Best Of: Samin Nosrat / Elizabeth Gilbert

Summary

Fresh Air: Best Of Samin Nosrat / Elizabeth Gilbert

Episode Date: September 27, 2025
Hosts: Sam Briger & Tonya Mosley

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Overview

This “Best Of” episode of Fresh Air features revealing and vulnerable interviews with two acclaimed writers: Samin Nosrat, author of Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat and the new cookbook Good Things; and Elizabeth Gilbert, famed author of Eat, Pray, Love and the new memoir All the Way to the River. Sam Briger talks with Nosrat about her evolving view of recipes, confronting family and personal trauma, and recalibrating her life priorities post-success and loss. Later, Tonya Mosley interviews Gilbert about caregiving, codependency, addiction, and truth-telling in her latest memoir, reflecting on love, ethical storytelling, and facing the hardest parts of ourselves.

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Samin Nosrat Interview (00:19–26:55)

Main Theme

Samin Nosrat discusses her surprising pivot to writing a book full of recipes (Good Things) despite her avowed dislike of recipes. She reflects on depression, recalibrating her sense of self-worth post-success, the complexities of family, and the importance of ritual, chosen family, and the pursuit of meaning outside of achievement.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Why Samin “Hates” Recipes (04:42–06:47)

• Recipes as Constraint:

  “I feel like they trap us. People can get trapped in a recipe... They feel really constraining, and that constraint hurts my heart.” (Samin, 04:57)

• The Big Picture:

  “There’s only seven or eight ways people cook things all around the world... my goal is to show how all of those things are connected and to show you how you have so much more power and knowledge than you think you do... But sometimes the big picture view can be really overwhelming.” (Samin, 05:43)

• Service Over Philosophy:
  Even though she dreams of liberating home cooks from strict recipes, she realized some people need recipes as a kind of handholding—a practical service.

The Practice of Cooking as “Touching Infinity” (06:47–08:04)

• Quoting Yo-Yo Ma:
  Samin draws from a Yo-Yo Ma interview with Terry Gross, comparing cooking to an artistic ritual that lets you “touch infinity”—an activity that connects to something bigger than oneself.

The Coleslaw Epiphany: Accepting Recipes (08:04–09:28)

• Reluctantly Recipe-Centric:
  After resisting suggestions to write a recipe book, she had a revelatory moment making a vibrant cabbage slaw.

  “I just stood there thinking, wow, this is so delicious and so simple, and if only I had, like, an easy way to share this with people. And then I was like, oh, I guess that’s a recipe.” (Samin, 08:45)

The Long Process behind “Sky High Focaccia” (09:28–12:10)

• Recipes like her focaccia require time and patience, but Samin argues that time substitutes for labor and yields much better results.

  “The time saves labor... thyme in a dough resting and fermentation... does this incredible work of flavor development... it is a much lazier recipe." (Samin, 10:18)

The Paradox of Recipe Precision (12:10–13:26)

• Impossible Precision:
  She struggles with the imprecision of measurements (a cup in England ≠ a cup in America, etc.), wanting recipes “loose enough to allow for flexibility, and... precise enough to guide you."

  “My frustration with recipes is at both ends... Now that I sound like a total mad woman, please buy my book.” (Samin, 12:25)

Shifting from Achievement to Meaning (15:11–16:37)

• Letting Go of Perfection:

  “I don’t want to act like I’ve gone through some like a Buddhist metamorphosis, but I’m trying... Before, I had only made the thing... and the thought of trying to do that again was really overwhelming... So I was like, oh, there is value in just making something. It doesn’t have to be the best thing I’ve ever made.” (Samin, 15:32)

Opening up About Family Trauma (16:37–23:19)

• Estrangement & Fear:
  After her father’s death, Samin feels able to reflect and speak publicly about having distanced herself from him due to fear and complicated history.

  “I lived with a very real fear that he would and could harm me… And that fear of my father, for sure, was present that night when I asked you to not talk about him.” (Samin, 17:49)

• Jewish Ancestry & Ritual:
  Discovering secret family history (Jewish ancestry) and being drawn to the communal rituals in Judaism—particularly the Sabbath as described by Abraham Joshua Heschel—informs her approach to food, ritual, and gathering.

  “There is just this beautiful sort of built in sense of collectivity… And that is an aspect of Judaism that I can really get behind." (Samin, 23:27)

The Power of Ritual & Chosen Family (25:17–26:52)

• Monday Dinners:
  Samin dedicates her book to her chosen family—her friends and her dog Fava—who anchor her with weekly rituals.

  “I have somewhere where I belong. And I don’t know that I’ve really ever had that before. And it feels really good.” (Samin, 25:48)

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Notable Quotes

• On Recipes:

  “There’s only seven recipes in the world... a braise is a stew is a tagine, is simmered meat for tacos, is a delicious pot of sukiyaki.” (Samin, 05:15)

• On Release from Perfectionism:

  “What if you just try and make a thing?” (Samin, 16:12)

• On Healing & Purpose:

  “I want to look back and know that I made a life filled with beauty and friendship and joy and love and nature and goodness…” (Samin, 19:35)

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Elizabeth Gilbert Interview (34:11–51:11)

Main Theme

Elizabeth Gilbert speaks movingly and unflinchingly about love, addiction, caregiving, and the ethics of storytelling, in the context of her new memoir All the Way to the River, chronicling her tumultuous relationship with Rhea Elias, her late partner.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Why Write So Openly? (35:36–38:05)

• From Friendship to Love:
  Rhea and Elizabeth’s bond evolved from deep friendship to romantic love when Rhea’s terminal diagnosis made denials impossible.
• Writing as Survival and Documentation:

  “From that moment, I started writing about her. From that day, from the very day that the terminal cancer diagnosis came in, because I wanted to... download her before I lost her.” (Elizabeth, 36:47)

• Both Rhea and Elizabeth knew and agreed a book would be written.

