Ina Garten’s Next Course? A Podcast

Ina Garten has built a culinary empire by way of simple, delicious recipes for the home cook. After two decades on The Food Network and more than a dozen cookbooks, she’s launching a new podcast with the Vox Media Podcast Network next month, called “Happy Hour With Ina Garten.” It’s her latest professional pivot in a career that’s been full of them. Ina and Kara talk about Ina’s plans for her new show, making the leap from traditional platforms to independent media, and what she'll get to do on podcasts that she couldn't do on TV. They also talk about the ways social media is reshaping our relationship to cooking and the people Ina turns to for inspiration. Happy Hour with Ina Garten premieres Wednesday, September 16th. Subscribe to the show on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Threads, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I can't even start doing a dinner party until the table is set. It's kind of like having the dress for the party. Once you have the dress, you know you're ready to go. But I mean, if you could see my kitchen after I've done a dinner party, it's like chaos.

• 0:27Kara Swisher?

  Hi, everyone. From New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. Today, I'm speaking to the barefoot Contessa herself, Ina Garten. She spent two decades hosting popular cooking shows on the Food Network, and she's written about a dozen cookbooks. Her fans love her for her simple, delicious recipes that are also crowd pleasers. Ina's latest project is a new podcast with the Vox Media Podcast Network, which also produces this show. It's called Happy Hour with Ina Garten. It launches next month, and each week, she'll invite guests over to her New York City apartment to share a drink and intimate conversation. It's yet another pivot for Ina in a career that's been full of them. Even at 78 years old, she keeps reinventing herself. I think it's great that she's coming to

• 1:12Kara Swisher?

  podcasting, and I think she'll be fantastic at it. She's an incredibly compelling personality. She has a huge fan base. And I think it's really important for a lot of people to go independent and try new things. Also, that tomato sauce recipe she does, I have made hundreds of times. Trust me when I tell you, you should do it. All right, let's get to my conversation with Ina Garten. Our expert question comes from Elizah Sontag, food critic at The Washington Post. Don't go anywhere.

• 1:52Speaker 02

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• 2:24Speaker 00

  I'm Ina Garten, and each week on Happy Hour, I invite new and old friends for a drink and a fun conversation at my kitchen table in New York City. On this week's episode, I'm joined by Julia Louis-Dreyfus. We talk all about attending a fashion show in Paris together, throwing dinner parties, and making her Broadway debut in other desert cities. New episodes of Happy Hour are available every Wednesday. You can watch on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts. Cheers.

• 3:00Speaker 03

  What if Bruce Springsteen had never become the superstar he is today? I'm Will Anderson, and this week on my music history podcast, The Monday Music Club, we're talking about the making of his breakthrough album, Born to Run, with the guy who wrote the literal book on it, Peter Ames Carlin.

• 3:13Speaker 04

  He had put so much of himself into his music, like all of himself. I mean, it was hard for him to have romantic relationships that could last. You know, he didn't really do anything but put all the energy into his guitar.

• 3:27Speaker 03

  It's a fun ride, so listen to the episode right now by searching for Monday Music Club anywhere you get your podcasts.

• 3:36Kara Swisher?

  Ina, thanks for coming on On.

• 3:38Speaker 00

  I'm so happy to be here, so happy to meet you.

• 3:41Kara Swisher?

  Congratulations on your new podcast. And I know we were trying to make this interview happen in person, and it didn't work out. But I'm curious, what cocktail would you make for me if I were coming over to be a guest on your show?

• 3:53Speaker 00

  I have a favorite new cocktail. First, I would ask what kind of cocktails you like, but my favorite cocktail is a bourbon sour that I found in the south of France at a hotel that has a little bit of chocolate liqueur and a little vanilla in it. You don't taste the chocolate and the vanilla, but it makes the bourbon taste incredible. Somebody described it as like drinking liquid velvet.

• 4:16Kara Swisher?

  Oh, wow.

• 4:17Speaker 00

  So that's what I would make for you. What kind of cocktails do you like?

• 4:21Kara Swisher?

  I don't actually, I know this is terrible, but I'm not a big drinker. My wife is. My wife would love that, loves a bourbon. I do the whole mocktail thing, even though they cost a fortune in restaurants.

• 4:32Speaker 00

  Isn't it crazy?

• 4:33Kara Swisher?

  $15. I'm kind of surprised. I don't have an issue, I just don't like alcohol. I've never had in my whole life. But there's all these really incredibly creative things happening.

• 4:43Speaker 00

  And you know what? Nobody's drinking anymore, which is crazy. So I think when you go to a restaurant, there are as many mocktails as there are cocktails.

• 4:51Kara Swisher?

  Absolutely. I just had one at a restaurant called Anju in DC. It's a Korean restaurant. And it was a lychee. It was a version of a lychee lemonade, essentially.

• 5:00Speaker 00

  The thing about mocktails that's really important is it needs to have like an edge. It needs lime. It needs something acidic. Otherwise, it just tastes like a fruit juice drink.

• 5:10Kara Swisher?

  Yes, which I also like.

• 5:15Kara Swisher?

  So the podcast, the reason I'm asking this, is the podcast is called Happy Hour with Ina Garten, and the focus is going to be on drinks, both cocktails and mocktails and longer conversations. And it's a different way of presenting yourself in food media. A lot of people associate you, obviously, with cooking. Talk about why you wanted to go in this direction for the podcast.

