Host Padma Lakshmi (‘Taste the Nation’) is Just Getting Started

To close out the holiday weekend, we're revisiting our conversation with writer, food expert, and television host Padma Lakshmi. At the top, we discuss her Hulu docuseries Taste the Nation (4:40), a formative episode in El Paso, Texas (8:14), and how the show connects to Padma’s personal history (11:59). Then, she reflects on her childhood in New York City (14:07), a heartbreaking event at seven (17:30*), and her unexpected entry to the modeling industry (25:14). On the back-half, we walk through the early years of her trailblazing career (33:52), the patriarchal systems she fought back against (38:58), and her painful essay in The Times in response to the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh (44:00*). To close, Padma talks about her powerful work through EndoFound (45:30), the activist underpinnings of Taste the Nation (49:21), and the stories she hopes to tell in years to come (52:44). *At this time-code, there is a discussion about sexual assault. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Speaker 00

  Lemonada.

• 0:31Sam Fragoso?

  This is Talk Easy. I'm Sam Forgozo. Welcome to the show.

• 0:48Sam Fragoso?

  Today, to close out the holiday weekend, writer, food expert, and television host, Padma Lakshmi. We sat in the spring of 2023 as her docu-series Taste the Nation returned for its second season on Hulu. A month later, Padma announced her exit from Top Chef, where she appeared as host and judge for 19 of its 20 seasons. The departure was partly motivated by her desire to make a different kind of program. On Taste the Nation, she breaks bread with all kinds of immigrant and indigenous communities across America. She visits a Nigerian community in Houston, Cambodian immigrants in Massachusetts, Afghan-Americans

• 1:33Sam Fragoso?

  in Washington DC, each of which, Padma highlights, has brought their unique culture by way of food to America. Not as an act of reclamation or erasure, as some insist, but as an offering. And so, as we move away from Thanksgiving and into the last month of the year, I wanted to re-present this episode to you. Like I said, we sat down in May of 2023, but re-listening, especially after this past election, which was full of confused rhetoric around immigrants and women's rights post-Dobbs.

• 2:10Sam Fragoso?

  This talk has taken on a whole new significance. At least it did for me. We also get into Padma's approach to food and cooking, which is marked by curiosity and compassion. And as someone who's always trying to be a better cook, and I really am always trying, curiosity and compassion is exactly what I need in a coach. So with that, I hope you had a good holiday break. As always, you can reach us at [email protected]. That's [email protected]. And I'll see you back here next week with a new episode. Until then, I hope you enjoy this conversation with the one and only Padma Lakshmi.

• 3:07Sam Fragoso?

  Padma, nice to meet you.

• 3:09Speaker 02

  Nice to meet you, too.

• 3:10Sam Fragoso?

  How are you feeling? What's going on? Because you walked in and I can tell there's, there's stuff.

• 3:16Speaker 02

  I'm really good and I'm in a great moment in my life. I am just tired, that's all. But you know, it's a great tired. It's Taste the Nation is just coming out and I created the show. And so I feel a lot of pressure to do everything I can to make sure that people watch it or give it a chance if they haven't seen it. And it's my baby, so I just, I don't know. It's a pressure-filled moment, but it's, like I said, it's such good news. I'm just jet-lagged, that's all.

• 3:48Sam Fragoso?

  Okay, we are going to push past the fatigue together.

• 3:52Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 3:52Sam Fragoso?

  And dive into Taste the Nation, because I want to start there.

• 3:55Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 3:56Sam Fragoso?

  You've described the show as being born out of a frustration of hearing other people define what it means to be an American and other people getting to say, what is American food? And so each episode, in its own way, I think, kind of beats back against those traditional definitions. And none, I think, more effective and moving than episode eight, which focuses on a community of Cambodian refugees and survivors who've made a life for themselves in a town called Lowell, Massachusetts. So for those who maybe haven't seen it yet, walk us through some of their story. And then why you wanted to tell it in 2023,

• 4:38Sam Fragoso?

  especially as the discourse around immigrants seems more and more polarized and contentious.

• 4:45Speaker 02

  Sure. I mean, the Cambodian episode in Lowell is my answer to people who don't think we should let in asylum seekers or refugees or even any immigrants because they may say that it's a drain on our economic system or that they take away jobs. But Lowell is a great example of what can happen to a town when it does get an infusion of refugees or asylum seekers. I mean, Lowell is this old New England town. And then, like many New England towns, when the steel mill or the factory goes bust, it falls on hard times. And I went to college in Massachusetts and I used to drive by Lowell all the time.

• 5:27Speaker 02

  And it really did have a hard time. And the property values were down. There were a lot of boarded up storefronts. And Cambodian refugees moved into Lowell largely because their rents were so cheap. And they, in many cases, didn't even speak the language or have a specialized skill or anything. They started from the ground up. And I'm happy to report that just a generation later, they have revitalized the town of Lowell, Massachusetts. They have opened up businesses. They have taken seats in local government. They have even cleaned up the river near Lowell so that everybody can fish. And so

• 6:09Speaker 02

  here is a beautiful story of the American dream in action and a real piece of evidence in a case where actually the immigrants and refugees helped rebuild this town. And it's a great way to show, rather than tell, what my beliefs are. It's an artistic way to extend the work that I've done with the ACLU, I guess, on immigration rights.

• 6:34Sam Fragoso?

  In a way, the show is very clearly an extension of your politics, but I think it is done very subtly.

• 6:42Speaker 02

  Thank you, yeah.

• 6:43Sam Fragoso?

