope that we can build together is a world fueled and powered by love. And I think that's a world where we can build extraordinary things, where we can bring benefits to everyone, where we can overcome adversity no matter what comes.

5:40And where we feel a sense of optimism and hope. It worries me greatly that as I travel that so many people feel pessimistic and anxious. But I also think that what gives us hope during hardship is our connection to one another. And so that's what I want us to rebuild in our lives. We have it within us. I think this is actually our true nature. It's a question of giving voice to it and coming together around that kind of society. And I think we can build it. We will. Yeah. We will. Thank you. So what we'd like to do is to read a recipe. and you chose the recipe of pumpkin soup. Yes. So would you like to read that recipe?

6:22Absolutely. And you can read it any way you like. Sure. So this is a recipe for pumpkin soup. And I chose pumpkin soup in part because I, having grown up in Miami, Florida, where it's very warm, and then having subsequently moved to very cold weather places, I was always craving warmth. And soup was the easiest way for me to find that. And I love pumpkins, in part because I love Halloween. So pumpkin soup. Three tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, 50 grams of butter, two cloves, sliced garlic, 20 sage leaves, a two kilogram pumpkin, peeled, seeded, cut into large cubes, one potato, peeled and cubed, one red chili, one liter of chicken stock, two tablespoons of grated Parmesan, and 1 tablespoon of creme fraiche.

7:18Heat the olive oil and butter. Add garlic and sage and fry for 5 minutes. Add the pumpkin and potato. Fry for 1 minute before adding chili seasoning and season well with salt and pepper. Pour enough stock to cover the pumpkin and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 20 minutes until the pumpkin is tender. strain half of the stock from the pumpkin into a bowl and set aside pouring what is left into a food processor pulse until the mixture is very thick return the mixture to the pan and add strained stock and stir serve with parmesan and a drizzle of olive oil and crumb fresh on top is this something you could imagine eating and cooking yes in fact i found myself getting hungry even though I had a whole meal after reading this recipe.

8:12So this is wonderful. So if we begin at the beginning, this is going to be a long, nice conversation about life and work and loneliness and happiness, food. Tell me about your family. Are they from India, came to London, to England? Yeah, my family is originally from India. My mother is from Bangalore, a city in the south of India. And my father is from a small farming village about two hours outside of Bangalore. And they grew up in fairly modest households. My mother's family was middle class. My father, though, came from a poor farming community, and his family did not have much at all in the way of resources growing up.

8:55After they got married, they moved to England, and they lived here for seven years in London for some part of that time. And then in other parts, They lived in Leeds. They lived up north in Huddersfield, which is actually where I was born. And where my sister was born, they lived in Wales, Scotland, and then ultimately moved to Canada and then eventually to the U.S. Did they bring the food of India with them? They did. They've never left the cuisine they grew up with behind. And they not only cooked and sought out that cuisine when they were in England, but even growing up, The aromas that I remember as a child are of the Indian food that my parents cooked at home.

9:35What was it like? What were the dishes that you remember? They had very different styles of cooking. So my mother was a primary cook, but my father cooked often, and he brought great joy to cooking. So my mother, the hallmark of her food was simple but rich flavors. so she would only cook with a few ingredients but she would somehow make all of them sing and people from the community would often come and ask her how did you make that? I have the list of ingredients but somehow I can't get quite the same flavor out of it and she would always say to me that one of her secrets was her intention when she cooked she said she would think of the love that she wanted to the food to represent and the love she wanted to give to the person who enjoyed the food and she would bring that into her mind and pour it into the food.

10:28It was one of her ingredients. Yes, love was one of her ingredients. And my father was an incredibly creative cook. If my mother's hallmark was simplicity, his was complexity. So he had often many ingredients. And if you ask my father, how did you make that dish because it was so good, he'll have a hard time telling you because he doesn't quite remember the proportions and this. He doesn't measure. He just adds based on his instinct. So he's a creative cook, but an equally talented one. Would he cook on special occasions or would he just cook every day? Did he? When we were growing up, he would cook on special occasions because he was working often.