• 5:33Speaker 00

  When I've been doing my TV shows, I really started out thinking I wanted to do a conversation with somebody and to really connect with them and find out who they are and what's interesting to them. And we ended up doing a cooking show with a conversation, but I just found a very short conversation is hard because you end up actually doing an interview, not a conversation. So, you know, if you have six minutes to do an interview in order to get to know somebody, it's pretty hard to do in six minutes. I wanted a long-form conversation. And so that's why I decided a podcast was really a better place to do that. And so that's what I've done. And so the conversation is about an

• 6:18Speaker 00

  hour, and we edit it down to 45 minutes, but it's exactly the way it is.

• 6:23Kara Swisher?

  And is it harder with cooking? You decided not to, because you know, all podcasts are video now, as you know.

• 6:28Speaker 00

  Exactly. Well, podcasts are really shows. They're not really even podcasts anymore. They're like TV shows. And, you know, I've been cooking for 25 years on film, and I just thought it's time to kind of shake it up.

• 6:41Kara Swisher?

  So the show is launching next month, and it'll feature guests who say you felt you couldn't have on your TV show. So what kind of guests are we going to expect? And how does it open up opportunities for different kind of guests for someone like you?

• 6:52Speaker 00

  I'm wondering if it opens different opportunities, but it's easier for guests, because everybody shows up in New York at some point. So if they're coming to do a speaking engagement, I can ask them to just stop by and have a drink and have a conversation with me. It's just much easier to get guests. And I find it, when I invite them to my apartment, it's much more intimate and much more casual. And it's not so quick questions with quick answers, but like much more thoughtful. And I really love figuring out how the guests and I really see things in similar ways, where we connect, what we're interested in. One of my guests is Sofia Coppola, and

• 7:37Speaker 00

  she's really interested in table settings. And I'd love to talk to her about that. I mean, who knew that about Sofia Coppola?

• 7:43Kara Swisher?

  No, I did not.

• 7:44Speaker 00

  Right? I mean, I think I've had guests that are cooks and guests that are not cooks, but this doesn't require that. I mean, there will be some people who are chefs and interested in cooking, but there'll be people who are not. You know, I mean, for example, Anne Patchett is going to come on. Anne's a very good cook, but I'd like to talk to her about other things. And I love her books, and she's fun, and she's actually a friend, and we'll have a wonderful time.

• 8:11Kara Swisher?

  So it's a little bit like my dinner with Andre, except with drinks. The visuals for a podcast and a cooking show are obviously different, of course. And in a cooking show, you're very active. You're moving around, prepping ingredients, giving instruction. And in this, you're seated with someone. Talk about the transition and how it felt for you.

• 8:29Speaker 00

  I wanted it to be beautiful, like film. And so we worked very hard to get my, the kitchen table where I am has gorgeous kind of rust orange walls. And it was a great way to set up a podcast that would look beautiful. And it was just kind of like everything I do. I want my books to look beautiful. I want them to be authentic, you know, like my style. And I wanted people to feel really comfortable. And so I think we really achieved it. My first guest was Paul Carmichael. And when we left each other, we just said, it was just extraordinary that we'd never met before. I felt like I'd known him forever. And our conversation really got us to

• 9:13Speaker 00

  connect about, we see things, we come from totally different places, but we see things very similarly. Like, we like doing things that are fun. And when he set up his restaurant, Kabawa, which is the number one restaurant in the New York Times list of restaurants in New York, everything he did was in the furtherance of how can this be fun, including the music that's pumped into the bathrooms. So he thinks about things really clearly in each detail, and how can it be more fun? And I do, too. I think that's a really important kind of factor when you're doing things, doing any, well, anything, but particularly when you're doing things publicly.

• 9:56Kara Swisher?

  Now, you've been in all the mediums. And you just noted that podcasting is television now, and I would agree. It's a different kind of television. But how do you think about the entertainment value and audience building between the two mediums?

• 10:08Speaker 00

  I just think if it's fun, people are really desperate to have fun. I mean, we all work so hard, and the world is so stressful. And if you can do something that's fun, that you can share with people, it's just so appealing. And I think that's what my cookbooks are. It's fun to read, but also I'm giving you the tools to do something fun for yourself, which is cook something and gather your friends around you. And I felt that way about the TV show, that it was fun to watch, and you might learn something about cooking that will be fun for you to do. And I think basically the podcast is that, too. It's fun to listen to, but it's also really interesting, that you might walk

• 10:53Speaker 00

  away with something interesting that you'll use. Like Alison Roman said to me, why are we always pushing so hard to cook fast? Why not, instead of taking the highway, why not take the scenic road and really enjoy the process? I mean, I think about that whenever I cook now. So it's interesting, but it's also a fun conversation.

• 11:18Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, fun is exactly how, the way I would describe you also. But there's a lot that running and growing a business and going into a new area that isn't fun and it still has to get done. I know this sounds strange, but what's the most unfun thing you have to do to keep your business going? And how do you force yourself to do it well, with some fun presumably?

• 11:37Speaker 00

  You know, there are two aspects of every business and I really do like both of them. I like the business part of it, figuring out how to promote it and how to share it with people. And the creative part, which is just having the conversation. So what's the most unfun thing?

• 11:57Kara Swisher?

  You don't have to not have fun. You may have fun doing everything.

• 11:59Speaker 00

  I think, I don't, I mean, there are things that we do, you know, flying to Chicago and having, you know, sitting on a stage and having a conversation. There's always something fun in it. And I could live without the airports and I could live without the travel. But I think if I'm on a stage with somebody doing an interesting interview and people are having fun in the audience, that's really fun. And we're desperate for it, aren't we?

• 12:25Kara Swisher?

