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The Current Transcript for December 23, 2016

Host: Piya Chattopadhyay

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

[Through translator] No, I don’t know anything about that. You know how many hackers there are today and they act so delicately and precisely. But I want to tell you again: I don’t know anything about that.

PIYA CHATTOPADHYAY: That's Russian President Vladimir Putin denying any knowledge of a hack earlier this year into the Democratic National Committee in the United States—something he reiterated in his year end press conference just this morning. Putin may say he knows nothing about it, but the CIA has suggested otherwise. And now European democracies—Germany and France, for example—with their own elections coming up, are wondering whether Russian hackers have similar designs on them. First up today, we're asking whether Vladimir Putin could just be the wild card candidate in European elections of 2017. Then—

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Damn it, his trachea is deviated to the left. His stats are dropping. I think he has a tension pneumo.

VOICE 2: But he has bilateral chest tubes.

VOICE 1: Someone find me a 14-gauge cannula or a 16—

VOICE 2: Got it.

PC: Those are the voices of some women doctors. So what, you may say? Well, after you hear about new research from Harvard University, they may just be the voices you want to hear next time you find yourself in a hospital. In a half an hour you'll hear from the co-author of a study that suggests women doctors may have an edge when it comes to saving your life. Plus, a holiday treat on this eve before Christmas Eve.

SOUNDCLIP

Well, this is not a recipe for when you’re planning to diet because it has to have a lot of butter and that’s what makes it so good.

PC: Yes—Julia Child, the beloved French chef who changed the way we all cook. We're delving into her life and time and her delicious legacy in an hour. Hi, I’m Piya Chattopadhyay and this is the Friday edition of The Current.

Mounting evidence Russia hacks European elections

Guests: Janosch Delcker, Anna Nemtsova

SOUNDCLIP

They say evidence is quite overwhelming. I don't know anyone Democrat or Republican that's seen the intelligence that has any doubt about Russian involvement in the hacking of our institutions and the dumping of information and the meddling in our elections. There may be a debate about the Russian motives. I don't think there is among our agencies, but there may be among members. But for the president-elect to continue to deny the obvious, I think does himself damage, does damage to our intelligence community.

PC: Well, that's Congressman Adam Schiff, a ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee talking about what the CIA and FBI have already concluded—that Russia did interfere in the US presidential election. And now several European countries with elections of their own on the horizon are wondering whether they may be next. Germany is already sounding the alarm over what its officials are calling “outside manipulation” on the part of Russia in the lead up to that country's 2017 election. And there are grounds for suspicion. Earlier this month, the head of the German domestic intelligence agency confirmed that an earlier hack against the Bundestag parliament was carried out by the same Russian group that hacked the US Democratic National Committee. Janosch Delcker is a correspondent with Politico Europe and he's in Berlin. Hello.

JANOSCH DELCKER: Hi, Piya.

PC: So how concerned, Janosch, should Germany be with Russia interfering in German upcoming elections?

JANOSCH DELCKER: Well, you know if you listen to officials here, there seems to be quite enough reason to be concerned. Even Chancellor Merkel herself said earlier this month that—and I'm quoting her here—“It is possible that Russia will try to influence next year's elections through cyber-attacks.” And this is something that is quite remarkable. Merkel is a politician who chooses her words very wisely and a straightforward statement like hers such as this, suggests that they have strong indications that they should be concerned about Russia interfering in next year's elections here in Germany.

PC: Words and indications—what evidence do they have?

JANOSCH DELCKER: Well, I mean when it comes to like evidence, it's hard to have hard evidence with these cyber-attacks. There was—you mentioned that—a 2015 attack on the Bundestag. For months, attackers were able to access files of the Bundestag which is the lower house of the parliament here in Germany. And afterwards, there were you know a couple of analyses done to understand what was going on there and all evidence within these analyses and all those analyses that I, you know had access to and looked at, strongly suggested that those attacks came from Russia. That being said, with those cyber-attacks, it's really, really difficult to have like definite proof. And then also the other question is you know even if they are like very strong indications that those attacks came from Russia, it's still not definite proof that the Russian state, the Kremlin, was actually behind it. So this is why you know people are talking about indications. But you know let's say like you know when you talk to officials off the record, they all seem very, very concerned that these things are going on.

PC: And Janosch, as we saw the US election, when it comes to Russian interference and alleged Russian interference, it wasn't just cyber-attacks. There were you know other ways that people suggested Russia or people in Russia were interfering with the US election. Things like fake news for example. How similar—are we seeing those kinds of tactics in Germany right now?

JANOSCH DELCKER: Well, I think very similarly. This is something that when you talk to security officials here, they like to use the umbrella term “active measures”, which is a term borrowed from the Soviet times and it's essentially the idea of influencing public opinion in other countries. So what are those like active measures? There are these you know alleged cyber-attacks but at the same time, we've seen an information campaign here in Germany. In 2014, two major Russian state-funded news outlets opened German language outlets here in Germany. That's Russia Today, RT Deutsch. They are German language YouTube channel and you know video service, and at the same time, Sputnik news, which is a German language website. So there are these you know sort of like information outlets that are very much trying to influence German opinion. And on top of that, there are many other sort of like paths how Russia can exert its influence here in Germany and none of those paths or like those avenues are nothing new. For instance, we've had very close ties between the German Social Democrats and the Kremlin for many, many years. And these are all sort of like different kind of like means—how Russia can and most likely will try to influence next year's campaign leading up to the election in the fall.

PC: And Janosch, give us a sense. I mean how do Germans sort of overall, what's their take on Russia? How do they see Russia?

JANOSCH DELCKER: It's a very good question. Germany is divided when it comes to Russia. Just in terms of numbers, when it comes to the question of whether Germans see Russia as a threat, it's 53 per cent of all Germans in the former West who say they do. So it's just around 30 per cent in the former East. So you can already see a sort of divide there. And on top of that, there is I mean a very sort of remarkable popularity of Russia among certain parts of the population in Germany who see Russia and the Kremlin—Putin—as sort of an alternative to the mainstream, the political mainstream in the West. And this is also something that a lot of the or like some of the parties at the edges of the political spectrum here in Germany—on the one hand, the far left party, Die Linke—and on the other hand, the far right, AfD, the so-called alternative for Germany—are very much sort of like pushing this idea of Russia as an alternative to the political mainstream in the West and the mainstream parties in Germany.

PC: And to your mind—to get into the mind of Vladimir Putin—what do you think his and the Kremlin's aim might be if indeed they are disrupting the German election? Like what's the goal here for them?

JANOSCH DELCKER: Well, you know I don't want to speculate about Vladimir Putin's mind and this is something that I can’t do. What I can tell you is what security officials here are concerned about, what I hear from them and what they say. They are very well aware of the fact that German Chancellor Angela Merkel has become one of the most visible critics of his policy both in Ukraine and Syria during the last two years, you know regarding the military interventions in both of those countries. And they are concerned—those security officials both within Merkel's party and within the security apparatus—they are concerned that Russia will try to sort of like influence public opinion against Merkel and her ruling government during next year to sort of like strengthen Russia's position.