  I'm reminded of an episode in the first season where you're talking to a diner owner in El Paso who has spent, I think, more than three decades working alongside and running this place with Mexicans and yet was supporting Trump during the wall talk, I'm just gonna call it that. Do you think you're using food as a kind of investigative tool to both map and explore some of the more unseemly parts of US history?

• 7:11Speaker 02

  I'm using it as bait. You know, food is the language-

• 7:15Sam Fragoso?

  Did I just dress it up? Is that what happened?

• 7:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe, yeah. I mean, your way sounds good, too.

• 7:19Sam Fragoso?

  You can take it for free.

• 7:21Speaker 02

  Thank you. You know, I love food and I'm always interested in what people are eating. It is the language in which I process the world and also the language with which people are used to hearing me speak. So it is the way I look at the world, but it's about a lot more because food is attached to a lot more in our lives and our cultures. And in that episode that you referenced in El Paso, Maynard was his name. You know, he is a staunch Republican. He's voted for everyone from Nixon on down, you know?

• 7:55Sam Fragoso?

  You went down the line of a bunch of presidents.

• 7:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:59Sam Fragoso?

  I was like, how far are you gonna go back here?

• 8:01Speaker 02

  He's old.

• 8:02Sam Fragoso?

  He's old.

• 8:03Speaker 02

  And, you know, he is who he is. But I wanted to talk to him. I don't want to talk to people who just think like me or say what I want to say. I want to talk to the Maynard's of the world because I think we do need to talk to each other. I mean, not to be too corny about it, but that was an interesting interview for me. It was also one of my first interviews and I was nervous as hell, I'm not gonna lie. Before I did Taste the Nation, I can probably count on one hand the times I've interviewed people, and it's always been like at a literary festival or a food festival. It's never been where the stakes are very high and no two interviews are alike. I mean, a lot of these people have never had a microphone in their face, let alone a camera. And they're not media trained.

• 8:46Speaker 02

  And I don't think you could media train a guy like Maynard. I mean, you see him sort of grab my hand and he's holding my hand the whole time. And I got a lot of flack for that. How could you hold that right winger's hand? And in the interview, that interview was two hours long. And people were like, why didn't you take him to task for this or that? It's not my place to tell him what to say. It's my place to listen. And it's his place to tell me what he thinks, how he thinks it.

• 9:14Sam Fragoso?

  Did he hold your hand for all two hours?

• 9:16Speaker 02

  He held it for most of two hours. When you watch the episode, you'll see he holds my hand and it was freezing and we're outside with this little space heater. And then at some point, I try to very subtly slip out of his grip. And that works for a couple of minutes. And then he just takes my hand again and he holds it. And you know what? If holding my hand makes him feel more comfortable, then that was fine. You know, I have people like that in my family. Not many, but a couple.

• 9:47Sam Fragoso?

  That's a concession you were willing to make if it was going to be good for the show.

• 9:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, America is beautiful because it's full of all kinds of people. Strange and interesting and funky people. And that's what interests me. That's what Destination is about, really. I mean, it plays to all of my idiosyncratic interests, you know? I hope that I give you a spoonful of history with a bigger spoon of entertainment.

• 10:11Sam Fragoso?

  The show clearly is a corrective to these kind of myopic narratives around the immigrant experience, which I don't think ever felt reflective of the complexity of your own experience coming here at age four. And I want to understand some of that story a little bit. You're born in New Delhi, India in 1970. Your mother leaves when you're two years old to avoid the stigma of being a divorcee. After living with your grandparents for, I think, a couple of years in New Delhi, you board an air India plane, dressed up in a red coat with a hood, a bow, and a laminated card pinned inside. Of that coat.

• 10:53Speaker 02

  Yes, it said like, if lost, please return to. And it had my grandparents' address in New Delhi and my mom's address in New York.

• 11:00Sam Fragoso?

  Like a piece of luggage.

• 11:01Speaker 02

  Pretty much. I mean, you couldn't do that today. I don't think you could fly an unaccompanied minor of that age, to my knowledge. But in those days, you certainly could.

• 11:10Sam Fragoso?

  When you touched down at JFK and you're reunited with your mother, what do you remember about that?

• 11:18Speaker 02

  I remember that my mom had a crocheted shawl draped over her arms. I remember she was there right when I got off the plane and me running to her. I remember being in the car or the cab and looking at all the tall buildings. You know, I lived in a very big city, but I don't remember seeing buildings that big. And I remember it was Halloween night, actually. And all these people were ringing our doorbell. And there was this huge plate of candy that I thought my mom had put out to welcome me. And whenever somebody, you know, opened the door, they were dressed very colorfully. And she kept giving them my candy.

• 12:00Speaker 02

  And after a while, I said, why are these beggars keep knocking on our door? And she had to tell me, no, they're not beggars. It's a celebration. It's a festival called Halloween. And so Halloween has always had a really special place in my family's heart. Because coincidentally, my mother also had come to America for the first time two years earlier on Halloween.

• 12:21Sam Fragoso?

  Inside that apartment, I think it's 405 East Third Street in Manhattan.

• 12:25Speaker 02

  Eighty Third Street.

• 12:26Sam Fragoso?

  Eighty Third Street. 405 East.

• 12:29Speaker 02

  Eighty Third Street, yeah.

• 12:30Sam Fragoso?

  Eighty Third Street. How do you see that time now?

• 12:34Speaker 02

  It was exciting. Growing up as a kid in New York City is a fabulous childhood. I saw people from all walks of life. It was the first time I saw anyone who was African American. Or a lot of people had blonde hair, like my doll Helen. But I had never actually seen a person who had blonde hair in person.