  Right, 100%. I've done it. There's a real shift happening right now.

• 12:28Speaker 00

  What do you see as the shift?

• 12:30Kara Swisher?

  Well, I'm watching voters. I always watch voters. I think they always express something. They're expressing something and some of it is just anger. But one of the things, I think people are sick and tired of being sick and tired. You know what I mean? It's like enough of this.

• 12:43Speaker 00

  I totally know what you mean.

• 12:44Kara Swisher?

  Enough of this. This is so mean.

• 12:46Speaker 00

  Every day you open the newspaper and there's total chaos.

• 12:49Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, yeah. But it's not, it's not good chaos.

• 12:51Speaker 00

  No, it's bad chaos.

• 12:53Kara Swisher?

  Sometimes chaos is good. Sometimes chaos is important to get you forward as in anything. I like chaos in some ways, but it's just, it's like nobody wants to feel bad anymore.

• 13:03Speaker 00

  And it's angry. It's angry and everybody's angry. People are angry on the left, people are angry on the right. And I think that we all just need to settle down and be kinder to each other, take care of each other and surround ourselves with people that, that we love. And it really takes the anger away. And that's really what I'm trying to encourage. And I think when you cook for people, they all show up and they have a good time and they, you create a community around yourself that makes you feel better. It's not about surrounding yourself with people that, that love you. It's about people that you feel love for. And that's what really grounds us. And so cooking and talking, it's, it's the whole thing.

• 13:49Kara Swisher?

  So what are you hoping to get out of it you didn't get from TV or book writing? They are, I, I do all three things too. I can't stand book writing anymore, I have to tell you. Really? I'm in the, maybe because I'm in the middle of it. I'm like, oh, I gotta get up. I can't stand staring at the screen. And TV's fine. TV's fine, like the formal TV.

• 14:06Speaker 00

  Well, TV was great. It's been a great experience and I'm not necessarily done with it. I just wanted to try a medium that was very clear about what I wanted to do, which is connect with people.

• 14:18Kara Swisher?

  You've always had a sort of fan-based career. I know it sounds weird, but one of the things, if I could say anything, moving into podcasting is the level of fans are very different. Now, you, you already were sort of down that road. It's a really very different relationship you have because you're in people's ears.

• 14:34Speaker 00

  How do you see that? What's the difference to you?

• 14:37Kara Swisher?

  I love it.

• 14:38Speaker 00

  Oh, you love it? Oh, that's wonderful.

• 14:39Kara Swisher?

  I love it. I, because people, when people used to come up to me, they'd like a story I wrote or something I said on television or something like that. And when pivot fans or on fans come up to me, it's emotional. You make me feel better. I'm happier after listening to it. It's often happier. I feel calmer, which is interesting because there's a lot of complex topics we talk about. And I'm not sure why, but it's wonderful, I have to say.

• 15:05Speaker 00

  Well, I think you're in their ears, in their head. And I think the really good podcasts are connecting with people out there. It's not like you're just overhearing a conversation. But it's really important to me that in every show that I did, every podcast that I do, that there's something that the audience can use, is there information that's useful in your, in your personal life? And I think they all end up with, you know, like how to infuse your life with more fun.

• 15:38Kara Swisher?

  Absolutely.

• 15:39Speaker 00

  It's, you know, just, I think it's a wonderful thing to think about and we can do it. One of, a very close friend of mine is Jennifer Wallace and she wrote a book called Mattering. And I love talking to her because she's, the research shows that the people are the happiest, are the ones that feel like their lives matter to others. And it's so actionable. You know, if you don't feel like your life matters, you can connect yourself with a charity, you can write a book that might matter to other people, you can very quickly figure out something that you can do that will matter to others. And I think a podcast does that. It's, if you're conscious of making sure that you're sharing, you're not just, this

• 16:24Speaker 00

  is what I did and that's the end of the story. This is what I did and this is how you can do the same thing. And it was really, made me very happy. It's a very important message.

• 16:36Kara Swisher?

  We'll be back in a minute.

• 16:52Speaker 05

  Whenever fall comes back around, it always feels like a fresh start. This year, I've been layering in some styles from the new Lululemon fall drop because the weather is shifting and I find I have to be ready for the entire day and not just one part of it. Lululemon's fall line has some really versatile transitional pieces, so I can just wake up, throw on a matching set, add a jacket or a fleece and head out, knowing that I'll feel comfortable enough to go wherever the day takes me. Check out the new fall arrivals in store and online now at lululemon.com.

• 17:22Kara Swisher?

  I'm Kara Swisher and I like people who say the quiet part out loud. In fact, I love it. That's Tiger Sisters, a new podcast that recently joined the Vox Media Podcast Network. Cherie Brook-Lu and Jean Lu are real sisters who built their careers at LinkedIn and Goldman Sachs. On their weekly podcast, they're giving the next generation practical tips on how to get ahead, how to write emails people actually answer, how to make your LinkedIn profile stand out and how to keep learning as an adult. It's straight talk about money, career and relationships every Monday. Follow Tiger Sisters wherever you get your podcasts.

• 17:59Speaker 06

  What if we told you there was one thing you could eat to reduce your risk of death by about a quarter? Interested?

• 18:06Speaker 07

  And what if we added that this magical substance can dramatically lower your cholesterol, improve your mood and keep your weight stable?

• 18:13Speaker 06

  No, it's not protein. It's actually fiber, the least sexy, most overlooked nutrient of all.

• 18:20Speaker 07

  But what is fiber? How could one nutrient do all those amazing things? And how can you get enough? Is a powder you stir into some water gonna do it for you?