  “…she was sort of mandating it... We both very much wanted that.” (Elizabeth, 38:27)

Addiction—Both Rhea’s and Elizabeth’s (39:16–41:45)

• Harrowing Descent:
  Rhea—formerly in recovery—spiraled into a “low bottom” opioid and cocaine addiction as her illness progressed.
• Mirroring Addictions:
  Elizabeth describes herself as a “blackout codependent” who, faced with Rhea’s addiction and impending loss, enabled and facilitated destructive behaviors.

  “I had never known Rhea as a drug addict... I was also descending down to the most degraded version of myself...” (Elizabeth, 39:49)

• Love/People Addiction:

  “Raya was addicted to drugs. I am addicted to people... Our famished yearning for love is the great yawning chasm that we keep trying to fill with other things.” (Elizabeth, 41:45)

Sex and Love Addiction: The Mechanics (41:45–45:06)

• Process Addictions:
  Behaviors like “scouting targets, breaking into emotional vaults” (Mosley, 43:44) often consumed her, leading to self-destruction similar to substance abusers.

Codependency and the Edge Between Love & Madness (45:06–49:01)

• When Love Becomes Toxic:
  Elizabeth distinguishes between normal romantic intensity and dangerous, boundaryless fixation:

  “There’s things I can’t do that other people can do... I have to be awake and aware and conscious and respectful of that tendency in me...” (Elizabeth, 45:06)

• Rock Bottom:
  In the nightmare of Rhea’s end-of-life addiction, Elizabeth seriously contemplated killing Rhea to end the suffering:

  “I should just kill her… she just looked up at me and said, Think very carefully about what you’re about to do right now. And I wrote about it because this story doesn't make any sense unless I tell the whole story.” (Elizabeth, 49:01)

The Ethics of Radical Truth-Telling (46:04–51:11)

• Elizabeth reflects deeply on her commitment to tell the full, unvarnished truth of her and Rhea’s intertwined declines, even when it means exposing her own darkest moments:

  “I was not interested once I decided to write this book in my image management, because I was interested in the truth, and I was interested in showing what codependency and sex and love addiction can lead a person into. Even a person who presents as somebody who’s got it all together…” (Elizabeth, 50:35)

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Notable Quotes

• On Addictions:

  “There are people in my life that I’ve used as a stimulant, and there are people in my life that I’ve used as a sedative.” (Elizabeth, 45:06)

• On Truthfulness in Memoir:

  “To withhold anything in order to make myself look better felt very unethical to me.” (Elizabeth, 49:01)

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Timestamps: Key Segments

• 00:19–26:55 — Samin Nosrat Interview: On the real role of recipes, personal transformation, family, and ritual.
• 34:11–51:11 — Elizabeth Gilbert Interview: Radical memoir writing, addiction, codependency, and confronting hard truths.

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Memorable Moments

• Samin’s Slaw Revelation (08:15): The moment she realized even a “recipe hater” sometimes needs... a recipe.
• Gilbert on enabling (39:16): The mutual gravity of addiction—drugs for Rhea, people and love for Liz—pulling them both under.
• Gilbert’s confessional climax (49:01): “I should just kill her...” and Rhea stopping her, a testament to the complexities of love, grief, and desperation.

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Conclusion

This episode is a profound meditation on the creative process, caregiving, imperfection, and the quest for truth. Both Samin Nosrat and Elizabeth Gilbert grapple with how to tell their stories—through food, memory, and confession—in ways that connect, serve, and illuminate, even through their most vulnerable admissions. It’s an invitation to reexamine ritual, family, addiction, and the meaning we make out of our ordinary (and extraordinary) lives.

Transcript

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This message comes from Sony Pictures Classics with Eleanor the Great. June Squibb shines in Scarlett Johansson's directorial debut, a moving, funny and unexpected tale about truth, loss and second chances. Eleanor the Great, now playing only in theaters.

[Sam Briger]

From WHYY in Philadelphia. This is FRESH AIR Weekend. I'm Sam Brigger. Today we speak with Samin Nosrat, author of the celebrated cookbook Salt Fat, Acid Heat. Her second book just came out. It's called Good Things and it's a collection of recipes, even though Nosrat says she hates recipes.

[Samin Nosrat]

Basically, I feel like they trap us. They feel really constraining and that constraint hurts my heart.

[Sam Briger]

Also, Elizabeth Gilbert, the best selling author of Eat, Pray Love, talks about her new memoir, all the Way to the River. It's about her intense relationship with her late partner, Rhea, a love she describes as deep and life changing, but also destructive, marked by addiction and heartbreak. And Justin Chang will review the new romantic fantasy film, A Big, Bold, Beautiful Journey starring Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie. That's coming up on FRESH AIR Weekend.

