Bun Cha With Obama, and Trump’s New World Disorder

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Bun Cha With Obama, and Trump’s New World Disorder"

The New Yorker Radio Hour – February 10, 2017
Host: David Remnick

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Overview

This episode brings together two distinct explorations. First, David Remnick interviews the late chef, author, and television host Anthony Bourdain about his celebrated career and his remarkable meal with President Obama in Hanoi. The conversation touches on the intersection of food, culture, and politics. In the second half, foreign affairs writer Robin Wright leads a roundtable discussion with veteran diplomat Ryan Crocker and former CIA deputy director John McLaughlin, examining turmoil and unpredictability in the early days of the Trump administration’s foreign policy. Personal stories from Syria and a literary segment with author Yiyun Li round out the episode.

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Key Sections & Major Discussion Points

1. Anthony Bourdain: On Food, Travel, and Dining with Obama in Hanoi

Bourdain's Journey from Kitchen to Global Storyteller

• David Remnick recounts his first experience publishing Bourdain’s writing, noting the vividness of his essay about restaurant life, which led to Bourdain’s breakout memoir Kitchen Confidential.

  • [02:11] “His piece was vivid, it was informative, it was funny, and it was a little gross, too…And we published the essay as Don't Eat.” – David Remnick

• Bourdain discusses his evolution from Manhattan chef to international television personality, shaping a storytelling style “never just about the food,” but anchored in the places, people, and politics behind every meal.

  • [02:35] “It’s never just about the food. It’s about the people who make it and the people who eat it, from the farmers to the chef to the President.” – David Remnick

The Hanoi Meal with President Obama

• Bourdain recounts the experience of eating bun cha and drinking beer with Obama in a small, working-class restaurant:

  • [04:50] “This was a working-class, beloved local joint, family-run … the second floor of a not particularly clean and certainly not fancy bun cha joint in the old quarter of Hanoi.” – Anthony Bourdain

• The significance of the meal for Hanoians:

  • [06:06] “People would come up to me, absolutely convulsed by tears, incredulous that the President of the United States chose…to eat at this accessible working-class place ... The pride and shock…was really gratifying.” – Anthony Bourdain

• Bourdain on Obama's "guilty pleasure":

  • [03:18] “There’s apparently some caramel corn…Michelle steps in and says, ah, ah, ah, ah. He’s very fit and he’s disgusting. He struggled to think of a guilty pleasure.” – Anthony Bourdain

Food as Political and Social Lens

• Bourdain explains how food, even street food, reflects deeper societal and political realities.

  • [14:12] “There’s nothing more political than food… Who’s eating what is something that we inadvertently started to show and had maybe more importance than we realized.” – Anthony Bourdain

• Memorable production anecdote on filming street food in Cairo (fool beans) and pressure from authorities:

  • [16:30] “We want to shoot a fool scene. No, no, no, we can’t do this…One of our executive producers feigned an attack of violent diarrhea to distract the fixers, and we shot the scene.” – Anthony Bourdain

Reflections on Life, Work, and Legacy

• On maintaining principles and happiness:

  • [17:32] “I live by something called the no asshole rule, meaning you don’t want to deal with them. …I want to be happy and I want to be having spent a lot of my time…waking up in the morning…not ashamed of anything I do.” – Anthony Bourdain

• On last meals:

  • [18:49] “If I had to choose one meal, it would be sushi… I’d be at Jiro or Masa or something like that.” – Anthony Bourdain

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2. Satire: "Another Brick in Trump’s Wall"

• [19:25–23:32] Jesse Wan’s satirical diary, performed by Chris Eigeman, lampoons the idea of Americans forced to build a border wall.
  • “May 27th: At night, we whisper about escaping through the wall to Mexico, that golden land of lemons and opportunity… Mexico is building its own wall now.”

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3. Trump’s Foreign Policy: Chaos or Strategy?

Panel: Robin Wright, Ryan Crocker, John McLaughlin

America First & the Risks of Nationalistic Policy

• [24:27] Robin Wright sets the stage: How feasible is "America First" in a globalized world?

• [25:07] “America first interpreted literally just won’t work…every problem we have is one that crosses national boundaries.” – John McLaughlin

Early Trump Administration: Inexperience and Instability

• [26:06] “I don’t think anyone could deliberately produce chaos on this scale as a matter of policy. So I do think it reflects inexperience.” – Ryan Crocker

• The need for diplomacy:

  • [26:40] “An ounce of diplomacy up front may save an administration…” – Ryan Crocker

Confrontation with Iran

• [28:22] “If you’re put on notice, you are drawing a line of sorts. I would bet anything that Iran will now launch other missiles. That’s what they will do.” – John McLaughlin

• On the complexity of Middle East engagement and the danger of rash action:

  • [29:04] “When you inflict violence, you don’t know where it’s going. …So you have to be prepared for that.” – John McLaughlin
  • [30:53] “There is no country in the Middle East we know less about than Iran because we haven’t been on the ground there since 1979.” – Ryan Crocker

Dissent Within the State Department

• [32:49] On the unprecedented dissent cable signed by over 1,000 diplomats:
  • “Normally…you file your dissent, it is completely ignored, and then six months later, you will be given an award. But never have we seen anything on this scale…” – Ryan Crocker

Should Foreign Policy Professionals Quit or Persevere?