• 18:28Speaker 06

  All that, plus the strange tale of the gorilla poop-obsessed father of cornflakes in the latest episode of Gastropod. Find Gastropod and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

• 18:41Kara Swisher?

  One thing you and I have in common is that we've been evolving our careers. I've changed a lot and you have done lots of different things. And you are moving away from traditional media spaces of TV and publishing, going independent. I've talked a lot about how great the movie's been for me. I've been doing it for a dozen years and how I think more people should do it. But it's, it also seems like people close to you have been pushing you to do this for years. So talk a little bit about this shift.

• 19:05Speaker 00

  You know, somebody asked me recently, actually, I thought it was really interesting. They said, most people start a business and they grow it and they grow it and they grow it and they grow it. And she said, what you do is you start a business, you shut it down, you start another business, you shut that one down and you start a third business. I don't like being the head of a company that's doing things. I like doing things. And so I think that was a really interesting view of what I do. I just, I find I have like a 20-year attention span and I like to do something until I, I know how to do it, I've done it and it's time to challenge myself again.

• 19:45Speaker 00

  And then I'll take it to the next level or in a different direction, but still in the same. Genre of food and connecting with people. And that's basically what I've done for the past 40 years in a slightly different way that may be accessible to people in a different way.

• 20:07Kara Swisher?

  Was there a moment, I always have these, that happens to me. When I stopped doing my conference after 20 years, which was really, when it was very successful, I was like, oh, we're done. I don't know why. I just woke up one morning and thought, oh, that's it.

• 20:21Speaker 00

  Because you know how to do it.

• 20:22Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

• 20:23Speaker 00

  It's not a challenge.

• 20:25Kara Swisher?

  No, and it wasn't, then it wasn't fun, as you say. But one of the things I remember when I was younger, it's harder to do when you're younger. It's a little easier to do when you're sort of practiced. But I was walking out of an interview in New York, and I was near Grand Central Station, beautiful day, one of those beautiful New York days. And I was working somewhere and I walked out of the building and I thought, okay, I'm quitting. Like, it just popped into my head. Like, I'm gonna do something else. I'm moving. And I moved, I changed jobs, I shifted. How did this happen for you?

• 20:58Speaker 00

  Well, I've done it many times.

• 20:59Kara Swisher?

  Yes, you have.

• 21:00Speaker 00

  Starting with Washington. I mean, I worked in nuclear energy policy in the White House. And everybody thought, wow, what a fabulous job. And I thought, oh, I have to get, I have to get out of here. I didn't like working in an organization. And I particularly didn't like working in an organization where it required a man to promote me.

• 21:21Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 21:21Speaker 00

  And I thought, that's never gonna happen. And that was 1970, the mid 1970s. I think it's changed a little bit, but I'm not sure it's changed that much. And so I decided I had to find a parallel universe where the only thing that would stop me is my own creativity. And that's when I bought Bear for Contessa. I think I'm very happy when I have a problem I can't solve. And I think, how is this ever gonna happen? But it's something that I think would be fun to do. And I just figure out how to solve the problem, how to get there, how to put a team together. And then we're off and running. And at the end of it, I think, I did it. That's just what I wanted to do.

• 22:05Speaker 00

  That's just what I wanted it to look like and feel like. And then I'll do that for 20 years. And then at some point go, okay, it's time to, you know, have a new challenge.

• 22:16Kara Swisher?

  But what's the signal?

• 22:17Speaker 00

  I'm bored.

• 22:18Kara Swisher?

  I'm bored.

• 22:19Speaker 00

  What was your signal when you left the podcast?

• 22:22Kara Swisher?

  I don't know. I feel like it's like some, you know, when something just pops into your head and you don't know why. It just, I just was like, I wanna do that. And I had just sold my company to Jim Bankhoff.

• 22:33Speaker 00

  Who we love.

• 22:34Kara Swisher?

  Who we love. And it was a lot of money that we sold it for. And he, I went, I called him and I said, I'm not running the website anymore. And he's like, what? And I said, I wanna start a podcast. And he was like, okay. Like, that's exactly how it happened. Like, he was so easy to do that with, which is why you wanna surround yourself with people that say okay a lot. But I just was like, this is what I need to do. And I'm not sure if it's out of the blue. What were you bored with in your last thing?

• 23:03Speaker 00

  I knew how to do it. I just, once I knew how to do it, there were no problems to solve. And television is a great medium, but things were moving. Things were changing. And it doesn't mean I'm never gonna go back to TV. I'm just saying, at this moment, I thought podcasting is interesting. It was kind of expanding. I didn't know whether there was a ceiling on it. But I think the other thing too was, I was talking to somebody for about two years about doing podcasts. And as with TV, I kept saying no. I needed to figure out what I wanted it to be that's different from what's out there. That I didn't wanna do just another podcast. I wanted it to be a podcast that was unique,

• 23:46Speaker 00

  that had a different point of view, that looked different, that felt different. And once I kind of sorted out what that was, then I was ready to try it. And I still don't know, because when it launches, we'll find out.

• 23:59Kara Swisher?

  It changes, which is the best part. And it's easier to change than most media. You can't change TV quite as easily. One of the things that appealed to you was messiness. A certain kind of messy is something you embrace in life. But you also have very high standards. You tell people never to serve anything that hadn't been made before hosting a party. You also told the New Yorker the idea of inviting someone out to dinner at a place you'd been meaning to try was appalling, which made me laugh.

• 24:25Speaker 00

  Well, messiness is relative.

• 24:27Kara Swisher?