11:08What was his job? He was a doctor, and he initially worked in emergency rooms and in hospitals, then eventually set up his own clinic in Miami in 1985, which he continues to work in until this day, now alongside my sister, who's also a primary doctor. Three doctors in the family. Only three? Is it more than three? Three of us, yeah. Just three of us in the nuclear family. We say my mother is essentially close to a doctor herself because she actually ran the medical practice that my father worked in. She managed the whole operation. And because it was a small shop, it was just the two of them seeing patients.

11:45A lot of times the patients would come and talk to her about what they were going through. And over time, she came to sort of recognize the various symptoms and be able to make diagnoses on the side. So it was very interesting. But, yeah. And when you went to Miami, did you live within a very Indian community or was it? When we first got there, we didn't know many people who were Indian. The Indian community was still small. And over time, as the Indian community grew, that became an important part of our experience. But initially, it wasn't the case. And I think that's part of the reason why I felt quite different as a young person growing up.

12:22I didn't know a lot of people in those early years who ate the food that we ate or had the customs that we had or had names that sounded like ours. And I often felt like an outsider. And it's funny how these early experiences stick with you. And I still remember that feeling of what it felt like to be an outsider and to not feel like you belong. and it's why I have found that in years since I'm particularly sensitive to when other people feel like they're outsiders because I felt that and it doesn't feel good. Did your sister experience that as well? She did. Yeah, and your parents. Did your grandparents come with you at all?

13:00I wish they had. They did not. They stayed in India and I miss them a lot because when we were young during holidays, During Christmas and Thanksgiving, people would go away and spend time with extended family. They would come back with these wonderful stories about their grandparents and about how grandma gave them this or grandpa took them here. And I often wish that our grandparents were closer. But they came to visit a few times when we were younger. And I really treasure those times. Would they cook? Yes. Well, my grandmother would cook, my mother's mother. And my father's mother had unfortunately passed away when he was young, when he was 10.

13:38but his father would actually cook as well because he had been used to cooking for himself and they all had their own styles but the one thing that was common among all of them is there was a lot of joy when they were in the kitchen. They were cooking from a place of happiness. They knew they were going to be bringing happiness to people with the food. It wasn't functional. It wasn't, ah, I just got to make - Got to get the meal on the table. Yeah, get the food out. That's right. There's some real joy. Do you think that is specific to Indian cooking? that it is more of a group activity? It's a good question.

14:10I think other cultures have that as well. But I do worry that in modern living that we've gotten away from a lot of that and that food preparation has become more functional than nurturing and therapeutic. And that old community style of sitting together and both making the food and consuming the food, And I think some of that got lost perhaps just as life structures change and in the interest of efficiency, or we can just get food delivered, or we can pop something in the microwave. And it does feel like it saves time. But I think perhaps what may not have been as deeply appreciated was how much was lost in terms of the community that's built, the relaxation also that comes when you're working with your hands and creating something beautiful in the form of food that others will enjoy.

14:59People often say to me, how can you cook for 150 people in the restaurant when it's hard to give a dinner party at home for 12 people? And I go, I can't do a dinner party for 12 people at home. It's so much easier doing it in a restaurant because you're collaborating. It is that thing of cooking with other people, sharing a conversation, tasting each other's food, talking about what you're going to do. And that community of working in a restaurant is so nice. You know, I do, of course, cook for 12 people at home. But it can be very solitary just being in the kitchen by yourself. It can be, yeah.

15:38And that's where I think doing it together, whether it's as family, as friends, really makes a difference. Some of my best memories growing up were actually of all of us, my sister and I, along with my parents, actually cooking together. So when we would have guests over, it was stressful at times because we got to get everything ready for the guests in time, et cetera. But the fun part was that we made things together. So one of my jobs was to make the list of items that we were going to cook that day. Was that for shopping? Kind of going to shop? For shopping, but actually for cooking also, like the dishes that we were going to make.

16:13And then I would be a sous chef for my mom, and then she would help put things together. I would chop. I would mix things together. I would watch things on the stove and roast vegetables or other ingredients. And when they were done, it was my job to check it off on the list. And I had to ultimately make sure that everything was checked off before the guests came. Good preparation for future life, maybe. Even to this day when I go home, if we're going to have people over, my mother, she'll turn to me and say, make the list. Make the list. And so I make the list. It's interesting what you said also about your grandparents, because people that we've talked to on the podcast, very often, especially if they've come from another country, from Ghana to London or from China to London, from wherever they've traveled, they very often talk about their grandparents almost more than their parents.