PC: And as we saw in the US election, a lot of the talk was about favouring one candidate in the US presidential election—namely only Donald Trump—by Russian interference. So in the German context, who's going to benefit or who would benefit from Russian interference in the upcoming German elections?

JANOSCH DELCKER: Well, I think two parties that are already mentioned but certainly you know be on top of that list and those are those two sort of like parties on the far edges, both on the far left and the far right. These are definitely parties—I mean Germany has a different political system than the US. It’s a government system that's based on coalitions so there's usually one major party those going into a coalition with either one or possibly in the future, more than one smaller parties. And you know this Russian influence could very much strengthen those two smaller parties to a degree, that it will be much harder for either Merkel's Christian Democrats—the one major party of Germany—or the Social Democrats to find coalition partners and it would maybe even force them to go into a coalition with two other parties. So I think that is the sort of like when it comes to political consequence, political implications, this is sort of like the big influence that this sort of campaign could have next year.

PC: And so to round it out, Janosch, German intelligence, the German government says we're pretty certain that there's already been some meddling and predict there'll probably be some more interference, Russian interference, in our upcoming election. What is the German intelligence community—how is it handling all this? What's it doing?

JANOSCH DELCKER: Well, I mean they were, as you know, visibly trying to send out that message as you said, sending out this message you know we are monitoring what you're doing. You know we are observing what's happening online. I think part of this sort of like push forward was also to anticipate some of the things that could happen next year, to sort of like prepare the public for it. And at the same time, I mean they are all really staffing up when it comes to like cyber defendants’ strategies, both the parties as well as the institutions in Germany. They really sort of like you know really trying to sort of secure all their IT systems better.

PC: Janosch, nice to talk to you. Thank you.

JANOSCH DELCKER: Thank you so much.

PC: Janosch Delcker is a correspondent with Politico Europe and we reached him in Berlin. Well, Germany isn't the only country in Europe that Russia has its sights on. And hackers are not its only tool.

SOUNDCLIP

[Through translator] We can see how the will of the European people is portrayed by unknown civil servants in Brussels. These are European Union employees who are in fact puppets of the United States of America. Long live France. Long live Russia. And long live Franco-Russian friendship.

[Sound: Applause]

PC: That’s Andrei Issaev, Russia's vice-president of the Duma, which is Russia's lower house. And while hearing anti-European Union sentiment from a key Putin ally may not surprise, the venue might. Issaev was speaking at the national congress of France's far-right National Front party two years ago, an early sign of Russia's interest in spreading its influence throughout Europe. Leaders from far-right parties in Austria, the Netherlands and Bulgaria sat on stage, clapping along with the audience to Mr. Issaev's comments. Anna Nemtsova has been following Russia's creeping influence in Europe. She's a reporter with Newsweek and The Daily Beast and she joins us from Moscow. Anna, hello.

ANNA NEMTSOVA: Hello. Thank you.

PC: You were just listening to our last guest who was talking about Germany and then you just heard that clip from Andrei Issaev speaking in France. In what other European countries does Russia have, well, political allies, so to speak?

ANNA NEMTSOVA: Well, you know in the last few years, we started noticing that the leaders of far-right groups and parties were invited by Russian top officials to visit Moscow or to even attend far-right’s congresses in St. Petersburg and Moscow. So I became interested and travelled to Vienna, Hungary and Sweden to speak with people, local people and with politicians, about why they think the Kremlin was interested in building a bridge to these groups. And it was interesting to hear what people said because here in Moscow for instance, one of the biggest experts on far-right movements, Alexander Verkhovsky, the head of SOVA Group, told me that the Kremlin needed some other card to play besides the gas and to say look. Look at Europeans. They really like us. They really support every word Putin says about the West and criticising the West. So it was interesting to see in Vienna for instance, meeting with local journalists and local editors, that many of them listened to Russia Today and find Russia Today news more interesting than local news on television.

PC: And just for people who don't know—just for people who don’t know, Russia Today is—

[Crosstalk]

ANNA NEMTSOVA: So obviously there was a very big influence by Russian media in Austria that I discovered.

PC: Sorry to interrupt you. I just wanted to say for people who aren't familiar with Russia Today, it is Russia's 24/7 English television station that's broadcast in many European countries.

ANNA NEMTSOVA: That’s right.

PC: Okay. You know it's one thing to talk about ideology. Like we kind of all think the same, as you suggested Putin has been saying. Viability is quite another thing and we heard from Janosch saying you know it's a small kind of fringe parties or on the spectrum in Germany that can maybe where Russia find its influence and its interference. And I'm just wondering beyond Germany, how many of these far-right groups or far-left for that matter, can wield real political power in their own countries?

ANNA NEMTSOVA: In Austria, the party called Freedom Party, the right wing party—which is supported by 52 per cent of population—talks openly, positively about Putin’s policy in Europe. For instance, Johann Gudenus, one of the party leaders speaks about the Kremlin's policy recently and he compares European Union's attitude for Turkey for instance, the membership in Turkey. If the EU, on the one hand—I’m quoting here—implements sanctions against Russia, a European country and on the other hand, negotiates membership with a non-EU country Turkey, such an EU is taking a dangerous route, Gudenus said. So Putin’s circle of friends in Europe is growing and it is obviously the leader of Hungary— Orbán, Mr. Orbán and Mr. Gudenus—they meet with Russian officials often and there are also relationships built on a different level. I was in Sweden talking with activist who is collecting information about far-right groups, meeting with Russian far-right activists. And they showed me a Swedish website of a group called Nordic Resistance, the far-right group that is openly supporting Nazi ideas. On that website, this group mentions Russian party [unintelligible] that is represented in Russian parliament today. Apparently Nordic Resistance last year received money from the Russian party. So this is one of the examples is not very popular by Russia but it is still interested that a pro-Kremlin party is communicating, helping and supporting a far-right group in Sweden.

PC: I want to just kind of see where there may be some cracks in the Russian interference in the European sphere. So if we look at—there’s a far-right candidate in Austria, Norbert Hofer, who lost his presidential bid earlier this month. To what extent for you, Anna, does that suggest that there may be a limit to far-right politics in Europe and the influence that Russia may have on them?

ANNA NEMTSOVA: Absolutely. It’s up to—people decide. I meet very worried, very concerned Europeans to try to resist these far-right groups here in Russia, by the way, and it's important to mention this. Far-right groups are not popular. They’re not supported by a majority of the population. They have very small percent of all support. And Mein Kamf, for instance, is banned in Russia. In the last two, three years, leaders of far-right groups had been arrested. Many of them are in jail for long terms. So that is just a small example how even in Russia, the population is not embracing far-right ideas.

PC: You were listening in. Vladimir Putin had his year-end press conference this morning. And I just want to read something he said because this suggests, from him anyway, that the kind of take that a lot of people are saying is happening, he says isn’t true. And this is his quote. He said, “Democrats”—and he's referring to around the world—“Democrats are losing on every front and looking for people to blame everywhere. They need to learn to lose with dignity.” What do you make of that? You know basically he’s saying look, you're losing and now you're blaming. You're blaming me.