  But I do like, as I said, chaos. When do you lean into the mess and when do you hold back?

• 24:33Speaker 00

  I think what I meant about messiness is that when I do a TV show, we film for a day and a half to end up with 22 minutes of film. When we do a podcast, we film for about an hour and we edit it down to like 45 minutes. It's more, it's the meat of it. It's not over-edited, it's not over-shopped, it's not overthought. It's much more, it feels much more organic than a television show. And that's what, that's kind of what I meant by messiness. Not messy like there's a mess behind me or there's a pile of dishes somewhere. That's not gonna happen anywhere.

• 25:13Kara Swisher?

  There is never a pile of dishes in your kitchen, I'm guessing. Are you ever messy at anything, like a secret drawer?

• 25:21Speaker 00

  Oh, oh my God. I'm the messiest cook you could possibly imagine. Because I like to cook and throw everything in the sink and then later clean up. But my kitchen has to be immaculate when I start.

• 25:33Kara Swisher?

  Oh, why?

• 25:34Speaker 00

  But once, literally, I can't, I can't even start doing a dinner party until the table is set. It's kind of like having the dress for the party. Once you have the dress, you know you're ready to go. But I mean, if you could see my kitchen after, after I've done a dinner party, it's like, like chaos. Jeffrey actually jokes that I can take out dinner from a specialty food store and use every dish in the kitchen, heating it up.

• 26:02Kara Swisher?

  Yep, yep, that sounds like. My son is a cook. He works at Boulevard in San Francisco.

• 26:06Speaker 00

  Oh, does he really?

• 26:07Kara Swisher?

  Yes, he's the, he's now the salad guy.

• 26:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:10Kara Swisher?

  It's just his first job out of college. But he started off as a prep chef, a prep cook. I can't use the word chef, he tells me. And now he is the gardier manger, the salad guy.

• 26:21Speaker 00

  Gardinger. He does the cold station.

• 26:24Kara Swisher?

  What does that mean? I don't even know what it means.

• 26:26Speaker 00

  Gardinger. Manger is to eat. And I actually don't know technically, but he does all the salads.

• 26:34Kara Swisher?

  Salads, that's what he's doing.

• 26:36Speaker 00

  Which is great.

• 26:36Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, yeah, he's very excited.

• 26:38Speaker 00

  Good for him.

• 26:39Kara Swisher?

  But he's terrified of the hotline, that's all I know. These are the things he tells me. He's like, not the hotline. I'm like, okay, not the hotline. I don't know what you're saying. So, talking about reinvention of career, you also haven't dramatically reinvented your identity. Everyone knows who you are, right? And at the same time, you've changed. And so talk about the North Stars and how you think about things.

• 27:02Speaker 00

  What a great question. I mean, as we get older, we get more clear about who we are and what we wanna do. And I don't know what it is. When I started writing books, I was with the top cookbook publisher in the country with a top cookbook editor. And I just instinctively knew what I wanted to do. And it was very different from what other people were doing at the time. They were writing cookbooks that had 250 recipes and no photographs. And I wanted to write the cookbook that I wanted, which was a cookbook with 75 recipes and gorgeous photographs and simple ingredients that you could get at the grocery store.

• 27:47Speaker 00

  And I think even my publisher didn't get what I wanted to do. But I was just, this is what I'm gonna do. And if I'm wrong, I'm really sorry. But you'll never have to see me again anyway. And if I'm right, it's gonna work. And I don't know where it comes from, actually, Kara. I think it's just an internal knowledge of this is what I wanna do and I have to do it my way. And fortunately, it seems to have worked so far, but we'll see if it works in podcasting. I think that making sure, when I think about my brand, I always think the first thing is fun. If it's fun, people will be really attracted to it. From the store, like when you walked into the store,

• 28:32Speaker 00

  there was a screen door that closed behind you and it felt like summer. There was great music, there was great smells. We always had bread baking in the store. We would have a big bakery as you walked in with samples of things to eat. So all of your senses were engaged. And I love that when people walked in, they felt good. And they would say, I just came in to see what was going on. And then they'd walk out with three bags of groceries. And I would think, yeah, did my job today. And I feel that way about the television. If it's fun, people will really be attracted to it. So that's kind of where I'm always looking. And I think to do a podcast with people

• 29:17Speaker 00

  that's both interesting and fun is a wonderful thing to be able to do.

• 29:22Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, I just did a series on CNN on longevity. It was called Kara Swisher Wants to Live Forever. And one of the things that got dropped out of it was what I wanted to put on my headstone when I died, which was, and it was very critical that the punctuation be correct. It was fun, exclamation point, fun, exclamation point, fun, exclamation point, death, period. So fun, fun, fun, death. I think someone would laugh going by.

• 29:50Speaker 00

  I love that, Kara. I just love that.

• 29:53Kara Swisher?

  Think about it. If you're in a cemetery and someone walks by, they'll laugh their ass off.

• 29:58Speaker 00

  And also, what's the point of you not having fun?

• 30:02Kara Swisher?

  Right, also, but fun is also, you know you're gonna die and therefore it has gravity too. The fun has gravity, if that makes sense. But death has to have a period. Nope, semicolon. Oh, there may be a semicolon. I'm not religious, so I don't know.

• 30:19Kara Swisher?

  We'll be back in a minute.

• 30:33Speaker 05

  Whenever fall comes back around, it always feels like a fresh start. This year, I've been layering in some styles from the new Lululemon fall drop because the weather is shifting and I find I have to be ready for the entire day and not just one part of it. Lululemon's fall line has some really versatile transitional pieces, so I can just wake up, throw on a matching set, add a jacket or a fleece, and head out, knowing that I'll feel comfortable enough to go wherever the day takes me. Check out the new fall arrivals in store and online now at lululemon.com.