• 12:54Sam Fragoso?

  That was your doll's name?

• 12:55Speaker 02

  Yes, my doll's name was Helen. And she was blonde and she had blue eyes. And I learned to navigate New York on roller skates. I roller Skated all over the city. I went to Carl Scher's Park, had my first kiss behind Gracie Mansion. I bought a pretzel for a quarter, a New York slice of pizza for 75 cents. I went to PS 158. But before that, I went to Catholic school in Queens. I went to Resurrection Ascension. It was a great time to be in New York. It was the 70s. It was when block parties, you know, were real block parties.

• 13:30Sam Fragoso?

  It all sounds like a movie.

• 13:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, it does. But I remember it like it was yesterday. And I remember my mom and I could, for a long time, only go out to eat to Chinese or Mexican or ethnic restaurants because I didn't eat meat and I had problems with the food because it was so bland. But at least with those restaurants, they always had rice. So I would ask for Tabasco and soy sauce. And the server would always look at me like this four-year-old or five-year-old is asking for Tabasco. And my mom would say, it's OK, you can give it to her. And I would shake that thing like I was putting powdered sugar on pancakes. And they were very stunned.

• 14:10Sam Fragoso?

  If only they knew the cookbooks you would write later on because of that. So I want to understand, for years, you go to school in New York and you spend your summers in India before eventually being sent back east for a while at age seven. Now that you're a mother, how do you understand that moment?

• 14:32Speaker 02

  Well, the first thing that motherhood and becoming a parent gave me is a lot more empathy for my own mother. My mother did not have a lot of the resources as a single parent that I'm lucky enough to have.

• 14:45Sam Fragoso?

  She was an oncology nurse?

• 14:46Speaker 02

  Yes, she's retired now, but yeah.

• 14:48Sam Fragoso?

  Studying for her master's at night during that time?

• 14:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, and she couldn't afford a babysitter. So often, she would take me to school at Hunter College. And I would just sit in the back of the room. So clearly, I should also have a master's in public health because I certainly sat through all those classes.

• 15:03Sam Fragoso?

  We'll call him after this, see if we can get an honorary. We'll figure it out.

• 15:07Speaker 02

  That would be great. But yes, she was very busy and very industrious and like. Many of us trying to do it all. And she sent me back to study so she could do that. And also because she was trying to get me to a safe place because something had happened to me and she didn't know how to handle it. And that was her first reaction. And so she sent me back to India where she knew I would be taken care of by people who love me.

• 15:33Sam Fragoso?

  You said once, "In doing that, she sent me a very powerful message that I have carried in my heart for the rest of my life. What happens to you, it really marks you as a young child and you can never get that confidence back."

• 15:46Speaker 02

  I was sexually molested when I was seven by a relative of my stepfather's. And, you know, I told my mother and she told her husband at the time. And he didn't believe us. So I got sent back to India right away to get me out of the house. But what I understood as a seven-year-old is that you speak out and you get punished for it. And so I think I internalized that message, subconsciously and otherwise, for a long, long time. And I think it affected me throughout my life. And I do think that, you know,

• 16:31Speaker 02

  it's taken me a long time to process all of that. And, you know, but it's still not easy to talk about. It's funny because it's something so icky, but it's something that's so common, that happens to so many girls and boys. And it's a really shitty thing, you know? And once that innocence is taken away from you, once you don't feel like you have autonomy or dominion over your own person, you can never get that innocence back. You can't. You're never happy-go-lucky, as every child should be.

• 17:13Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah, on a human level, how did you hold all that as a young kid going back to New Delhi?

• 17:20Speaker 02

  Well, by then, we had moved back to Chennai. And I was immediately rolled and rolled into another Catholic school. Weirdly enough, I just was called St. Michael's Academy. And, you know, I don't think I knew to look very hard at why. I was in the habit of going back home to my grandparents in India for three months every summer. And so that's what happened. And in this case, I just didn't go back. And, you know, the school years in India are different. So then I got enrolled right away and I didn't have any summer break. And it was hard because the Indian school system is much more advanced than the American school system. So I was always behind.

• 18:05Speaker 02

  I was always catching up. But, you know, I loved being in my grandparents' house because we lived in an extended joint family in a two-room apartment. And it was a wonderful way to grow up. It was so diametrically opposite to how I grew up in New York. In New York, I lived in a studio. I was a latchkey kid. The studio was probably just double the size of this studio we're in right now.

• 18:33Sam Fragoso?

  For listeners, not very big in there.

• 18:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then in India, you know, we lived at any given time, eight to 10 people in this two-bedroom apartment. And my grandmother cooked all the food for all of us on a two-burner stove. Now I have this Maserati of a stove in my apartment. And I think, I don't deserve this, you know? But, I mean, she, she did it all. And she was constantly cooking. And she was a very pragmatic woman. My grandmother was not a cuddly grandma. But there was so much love. And I was parented by all of my aunts and all of my uncles. And my cousins, to this day, function like my siblings, you know? The young cousin who's three years younger than me, Rajini, who grew up with me, she's, lives now in Connecticut.

• 19:19Speaker 02

  And she's still like as close to me as a sister would be.

• 19:23Sam Fragoso?

  But it's also your grandmother that taught you about the colorism embedded inside Indian culture. How did that manifest as a young woman?