ANNA NEMTSOVA: That’s right. It was very interesting to listen to on this part of the press conference. I think that in general, the tone of a lecturer or professor who's been in power for over 15 years and has seen it all and has heard it all, he's teaching the Europeans and the West to be here to look at themselves in their own mirror and stop blaming Russia. Whatever question was asked today, the main line that Putin had was, “I'm right. I'm right in every single situation and the West is losing. They’re failing.” And this year is obviously—at least what we could hear between the lines—that Putin is celebrating a victorious year.

PC: Anna, just before I let you go—what is Russia's end goal in Europe?

ANNA NEMTSOVA: Well, today Putin was saying that he wants to find more partners to unite people, to have more [unintelligible] and more partners with the West. But the idea is that, it’s one thing to win a few situations, to celebrate Trump’s victory in Russia. And another thing is to capitalize the victories. That's what the Kremlin's officials say. Now we have to capitalize our good news and see anti-Russian sanctions cancelled and that's what has not happened yet. And it’s a question that it’s going to happen next year.

PC: Anna, thank you for your analysis. Appreciate it.

ANNA NEMTSOVA: Thank you.

PC: Anna Nemtsova is a reporter with Newsweek as well as The Daily Beast. She's in Moscow. We did request an interview with Russia's ambassador to Canada. But we did not hear back. If you want to comment on this story, do get in touch or any other story for that matter here on The Current. You can find us: www.facebook.com/CBCthecurrent, if you prefer Facebook, on Twitter, @thecurrentCBC, or you can email us. And you can do that by going to our website, www.cbc.ca/thecurrent. Once you're there, click on that contact link. Well, the CBC News is next. And then beyond bedside manner, new research suggests that with a female doctor, rather than a male, you may just live longer. We're going to hear from the study's co-author that is coming up in just a bit. I'm Piya Chattopadhyay. You’re listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

Why women doctors might be better for your health

Guests: Dr. Ashish Jha, Tanya van Biesen

PC: Hi. I’m Piya Chattopadhyay and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

[Music: Theme]

PC: Still to come, we're going to revisit our interview with Alex Prud’homme, nephew of the original celebrity chef, Julia Child. He'll reflect on the life and lasting legacy of Julia Child who changed the way most of us cook and eat. That is in a half an hour. And we'll hear why female physicians may be just what the doctor ordered. But first, a postscript on sanctuary cities. Yesterday here on The Current, we heard about the brewing US debate over so-called sanctuary cities—cities such as LA, Washington, DC and Santa Fe, New Mexico—that shelter undocumented immigrants by refusing to help the federal government fully enforce immigration laws. US President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to crack down on these safe havens when he takes office by cutting their federal funding. We heard from Javier Gonzales, the mayor of Santa Fe, New Mexico, about his city's choice to formally reaffirm its sanctuary status.

SOUNDCLIP

One, I wanted to make sure that we stood up and stood against any policy that would be harmful and two, it really comes down to privatization of local law enforcement resources. And having to take on an additional function for the federal government that's not paid and certainly is not part of what our priority is, in terms of checking these statuses, is something that we're going to resist.

PC: That’s Santa Fe, New Mexico mayor, Javier Gonzales. After that segment aired yesterday, many of you wrote in. Willy Ward from Kamloops, B.C. emailed: “It is so disturbing how Trump supporters ignore the law and factual evidence in their bully quest to displace so many people that are doing nothing except trying to live a life free of conflict. Your guest from the right wing think tank twists in the wind with his anecdotal examples. Ignorance is obviously bliss to this man.” Grant Smith from Blenheim, Ontario had a different opinion. He writes: “Isn't referring to an illegal alien as an ‘undocumented immigrant’ something akin to referring to a heroin dealer as an ‘unlicensed pharmacist’?” Lorne White wrote in to say: “Wouldn't the best solution to illegal immigration in any country be to severely fine an employer who hires an illegal immigrant? They wouldn't sneak across borders if there weren't jobs for them!” And finally on this story, Cliff Le Jeune emailed: “Listening to the man defending Donald Trump's position on sanctuary cities, it sounds like the same narrow and futile conversation over and over. Instead of finding ways to live in harmony, they remain rooted in building protectionist and populist policies that cannot stop the trend. Do they really think they can continue to build those walls higher and higher as a solution?" Thank you everyone who wrote in. As always, we like to hear from you when you write in. Sometimes we share your letters on the air so you can get in touch with us. We also share your tweets. You can tweet us @thecurrentCBC, like and post on our Facebook page and e-mail us by clicking on the contact link on our website which is www.cbc.ca/thecurrent. By the way, we're here over the holidays so you can talk to us then as well. I'm Piya Chattopadhyay and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current. Well, in medical news this week, researchers at Harvard may have discovered the secret to a longer life. That is: have a woman doctor. Yes, this was research into the outcomes of elderly patients, some with male doctors and some with female doctors. And according to the study, patients have a better chance of living longer if they're seen by a woman rather than a man. In just a moment, we'll hear from one of the co-authors of that study. But first, we took to the streets of Calgary to ask about people's own experiences.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: In my own personal experience, I have seen men and women for doctors. I have noticed all the women doctors that I've seen, have had a more personable bedside manner.

VOICE 2: There is no difference. I have been to both male and female doctors. No difference. They're both well trained and there's really no qualitative or quantitative difference.

VOICE 3: I always used a male doctor until I got older and then I preferred to go to a female doctor. I've had bad experience with both. It depends on the doctor entirely. Especially with an oncologist. Yeah, yeah. He was really bad. His attitude towards cancer. He says oh, he really didn't like being there. It wasn't very helpful at all.

VOICE 4: I have not had a female doctor either, only because that's all that was available in our small town. But I would believe they would be more compassionate. But then on the other hand, maybe not as blunt. Maybe you need the bluntness too, now and again.

PC: Well, not an entirely clear diagnosis from those folks in Calgary. But one thing that we do know about Canadian doctors is that more and more of them are women. Currently 40 per cent of doctors in Canada are women and that's up about three and a half per cent from 2011. On top of that, nearly all of the country's medical schools now have more women enrolled than men. So today we're going to take a look at just where women are outpacing men professionally and why. So first, let's take the pulse of the study comparing male and female doctors and to do that, we're joined by Dr. Ashish Jha. He's one of the co-authors of the study and a professor of health policy at Harvard University’s School of Public Health. He's also a practicing general internist. We've reached him in Newton, Massachusetts. Hello.

DOCTOR ASHISH JHA: Good morning.

PC: Why did you want to study this issue?

DOCTOR ASHISH JHA: Well, so you know we've known for a long time that men and women seem to practice medicine a little differently from each other. Women tend to be a little bit more evidence-based, a little more scientifically oriented. They tend to communicate more effectively. But we didn't know if any of that really made a difference when it came to patient outcomes. And so we thought let's look at kind of a national sample of Americans who are hospitalized and see if there really is a difference in outcomes between the way men practice medicine and the way women practice medicine.