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[Sam Briger]

I'm Sam Brigger. When I first spoke to Samin Nosrat in 2018, her career could not have been going better. Her 2017 book about cooking Salt Fat Acid Heat had been a triumph. People calling it the best cookbook of the year, the best cookbook of the century. So far, it was decidedly not a book of recipes. Instead, it wanted to teach you how to become a confident enough cook that you didn't need recipes. If you had enough of an understanding about those four elements, and I'll say them again, salt, fat, acid and heat and how they work together, then you'd be able to look in the pantry, check out what you had in the fridge and make something delicious without following someone's step by step instructions. Samin Nasrat had learned to do this herself first at the famous Berkeley restaurant Chez Panisse, where she worked her way up from being a busser to working in the kitchen as a cook. Her book led to a four episode Netflix show where we follow the delightful Samin, who has become one of those celebrities that people feel they're on a first name basis with, exploring those four elements in various food cultures. Japan, Italy, Mexico and the United States. From there, she went on to write as a columnist for the New York Times. And from the outside, it looked like everything was going right for Samin Nusrat. However, it in her new book, Nosrat describes how at this time when she should have been feeling happy about her success, all she felt was emptiness, which during the pandemic led to a debilitating clinical depression and a desire to recalibrate her life to find meaning in a way that wasn't about work. Still, she was trying to write a new book, one that went through many versions and finally ended up as this one. Good recipes and rituals to to share with people you love. And yes, as the subtitle reveals, it does have recipes in it, even as Nasrat says in her introduction that she hates them. Samin Nasrat, welcome back to FRESH air.

[Samin Nosrat]

Oh, Sam, thanks for having me back.

[Sam Briger]

So in your book, as we said, you write that you hate recipes and that writing a book full of recipes felt like a betrayal. So first of all, why the hate on recipes?

[Samin Nosrat]

You know, basically I feel like they trap us or people can get trapped in a recipe and feel so bound to the written letter and to following them to the letter and that that's the only way to do it or that's the only way forward. They feel really constraining. And that constraint hurts my heart because a joke that I say and a lot of the cooks I know say is kind of like there's only seven recipes in the world. There's only seven or eight ways people cook things all around the world. And so if you can sort of zoom way out and see how all the things are connected. You can understand how, you know, a braise is, a stew is a tagine is, you know, like simmered meat for tacos is the same as, like, a delicious pot of sukiyaki. So all around the world, people are doing the same thing. And that's not by accident. It's because there just are a certain number of ways to cook things that result in deliciousness. And that was my goal. That's always my goal, is to show how all of those things are connected and to show you how you have so much more power and knowledge than you think you do. And also, the truth is that people, I've realized, need some hand holding. And my dream is to zoom you out, to, like, the big picture view. But sometimes the big picture view can be really overwhelming is what I've learned. And so I think this is almost an act of service. The way I view making recipes is something I can do that can be of use to the greatest number of people.

[Sam Briger]

Well, you say the practice of cooking is a way to touch infinity. And making your focaccia recipe, I think I got to have a sense of what the infinite was, but I don't think that's what you mean.

[Samin Nosrat]

Oh, you know, that. That's. I'm quoting Yo Yo Ma in an interview with Terry Gross that I heard on Fresh Air.

[Sam Briger]

Ah. I think I've heard of her.

[Samin Nosrat]

Yeah. And it was such a moving thing that he was talking about, because she was asking him about playing the Bach concertos just over and over and over again over the course of his life and even making three recordings of it. And she basically was like, how is it you don't get bored? And he gave this beautiful answer about how he doesn't view it as doing the same thing over and over again. He views it as sort of this, like, flowing stream that he steps in and out of, and he's like, and if we can sort of view things like that, then we can actually touch infinity. We can be part of some greater whole. And that was so beautiful to me. And I listened to that at a moment when I was really agonizing about how to convey what it is that I hope that cooking or following a recipe can give us.

[Sam Briger]

Okay, so how did you reconcile this ambivalence about writing a book of recipes? You had an epiphany, as I think we all do, while eating coleslaw.

[Samin Nosrat]

Yes. So, you know, I was very stubbornly sort of like, I will never do this. And somebody had suggested to me, you should just write a book of recipes. You make things so complicated for yourself. You don't need to every time you write a book, like, redefine the genre, everything doesn't have to be this, like, major philosophical tome. And, you know, I kind of got mad at her. I was like, do you even know me? I would never do that. And then just about a week later, I was making sort of this cabbage slaw with this like, very gingery sesame miso dressing that was so good and so easy and reminded me kind of of like the hippie ginger slaws of my youth, but also just like, I had pushed all the flavors to the max. It was like super gingery, super salty, super acidic, super sp. And just like tingled every bit of yumminess in my mouth. And I just stood there thinking, wow, this is so delicious and so simple, and if only I had, like, an easy way to share this with people. And then I was like, oh, I guess that's a recipe.

[Sam Briger]

Okay, so it may have sounded like I was complaining earlier about how long it took took to make your focaccia, which is called the sky high focaccia, but I wasn't complaining because it was really delicious. I even. I brought some in to the Fresh Air staff who seemed to enjoy it. But it does take a lot of time. And I'm not a. I don't usually make focaccia, but I think recipes for focaccia don't have to be this long. Like, this is like a 24 hour process. Right. Or even maybe a little more. I'm not sure.

[Samin Nosrat]

Yeah. Is there a question?

[Sam Briger]

Well, well. So why is yours so long?

[Samin Nosrat]

Well, for one thing, if I'm not mistaken, that recipe's in a chapter called Good Things Take Time.

[Sam Briger]

Yes, that's true.

[Samin Nosrat]

Yes.

[Sam Briger]

So at least there's a caveat.