• 19:34Speaker 02

  You know, this is sort of, not exactly, but this is what I was alluding to earlier when I said, you know, we have a lot of different colorful people in our family. My grandmother was a wonderful woman who worked hard all her life, started, you know, the first Montessori school in her part of India, started an orphanage, who had a mobile vaccination unit in South India. But my grandmother would always get mad at me for wanting to play outside in the sun. And she would say, don't go out, you're going to get black, you're going to get darker. And she would make us stay inside until after 4:35. And if we went out, we had to take an umbrella. And colorism is very rampant in India. And not

• 20:17Speaker 02

  only that, when we opened Indian magazines or watched Indian TV, there was a huge cosmetic company called Fair and Lovely that had skin bleaching products. Hopefully, I don't think they do that any longer, but until very recently, just a few years ago, they sure did. And that also made an impression on me.

• 20:38Sam Fragoso?

  How did it make an impression?

• 20:39Speaker 02

  I understood that to be darker skinned, which I was compared to a lot of the members of my family, was not a good thing. That beauty was equivalent to being fair. Lovely meant fair. Lovely meant light skin.

• 20:55Sam Fragoso?

  And your own family made that known to you?

• 20:58Speaker 02

  Yes. I mean, not by saying it in so many words, but they didn't have to. I mean, the fact that she said, you know, you're gonna get black, don't go out, that kind of says it all. In every Indian newspaper, they have a section called the matrimonials, which are literally personal ads that families take out to try and get arranged marriages for their sons and daughters. And often, the first two or three things you'll see is their education and the fact that they're fair, light skin. And there are all these code words, like wheatish means medium skin color, or dusky, which means dark. It's like a you've, you know what I mean? That's how it affected me. And so I think there was a lot of self-loathing that I internalized, not only in India, but when I would come back to America and I would

• 21:43Speaker 02

  see only fair-skinned, blond-haired, blue-eyed, for lack of a better word, white people, or Euro-Americans, as I like to call white people.

• 21:53Sam Fragoso?

  No, we'll call them white people.

• 21:54Speaker 02

  Well, I call them Euro-Americans because why is it that everyone else has to hyphenate their name, Native American, African-American, Asian-American? Their immigrants are descendants of immigrants, too. They should have to call themselves Euro-Americans.

• 22:08Sam Fragoso?

  Okay, fine. We'll do Euro-Americans.

• 22:09Speaker 02

  I know it's long, but it's worth it.

• 22:11Sam Fragoso?

  Oh.

• 22:13Speaker 02

  I'm trying to start this movement.

• 22:14Sam Fragoso?

  Okay.

• 22:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:15Sam Fragoso?

  And you started right here on this podcast, goddammit.

• 22:19Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 22:19Sam Fragoso?

  That was the reason you came in today, was to start this Euro-American trend.

• 22:25Speaker 02

  You know, actually, I wrote about it for Vogue. I wrote about the fact that when I was growing up, there was this beautiful model named Kim Alexis, who was blue-eyed and fair and gorgeous. And she was on every cover and on every perfume ad, and she looked nothing like me. And no matter what I did to my face, or what kind of face paint I put on, I would never look like that. And any brown-skinned person knows this. I would try to light the CoverGirl eyeliner with a match to make the pigment softer, so I could deposit more color, so it would show up on someone brown like me. I mean, now, we have so many beauty brands like MAC and, you know, Iman cosmetics and so many other brands that have lovely, lovely shades for all skin tones. But when I was growing up, that really wasn't the case.

• 23:09Sam Fragoso?

  So I want to unpack this, because you take, what did you call it, self-hatred? Internalized self-

• 23:15Speaker 02

  Internalized self-loathing.

• 23:16Sam Fragoso?

  Internalized self-loathing.

• 23:17Speaker 02

  Or kind of its colonial mentality a little bit. And that's what we tried to address in the Filipino episode, by the way, of this season's Taste Nation, is that kind of internalized belief that you're not good enough, or you're good, but not as good as a white person. And it's fed to you in a million different ways. It's in the very air you breathe, it feels like, sometimes. And so, of course, you're going to drink the Kool-Aid, whether you want to or not.

• 23:43Sam Fragoso?

  You take this internalized colonialism and you go back to the US, first in New York, then in La Puente, California, where it sounds like you're continuing to untangle these ideas around race and body image and where you fit in through high school, then college at Clark University, where you spent the last semester studying in Madrid. I want to understand, walk me through the day that you land in the office of Jet Set in 1991.

• 24:15Speaker 02

  You're good. You really did your research.

• 24:19Sam Fragoso?

  We got to show up for you here.

• 24:20Speaker 02

  Thank you. I really appreciate that, by the way. I really do. It's rare and great. I was friends with, you know, my friend Santiago Molina, who had graduated the year before from Clark, was the only person I knew in Madrid.

• 24:33Sam Fragoso?

  You know, the school website called him a fellow Clarkie.

• 24:37Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 24:38Sam Fragoso?

  I didn't know what a Clarkie was till today.

• 24:42Speaker 02

  We went out and he said, I just want to go to this bar to visit a friend of mine. The bar's name was called Zarabanda. And I met his friend named Fernando Marino. And Fernando was a booker, an agent at a modeling agency called Jet Set, which was owned by a Brazilian woman named Josette Naimas. And I went to the bar and, you know, Santiago had plotted this because I know he just wanted to meet other models. And so he introduced me to Fernando and he kind of casually said, you should tell her to model for you. And I said, well, I'm in school and I don't want to ruin my GPA in the last semester. And he said, oh, it's okay. You know, then he told me around what I could make.