PC: I’m going to ask you about the study and how you did it in just a sec. But you said generally there has been this thinking that women, women doctors have relied more on evidence-based things. What have the men been relying on?

DOCTOR ASHISH JHA: [laughs] So look, we all should be evidence-based and all of us are trying to practice evidence-based medicine. It's just—the data says that women just do it a little bit better.

PC: Okay. So how do you conduct the study? What did you do?

DOCTOR ASHISH JHA: So we looked at all patients in America over a two year period. All older Americans who were hospitalized for medical conditions so like pneumonia, stroke, heart attack. We didn't look at surgery. And we basically looked at what happened to patients whose primary doctor in the hospital was a woman compared to a primary doctor being a man. And we looked after 30 days and said what are your chances of surviving? And for people who survived, what is the likelihood that you’re going to have to come back to the hospital after you're discharged?

PC: And what's the difference? Was it huge? Was it, you know, negligible?

DOCTOR ASHISH JHA: It was—I sort of describe it as modest but important. So let me explain what I mean. It was about a half a percentage point which may not seem like a big deal. But if you look across the country, across the US, and say if men achieved the same outcomes that women do, that’d be about 32,000 fewer deaths just in the Medicare population. That's about how many people die in car accidents every year. So from a public health point of view, I see this as pretty important.

PC: You looked at elderly patients across the US. Can we—can you extrapolate these findings into the general population?

DOCTOR ASHISH JHA: Yeah. So I actually think we can. There have been a lot of studies that have looked at whether how you take care of a 70 year old with pneumonia is different from how people take care of a 50 year old with pneumonia. And the answer is not really. The truth is for common medical conditions, how we take care of older Americans is pretty good marker of how we take care of everybody with those conditions.

PC: Help me understand a little bit more. Earlier you said again about evidence-based and you know there's the old trope about women having a better bedside manner than men. And maybe it's not a trope. Maybe it manifests itself on the ground. But when you did your study and you looked, like what did you account for what exactly do women doctors—and I know were kind of generalizing here—but do differently that would account for this difference in mortality?

DOCTOR ASHISH JHA: Yeah. So let me tell you what we did do and we couldn't do. So we try to account for all the potential differences—how sick the patients were, which hospitals people were getting care in—a whole bunch of factors that we worried would you know kind of confound our analysis, would mess up our analysis. And after accounting for everything, we still see this you know what I call modest but important difference. What we couldn't do in our study was actually get into why. We couldn't look at communication or practice patterns in our study. But any study has to be taken in context of kind of all the evidence that's out there. And if you take a step back, look at our study, look at everything else that's been done examining differences between men and women, I think the pattern that emerges is that women seem to achieve a little bit of a better outcome because they seem to be practicing a little bit more effectively—a little more scientifically based, a little better communication. And I think all of that is translating into somewhat better outcomes.

PC: And here's the rub. There's this wage gap that still exists between female and male physicians here in Canada and in the US. Do you know what the wage gap is in the US between generally?

DOCTOR ASHISH JHA: Yeah, I do. So women get paid—accounting for all the differences in work hours, experience—women still get paid about 10 per cent less in the US. They're also less likely to get promoted academically in academic medical centres. So that backdrop, I think, really is important for understanding our study.

PC: Sounds familiar sadly. This all sounds familiar in the sense that we see this in many, many industries. Why in the medical industry do we see that wage gap though? Especially given like look, we've known for a long time women doctors, female doctors, rely more heavily on evidence-based practices and so on. Why is there a wage gap then?

DOCTOR ASHISH JHA: Yeah. I think you know first of all, I would say I don’t think we really understand why the wage gap exists in almost any industry I think it's really subtle forms of discrimination. Obviously explicit discrimination is banned by the law—but how wages are set, how people are promoted, how much of a wage increase people get—all this stuff is really I think influenced by a lot of factors. But what we know is that it's not clinically justifiable. And really given our study that women are achieving at least the same but I would argue better outcomes, those wage gaps, I think, become particularly unconscionable.

PC: Okay. Dr. Jha, what's the conclusion people should draw from your findings? I mean you know should they dial up a new doctor and try and find a female doctor? What should we take away from all of this?

DOCTOR ASHISH JHA: Yeah. So I think for patients, consumers, this is something worth taking note of but I wouldn't necessarily act on this yet. Look, first of all, there are plenty of great male physicians. I think for me the most important thing that comes out of this is two things. One is we know that women are not only practising just as well but really better in many contexts than men. And second, we have to understand why exactly that is. And we have to help everybody, all physicians—men and women— practice more evidence-based medicine so everybody can have great outcomes whoever your doctor is.

PC: One of the ways that you might not motivate anyone but a group of male doctors is to say hey, the women, your women counterparts are doing much better than you. So you know pick it up. So what has to happen so male physicians adopt some of the best practices that you say we're seeing from their female counterparts?

DOCTOR ASHISH JHA: Yeah. So look, I think all of us when we go to the hospital, we want to be treated you know kind of using the latest scientific evidence, right? And what we know is that the male physicians seem to be doing it just a little bit worse. And if this motivates men to step up their game and to try to catch up to their female colleagues, I think that would be great for everybody.

PC: What about you? Are you going to up your game? You're a male doctor.

DOCTOR ASHISH JHA: I am a male doctor and it has made me go back and think about how I practice. I think we all need to—men and women—have to go back and kind of think about how we practice and try to think about how we do better.

PC: What are you thinking about for yourself?

DOCTOR ASHISH JHA: So look, again, I think there are lots of fabulous male physicians and I think I'm not—well, the thing that I don't want people to do is somehow decide that they're going to drop their male physician to get a female one. There are great doctors who are men, great doctors who are women. The key here is for us to try to understand why this difference exists and how we help everybody. For patients, it's really to engage and make sure your physician is providing good care and listening to you and responding to your needs.

PC: Dr. Ashish Jha, thank you very much for your time.

DOCTOR ASHISH JHA: Piya, nice to be on the show.

PC: Happy holidays.

DOCTOR ASHISH JHA: Happy holidays.

PC: Dr. Ashish Jha is one of the authors of this study and a professor of health policy at Harvard University’s School of Public Health. He was in Newton, Massachusetts. Well, according to my next guest, medicine isn't the only field that could benefit from more women. Tanya van Biesen is the executive director of Catalyst Canada. That's an organization that advocates for more inclusion of women in the workplace. She's here in our Toronto studio. Hi.

TANYA VAN BIESEN: Hi.

PC: Surprised by what you just heard there in the medical realm?

TANYA VAN BIESEN: I am surprised although there are really interesting linkages between what Dr. Jha said and what our research shows.

PC: Okay. So let’s make some links.

TANYA VAN BIESEN: So he just talked about you know the fact that women are performing better in medicine and will that get men, male doctors to up their game? So what we see in the boards, women on boards couple of things. One, when we see more women on boards, we see greater financial performance of the company and a lot of people ask us why that is and what we see is that women tend to have greater board engagement. They have better attendance and interestingly where boards have women on their—you know they have a representation of women on their boards, the attendance of all members of the board goes up.

PC: Peer pressure.