[Samin Nosrat]

I'm not misleading. So there's only so much that sort of quick and easy will get you in terms of cooking. And a lot of what I do in writing recipes and in deciding what to include or how to shape a recipe is weighing, you know, the value of asking you to wait or asking you to go look for a special ingredient or asking you to, I don't know, do something a little more labor intensive or complicated. And in this focaccia, which evolved out of the focaccia that I made in Italy on the Salt Fat Acid Heat documentary, I have found that the time really does make a big difference. And in fact, the time saves labor. So by not it Saves you from having to do the physical labor of kneading because thyme in a dough resting and fermentation sort of does this incredible work of like, flavor development at adding all the little. Getting all the gases and the bubbles and the lightness. And so in a way, it's like. It is a much lazier recipe. It's just a longer, you know, longer one time wise. So it's one to do when you, I don't know, are working from home or on a weekend when you can sort of take the dog for a walk. Come and turn the focaccia. I don't know, unload the dishwasher. Come and turn the focaccia. I also worked really hard to come up with a recipe that doesn't require a stand mixer so anyone can make it. But I do think that it's worth it. I think you get a lot more loft. I think you get a really delicious flavor development, and I think you get that incredible chewiness, which is like in what I'm always after in a focaccia.

[Sam Briger]

Yeah. You preface this recipe by saying, I've spent more time thinking about and discussing the weight of a cup of all purpose flour than any anyone ever should. And I still don't have a definitive answer. I mean, is that sort of getting back to the ineffableness of cooking?

[Samin Nosrat]

Yes. Yes. And certainly, like with. When it comes to cup measurements, it's really, it's just like how, you know, another thing I just learned or maybe I knew and forgot willfully, is a cup in England is different than a cup here. And so that's why in Britain, they. They measure everything by weight. It's just a smarter way to do it. Volume measurement is so sort of wacky that, like, you know, I could tell you you'd use 100 raisins. And that could, depending on the size of your raisin. Right. That could be, you know, whatever. Or a cup of raisins could be just a totally different weight in a weird way. Actually, this is getting me to a crazy place. My frustration with recipes is kind of at both ends of the spectrum, I. E. I both want it to be loose enough to allow for flexibility, and I'm completely precise enough to guide you to the result that you're after. Yeah. Now that I sound like a total mad woman, please buy my book. Yeah.

[Sam Briger]

If you're just joining us, we're speaking with Samid Nusrat. Her new cookbook is called Good Things More after a short break. I'm Sam Brigger. And this is FRESH AIR weekend.

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[Sam Briger]

Well, you said that you used to prioritize output, that you were going to make something extraordinary and that was the way you would feel success. But you no longer feel that way. You've sort of changed, you've recalibrated what is important to you.

[Samin Nosrat]

Let's be real. I'm trying to. You say that as I'm like on a press tour promoting this book.

[Sam Briger]

Yes, that's true.

[Samin Nosrat]

Yeah. So, like, I don't want to like act like I've gone through some like a Buddhist metamorphosis, but I'm trying. I'm trying to shift what I prioritize. And you know, a mantra for me in making this book very much was like, just make a thing. Because before that I had only made the thing. For me, salt, fat, acid heat was the thing my life was sort of always heading toward since I was 17, 18, 19 years old. And it came out when I was 37. You know, I had that idea so long ago and it was very much this, like, culmination of so many years of hard work. And the thought of trying to do that again was really overwhelming. And like, yeah, made me Collapse under. Under it. And so I kind of somebody, A friend at one point was like, what if you just try and make a thing? Like. And so I was like, oh, there is value in just making something. It doesn't have to be the best thing I've ever made in the world.

[Sam Briger]

I think also one of the things that's changed about you since then is that you're talking about your family a little bit more now.

[Samin Nosrat]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Sam Briger]

In the past, you know, you would talk about how difficult it was for you to be the daughter of Iranian religious refugees in a very white community in San Diego, but you didn't talk so much about the difficulties you faced in your home. And I actually remember we did a live event together before COVID and before we went on stage, I asked you, is there anything you don't want me to ask you about?

[Samin Nosrat]

Just my dad.

[Sam Briger]

Yeah. You said, just don't ask me about my dad.

[Samin Nosrat]

Yeah.

[Sam Briger]

And your dad died in 2022. Is that why you're more comfortable talking about this now?

[Samin Nosrat]

Yes, definitely. And I think my dad was a really complicated person. And it wasn't until he had a traumatic brain injury and then was in the hospital for several months before dying, and it wasn't until he basically was incapacitated that I was able to reflect on some of my feelings, which I now understand were fear for my own safety.

[Sam Briger]

Well, before that, you had really distanced yourself from him, right?

[Samin Nosrat]

Yes. And I was estranged from him basically my entire adult life, which also felt very shameful to acknowledge and talk about. But also I was scared to talk about it because he was often sort of stalking me and sending people to spy on me and stuff. And it was scary hiring people, not hired people, but just my dad was a really complicated and traumatized person. And so there would be sort of, like, distant family members that he would sort of assign to come check on me and stuff. And I lived with a very real fear that he would and could harm me in sort of meaningful ways, if not physical ways than other ways. And that fear of my father, for sure, was present that night when I asked you to not talk about him. And so. And also the actual lived experience of watching somebody die. And in this particular, like, melodramatic, traumatic situation that was so heightened and so intense, it just gave me so much to face in my own life. And one of those things was like, I just. I watched him die, and he was so sort of lonely, and the sort of sum total of everything that he'd done was coming back to end his Life so sadly, like he did it to himself. And it made me reflect on that in that moment and ever since, about how I want to die and what I want to be looking at at the end of my life. And, you know, I want to look back and know that I made a life filled with beauty and friendship and joy and love and nature and goodness. And so how do I make my choices on a daily basis so that I can end my life that way? And that sort of has become part.