• 25:26Speaker 02

  And I said, I think I can make room for that. You know, I was a financial aid student. And then he said, please come to my agency after school, whatever the next day was. And so Santiago picked me up after school and I went there.

• 25:39Sam Fragoso?

  What a noble, nice friend. He had, I'm sure he had no ulterior motives.

• 25:43Speaker 02

  So self-sacrificing. I still talk to him, by the way. He's so great. But the minute I got there, they took my measurements and it was winter and I hadn't shaved my leg. And I felt so self-conscious. But I said, you know, and then I sort of had this very quiet voice. And they said, OK, we'd love to represent you. And I said, I have something to tell you. I have a very big scar on my arm. And she said, OK, can I see it? And I showed it to her. And she said, all right. And I said, gee, it's OK. Do you still want to represent me? And she said, yes. And I was so shocked by that. And then the phone rang and Peppa, who was another booker there, they said, Elle magazine needs you to go see them. And I said, what? They said, right now. And Sancho was like, I'll drive you.

• 26:28Sam Fragoso?

  So that scar that you mentioned, you got that at age 14, driving back from a temple in Malibu.

• 26:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:37Sam Fragoso?

  Your mom and your stepfather were driving a red Ford Mercury sedan.

• 26:42Speaker 02

  By the way, that's a different stepfather than the stepfather in New York.

• 26:45Sam Fragoso?

  Stepfather number two.

• 26:46Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 26:47Sam Fragoso?

  Yes. Don't worry, I had at least three or four myself, so I'm familiar. The incident of flying off the freeway, 40 feet down an embankment, pretty traumatic incident. To then have that scar looked at not as a negative, but actually as a virtue, did that help you make sense of and move forward from the pain of that car crash?

• 27:15Speaker 02

  You know, I was a teenager when I had that car accident. I was just 14. I was very conscious of my body to begin with. And I have run the gamut of how I feel about my scar. And what I thought should have been covered up was uncovered or discovered by Helmut Newton, who thought it was very beautiful and shot me because of that. And because he was so well-respected as a photographer in the fashion industry, it showed me, literally overnight, how arbitrary our notions of beauty are. And it did something for me that I'll never forget and I'll never be able to repay Helmut for,

• 27:56Speaker 02

  which is it gave me a completely different view of my own body. And it gave me The permission to feel beautiful. And I know that it sounds weird that someone else has to give you that. But as a young woman, the world tries to tell you all the time who you are. And it takes a Herculean amount of strength to push against that. But for the first time, I just realized how much all this stuff was just fluff and bullshit.

• 28:30Sam Fragoso?

  Well, the fluff and bullshit of that industry extends to the kind of embedded racism that's inside of it. You said once, "I knew that I wasn't going to get as many covers, and neither were the black girls or the Latin girls who looked dark. It's so insidious and subliminal that you don't even stop to think about it. We were just happy for whatever work we got."

• 28:52Speaker 02

  It was just the way it is. It was. It still is.

• 28:56Sam Fragoso?

  Now that we do have the time to stop and think about it, how do you make sense of the external validation you did receive?

• 29:04Speaker 02

  It's all human. You know, babies look to their adults for cues, visual and otherwise, of how to behave and process the world. And we continue to do that well into adulthood. We look for external signs to tell us who we are. And sometimes we look to certain gatekeepers who have become powerful enough to decide that for our culture or in pop culture and media. And as more people of diverse backgrounds and heritage get into power, those notions also expand because we have different points of view, being arbiters of what is beautiful or what is not or what is interesting.

• 29:47Speaker 02

  To me, beauty is anything that you can't take your eyes off of. People say some things are beautiful, some things are ugly. But to me, there is beauty to be found in everything you see. You just have to look at it the right way. You know, I think there are great people like Edward Eninfull, who is doing wonderful things with British Vogue. I mean, they just did this incredible issue with differently abled people that is phenomenal. And I love that. I would have kilt for those kind of examples when I was young. And that's why, you know, with my scar, I make sure now that I have the power to tell every magazine or photographer that I work with, please don't retouch my scar.

• 30:28Speaker 02

  I want the scar to show. And some of the most compelling fan mail I've ever gotten has been from young women who tell me, thank you for showing your scar. I have this scar. I have that scar. I was so self-conscious about it. Then my husband showed it to me or my mom showed it to me. And that has been some of the most moving mail I've ever received.

• 30:54Sam Fragoso?

  We'll be right back with Padma Lakshmi.

• 31:03Sam Fragoso?

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• 31:47Sam Fragoso?

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• 32:34Sam Fragoso?

  Coming back, as you begin to make a career for yourself before Top Chef, as a model, then a writer, I'm curious about how you thought of ambition as a young woman in their late 20s, early 30s. Because Andre Haral, the late head of Motown Records, once said about you, "Even in the late 90s, Padma really was dedicated to making her star shine." We used to talk all the time because she's so intense. She believes in what many stars believe, that you can create your own destiny.

• 33:14Speaker 02

  I've never even read that quote from Andre, but Andre was a dear friend of mine, and I miss him so much because he was so smart. I remember one time we took a flight from New York to LA for the Soul Train Awards. I was his date, and we talked a mile a minute. And we talked nonstop, so much so that they were going to kick us off the plane, not for, you know, doing anything but like talking a mile a minute.

• 33:40Sam Fragoso?

  In your late 20s, early 30s, did you feel in control of your own destiny?