TANYA VAN BIESEN: Peer pressure. So the fact that you just pointed out to Dr. Jha, it actually does work. That moral suasion peer pressure piece does work. So we have lots of evidence to suggest that bringing women into senior teams and on boards improves overall performance of companies in a variety of areas.

PC: Okay. But the increase in women—well, let me just step back for a second. You know you're advocating for inclusion of women on corporate boards. Just how many women are on boards in Canada?

TANYA VAN BIESEN: Yes. That's a great question. The OSC is doing a lot of work around this. And currently, if you look at all of the companies regulated by the Ontario Securities Commission, 12 per cent of board seats are held by women across Canada.

PC: Twelve per cent.

TANYA VAN BIESEN: Twelve per cent. Now if you look at a smaller subset, the top 100 companies in Canada, publicly traded—25 per cent of the board seats there are held by women and in fact there's been great movement there. In 2011, that number was 15 per cent. Today it's 25 per cent. So we're seeing some leading companies really move the dial. The companies that are laggards are often smaller to mid-sized companies, a lot of the junior companies, extractive industries where they're finding it more difficult to find women with the skill sets they're looking for, a whole host of reasons. But that's essentially what the landscape looks like.

PC: A whole bunch of explanations.

TANYA VAN BIESEN: Yeah.

PC: Okay. I want to get back to what we're talking about and it has to do with what you said—the benefits of having more women on boards, one of them being that people show up. The second one—and I think most boards would be highly concerned about this—is the financial bottom line if you have more women on boards. But the increase—here's the question—the increase in women on boards and the increase in a company's financials, they are correlations, right?

TANYA VAN BIESEN: Correlations.

PC: Yeah. So how do you know that there is a causal link?

TANYA VAN BIESEN: So we don't have a causal link. We have a variety of correlations that lead us to some good results. So what we know to be true is that you need a critical mass of women on a board for starters, which we would say is 30 per cent or more. Once you start to see that, you do see improved bottom line performance, return on sales, return on equity, return on invested capital share performance. You also see companies who are able to better attract talent and leverage and retain that talent. The third thing that you see is better corporate reputation. So shareholders and the general public perceive companies that have women on their board as being more ethically responsible, more engaged in environmental issues—so the whole corporate social responsibility piece is important. And frankly, 85 per cent of purchasing decisions are made by women. So you are a better reflection of your marketplace. And then finally, what we see is better group performance. So companies that have women in and among their ranks perform more effectively in groups which means better problem solving skills and that leads to greater innovation. So all correlation, but they are powerful messages.

PC: Okay. You know a lot of what you say we've been talking about for some time. This isn't sort of like Eureka moment like wow, having more women in leadership positions anywhere actually is better for a whole bunch of things. So then the question becomes why don't we see it on the ground? In other words, if women are better for the bottom line and a whole bunch of other workplace and company things, why is there just still such an inequity on boards?

TANYA VAN BIESEN: Good question. So I always like to start from the positive. I think again, there are tremendous companies in Canada making great strides. So I would point to for instance, the banks who are—they all have 33 per cent upwards of over 40 per cent female representation on their boards and 40 per cent plus female representation in their senior management teams. We're seeing some great strides taking place in professional services, which historically had been a tougher place so that is really positive. So there are definitely industries and pockets that are doing good work. And even in the extractive industries where it's been tough, they are actually taking some conscious steps. Why is it not taking hold on a broad base? Frankly, conscious and unconscious bias. There are still those issues out there.

PC: Would quotas help?

TANYA VAN BIESEN: Oh, good question. We've seen both work around the world frankly. I'm still I think a bit of an idealist. I believe in targets and I believe that companies can get this done on their own with intentional action and we've seen that in lots of great examples in Canada. Would quotes help? On the one hand, yes, but I do think there are downsides to quotas.

PC: You mentioned banks doing well, Canadian banks doing well in terms of women in leadership positions and then servicing out the bank’s bottom line. What other industries are there where women have this sort of competitive advantage over men, where we're really seeing that if you just hire women, promote women, put them on your boards, that it changes so much for the better?

TANYA VAN BIESEN: So I wouldn't actually break it down to an industry. I would say a profession, much like the medical profession discussion you just had. If you look at investment management, so portfolio management, fund management, that's an interesting area where some similar research has surfaced to what you just discussed in the medical profession. Women do tend to outperform men for a couple of reasons that I think are very similar. They tend to do more research. They tend to have greater conviction in their ideas and therefore, they're able to block out a lot of the market noise around them and they tend to trade far less actively which tends to erode returns. And so the combination of those things helps them to on balance, outperform men in that industry.

PC: You worked in executive board recruitment for many years. So you talked about some of the biases, obstacles per se, but what obstacles did you see for women? Like when they came in and you were talking with them, what did you see sort of on the ground that you thought that's an obstacle for them, either societally or individually or collectively for women to take some responsibility in this?

TANYA VAN BIESEN: So the biggest, most obvious obstacle is that the desire at the board level is still very much in general, I'm generalizing, to have sitting or former CEO or sitting or former CFOs or someone who has run a very large division or PnL of a business. Because we don't have enough women holding those posts, that creates an immediate barrier for women to get on boards. So the idea is boards need to think more expansively about the skill sets that they bring to the table and therefore can open up more candidate pools.

PC: And more diversity even amongst their ranks in many facets, not just in the gender facet. How do we change the—this is a big question—how do we change the culture and combat some of these biases?

TANYA VAN BIESEN: So couple of big things. One, what we've been doing a lot of—we engage men in this discussion. This is not a women's issue. This is not a bunch of women in a corner talking to themselves. This is a societal issue and we need to all come together. So engaging men has been a very proactive intentional thing on our part and companies are really starting to embrace that. Let's all get together. This is not about trading jobs. I get one and you don't. This is about creating greater prosperity and innovation for Canada and opening up new opportunities. So that's the first thing. Unconscious bias training—we need to keep doing it. We need to make people aware of the fact that we all bring biases to the table. But how does that translate into the workplace and how we conduct ourselves as leaders? We need to think broadly about diversity inclusion because this country is built upon immigration and will continue to grow on immigration. So it's not just a gender question. It's about all forms of diversity and how we include them and leverage that talent. To me, this is 100 per cent a talent game. Don't close yourself off to 50 per cent of the talent pool. That's crazy. Open it up and get the best talent you can.

PC: Tanya van Biesen, thank you for coming in and talking with us.

TANYA VAN BIESEN: Pleasure. Thank you.

PC: Tanya van Biesen is the executive director of Catalyst Canada, an organization that advocates for more inclusion of women in the workplace. She was in our Toronto studio. Well, we have a minute or so now to tell you about an interview that's coming up next week here on The Current and it's kind of become an annual tradition for The Current this time of year. I'll be talking to journalist Paul Salopek. The Pulitzer Prize winner has been taking a slow, slow trip around the world. He's been on the road on his feet for about four years now and he's reached a milestone recently—10 million steps travelled—the speed have carried him more than 8,000 kilometres. This year, Paul Salopek has walked from Baku, Azerbaijan which is where we checked in with him last December. He's now in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan and he's been traveling along the old Silk Road looking at modern day trade along that route. He told us about some of the people he met along the way.