• [34:12] “This may be the time your country needs you the most…The bar would have to be pretty darn high…I would support anyone taking the step of resignation.” – Ryan Crocker

Predicting the First Crisis

• [35:21] “[North Korea]…within the term of this President, North Korea will acquire the ability to send an ICBM across the Pacific with a nuclear weapon…The question will arise, what are you going to do about that?” – John McLaughlin

• [36:44] “The international order…was designed and led by the U.S. I think we’re at a moment now when the U.S. isn’t really sure it wants to lead anymore.” – Ryan Crocker

What’s at Stake with the Global Order

• [38:20] “Global order is very concrete. It consists of allies we’ve made, alliances we’ve made…rules we all follow…No one else aspires to lead the world…It would be a terrible thing to lose.” – John McLaughlin

Advice to the Trump Administration

• [40:04] “Take a page from President Bush’s notebook. Start to build relations…That paid off for us in the first Gulf War.” – Ryan Crocker
• [41:34] “Think about the difference between tough and tough-minded…Tough-minded means put your heads together…about consequences…That’s a lot harder than acting tough.” – John McLaughlin

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4. Human Story: Omar Dawood’s Family Escapes Aleppo

• [43:14–45:43] Brief, moving update on Syrian relief worker Omar Dawood and his family, previously feared dead during Aleppo’s siege but now living as refugees in Turkey.
  • [43:31] “It’s kind of a miracle to hear that he’s alive. He’s one of the lucky ones and there are hundreds of thousands dead.” – David Remnick

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5. Literary Portrait: Yiyun Li at Mountain View Cemetery

• [48:17–54:20] Author Yiyun Li reflects on immigrant stories, memory, and her adopted California identity during a walk through an Oakland cemetery:
  • “I think part of the reason I’m drawn to cemeteries…I like to imagine lives already lived and lives that are in the past so I can reimagine their lives. And then I can make up a story.” – Yiyun Li

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Particularly Notable Quotes & Highlights

• On the meaning of Bourdain’s approach:
  • [13:06] “If you ask people simple things like what food makes you happy, they also start telling you these rather extraordinary things many times that they might not tell a journalist in a hurry…” – Anthony Bourdain
• On personal rules for happiness:
  • [17:32] “I live by something called the no asshole rule…” – Anthony Bourdain
• On Trump’s approach to foreign affairs:
  • [26:06] “I don’t think anyone could deliberately produce chaos on this scale as a matter of policy.” – Ryan Crocker
• On the risk to the international order:
  • [36:44] “We are looking at a critical moment in world history. The international order…was designed and led by the U.S. I think we’re at a moment now when the U.S. isn’t really sure it wants to lead anymore.” – Ryan Crocker
• On the concrete nature of global order:
  • [38:20] “Global order is very concrete. It consists of allies we’ve made, alliances we’ve made…coalitions we’ve built. It consists of rules that we all follow.” – John McLaughlin

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• 00:41 – Bourdain’s Origins and Early Writing Career
• 02:11 – Bourdain’s TV Career and Philosophical Approach
• 03:53 – The Hanoi Meal with Obama, Cultural Impact
• 10:46 – How Kitchen Confidential Became Television
• 12:33 – Reporting from the Congo
• 14:49 – Food’s Political Significance
• 17:32 – Bourdain on Life Goals and Principles
• 18:46 – Bourdain’s (Hypothetical) Last Meal
• 19:25 – Satirical Diary: “Another Brick in Trump’s Wall”
• 24:27 – Panel Begins: “America First” and Early Trump Foreign Policy
• 26:06 – Chaos in the Trump Administration
• 28:22 – Confrontation with Iran
• 32:49 – State Department Dissent
• 35:07 – Predicting Foreign Policy Crises
• 38:20 – What’s at Stake with the Global Order
• 40:04 – Advice to New Administration
• 43:14 – Update on Syrian Refugee Family
• 48:17 – Yiyun Li’s Landmark Walk and Reflections

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Structure, Flow, and Tone

The episode moves fluidly between profiles (Bourdain, Li), political satire, and high-level policy analysis. Remnick’s tone is warm and curious; Bourdain’s is candid and irreverent; the policy roundtable is sober, learned, and occasionally dry but urgent. Personal storytelling and literary observation are woven into serious discussions about food, identity, and the fate of America’s place in the world.