• 33:46Speaker 02

  No, I still don't feel in control of my own destiny. I wish I could tell you I had some grand plan, but I didn't. I just took whatever opportunities came to me. When the New York Times called and they wanted to syndicate a column, I said, "Sure." On food and fashion and film, yes, okay. When Harper's Bazaar wanted me to do a style column, I said, "Sure." And I was piecing together a living from a few modeling jobs that were still trickling in, whatever auditions I could get as an actor, and writing, whatever I could do. And all of that together made my living. And, you know, I was just trying to survive. And modeling was very hard for me. It's a very soul-crushing, can be a soul-crushing career.

• 34:28Speaker 02

  But it also afforded me the ability to pay off my college loans. And it also afforded me, as a young woman... To travel the world and educate my palate. I would never be able to do Taste Nation or Top Chef Now. All of that stuff, I only was able to do because of modeling. And so I tried to use those opportunities to see the world and squeeze as much juice out of all that fruit that I could. And if you had told me I would have a career in food at 27, I wouldn't have believed you. I didn't know that a career in food was open to me unless I was wearing a chef's coat and toque and, you know, was in a kitchen. Like, I didn't grow up knowing the names of chefs

• 35:13Speaker 02

  or going to fancy restaurants.

• 35:15Sam Fragoso?

  The confidence of that quote from him, like, the certainty in which he's describing you. You've talked so much in the past about ambition in young women. You said once, "We gaslight young women. We accept them to be smart and sexy and nice and ambitious, but not too ambitious." Did you think of yourself as an ambitious person at that age?

• 35:36Speaker 02

  I think I thought of myself as someone who wanted a life that she knew was out there, but had never had access to.

• 35:45Sam Fragoso?

  Or seen an example of.

• 35:46Speaker 02

  Yes, or seen an example of, definitely. I, I just wanted a chance. I think I wouldn't have openly called myself ambitious because it's a dirty word for women. It really is, you know? You can even hear it, you know? I mean, he's not, of course, meaning it that way. But you say, "Oh, my God, that guy is so ambitious. He's doing great. That woman is so ambitious." You know, it just sounds different, and it shouldn't.

• 36:12Sam Fragoso?

  Even the way you said it there.

• 36:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:15Sam Fragoso?

  It had like a whole history to it.

• 36:17Speaker 02

  Definitely. You know, someone who's very smart once said to me, "Don't hide your light under a bushel. It will light your way." And I think that is true. Like, we're sometimes afraid of what we want or who we want to become because we somehow think we don't deserve it. And I think that also comes from being abandoned by my biological father, you know? I think I always felt like I wasn't worthy enough of my father's love. So how could I be worthy enough of anyone else's, including my own?

• 36:52Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 36:55Speaker 02

  But why not me? Why not? Why not some Indian girl from Queens?

• 37:03Speaker 02

  I drive by those buildings every time I go to JFK. And I look at the graffiti on that brick building. And I remember being there before my mom sent me back to study in India. And it's good. I'm glad that that building is there every time I fly to Paris, every time I fly to Los Angeles to, you know, be on your show or whatever it is. It reminds me, you know, it's just a couple of miles from that brick building in Queens to my current apartment downtown in Manhattan. But it is a lifetime away.

• 37:39Sam Fragoso?

  You know, I was thinking about the, in that time, but then, you know, you land Top Chef and all these things happen. Whether it's the world of publishing, modeling, television, these are capitalistic systems with patriarchal underpinnings that we're just starting to kind of reckon with. And I want to emphasize kind of.

• 37:59Speaker 02

  Yes, I agree.

• 38:00Sam Fragoso?

  And I wondered, are there any concessions you made in that period where you're establishing your career that you wish you didn't have to have made?

• 38:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, I have. Even today, the standards for me as a brown woman on television are much different for my white male counterparts. And I contend with that every single day. But I live in the world I live in. And so I can either feel sorry for myself that those things exist or I can be like water. I can just go above the rock and around the bush or whatever. You know, my metaphor is a little weird right now, but you get my point.

• 38:50Sam Fragoso?

  I think I'm following you.

• 38:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I just have to do what I have to do. And if I have to work harder and twice the hours as someone else, then I'm just going to do that, goddammit. Because I want to be somewhere so that I can reach down and help other people so that they can have a hand that I should have and didn't have. And that's OK. That's, I was born in this gender and I was born in this skin. And You know, in many ways, I'm luckier than a lot of Indian girls who are born every day. And that doesn't escape my thinking either. I realize that had my mom not been educated, had I been born to a different kind of family than a middle-class Indian family, that my life could have been so much harder.

• 39:35Speaker 02

  And just by some twist of fate, luckily, there was a shortage of medical professionals in America. Luckily, my mom could get a visa and come here. There were so many things that had to happen that do make me a lot luckier. So, yes, there are people who have it much easier than me, but there are also people who have it much, much harder than me. And I know that.

• 39:58Sam Fragoso?

  You know, it's in this last decade, around the time you had your child, that it appears you have done this pivot into advocacy versus a co-founder of the Endometriosis Foundation of America, and then later, as an ACLU ambassador for immigration and women's rights. How much did having a daughter inform your decision of speaking up in The New York Times in 2018, when Brett Kavanaugh is accused by Christine Blasey Ford of sexual assault when they were in high school back in 1982? Did having her embolden you to come forth and tell your story?

• 40:41Speaker 02

  You know, I remember sitting in my college apartment with all my roommates when Clarence Thomas was having hearings with Anita Hill. And that was a long, long time ago. And I just felt outraged because nothing had changed in all these decades. And there was all this rhetoric by Trump saying, if it was so bad, why didn't she report it then? And there was this tweet going around with a lot of women saying, this happened to me, that happened to me, you know, me too, me too. And I too tweeted. It happened to me not only when I was seven, it happened to me when I was 16, and that's what the op-ed is about. And after I tweeted it on Friday night, I kind of felt what happened to me was really serious.