[Sam Briger]

Of this recalibration which is baked into this book, which as well. But I mean, the other thing that I can imagine is you go to help your dad, he's on a ventilator, and then you find out that he's been married to someone else. I mean, your parents have separated.

[Samin Nosrat]

But my parents were divorced.

[Sam Briger]

Your parents were divorced, but you and your siblings, I think, did not know that he had remarried.

[Samin Nosrat]

Yeah, he had a secret wife who we. You know, the only way my brothers and I sort of made it through this time, which was so disorienting and crazy, was a lot of dark humor. And so we named this woman New Mommy. We call her New Mommy. And she really. It was just a really complicated situation. And so he had filed for divorce from her 13 days before his traumatic brain injury. And so it was. But in California, there's a six month cooling off period, so they were still technically married. And so in this very complicated sort of medical situation, she appeared from across the world. She lives in Israel. And so she appeared sort of by phone to threaten to sue the hospital and to, you know, she called me and my brothers like murderers and thieves.

[Sam Briger]

Every day for six months.

[Samin Nosrat]

If they took him off the ventilator. If they took him off the ventilator. And so. And then she just accused us of murdering. Of wanting to murder him. So it was very sort of. It was so heightened in drama. You know, like, my brother and I kept joking like, we're gonna turn this into a movie one day. But it would be the worst movie ever because it's like, so over the top.

[Sam Briger]

Yeah. Well, then you also discover this family secret of. That your ancestors were Jewish, perhaps.

[Samin Nosrat]

Yeah, my dad's side of the family. There are so many things.

[Sam Briger]

I mean, that's the thing. I mean, having your father die, which. My father died too, and I was there when he died. And that in itself is really hard to deal with. And it changes your sense of identity. But, you know, piling onto that, all these other things, like, I just don't. I don't Understand what that would be like.

[Samin Nosrat]

It was really hard. It was a really hard time. And you know, like, it's not done, you know, like ending well, for one thing, it'll never be done, but also it's just literally not done. Like, we're still sort of in the estate stuff. And so just the other day we got an email from the lawyer saying, oh, hey, here's. Here are the contents of your father's safe. Like, let me know which things you would like and I'll, you know, I'll like, interface with new mommy's lawyer about it. And so we clicked on the file and it was a 500 page PDF with photos like that, you know, of just like all of these documents and things and like driver's licenses and who knows what. Just like just papers mostly from the safe. And a lot of it's in Farsi. So I'm so curious because so much has been withheld from me about where I come from and who I come from. And so I would love to sort of try and piece together some semblance of some truth as much as possible. But between coming from like a very secretive family and a very secretive country, that's not very easy.

[Sam Briger]

Yeah, well, so do you. How have you folded in this Jewish ancestry into your understanding of yourself?

[Samin Nosrat]

I mean, at this point I will say, you know, there's a part of me that has always found something really comforting in Judaism as a religion. There is just this beautiful sort of built in sense of collectivity in a way that's like built into the rituals and the practices. And I have always, like, I want to be at your seder, you know what I mean? Like, I want to be sort of hearing these stories and being at these tables. I've always wanted to be part of something. And so there was a way where it felt kind of like a little bit of a gift, you know, and also like, I also feel that way about other religions. It was just like, wow, this is cool. Like, this is cool that there's a piece of this somewhere in me. But in terms of like where I was at this time in my life is, you know, one of sort of the foundational texts for me for this book is a really small little book by a rabbi philosopher named Abraham Joshua Heschel. It's a book called the Sabbath. And it's just this beautiful little sort of treatise on the value of making time, like the ritual, ritualizing the practice of being together. And that time is our most precious currency, basically. And that is an aspect of Judaism that I can really get behind, you know. And also that was at the same time this thing that was becoming sort of central to my own life to create my own Sabbath, like practice with these Monday dinners that I have with my friends and sort of trying to understand how it is that a ritualized meal can feel like such an anchor for life. And so there was a way when I realized, oh, like, cool, I get to claim some piece of this.

[Sam Briger]

You dedicate this book to a few people, including your dog, Fava, and you say they're the family that's chosen you. And these, I think, are the people that you have these weekly dinners with.

[Samin Nosrat]

Plus a few other people.

[Sam Briger]

Plus a few other people. And these dinners are incredibly important to you. I think that they started at a time when you were feeling really low and someone reached out and said, let's just have dinner. Do you miss these dinners? You're on book tour now. Are you missing these dinners?

[Samin Nosrat]

Well, today I'm missing one, but I was there last Monday and I'll be there next Monday. So I definitely it's in my calendar. It's one one of my favorites on my phone is the Monday dinner text thread. These are the people sort of very much at the heart of this book and now at the heart of my life. And I'm so glad for them. I'm so glad for this ritual. You know, the other day I was leaving my house to go to the airport to begin this book tour, and I locked the door and I walked to the car and I said like a little prayer under my breath, I said, it'll be different this time. It'll be different this time. Like, I have something to ground me. I have Fava, I have these friends. I have my girlfriend. I have my home. I have this ritual. I have a place that I'm expected to be every Monday, and I have somewhere where I belong. And I don't know that I've really ever had that before. And it feels really good.

[Sam Briger]

Samin Nusrat, thank you so much for coming back on FRESH air.

[Samin Nosrat]

Oh, thanks for having me, Sam.