• 31:03Kara Swisher?

  I want to talk a little bit about social media and how it's changing food media, though. We haven't talked much about food, but you're not on TikTok, but you're active on Instagram and Facebook, and you became kind of a meme in the early days of the pandemic with this image of you drinking a giant Cosmo. I just did a podcast with Hillary Clinton, and she's the meme queen. I mean, there's so many memes of Hillary Clinton. They're all fantastic. In a recent episode I did on career advice, I talked about how you really have to be all kinds of social media, but you also have to be authentic to it. So talk to me a little bit of how you think about social media and the incentive to constantly making new things and engaging with your audience.

• 31:38Speaker 00

  Well, one thing is I do social media myself. It's not something I've farmed out to other people. And the time during the pandemic actually was a perfect example of how I think about it, because I was, you know, we were all of a sudden in our houses, didn't know what was going to happen, didn't know where we were even going to spend the days or how we were going to connect with people. And my publicist, Kate Tyler, from my publisher, said, you know, you should probably tell people what to do with what they've bought in their pantry, because we've bought pasta and beans and ramen and canned goods, and a lot of people didn't know what to do with

• 32:23Speaker 00

  it. And I said to her, I don't know what to do with it. I mean, I can think about what to do with it. And I thought about it for a day, and I thought, you know what? I think it's a really great thing to do. So I posted a picture of my pantry, and I said, if anybody has things in their pantry they don't know how to cook or don't know what to do with, let me know. And all of a sudden, I mean, first of all, everybody was like thrilled that I had ramen in my pantry. What they didn't know is I'd never made it before, so I had to figure out what to do with it. So I made ramen chicken noodle soup. And all of a sudden, I found myself at home with a connection with other people, which was so much fun for me.

• 33:06Speaker 00

  And I actually did know the answers to the questions they were asking. So every day, I would write a recipe for something that was from ingredients in my own pantry. And so I found that social media used that way was a way to connect with people who were home in their, in their own homes, lonely, trying to figure out what to do, trying to navigate how to cook with things that they didn't know usually use. And it really sustained me for a year. It was, it was fantastic for both me and I think for the people that were following me. That, to me, is the best use of social media.

• 33:44Kara Swisher?

  Right. Is cooking for an online audience different from cooking for a TV audience or a cookbook reader? Do you see differences?

• 33:50Speaker 00

  Cooking online? No, not really.

• 33:52Kara Swisher?

  For an online audience, when you're doing that?

• 33:55Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, remember, I was sitting there with my own phone, you know, set up, trying to cook something with, I didn't have a, you know, food stylist, prop stylist, I mean, all the things that you have for TV, somebody checking the audio. I was just doing it on my own. And I actually started doing TV shows in my house in East Hampton. So I'd set up a, a phone, and then I'd go, oh, I have to do my hair, I have to do my makeup, I have to, I have to do the food styling, I have to get the, you know, get everything ready. And then by noon, I was ready to actually do the show, and I'd be cooking. And then after it was done, I realized I'd taken a pot and put it right in front of a camera.

• 34:39Speaker 00

  So the next day, I had to do it all over again. I came to really appreciate my film crew. So it's hard, it was hard, but you know, it was just, it was a challenge, and I did it.

• 34:51Kara Swisher?

  It has some verisimilitude that it's your real life, right?

• 34:54Speaker 00

  It was. It was. Exactly. And it was a little messy.

• 34:58Kara Swisher?

  So every episode, we get a question from an outside expert. Here's yours.

• 35:03Speaker 00

  Oh, good.

• 35:04Speaker 06

  Hi, Ina. I'm Elizur Sontag, food critic at The Washington Post, and I am dying to know how you feel about the current landscape of cooking personalities and food influencers. You were obviously the blueprint for so many of these people. You had one of the early food shops. You showed so many of us how to talk about hosting and our own cooking philosophies. Now there are so many people in this space. How do you feel about the way that the landscape has changed, about the kind of access people have to this platform? Do you feel like it's had a flattening effect? Do you think it's done something good for the food world? Are there elements of it that you find frustrating or confusing or just downright bad? I would love to know. Thank you so much.

• 35:44Speaker 00

  Thank you. How about all of the above?

• 35:47Kara Swisher?

  Elizur is amazing. I love Elizur.

• 35:51Speaker 00

  I think there are people that love cooking and that are sharing their skills, which is great. I think there are a lot of people who are influencers who are just skirting the surface, and they're, they're doing things that look nice, but, but for what point? I mean, if you're doing a fancy table setting, which I hate this word, table scape, if you're doing a table scape and there are big tall candles and there are things in the middle that are interrupting how people connect with each other, you're just doing it for show, and I think that's a bad idea. I love table settings where the candles are low and the flowers are low, however you're doing it. I went to somebody's house the other day, and he had a piece of sculpture in the middle of the table.

• 36:36Speaker 00

  It wasn't even flowers. It was gorgeous, but it was low and everybody could connect. That's what I look for. And I think a lot of people who are doing like the influencer kind of idea don't really understand what entertaining is about. It's just about the show, and it's very surface to me, and I don't like that.

• 36:56Kara Swisher?

  What do you like when you see things? When people are happy doing things or interesting ideas? I mean, there's one guy who just criticizes, and very funny, he's a chef, other people doing their recipes, some of which are horrifying, you know, some of these.