17:05because sometimes the mother adapts, you know, the mother adapts her cooking. The child only sometimes wants to eat the food of the culture he's moved to. But the grandmother clings to more to what, you know, or the grandfather, I should say, from their country. Did your mother adapt or did she only cook Indian food? Did she ever make you hamburgers or meatballs and spaghetti or was the food of your home the food of India? Yeah, you know, my mother still to this day primarily cooks Indian food, and almost exclusively, I would say. So that is what we ate growing up. My father, on the other hand, he still makes a lot of traditional Indian food, but he does a lot of creative fusion food.

17:50So he has an Indian version of spaghetti that he makes and of other pastas. Well, I don't know what he calls it. It doesn't actually have a name, but when you eat it, you taste all of these flavorful Indian spices. and then he does other interesting things too like he'll take jackfruit which is, I'm not sure if you've had it or not but it's a fruit that grows in the tropics when it's ripe, it's yellow and rubbery and very sweet but in its raw form it can actually be used for savory dishes and it's quite tender, it can actually mimic a steak so he'll chop up raw jackfruit and then he'll drop it into the pasta and so it almost tastes like you're eating meat in the pasta but it's all vegetables So he'll do all of these crazy creative things.

18:32How to meet your dad. Yeah. Both of them sound like great cooks. They are. How did they work all day and then come home and make – did you sit with your sister every night around the table and your parents after a long day at school? We did. And the reason we did that was actually because my parents were insistent that we always have dinner together every night. Sometimes my sister and I, as kids growing up, we'd get annoyed. You know, we'd say, well, you know, our friends get to like sit in front of the TV during dinnertime. Why can we do that? Or, you know, why don't you guys have dinner? We're busy doing something.

19:05You know, we're reading this book. Well, we'll have dinner later. But they were always insistent that we have to eat together. So much so that when I was in high school, Ruthie, and when we, you know, sometimes we had a lot of homework. And like I was in the middle of like writing an essay and I didn't want to stop exactly when dinnertime was. And they would just wait for us. And I still feel guilty and so I'm embarrassed to say this, but I still remember many nights in high school where I was stressed about an exam and I was late studying and I didn't feel like I could quite break. And they would stay up and just wait until, and we would eat at 9 or 9.30 or 10 o 'clock at night, but they would just wait because they wanted to have dinner together.

19:39I still can't believe I made them wait that long. They probably didn't mind. I can imagine waiting for my children to finish. But as your sister as well, would you study? Yeah. And we were in the same grade growing up, so we thankfully had a lot of the same assignments and everything. Did you go to friends' homes for dinner? Did you go to other people's houses for dinner? We did, yes. We went to other people's homes, and that was always a real source of joy because it was always a family affair, and it was always very informal. So it wasn't that there was a big long table and everyone would sit together around that table.

20:20Usually there was food that was made. People would often bring food almost potluck style. All the dishes would be laid out on a table and everyone would just noisily, messily grab a plate, put food on it, and then go to various parts of the house in small groups and this and that. And as kids, we would just all hang out in a room together and eat and play. And it was fun. I really enjoyed it. It was community. It was food. It was entertainment. Very evocative, very beautiful description of this life at home. Was that a big break then when you went off to university, when you went to Harvard? Was that a shock to the system that suddenly you were away from that?

20:57It was a shock. It was actually extremely hard for me. And I struggled a lot, especially during my first semester away. I felt really lonely. I felt just really disconnected. And being a shy, introverted kid, I had a hard time just making friends off the bat. It took me a while to get to know people. And so that was, it was very hard. I remember coming home for the first time after enrolling in college during Christmas break. And I had my suitcase in my hand. The door opened. I stepped in. I put my bags down. I looked up at the ceiling of the house in which I had grown up, took a deep breath. And I said to my father, I feel like I've just been released from prison.