[Sam Briger]

Samin Nusrat's new cookbook is called Good Things. In the New Romantic Fantasy A Big, Bold, Beautiful Journey, Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie play two lonely strangers who wind up traveling together in a rental car with a magical gps. The movie, which also features Kevin Kline and Phoebe Waller Bridge, was directed by the Korean American filmmaker Kogonada, who previously made the independent dramas Columbus and After Yang. Our film critic Justin Chang has this review.

[Justin Chang]

I have a real affection for stories in which ordinary looking doors show up in the middle of nowhere and become portals to another realm or dimension. It could be the wardrobe that leads to the wintry woods of Narnia, or the doors that form an elaborate teleportation network in films like Monsters, Inc. Or the Japanese anime Suzume. One of the reasons I was curious to see A Big, Bold, beautiful Journey is that it repurposes what is essentially a children's fantasy device for a grown up audience. It's a drama about love, loss and the fear of commitment with a let's go on an adventure twist like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind by way of the Phantom Tollbooth. I wish it were remotely as good as that sounds. The movie was written by Seth Rice of the recent haute cuisine horror satire the Menu, and from the beginning it's awash in strained whimsy. We're in an unidentified city where rain showers erupt out of nowhere and everyone packs perfectly color coordinated umbrellas. Colin Farrell plays a single guy named David who's heading to a friend's wedding hundreds of miles away when he runs into car trouble. Off he goes to rent a new one at an eccentric agency run by Kevin Klein and a randomly German accented Phoebe Waller Bridge. They give him a car with a GPS that spouts cryptic directions and at one point asks, do you want to go on a big, bold, beautiful journey? David says yes. It soon becomes clear that this journey will be undertaken with Sarah, played by Margot Robbie, whom David meets and flirts awkwardly with at the wedding. Like David, Sarah is single and has little interest in jumping into a relationship. But that begins to change as the two take the scenic route back to their home city. Along the way, the GPS steers them toward those magical doors one after the other, which lead them both into scenes from the past. One door goes to a lighthouse that David remembers seeing as a child. Another opens into an art museum that Sarah used to visit with her mother. Still another leads to a fateful night when young David played the lead role in his high school musical and was rejected by the girl he loved. In this scene, David, standing in for his 15 year old self, tells Sarah about the torment he's about to re experience that night.

[Elizabeth Gilbert]

Tonight I. I go home and I don't even get out of my costume. I go up to my playroom. I plant myself face down on the couch. I cry.

[Samin Nosrat]

You have a playroom?

[Elizabeth Gilbert]

I cry so hard. Jesus.

[Sam Briger]

God, it feels like it. Ah. Feels exactly like it felt that night.

[Elizabeth Gilbert]

Okay, well, except now I know it's worse now because I know she's going to just destroy me all over again. Okay, just don't. Don't tell her you love her.

[Sam Briger]

I have to. Why?

[Elizabeth Gilbert]

You just said that. You know that. She's not gonna say it back. Maybe she will. She won't. I have to.

[Justin Chang]

There's something low key charming about how matter of factly David and Sarah submit to all this quasi therapeutic enchantment. Without asking too many questions. They're willing to go along for the ride, and so we go along with them up to a point. There are touching moments here and there, like when David finds himself comforting his dad, then a nervous new father played by Hamish Linklater. Or when Sarah gets to be 12 again and relive a precious evening with her mom. That's Lily Rabe before her untimely death. But even these poignant scenes feel like laborious stepping stones en route to a predictable outcome. David and Sarah are meant to be together and should just get over their commitment phobia already and take the plunge. There's nothing wrong with that. Most romantic comedies come to similar conclusions, but hearing the characters talk so relentlessly about their relationship hang ups and parent issues would be a drag even without all these supernatural visual aids. And while Farrell and Robbie are both as likable as ever, the dynamic feels lopsided, mainly because Sarah's character is so poorly written. Not long after they meet, she tells David that she's bad news and will only hurt him like she's hurt every other man she's been with. Sarah represents another kind of fantasy, the kind that's meant to titillate and moralize at the same time. Perhaps the most mystifying thing about A Big, Bold, Beautiful Journey is that it was directed by Kogonada, one of the most interesting and philosophical voices to emerge in recent American independent cinema. He previously directed Colin Farrell in the lovely sci fi drama After Yang, and he made an exquisite debut with Columbus, about two young people bonding over a shared love of modern architecture. Like those films, A Big, Bold, Beautiful Journey wants to engage us in heady conceits, transport us to another place and say something about how we forge lasting relationships and memories. But not even Kogonada's elegant shot compositions or his skill with actors can work wonders with a script this hopeless. It's a magical doorway to nowhere.

[Sam Briger]

Justin Chang is film critic for the New Yorker. He reviewed A Big, Bold, Beautiful Journey. Coming up, Elizabeth Gilbert, the best selling author of Eat, Pray Love, talks about her new memoir, all the Way to the River. I'M Sam Brigger, and this is FRESH AIR weekend.

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[Sam Briger]

Tanya Mosley has our next interview. Here she is.

[Tanya Mosley]

My guest today is Elizabeth Gilbert. Her 2006 memoir, Eat, Pray Love made her famous for a particular kind of longing for reinvention, turning a year of post divorce travel into a cultural phenomenon with millions of readers, a spinoff industry and a film starring Julia Rober. Her latest book, all the Way to the river, is almost the reverse. It immerses the reader into caregiving addiction, grief and loss, with some critics raising ethical questions about its framing and the choice to write in great detail about her late partner's most private moments. The book tells the story of Gilbert's relationship with Rhea Elias, first her hairstylist and friend and later her lover, who died of pancreatic and liver cancer in 2018. Gilbert writes about leaving her marriage for Rhea, the devotion and the chaos of that love and her own dangerous impulses, lavishly spending on friends, enabling Rhea's addictions, and in a moment of despair, even plotting to end Raya's life. Those confessions make the memoir as intimate as it is shocking. In addition to Eat, Pray, Love, gilbert is also the author of several works, including the Signature of All, City of Girls and Big Magic. Elizabeth Gilbert, welcome to FRESH air.