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Final Thoughts

This episode stands out for its intimate, intellectual, and sometimes wryly humorous take on world affairs—whether it’s a meal that stirs pride and surprise in Vietnam, or reflective apprehension about the world order in Washington. The disparate segments echo one another in emphasizing how global events are experienced locally, through lives, meals, and the stories they create.

Transcript

[Anthony Bourdain]

Floor 38.

[David Remnick]

These are just anecdotes, but it's building.

[Ryan Crocker]

Up into something more coherent.

[David Remnick]

I think it'd be interesting to really try to unravel what his ties.

[Ryan Crocker]

There's this sort of country city divide for their own convenient ends, and it's.

[David Remnick]

Not clear where it goes next.

[Robin Wright]

From one World Trade center in Manhattan.

[Anthony Bourdain]

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker.

[Robin Wright]

Both of you have served eight presidents, one as one of America's finest diplomats and the other as one of the highest ranking intelligence officers.

[David Remnick]

Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Robin Wright has been writing for the New Yorker for almost 30 years and she's reported from 140 countries. She's witnessed changes of regime and all the chaos they bring. Today, she'll discuss what's happening inside the Trump administration. What's happening to the huge numbers of people who actually carry out policy and who are making the transition from one presidency to another. That's later this hour. I'm going to start, though, with a guy who's a different kind of globetrotter, although when I met him, he barely ever left the kitchen and secretly, he was writing. Almost 20 years ago, a chef named Anthony Bourdin sent me an essay about what really goes on in restaurants. And Anthony was working at a pretty good French place in Manhattan called Les Ales. He was making steaks and fries and all that. His piece was vivid, it was informative, it was funny, and it was a little gross, too. It had all kinds of scenes about, well, the kitchen help having sex in the kitchen. It told you why you shouldn't eat the fish on certain days. It was incredibly vivid and like nothing else. And we published the essay as Don't Eat. Before reading this, Bourdin went on to publish his memoir, Kitchen Confidential. It became a huge bestseller. And, well, don't you know, A star was born. Anthony then left the kitchen. He took to television with the show Parts Unknown, where he travels the world with a film crew in search of the most authentic food and a sense of place.

[Anthony Bourdain]

It's delicious. As you can see, people don't eat meat.

[Ryan Crocker]

Meat is quite expensive, almost $2.

[Anthony Bourdain]

It is a lot. That's more than most people make in a day or even two days. What are the first things you buy if you're very, very, very poor?

[Yasmin Al Sayyad]

Very poor.

[Anthony Bourdain]

Soap. Soap. Because at least you have to look a bit clean. So soap first. Soap.

[David Remnick]

In an era of celebrity chefs with cooking shows, I think they call it stand and stir, those shows. Anthony Bourdain takes a very different tact. It's never just about the food. It's about the people who make it and the people who eat it, from the farmers to the chef to the President. So you were in Vietnam, I don't know how many months ago in a show that's now aired on cnn. But I want to know everything about your meeting with President Obama, because in my slight experience of him, he doesn't eat much at all.

[Anthony Bourdain]

It's funny, I asked him at one point about his guilty pleasure. I mean, we've all got him, you know, Shameful. I was looking for something shameful. I said, come on, Captain Crunch with crunch berries at 2:00 in the morning.

[David Remnick]

His are what, like six walnuts or.

[Anthony Bourdain]

Well, there's apparently some caramel corn, I think that they bake in Chicago. And apparently Michel steps in and says, ah, ah, ah, ah. He's very fit and he's disgusting. And he struggled to think of a guilty pleasure that he eats. I think he eats very healthy. That said, I've never seen anyone so happy to be drinking beer out of the neck of a bottle, sitting on a low plastic stool, eating what's essentially a street food classic in Hanoi with chopsticks.

[David Remnick]

But wait a minute. Did the White House not make sure that there were no poison chicken gizzards or whatever you were eating there? What place were you at, set the scene?

[Anthony Bourdain]

Okay, well, very early on, the White House reached out to us, expressing an interest in doing something together. And we were looking and kicking around various locations, some of which didn't work out, some of which weren't very interesting. But the minute we heard that the President was gonna be stopping over in Vietnam, that was it. I will go to Vietnam. Any excuses is enough of an excuse for me to go to Vietnam. And this was a particularly good one. I love it there. I'm always happy there.

[David Remnick]

Why is that?

[Anthony Bourdain]

It was one of the first places outside of the US that I'd been. I'd read a lot about it. I have an over romantic affection for the quiet. It was really the first place in Asia I really fell in love with.

[David Remnick]

So you got to pick the place where you're gonna take the President.