21:49And I had almost forgotten that I had said that until a few years ago he reminded me. And it brought back this flood of emotions of what it had felt like to be just separated from this love that had nurtured me for so long. And things got a bit better after that as I was able to make friends and build a community. but some years after when I was in my residency training in my first year when I was working you know probably 80 90 100 hours a week but seeing and working with patients who were going through some of the most difficult moments of their life including people who are my age you know at that time young people in their 20s who were dealing with metastatic cancer and only had a few months to live I started reflecting then and thought to myself I never want to lose my connection to my family.

22:39I want to make sure that every time, moment that I have, that I'm spending it with family and friends, you know, whether that's vacation time, weekend time, I was like, I want to make that a priority. So after that, I started going home much more often to see my parents and to spend time with them, even if it was just for a weekend, you know, it was worth it because I always remember those patients I cared for, those young patients. And it just reminds me that we all don't know how much time we have. And I want to make sure I'm spending that time with the people, the time I have with the people that I love.

23:15Did you know the River Cafe has a shop? It's full of our favorite foods and designs. We have cookbooks, linen napkins, kitchenware, tote bags with our signatures, glasses from Venice, chocolates from Turin. You can find us right next door to the River Cafe in London or online at shoptherivercafe.co.uk.

23:43When you were growing up, you described always eating at home and cooking at home and the community of home. But would you go to restaurants in Miami? Would that be a... We would from time to time. Do you remember them? I do. I remember that my parents, because they liked spicy food in particular, and some stories I can tell you about spice and my father and the crazy hot sauces he makes. He makes some special hot sauces, does he? Yes. He makes a series of different hot sauces from different types of peppers, including some are from habanero peppers, some are from special Jamaican hot peppers, some are from ghost peppers.

24:23He's like extremely spicy sauce, so much so that when he makes them, we all have to leave the house. The house. When he makes the sauce. Not even the kitchen or the - No, no, no, the house. We have to step outside. And he wears something that's equivalent to a gas mask when he makes it because the fumes are so incredibly overpowering. But once he's made it and put it in a bottle, if you add a little bit to your food, it tastes incredible as long as you can tolerate the spice. And I generally, like I eat a lot of spice, but that level of spice is even hard for me to tolerate. So would he find a restaurant that could serve him the equivalent?

25:01So we would always be on the lookout for them. And so I remember many times going to Chinese restaurants, for example, and he would ask them, like, can you make it spicy? And there was always a cadence to this conversation. First question, can you make it spicy? They would say yes. Second question, how spicy can you make it? And they would say, well, we have a five-star scale, and we can make it one to five. And the third question would say, can you make seven stars? I was going to guess six. And then they would get scared because they didn't want something to happen against you. But then he would go through trying to convince them that he really could take the spice.

25:31So generally when we went out to eat, it was often in restaurants where they hoped people could make the food spicy. Chinese restaurants, Thai restaurants, food cuisines of that sort. And when you were in university, what was the food like there? Was that a shock as well, just sitting down to the kind of food they serve at school? Or did you go out? It was. I actually lost a lot of weight. in college. I think I'm a fairly normal weight now. But I actually, if you can picture this, I weighed 40 pounds less when I was in college. Did anybody notice? I mean, did anybody notice that there was a student in his freshman year homesick and losing weight and lonely, do you think?

26:12Was there any? You know, no one's ever asked me that question. Outside of my family, I don't think anyone noticed. But it was painful to my family. They clearly knew something was wrong, I wasn't feeling happy, et cetera. But, yeah, what I used to do is, because I missed the food at home also, is I had a little packet of spicy powder that I would take with me to the dining hall. And I would sprinkle it on everything. Anything and everything I could find, I would just, like, spice it up. And so even people who didn't know me knew that I was a kid with the spicy powder. I have a friend who travels with chilies.

26:50Yeah. She always travels with some chili that she can put on food. I don't know whether she's afraid of having inconsequential food or whether she just loves it with spicy. Well, I learned that actually from my parents because when we would go out to restaurants that couldn't make food spicy, sometimes we'd be really disappointed, so they would always have their own powder that they would add to it. I remember a few times going out. At that time, as kids, we loved pizza and we wanted to eat pizza. We didn't make pizza at home, but we always wanted to go to Pizza Hut or something. So sometimes they would begrudgingly go, and they would dutifully bring the spicy powder and sprinkle it all over the pizza so that it looked like red pizza.