[Elizabeth Gilbert]

Thank you so much, Tanya. I'm very happy to be here with you today.

[Tanya Mosley]

Well, Elizabeth, this book is not Eat, Pray, Love. You write with such intimacy about your addictions, about Raya's decline, the choices that you made in caring for her. And I think a good place to start might be what led you to put these moments on the page for others to read. And I'm asking that not only as someone who is often perceived as having life figured out, but also as Raya's partner. Like, what sense of responsibility did you feel toward her in Deciding how to tell this story.

[Elizabeth Gilbert]

Thanks for asking that. So Raya was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic and liver cancer in 2016. And at that point, our relationship was that we were best friends, although we had long surpassed emotionally, something that you could even call best friends. We used to call each other, you know, you're my person. And both of us, it turns out later we would find out, were secretly in love with each other and had slowly fallen in love with each other over a decade and a half of friendship. I was married at that time to somebody who I cared about enormously. We were all being very careful and respectful of each other and each other's feelings. But when I discovered that she had six months left to live, it was no longer possible for me to hide or pretend that this was not the person who I loved dearly and that I had to go and be with her, not as a friend, but as her partner. And from that moment, I started writing about her. From that day, from the very day that the terminal cancer diagnosis came in, because I wanted to. The word that kept coming to mind was download her before I lost her. But it took me seven years after she died to finally write this version of the book, Although I wrote a few other versions of it along the way because it took me so long after she died to process what indeed had happened and what my role had been in what had happened and how we got in such a short time, in what turned out to be the 18 months between her diagnosis and her death, how it was that we sort of soared to the highest heights and also collapsed to the lowest depths.

[Tanya Mosley]

You write about some very harrowing moments, and that's really interesting when you talk about downloading her from the moment that you received that diagnosis about her cancer. Just so I'm clear, were you aware that you might be writing a book later? Was she aware that you might be writing a book later?

[Elizabeth Gilbert]

Oh, yeah, absolutely. It was. Everybody was aware. Yeah. Yeah, it was actually, you know, she was sort of mandating it, you know, like she very much. We both very much wanted that.

[Tanya Mosley]

With six months to live, you all decided, we're going to express our love for each other. And there was this potent. I don't even know how long it was within that time period where you all were experiencing this new love, this intoxicating love. But something changed over time. As her disease progressed, you started enabling what went on to become a full fledged drug addiction. You were procuring and administering drugs. You were even tying off her arm. How bad did it get?

[Elizabeth Gilbert]

Well, it got as bad as what you've just described, and I don't think that that could have gotten any worse for either one of us. The simplest way that I can express it is that, you know, Rhea, who had been a heroin and cocaine addict for a long portion of her adult life and who had found recovery years earlier and was so very proud of having found recovery when she was faced with the real pain and the real terror of her imminent death, she went back to that. She went back to the oldest way that she knew to not feel emotional and physical pain and very quickly escalated into absolutely harrowing drug addiction. And I had never known Rhea as a drug addict. I had known her story because she talked about it a lot. She was so open about her addiction and about her recovery. It was a big part of how she identified herself. So I didn't know that person who showed up. And that was so harrowing and disorienting for me. What was happening to me at the same time was that I was also descending down to the most degraded version of myself. So if the most degraded version of Rhea was a low bottom opioid and cocaine addict who became very manipulative and abusive and quite terrifying for me to live with the lowest version of myself, What I would call a sort of relapse in my life is an enabler who has no boundaries, who will do absolutely anything to be loved, who will pay for everything, who will just constantly try to be pleasing, who will allow herself to be abused. Both of us sunk pretty low that.

[Tanya Mosley]

Description you give of being an enabler. I mean, you use much stronger language in the book and the description of what you were. I mean, it's a full on addiction. You describe yourself as having a love and sex addiction, but I actually want to have you read from the book your description of what sex and love addiction looks like for you.

[Elizabeth Gilbert]

My problem is what's officially called a process addiction as opposed to substance addiction, which was Raya's downfall. Process addictions are characterized by extreme compulsivity around certain behaviors. Gambling, shopping, hoarding, eating, sex, control, obsession, gaming, skin picking, etc. Put simply, Raya was addicted to drugs. I am addicted to people. Although I do believe that Raya was a love addict as well. In fact, many folks in the rooms of recovery surmise that love addiction is at the bottom of all the other addictions. Our famished yearning for love is the great yawning chasm that we keep trying to fill with other things. With drugs, alcohol, food, money, sexual cigarettes, gambling, gaming, success, perfectionism, workaholism, Internet addiction, you name it. Of all the human desires, the need to feel loved is the most fundamental. When unmet or perverted at a tender age, that need can warp our brains into making dangerous and even insane decisions for the rest of our lives. Elizabeth, thank you for reading.

[Tanya Mosley]

And you know, when I read that section of the book, I had also read a lot of your other writing. I even went back to Eat Pray Love, which I wanna talk about because I feel like you were leading to this moment that you talk about in this book of really revealing this or understanding for yourself that you had an addiction. But you've used other language to talk about your need and the lengths that you'd go to get that love, to get that fulfillment to feed your addiction. You called seduction a heist, scouting targets, breaking into emotional vaults as you describe it. And that is such precise language. Can you go into a little more detail of what that addiction looked like with Rhea?