• 41:26Speaker 02

  It deserved more than a tweet. And so, over that weekend, after my daughter went to sleep, I worked really hard, late at night, and I wrote this piece in a fury, you know, in some fugue. And I talked about being raped at 16 and losing my virginity and being raped. And saying, you know, why didn't I tell anybody? Because there's no upside to telling anybody. It's just re-traumatizing you over and over again, and no one believes you. And they ask you things like, what were you wearing? And shit like that. And so, you know, that was sort of my rebuttal. It just made me sick to my stomach. And I hadn't talked about what happened to me to anybody.

• 42:08Speaker 02

  Not to my mother, not to my husband, not to my therapist, nobody. I had pushed it down so far beneath everything about me to pretend like it didn't exist, to do all I could to make it disappear and erase it from my soul. And I pulled that 30-year Band-Aid off in one foul swoop. And I don't recommend anybody doing that. I highly recommend you talking to a therapist before you do that and seeking counsel. But I'm not sorry I wrote that piece. I think it was important to say. And I, after that, you know, with the ACLU a couple of years ago, I was a guest of the Supreme Court. And I did sit right in front of Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas

• 42:52Speaker 02

  as we were arguing for an asylum case for a man from Sri Lanka.

• 42:57Sam Fragoso?

  I commend you for sitting that close to them.

• 43:02Sam Fragoso?

  You know, the thing that I'm struck by, I mean, a lot. You write that piece in a fury. You send it off to the editors. And on the eve before it comes out, you, with your daughter, drive to the opera. And while you're in the car idly scrolling on your phone, you get an email with notes from the editor about an incident that happened to you at 16. And you send off your approvals. Yes, no, this doesn't work, word choice. Okay. I want to understand, like, when you sit down in those seats at the opera, knowing that you've just given the approval

• 43:47Sam Fragoso?

  of this thing that you've buried for 30 years, what's going through your head during that performance?

• 43:55Speaker 02

  I was glad to be at the opera. I was glad to hold my daughter's hand. I was glad that I got to a point in my life where somebody would invite me to the opening of an opera, the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. I was in a beautiful gown. My daughter was so excited to see it. And I just held her hand really tightly. And I thought, well, no matter how sick to your stomach this may make you feel, at least you did what you could. If you couldn't do it for yourself when you were 16, I'm doing it for Krishna and all of the girls and boys her age. But I owed it to my 16-year-old self to say out loud what happened and say that that wasn't right and that shouldn't have happened.

• 44:38Speaker 02

  And it was a way to gain back some of what was stolen, if at all that's possible, from me. I tried to be propelled by the future rather than pulled back by my past. And the only good that I can make of all the difficult and painful things that have happened to me is to do something productive with them. That's how I find meaning in all of that pain and suffering. You know, that's why I started the Endometriosis Foundation. Once I got the treatment I finally needed and got a proper diagnosis, I saw what life was like for normal women who didn't live in chronic pain. And it made me relieved.

• 45:23Speaker 02

  But then it made me angry because I should have had that surgery when I was 16, or 18, or even 25, not 36. And I didn't want any other young woman or girl to go through what I did, to give up a week every month of your life where you have to cancel work and miss exams and not be there for your family and not go on a date or not be at the football game or the school dance or whatever it is.

• 45:47Sam Fragoso?

  It adds up.

• 45:48Speaker 02

  It does add up. You know, we're not all equal in this world, but we should at least have an equal shot at becoming the best versions of ourselves. And it's hard enough for women to compete in the workplace and anywhere else. So having a chronic Condition like this, that's really icky to talk about, is only going to further keep us from having that equal footing. And, you know, my niece started having problems with PCOS, which is polycystic ovarian syndrome. And I didn't want her to suffer like that. And so I turned my pain into something that I could use to fuel the foundation, to have power. And I didn't want to speak about that stuff.

• 46:33Speaker 02

  It was really hard at first, but I'm so glad I did. I'm really glad I did because now, you know, Congress has doubled the funding just last year that we spend on endometriosis research. The New York state, we've managed to change that law so that anytime they talk about sex education in schools, they have to talk to boys and girls about women's reproductive health. And 35,000 kids have been educated from our Empower program. And also, it was a great training ground for me to be able to be a spokesperson for the ACLU on immigrant rights. I would never, ever be a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations if I hadn't done the work with the Endometriosis Foundation.

• 47:18Speaker 02

  You know, that was, I learned so much in that whole decade that it allows me to be who I am today. And so all of those steps, even the incredibly painful ones, were important, if difficult.

• 47:31Sam Fragoso?

  I have only two things before we have to go.

• 47:34Speaker 02

  I really like talking to you.

• 47:38Sam Fragoso?

  We don't have to go. I do think you have Jimmy Kimmel or something.

• 47:41Speaker 02

  I do.

• 47:44Speaker 02

  I know. I just want to sit in a dark room and talk because I am intense and this is a good medium for me.

• 47:51Sam Fragoso?

  Look, I could keep going. I have so many things that I've left out of my notes today. Maybe for another time.

• 47:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I'll come back.

• 48:00Sam Fragoso?