• 37:12Speaker 00

  I haven't seen that.

• 37:13Kara Swisher?

  They're great.

• 37:14Speaker 00

  You know, it's just, it's so easy to take potshots at people. It's so much harder to do the work and share something that you love doing, that you think somebody else would love doing as well. And there are too many people out there. It's kind of like you're driving in the car and somebody's screaming out the window, but they don't have to actually deal with the fact that you're hurt and that you're a person and you have feelings. If you criticize somebody to their face, you have to deal with how their face looks afterwards. But if you're just driving by in the car and you yell out the window and you keep going, then you don't have to deal with that, and that's just not right.

• 37:55Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, that's a very Taylor Swift personality. She goes, people that make fun of people who are doing things are the worst.

• 38:01Speaker 00

  I have to say, I find people on my post, you know, when I'm doing Instagram, I find them incredibly positive and supportive. And every once in a while, somebody has something really nasty to say, and I just love that all of my followers just go, they just pile on. It's like, if you want to talk about that way, go somewhere else.

• 38:24Kara Swisher?

  Yeah. Do you, like, you know, there's the Beyonce beehive. Do you have an Ina's form? What, what would you call your fans?

• 38:31Speaker 00

  I don't know. I haven't, I haven't thought about it.

• 38:33Kara Swisher?

  It has to have something to do with your tomato sauce, that's really, which I've made approximately 412 times, at least. It's the finest tomato sauce in the land. I know you know this. I know you do, but it is your greatest contribution.

• 38:47Speaker 00

  I don't, but thank you.

• 38:48Kara Swisher?

  It is your greatest contribution to society. Butter. Oh, more butter.

• 38:53Speaker 00

  Butter, more butter. Butter and salt.

• 38:56Kara Swisher?

  Salt and tomatoes. Is there any food influences you like? I mean, do you, do you watch regularly?

• 39:02Speaker 00

  Any food shows?

• 39:04Kara Swisher?

  Influencers online?

• 39:05Speaker 00

  On Instagram? I mean, every once in a while, I'll watch somebody making something I think is interesting, but what you don't know is whether it's any good. And I have to say, I've made a lot of recipes from Instagram that have been just really terrible. I mean, there was one, one guy who was saying, this is the foolproof way to make a standing rib roast. I mean, it's a huge piece of meat, and it's really expensive. And I thought, how could that possibly be? But I was going to test it. I went out and got a standing rib roast, and I cooked it according to his instructions. And it was so overcooked, it was inedible.

• 39:43Kara Swisher?

  Oh, no.

• 39:44Speaker 00

  So I just, I think that what's important is that you know who you're listening to, whose work you're following, and that you trust their sense of flavor and texture and their instructions are accurate. And the people who've actually done the work to make sure that you can use it, the recipe, successfully, there aren't that many people.

• 40:08Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, I agree. I do Instagram recipes with my daughter, who's seven. We always try them, and I would say six out of seven suck. Like, we just did the watermelon ice. You put the watermelon in the fridge, and then you make ice cream out of it.

• 40:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:21Kara Swisher?

  And it was fun, but not delicious.

• 40:22Speaker 00

  Not delicious. Exactly.

• 40:24Kara Swisher?

  And the bread has worked, the bread has worked, and the butter, making butter in a jar with a, with a, with a marble. That has worked beautifully. That is, and it's delicious. Delicious. But most of it is just heinous. But we have a good time, so that's really the point.

• 40:39Speaker 00

  That's the more important.

• 40:40Kara Swisher?

  Absolutely. Do you, who do you turn to looking for inspiration or making something new? Who, what inspires you?

• 40:46Speaker 00

  You know, it can be anywhere. I, you know, I can go to a restaurant and see something on a menu and think, oh, that's really interesting. Try it, maybe come home and do my own twist on it. I can read cookbooks. There's an author whose work I just adore, and she's worked with me for a long time, Sarah Leah Chase from Nantucket. She had a specialty food store. My late friend Anna Pomp had a specialty food store called Loaves and Fishes.

• 41:17Speaker 00

  I think people that have had specialty food stores have the same sensibility I do. Things have to be absolutely delicious, otherwise nobody's going to come back for it. They have to look gorgeous and look like what they are. But also, they're very often things that you can make in advance because the store is making it, putting it in a refrigerator case or on a table. You're buying it, taking it home and heating it up. And that makes entertaining really easy, using those recipes at home. So I find them inspiring. And you know what else I like is Ruth Rogers' book's River Cafe.

• 41:54Kara Swisher?

  Amazing.

• 41:55Speaker 00

  Just fabulous, fabulous cook.

• 41:58Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, she is. She just recently texted me.

• 42:00Speaker 00

  Did she?

• 42:01Kara Swisher?

  Out of the blue, out of the blue.

• 42:03Speaker 00

  Isn't that nice?

• 42:04Kara Swisher?

  I know, it was. She liked something I had done.

• 42:06Speaker 00

  What did she want?

• 42:07Kara Swisher?

  Something I had done. She liked the podcast. It was interesting.

• 42:10Speaker 00

  How lovely.

• 42:11Kara Swisher?

  It happens all the time. Sometimes, especially when they're well-known people like that, I don't believe it. And I did that to several different people.

• 42:19Speaker 00

  That's something I would do, too.

• 42:20Kara Swisher?

  Some celebrity, I'm not gonna say who, wrote me with an AOL account and I didn't think it was them. And they got in touch with me another way. And I was like, well, why are you using AOL? I don't understand what is happening. Anyway, you pride yourself on testing your recipes up to 25 times before you share them.