[Elizabeth Gilbert]

Yeah, I mean, I think I can start by just going into more detail about what my behavior patterns have been even outside of Rhea, because there's a level at which the way that I act in my most self destructive and self abandoning and using way doesn't even really have much to do with her. It's something that I've done before and it's something that I did again after Rhea had died. It's something that I've done for decades. There's a term that we use and I do identify as a sex and love addict. I identify as what I call a blackout codependent, which is I get so swept up in somebody that I actually kind of lose my brains and wake up. You know, similar to the way that a blackout alcoholic would wake up months later and be like, oh my God, what just happened to my life? That's something that I've done numerous times with numerous people starting at a very young age.

[Tanya Mosley]

Also, I think some people might hear this and say, well, isn't that what happens when you fall deeply in love with someone? They may see that behavior as a normal behavior, like, when does it stop being human and really starts becoming a problem?

[Elizabeth Gilbert]

Like all addictions, it's a matter of scale. And as with many addictions, people are left on the sidelines scratching their heads, saying, wait, when did that escalate? And for me, in my extreme attachment disorder that causes me to use other people as a drug, right? There are people in my life that I've used as a stimulant, and there are people in my life that I've used as a sedative causes me to dehumanize both myself and them. Causes me to act out in ways that puts my life in danger and also can put other people's relationships and families in danger. Like, there's things I can't do that other people can do, and I know that now. And I have to be awake and aware and conscious and respectful of that tendency in me, the same way that any addict in recovery has to remain soberly aware.

[Tanya Mosley]

Elizabeth, I want to ask you about something that was very shocking to a lot of folks, including a lot of critics of the book. You detailed a plot to kill Rhea when she was in the throes of her addiction. And all that comes with a person who's struggling with cancer, who's in extreme pain, who's dying. And you could have kept that to yourself and no one would have known, but you chose to write about it in the book. Talk to me a little bit about your choice to actually write about that really hard moment in your relationship and in her decline.

[Elizabeth Gilbert]

Yeah, that was a kind of collision of both of our rock bottoms. I was at the end of myself, and she was at the end of herself. It was a situation that had become kind of the very definition of unmanageable. Her drug addiction was so devastating and nightmarish, and she had turned into somebody who was paranoid and abusive and aggressive and who also wasn't sleeping, because cocaine addicts don't sleep. And also wasn't allowing me to sleep and also wasn't allowing anyone else to take care of her. Had pushed away all the other people close in our life, had pushed away the hospice people who were taking care of her and who was also in hospice, so had access to, like, limitless drugs through hospice and also whatever street drugs she was procuring at the same time. And I was trying to fix it and control it and manage it, and I was breaking, and she was breaking. And there was no possibility of an intervention, because how do you have an intervention with a drug addict who's got a terminal cancer diagnosis and is in hospice? You know what I mean? Like, would you say, like, if you keep doing this, you're going to die? In a weird way, that knowledge that she was dying was the permission slip that she had, and everyone kind of got it. I even got it. Like, why not go on the world's biggest drug bender if you're in pain and you're angry and you're dying? But it was the most harrowing and dangerous situation I'd ever been in with drug dealers, coming in and out of the house day and night, money hemorrhaging from my atm. She was nodding off, smoking in bed, setting things on fire, like. And I was insane. Like, I was so in my own disease and in my own horror and also in my own withdrawal from this person who I had idealized as the one person in the world I ever felt completely safe around, who had now become the most dangerous person I'd ever been around. And I lost my mind.

[Tanya Mosley]

What stopped you?

[Elizabeth Gilbert]

She stopped me. She stopped me. And a sort of pause. Insanity. Yeah. So to answer your question, I had an idea. And the idea was, like, I should just kill her. Like, I should just give her all the. Like, give her a handful of sleeping pills and a bunch of fentanyl patches and just, like, I could see no other way out. And it felt like the degree of my insanity that I can speak to here as to how crazy I was was that it seemed like a really good idea. In that moment, in that morning, I was like, that's the best idea I can come up with. And she smelled it. You know, Rhea was an incredible survivor. She had lived on the streets as a drug user. She'd lived in jails and prisons and institutions. She was so. She was such a survivor. And I walked in the house, like, with this idea that I was going to try to figure out a way to kill her. And she just looked up at me and said, think very carefully about what you're about to do right now. And I wrote about it because this story doesn't make any sense unless I tell the whole story. And I was going to be writing, and Rhea knew that I was going to be writing the entire truth of this story. And to withhold anything in order to make myself look better felt very unethical to me. And the book is about the way our addictions and our compulsions fired off of each other to lead us both into insanity. And I was not interested once I decided to write this book and my image management, because I was interested in the truth, and I was interested in showing what codependency and sex and love addiction can lead a person into. Even a person who presents as somebody who's got it all together, which is how I was out there in the world. Presenting Elizabeth Gilbert. Thank you so much. Thank you, Tanya. Thank you for such a thoughtful and rich conversation. I really appreciate your sensitivity. Thank you.

[Sam Briger]

Elizabeth Gilbert's new memoir is all the Way to the River. She spoke with Tonya Mosley. Fresh Air Weekend is produced by Teresa Madden. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Roberta Shorrock, Anne Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi and Anna Bauman. Our digital social media producer is Molly CV Nessberg. Our consulting video producer is Hope Wilson. For Terry Gross and Tanya Moseley, I'm Sam Bridger.

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