  Okay, that's a deal. Everything you've talked about in the last five minutes, becoming that advocate, it really does feel like you're attempting to become the type of person you wish you had growing up. And we started this conversation talking about Taste the Nation and how, as you said, it was born out of frustration of hearing other people define what it means to be American. I was thinking about this, like, so much of your experience has seen you be defined by press, by ex-jilted lovers who've gone to the press.

• 48:39Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 48:40Sam Fragoso?

  Your life basically being written in terms that you did not have a hand in defining. Same goes for the industries, publishing, modeling, TV especially. And so, at this point, you're, what, you're 52?

• 48:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:55Sam Fragoso?

  52. Is Taste the Nation and all the work you're doing now, after all the shit you've gone through, is it your way of being able to create that definition for yourself?

• 49:08Speaker 02

  I finally feel that I've been accorded the freedom to do that. I am still the person I was 20 years ago, 30 years ago. I'm just getting the chance now. I'm a late bloomer, I guess. You know, I wish I had had a Taste the Nation when I was growing up. I wish I had had a mentor when I was growing up. I wish I knew, I wish my doctors knew about endometriosis. I wish more people in America and the world would understand that we're all human and immigrants are not to be feared, they're to be embraced. They're what built this country, goddammit, you know? And so, I'm just so happy that I get the

• 49:49Speaker 02

  opportunity to explore all of the things that I'm naturally interested in and passionate about and think hard on. I finally have that privilege, which is not something that most women in my industry get.

• 50:05Sam Fragoso?

  But a privilege you've fought for.

• 50:07Speaker 02

  And will probably have to continue fighting for, frankly.

• 50:10Sam Fragoso?

  So, maybe that's my last question. Do you think all those boxing lessons you've been taking? For over 20 years.

• 50:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:19Sam Fragoso?

  Some philosophy in that, is that what keeps you fighting? Is your capacity to do that, your willingness to?

• 50:25Speaker 02

  You know, what any martial arts person of any discipline will tell you is that the one fighter that they're scared of most is the boxer. Not because of the pain they inflict, but because of the pain they're able to sustain. A boxer is used to getting hit. It's a part of the existence. But the good boxer takes the hit and stands up again. And that's what I hope I will continue to do. Because that's what I've had to do to survive. That's it.

• 51:01Sam Fragoso?

  I have faith.

• 51:03Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 51:03Sam Fragoso?

  In fact, I'm pretty certain you'll keep standing. I just hope the terms within the ring, for continuing this metaphor.

• 51:10Speaker 02

  Yes, let's continue it, yeah. I hope we have many rounds left.

• 51:14Sam Fragoso?

  Yes, many rounds, maybe more cushioning, softer blows. I don't know, something like this.

• 51:20Speaker 02

  I like to think I took all of my real hits early on in my life.

• 51:24Sam Fragoso?

  Right.

• 51:25Speaker 02

  And there's so much more I want to do. There is, I have a couple of scripted projects that we're producing. I'm working on the Taste the Nation cookbook, and there's two or three other books we're thinking about. So I feel like I'm just getting started now that I have the power to create my own projects. And people are letting me do this stuff. I'm gonna take full advantage of it. I'm gonna do as much as I can, as long as I can do it well.

• 51:50Sam Fragoso?

  Well, when those are ready, you come back here.

• 51:54Speaker 02

  It would be my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. I really, really did enjoy this hour.

• 51:59Sam Fragoso?

  Padma, the pleasure's all mine.

• 52:01Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 52:02Sam Fragoso?

  Really?

• 52:03Speaker 02

  Thank you so much. This was exactly the calm I needed.

• 53:05Sam Fragoso?

  And that's our show. If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to give us five stars on Spotify, Apple, wherever you do your listening. I want to give a special thanks to Anthony Jackson, Sam Speedy, the team and Initiative PR, and of course, Padma Lakshmi. Season two of Taste the Nation is now available on Hulu. To learn more about the show, or Top Chef, or her books, visit our website at talkeasypod.com. If you enjoyed today's conversation, I'd recommend our talks with Alison Roman, Hiro Marai, Abby Jacobson, Questlove, Porna Jagannathan, Margaret Atwood, Gloria Steinem,

• 53:48Sam Fragoso?

  and Anita Hill. To hear those and more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen. Talk Easy is produced by Caroline Reebok. Our executive producer is Janix Bravo. Today's talk was edited by Matt Sasaki and mixed by Andrew Vastola. Our music is by Dylan Peck. Our illustrations are by Chris Shannoy. Photographs today are by Julius Chu. I also want to thank our team at Pushkin Industries, Justin Richmond, Carrie Brody, Jacob Smith, Eric Sandler, Kira Posey, Jordan McMillan, Amy Hagedorn, Sarah Brugger, Owen Miller, Sarah Nix, Malcolm Gladwell, Greta Cohen, and Jacob Weisberg. I'm Sam Fragoso. Thank you for listening to Talk Easy. We'll be back next week with

• 54:33Sam Fragoso?

  another episode. Until then, stay safe and so long.

• 54:58Speaker 03

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• 56:08Speaker 04

  I'm Dan Heath. On What It's Like to Be, I interview people about their jobs. Here's a married couple that drives a long haul truck together.

• 56:16Speaker 05

  We backed up and they loaded fresh dead rats.

• 56:20Speaker 04

  I mean, how many rats would you guess were back there?

• 56:22Speaker 05

  There were 32,000 pounds of them.

• 56:24Speaker 04

  Thirty-two thousand pounds of frozen dead rats?

• 56:31Speaker 04

  Find out what it's like to be a long haul trucker, a couples therapist, or an FBI agent, all on the podcast What It's Like to Be.