• 42:37Speaker 00

  I do.

• 42:37Kara Swisher?

  This is what you're talking about. You're someone who got in the food business, any kind of restaurant or culinary school credential that historically had kept people out of this line of work. What do you think makes them an authority on food now? And how do you decide who to trust?

• 42:50Speaker 00

  Do I like their sense of flavor and texture in a recipe? And are the recipes easy? A lot of people, you know, when I started out in writing cookbooks, I thought, what makes me think I can write a cookbook? I had a specialty food store, but I, you know, wasn't a chef. I was the, you know, I ran the store. But I realized as I started working, that I was actually kind of the perfect person because I'm a home cook that's had much more experience than most people with home cooking. And so I think I trust people who use home ingredients and home equipment, things that

• 43:33Speaker 00

  you can actually do at home, as opposed to a recipe. I mean, I saw a recipe once that was for a cocktail. They called for, I think, one ounce of orange vodka, an ounce of lemon vodka, and an ounce of, I can't remember, some other kind of vodka. And I thought, that is so crazy. Now you have three bottles of vodka, flavored vodka. How about just regular vodka with a little large, a little lemon, and a little, you know, lime in it? So I think if I see a recipe with demi-glass in it, you know, you don't have somebody over there making demi-glass for you. You have to make the demi-glass. So I just, I like home cook recipes.

• 44:15Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, one of the things, when I interviewed Steve Jobs once, he said, it's complex to do simple things.

• 44:22Speaker 00

  That's a classic. It's not easy to do something simple.

• 44:25Kara Swisher?

  Right, yeah. It's a, it's a complex thing. And that's, he always was going for the simple. Speaking of not simple, the new thing is now AI recipes, but AI can't taste or smell or feel anything, let alone test recipes dozens of times, like you do. And what it does generate is a lot of slop, an actual slop, not just digital slop. Do you think AI can write a decent recipe? Because a lot of people, they'll put in ingredients and I guess they're pulling from recipes. But how do you think about that? And that AI's entry into the recipe game?

• 44:56Speaker 00

  I've never made an AI recipe, but I did once, just to test it. Ask, please write a recipe for roast chicken in the style of Ina Garten, just to, just to see what would happen.

• 45:09Kara Swisher?

  And?

• 45:09Speaker 00

  And I didn't make the recipe, but it was actually pretty good.

• 45:13Kara Swisher?

  Okay.

• 45:14Speaker 00

  I mean, it was, it was absolutely a roast chicken in the style of Ina Garten with the kinds of words that I use. But would it be better that a recipe that I tested over and over and over again? Of course not. So who knows? I mean, maybe someday it'll write a better recipe than I do. But for right now, I'm, I believe in people.

• 45:35Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, you're the OG. You're the OG. So you're known, obviously, for your impeccable and highly personal taste. And that's become a currency in an age where social media and AI really flattens a lot of things. I think that's the problem. It gets very anodyne. What's your recommendation for people who are looking to develop their own style and taste? And where do people start?

• 45:56Speaker 00

  What a great question. How to develop your own style and taste? I think you look back at things that you liked when you were younger, before you had these shoulds, I should do this and I should do that. What did you used to do when you were 10? And what did you like when you were then? And then develop from there. You have to really listen to your inner voice and pay attention to that and not try and be just like that, you know, that girl on TikTok or that recipe that somebody posted. Just, just follow your joy and find the things that make you happy. And then try and share it.

• 46:38Speaker 00

  If it makes you happy, it'll probably make other people happy as well. And it doesn't start, you know, I'm looking at now, doing a cookbook that's the best of barefoot, but I'm 30 years later from my first book. And I go back to the original recipes and you know what? They're good, but I can make them better now because I've learned so much in 30 years about making something that's delicious and simple, that has great flavor and great texture. And it's kind of fun to update them. So the other day I made a frittata from family style and I added a little panchetta and I add a little more liquid to it. And it was better. And it was really fun to do.

• 47:20Kara Swisher?

  Is it Ina's version of Ina? Are you going to update them, all of them?

• 47:24Speaker 00

  Exactly. I mean, I've learned things in 30 years and I want to share them.

• 47:28Kara Swisher?

  Do I have to do anything to my tomato sauce? Please say no, because it's fantastic the way it is. It's absolutely perfect. There's nothing to be done. My very last question, what are you having for lunch?

• 47:37Speaker 00

  What am I having for lunch? Soup. I love soup. So I have, I don't know, I have a couple of pots of soup at home. I like, right now I would like cheddar corn chowder because the corn is so delicious. And I love salmorejo, which is like a pureed gazpacho with a little bread in it to thicken it, which is just fabulous. Good summer soup.

• 48:02Kara Swisher?

  Excellent. I think I may have to go not make some, I'll go buy some at a specialty retailer. Anyway, Ina, thank you so much for your time. I'm so excited for your podcast. I'm excited to have you at Vox Media. You'll love it.

• 48:13Speaker 00

  Thank you. I'm just so happy to meet you and to talk to you. And it's been just great fun.

• 48:29Kara Swisher?

  Today's show was produced by Nishat Kurwa, Michelle Aloy, Catherine Millsop, Madeline LaPlante-Duby, Megan Burney, and Kailin Lynch. Special thanks to Catherine Barner and Lissa Soap. Our engineers are Fernando Aruda and Rick Kwan, and our theme music is by Track academics. If you're already following the show, you are surrounded by people you love and who love you. If not, get that sculpture out of the middle of your table setting. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from Podium Media, New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Thursday with more.