SOUNDCLIP

One man who walked with me almost entirely across the country of Uzbekistan, you know I met through the Internet. The ultimate post-modern Silk Road technology, right? And I meet Aziz at the border between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Uzbekistan, especially in the West, is wilderness. It's this enormous wild plateau that nobody really in the right mind crosses on foot anymore. There's a lonesome highway and an industrial rail line and that's about it. And so who meets me, is Aziz, and he's wearing Bermuda shorts and wrap-around sunglasses and top-sider sneakers. And I’m saying, does this guy realize that we’re walking across you know a chunk of territory beside some countries that's all grassland? And Aziz, who is an urbanite, grew into the walk and in a sense again, this is what happened. He took possession of it. He didn't want to stop walking after walking 2,200 kilometres across his own country because walking is addictive in a positive sense. It kind of wakes you up from your nap. It forces you to engage with people. You have 20 or 30 conversations a day.

PC: I’m going to be talking with Paul Salopek. Well, I've talked to him. You can hear it next Wednesday to hear my full conversation. Journalist and National Geographic fellow Paul Salopek as he continues his slow journey around the world. I can tell you it's a conversation you don't want to miss. As well next week here on The Current, some other annual traditions we have at this time of year. We'll hear from some satirists, Amanda Barker and Terry Fallis, as well as we'll check in with some of Canada's top journalists about the year that almost t’was. That's coming up next week. But coming up in our next half hour, break out the butter. We're taking a trip down memory lane about none other than the woman who introduced French cuisine to Americans and to we Canadians—Julia Child. I'm Piya Chattopadhyay. You're listening to the Friday edition of The Current. We're back in just a bit.

ENCORE: 'The revolutionary in pearls': Julia Child's recipe for success

Guests: Alex Prud’homme

PC: I’m Piya Chattopadhyay and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current. As we head into a weekend where many of you will be doing a lot of eating, we want to share with you one of our favorite conversations from this season. Last month as part of our season-long project The Disruptors, we looked at the legacy of the original TV celebrity chef, Julia Child, because as an American master of French cuisine, she broke all the rules and changed how North Americans viewed the act of eating. Here is Anna Maria Tremonti and our look at the iconic Julia Child.

SOUNDCLIP

[Music: Sci-Fi]

VOICE 1: The disruptors.

VOICE 2: Julia Child presents the chicken sisters. Ms. Broiler. Ms. Fryer. Ms. Roaster. Ms. Caponette. Ms. Stewer and Old Madame Hen. But we’re spotlighting Ms. Roaster of the year. We’re roasting Ms. Chicken today on The French Chef.

[Sound: Laughter]

[Music: Cheerful]

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Long before Jamie Oliver, Rachael Ray, Anthony Bourdain, there was the original celebrity chef, Julia Child. With her warbly voice and unflagging good humour, she was an iconic TV presence from the 1960s onward, as you heard there. She introduced French cuisine to North America, teaching us all new ways to cook in our own homes. Julia Child died in 2004. She was 92 years old. But her legacy lives on because she forever changed the way we think about food. She was a disruptor and as part of our project, The Disruptors, we’re looking at her life and legacy and we're starting in her kitchen. Julia Child’s kitchen is a popular display at the National Museum of American History in Washington, DC, and Paula Johnson curates food history collections there.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: I’m Julia Child.

[Music: Cheerful]

VOICE 2: Well, this is actually Julia Child's home kitchen from her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This was the design that Julia and her husband Paul settled on when they settled in the house in 1961. By the time they got to Cambridge, this was their 12th kitchen and so they knew exactly what they wanted. They knew what Julia needed to do her cooking and so they designed it to suit her. And so for example, the countertops are a couple inches taller than ordinary because of course she was six foot three and having a taller countertop, she didn't have to stoop over. This kitchen, when you look at it at first, it seems pretty simple. It seems sort of small and you know the cabinetry is very simply painted. But if you look closer, you can see that this is a serious workspace. You can see some of the pegboard has outlines around the pans and the pots and that is again to make sure that everything is put away properly. Things are categorized. You have the pots and pans that are used on the range are very close at hand. You have the knives that are placed on magnetic strips on both sides of the sink. She was a self-avowed gadget freak, knife freak. She loved to try new tools, new equipment. She did have, I think, many fish scalers. I don't know how many fish scalers one person needs but she had quite a few. She also basically said everybody needs you know at least three knives but you can see she has many more than that because she again, collected knives to suit different tasks.

VOICE 1: This is Julia Child. Bon appetit.

[Music: Cheerful]

VOICE 2: Julia enjoyed cooking for her friends and family. As she said, the kitchen is the beating heart of the household. And it would have been her desire for everybody who sees this to feel the same way about their own kitchens.

[Music: Cheerful]

AMT: Paula Johnson curates food history collections at the National Museum of American History in Washington, DC. Alex Prud’homme is the author of The French Chef in America, which chronicles how Julia Child remade herself after her initial success with the book, Mastering the Art of French Cuisine. He also happens to be Julia Child’s grandnephew and he's in our New York City studio. Hello.

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: Hello there.

AMT: Did you ever have a chance to be in that kitchen in her home and cook with her?

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: Oh, many times. And for me it's odd to go back to the Smithsonian and see the kitchen behind Plexiglas because I did spend a lot of time there. And I associate it with delicious aromas and fantastic creations on the old Garland stove in the corner. So when I see it, I want to just walk through that Plexiglas and sit down, have a glass of wine and see what's cooking.

AMT: Your fingerprints are probably still somewhere in that kitchen.

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: Actually, the chewing gum that my sisters and I surreptitiously put under the kitchen table may still be there. [chuckles]

AMT: [laughs] Well, what was she like? How does she compare with the person we saw on television?

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: Well, the Julia that you saw on television was actually the real Julia, the person that I knew. I think it slightly amplified for TV. She was a great ham, as she put it. She loved to perform. She was very genuine.

AMT: Tell me about the moment she decided she wanted to dedicate her life to learning about French food.

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: Well, I can give you the precise moment. It was at lunch on November 3rd, 1948. She had never been to France before. Her husband Paul brought her to France because he was posted to the US embassy and they took the SS America across the Atlantic through a terrible storm, landed in Le Havre and drove to Paris. And along the way they stopped in Rouen and went to La Couronne, The Crown, which is the oldest restaurant in France and had lunch and it was a lunch of sole meunière, which is sole in a sputtering butter sauce, with wine which Julia had never had at lunch before and salade and lovely café filtre at the end. Julia was transported by her first French meal and she said it was the meal that changed my life.

AMT: Hmm. How much of a departure was her focus on food from the life she and her husband Paul had before?

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: Pretty radical. She was raised in Pasadena, California in an upper middle-class household. They had a gardener and a driver and a chef. So she and her mother and siblings spent very little time in the kitchen. She basically knew how to boil water and burn toast and didn't really have much of an interest in cooking other than that she loved to eat as a young woman. But when Paul brought her to France, a switch went off and it just changed her life. And she dedicated the rest of her life to cooking and teaching cookery and writing and talking about it. It’s when they moved back to the States in 1961 that this remarkable transformation happens. Paul retires from the Foreign Service and very consciously steps back from his public role and pushes Julia forward. Her first cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, is published in 1961. She gets on television first in 1962 and then starts to perform as the French Chef in 1963. And she gets on television for the first time when she's invited on a show called What I've Been Reading in Boston. It was at the local PBS station WGBH. And she was invited to come talk about the cookbook. But Julia being Julia, she didn't just bring the book, she brought a hot plate and a frying pan and some eggs and lots of butter and proceeded to make an omelette in the French way and in fact was so intent on making the omelet that she forgot to mention the title of her book. But the good news is that all 27 people who were watching the show wrote in and said we want more of that tall lady cooking. The honchos at WGBH sort of looked at each other and said hmm, maybe a cooking show with this Julia Child person might work out. And so in 1963, they started up The French Chef.

AMT: Okay. Well, we have a montage of a few episodes. Let's listen.

SOUNDCLIP

[Music: Cheerful]

Welcome to The French Chef. I'm Julia Child. You know the egg can be your best friend if you just give it the right break. And I'm not talking just about breakfast eggs, but eggs for brunch, eggs for lunch. Now take for instance, oeuf en cocotte, or eggs baked in little dishes like this. These are called little ramekins.

[Music: Cheerful]

Get acquainted with the Hollandaise family today on The French Chef. This is Hollandaise sauce— lemony and rich and buttery. And all you need to do is just taste it and you know it's homemade. Mmm. Delicious.

[Music: Cheerful]

Welcome to The French Chef. I'm Julia Child. You could really call this chocolate mousse ambrosia. And while you make it, you're going to learn several fine techniques such as how to cook eggs in sugar until they make a thick and creamy mass. And this is one of those techniques you can use for French buttercream frostings and cake fillings. And also you're going to master egg whites. That is the gateway to French soufflés and cakes. So you're not only learning a mousse, you're getting sort of a great bunch of marvelous techniques which will serve you well. That's my little pitch for you learning the moves.

AMT: Learning the moves. Don’t you love the music, huh? [laughs]

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: I love the whole thing. It just brings it back. I love hearing her voice and she's so enthusiastic. You feel like she's there next to you kind of guiding you through these things and she mixes the humour with the pedagogy. You know it's so interesting listening to that chocolate mousse at the end where she says you know you're not just learning how to make a mousse. You're learning the techniques and you're learning things that you can apply to other dishes and that’s sort of classic Julia, where she mixed humour with teaching in a very compelling way.

AMT: She started in the era of black and white television and she carried on. What inspired Julia Child to keep experimenting with her television presence?

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: You know if I had to pick one adjective to describe her, I'd say inquisitive. She was just constantly curious and constantly pushing. She said she wasn't ambitious and didn't have a grand plan. You know with all due respect, she must have had some ambition because she was ground-breaking in so many realms. I mean in the books she did and the television she did, in the documentary films she made and in the way she lived her life. So she was driven but in a very kind of pleasant, not overbearing way. And she referred to herself as an eternal pupil and a teacher of cookery more than a celebrity.

AMT: How did she change the culinary landscape in North America?

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: In many ways. There were notebooks like the ones that she did at the time which were French cookbooks for the American audience laid out in a very logical way with exact measurements and step-by-step procedures illustrated from the cook’s perspective, not from sort of the third person which is the standard of the day. And this was really aimed for people like herself who were dedicated home cooks, who were adventurous and ambitious. And the television that she did, she just had so much fun. I mean you just heard it on those clips that she was having a great time. But at the same time she was extremely instructive and really knew her stuff and so she kind of made things that were a bit complicated seem easy and seem approachable and she really held the viewer’s hand in a sense. And you heard in the clip how she kept saying oh, it's so delicious and she was constantly tasting and it made you want to cook and made you want to dive through the TV and eat that boeuf bourguignon or that tarte tatin, you know? And then she did documentary films which you know people just simply weren't doing about food at that time. She, you know anticipated a lot of what's happening now by decades. And so she was really a pioneer and a revolutionary.

AMT: She really actually even changed what grocery stores carried.

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: That's true. She exhorted her audience to demand you know fresh mushrooms and exotic vegetables like leeks or you know herbs like tarragon and parsley or tools like the garlic press or later on you know the Cuisinart. And when the audience did so, the retailers responded because they would sell out on all those things. And you know she wasn't the only one doing this. She wasn't solely responsible for the food revolution in North America in the sixties and seventies. But she was its leading voice and I would argue she was the first celebrity TV chef. And so when she spoke, the medium was so powerful that it really resonated in the culture.

AMT: Did she realize the irony of how her work to preserve the French culture of eating was symbolically overturning the dinner table in North America?

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: I think she did. That's a great question. You know I call her the revolutionary in pearls because you know on the one hand she was kind of a patrician woman, sort of traditional in certain ways and certainly a defender of tradition in French cooking. And yet in her personal life, she was a revolutionary. She was upending the shibboleths and the standards of the day. Let's remember what food was like in the early sixties when she first appeared on the scene, which was you know Jell-O and iceberg lettuce and meals in a can.

AMT: Velveeta cheese.

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: Yeah. I mean this space age horrible food and all the advertising was about well, let us take care of you, the little woman in the kitchen. You know let's make it easy. You don't have to worry about this stuff. Julia took the exact opposite approach. Her approach was let me show you how to make a really great meal that requires some work and you get your hands dirty. And it just—people really responded to that as a reaction against all of that kind of commercial glop they were being fed.

AMT: Did she become rich as a result of her fame?

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: She did fine but she was resolutely non-commercial. She never endorsed products or chefs or individual restaurants. She was very careful to cover up the labels on ingredients she used on television. She turned down million-dollar endorsement deals left and right. So she certainly forsook a lot of money. But that's not why she was doing what she was doing. She was doing her cooking shows and her books, in her films because she loved to cook and to teach cookery. And that's really what turned her on. But she certainly wasn't like the modern celebrity chefs that you know are basically CEOs and celebrities first.

AMT: Has a product line, yeah.

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: Right.

AMT: As you point out, she was the first celebrity chef, the television celebrity chef so many have now followed. Some chefs do have a cult following on all their product lines. She was alive to see some of this change. What did she think?

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: I think she had mixed feelings to be honest. You know she saw cooking as a civilized art, as she put it and she liked the camaraderie and the creativity of cooking. And today what you see is competition and soap opera melodrama. And I think she would have dismissed that out of hand as something that wasn't you know true or real. It's a manufactured product in a sense. On the other hand, these cooking shows that seem to happen 24/7 now have brought a huge audience to food. And I think she'd be really pleased to see how many people in North America consider themselves foodies. And as she would say, are “eating with gusto.” It was one of her favorite words. And you know going out more, buying cookware more. They're more informed about wine and ingredients and that conversation is really engaged. And it's remarkable. So I think she would have mixed feelings you know on the one hand a little bit disappointed by the razzle dazzled, on the other hand encouraged by the widening of the conversation.

AMT: She'd be proud of some of them too, huh? Because she mentored some of today’s celebrity chefs.

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: Yeah. In fact one of the guys I interviewed for this book is Emeril Lagasse, who she mentored. And he, to this day, credits her with getting him on television, inspiring him as a kid. He's kind of the lynchpin between Julia's era of cooking on television and the modern sort of CEO celebrity era. He's the guy who is the transition figure there.

AMT: And there are others too, huh? Lidia Bastianich, Sara Moulton.

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: Yeah. And especially as women chefs, they were very much influenced by Julia's model. I just saw Lidia the other day in Toronto as a matter of fact. You know Julia got her on one of her programs in the 1990s. It was the first time I believe that Lidia was on TV and they won an Emmy for that particular episode. And now look at Lidia. She's got her own little empire going. Same with Sara Moulton who Julia mentored.

AMT: And Alex, we've been talking about her as a disruptor in the food world and most people who are disruptors face resistance. What challenges did she face?

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: Well, in the seventies Julia separated herself from her old persona which was the French chef and cooking just classical French cuisine and she reinvented herself. She re-Americanized herself. She began to write in the first person as Julia Child and she developed a really kind of distinctive voice, the one that we came to know on television, and she was able to transfer that to the page. And it was not easy for her but she did it and then she started to use this voice rather loudly and aggressively. And she, you know would champion Planned Parenthood and left-leaning Democratic politics. She would dismiss things like nouvelle cuisine as not being as healthy or revolutionary as its promoters declared. She questioned vegetarianism and nutritionists and all of these things kind of stirred the pot, which she loved to do in her kind of mischievous way, and gained her a huge following but also some enemies. Amazingly some of which were within the ranks of fellow cooks. There were the Hesses, a couple that wrote for the New York Times who said that Julia was not a chef though she played one on television. And Madeleine Kamman, a woman who was French-born and Massachusetts-based who taught cookery who said that Julia was neither French nor a chef and that she, Madeline was and therefore she should be known as the French Chef. [chuckles] So Julia kind of took these criticisms in stride and was careful not to respond in public. But in private, I found a letter where she's saying about Madeleine Kamman, or she who will not be named, that she'd like to take Madeleine by the short hairs and grind her up in the Cuisinart piece by piece.

AMT: Whoa.

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: So she was annoyed in private.

AMT: Okay. So that scary knife, those big knives. You’ve got to be careful. [laughs]

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: The fright knife, yes. Exactly.

AMT: Interesting. We heard earlier the National Museum of American History in Washington, DC has her kitchen as a display. It's very popular to this day. We wanted to hear what some of the visitors had to say about it. Listen.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: I am fascinated by these bajillions of thing over here.

VOICE 2: It's fascinating because I’ve always loved her and I used to follow her TV show on PBS. The first day I got of hers was the Art of French Cooking and I made dishes out of it.

VOICE 3: Every Thanksgiving, I use her recipe for cream mushrooms that his grandmother used to make.

VOICE 4: Julia gave us the recipe.

VOICE 1: There’s a lot of stuff in here. I mean, gosh, the meals that must have been made in this kitchen. It's impressive.

VOICE 6: This is cool. Her arrangement of her pans because she actually drew drawings around what she was doing and the fact that you can just have a sense that she was very organized.

VOICE 7: So when I come here, I think about sitting in front of the PBS television show watching The French Chef with my mother and learning how to cook with my mother through Julia Child.

VOICE 8: I always think of like a little bit of more wine for me, a little bit of wine for the dressing. [laughs] But this is exciting for me being a cook to just see this. It is a part of our history. In the whole cooking culture that she started, she was at the forefront.

VOICE 9: She was an icon. She really was.

AMT: Alex Prud’homme, what are you thinking as you listen to that?

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: Oh, I love it. You know the—

AMT: Well, they love her, huh?

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: Yeah. Well, you know that kitchen display was meant to be a temporary exhibit and proved so popular that it's now fairly well enshrined in the National Museum of American History and it's wonderful to see. You know you see people there of all ages, races, creeds. They kind of think they're going to pass through and they just get stuck there. And it's remarkable, I've seen it happen many times and it's a combination of the kitchen itself is quite interesting. The displays and the cabinets of you know her giant rolling pins and her mortar and pestle which looks like it belonged to a cave man. And the wine that she used on the show which was called Château Gravy Master. It was actually Gravy Master mixed with water to look like wine. And then there's a video loop of some of the old shows like some of the moments you were just playing and it's just kind of irresistible. And now, that kitchen is the entry point to a whole new American history of food hall. They've done a wonderful job with it.

AMT: So when people find out your connection to her, how do they react to you?

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: When I first started to promote the memoir, My Life in France, was people would come up and give me a big hug and some of them would start to burst into tears because it turned out that Julia had really changed their lives. And I wasn't ready for that at first. After the fifth or sixth time, I thought oh, okay. This is a thing. I’ve going to have to get used to it. More often, they just want to know all about her because she was such a genuine person on television and they felt as if they knew her and people invariably referred to her simply as Julia, as if she is a personal friend even though they had never met her.

AMT: Well, for you, what is her most important legacy?

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: Well, it comes down to this optimistic worldview that she has. She would encourage people to be adventurous in their cooking, you know take risks, don't worry about failing and if you do fail, never apologize. But above all, have fun. That was her message and she applied this very optimistic worldview to cooking but one could really apply it to anything in life and I think people just found that empowering.

AMT: I have to tell you, I am so hungry right now.

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: [laughs] Time for some boeuf bourguignon.

AMT: Or maybe some baguette and butter. Anyway.

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: Yeah, sure.

AMT: Thank you so much. It's great to talk to you.

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: My pleasure. Merci and bon appetit.

PC: That was Anna Maria Tremonti’s interview with Alex Prud’homme, the author of The French Chef in America. That interview first aired here on The Current in November. Now if you want to see pictures of Julia Child’s kitchen in the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History, go to our website: www.cbc.ca/thecurrent. And while you're there, you can check out all of the other stories in our year-long project, The Disruptors. That is our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for q. Author Zadie Smith will join Tom Power to talk about her new novel. It's called Swing Time. And remember, you can always take The Current with you to go on the free CBC Radio app. It's free from the App Store or Google Play. We're going to leave you today with a bit of Julia Child herself from a vintage seasonal episode of The French Chef. I'm Piya Chattopadhyay. Happy holidays, everyone. And thank you for lending us your ear here on the Friday edition of The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

We're having a Christmas party and I'm doing a real French flourish with a Yule log, a Buche de Noel with chocolate bark, meringue mushrooms, powdered sugar snow. It looks like a real log and it's just wonderful eating. And you could serve this with coffee or tea but we're going to serve it with some champagne which will be very nice. And so you see the good thing about this Yule log is that after decorating and trimming it, you can sit down and eat it too. That's more than you can say for a Christmas tree. That's all for today on The French Chef. This is Julia Child. Merry Christmas and bon appétit.

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December 23, 2016 full episode transcript

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