[Anthony Bourdain]

Yes, this was a working class, beloved local joint, family run joint. The second floor of a not particularly clean and certainly not fancy bun cha joint in the old quarter of Hanoi.

[David Remnick]

What's bun cha?

[Anthony Bourdain]

It is little pork patties, grilled pork patties and pieces of pork dipped into a cold fish Sauce Dr. Served with room temperature sticky rice, noodles and herb. It's delicious. And I think, significantly, it is a uniquely Hanoi thing. Nowhere else in Vietnam is it a specialty, and they hold it very dear. They had no idea who was coming to dinner. No one did. The Secret Service would have preferred, I gather, a more controllable environment with many exits. A banquet room at a Hilton would have been more in their comfort zone. But as far as the President himself, incredibly comfortable. He put us all at ease. I mean, he was one of the few people who've ever been on the show in 15, 16 years of making television who's turned to the camera crew mid scene and said, have you guys eaten yet? Do you get to eat? But what happened afterwards was in many ways more amazing because people from Hanoi the next day, it had been in all the papers, and I would ride around alone on my scooter, as I love to do in Hanoi, after, after the before and after shoots. And people would come up to me, absolutely convulsed by tears, incredulous that the President of the United States chose not spring rolls or pho or to eat at a banquet room, but that he chose to eat at this accessible working class place, and that he chose to drink Hanoi beer and bun cha, which is really a Hanoi thing. And the pride and shock, shock of all of these ordinary people who would just sort of waylay me in the street was really gratifying.

[David Remnick]

That's an amazing thing. Now, we grew up in similar. Well, we grew up in the same state. And you became a cook. And you were at Les Halles for years, cooking steaks and frite and all the rest. Did you think that your life was going to go in that direction? Onward and forever?

[Anthony Bourdain]

Yeah. Before you called, I was standing there in the kitchen, I think, filleting salmon. And the kitchen phone rang and it was you on the other end.

[David Remnick]

You had written fiction before that, right?

[Anthony Bourdain]

Yeah, but I mean, I'd written those in a rather cynical way. I mean, my old college roommate, who I used to write his papers for him, had essentially bribed me into writing these proposals. I expected nothing to happen, and nothing did happen with him. And I'd long ago given up any hope or dream of ever doing anything but what I was doing, which was standing in a kitchen dunking French fries and cooking steak frite rather happily. I'd had a long and frankly checkered and not particularly distinguished career in the business. 30 years of sling and hash.

[David Remnick]

But you invented this character of you. It was partly reality, partly. You were drawing on your somewhat misbegotten past, you had drugs and booze and all the rest of it. And you created a larger than life presence on television, which is very much, I imagine is part you and part something that you write a little larger.

[Anthony Bourdain]

Maybe aspire to, I think.

[David Remnick]

How do you mean?

[Anthony Bourdain]

Well, I mean, I grew up, you know, Hunter Thompson loomed large in my life as a 13 year old reading Fear of Loathing.

[David Remnick]

Were you reading food writers at all or was that something that you were pursuing?

[John McLaughlin]

No.

[David Remnick]

Or were you just reading writers?

[Anthony Bourdain]

I was reading writers, a lot of writers. Who? Orwell, his essays, Somerset Maugham, Graham Greene was huge for me. Liebling, I guess, arguably kind of a food writer. I mean, people who had. Who enjoyed eating. Orwell, I don't know, not famous for eating.

[David Remnick]

I think the only thing Orwell ate was cigarette butts. Barely anything.

[Anthony Bourdain]

Orwell's down and out in Paris and London was a big book for me and I was very much thinking of that.

[David Remnick]

Where he's working in a kitchen.

[Anthony Bourdain]

As a. Yeah, he's working in, I think, what was actually the Ritz in Paris as a young man. I remember the effect that reading that book had on me when I was a dishwasher. And it was very much a template and inspiration for Kitchen Confidential. You know, this is a book written in the 20s and the fact that it was so recognizable and I felt such kinship with these characters so long ago that so little had.

[David Remnick]

Kitchens haven't changed since the 20s.

[Anthony Bourdain]

I mean, you know, people who found themselves in kitchens were the refuse and the refugees and you know, people for whom things had gone wrong. They were the second smartest kid in the family who, you know, the family couldn't afford to send two of them to college or to. And to some extent that's who was working in the 70s when I started cooking. That's changed now. But that connection was something that I kind of. I yearned for what I wrote the first article. I had hoped for nothing more than to inspire that feeling of I'm not alone in a few other cooks in the New York area. That was my goal.

[David Remnick]

And what was the reaction to that first article? What were you hearing?

[Anthony Bourdain]

I mean, there was a news crew waiting for me the next day at the restaurant. I came out of jury duty and there was a television crew waiting for me. And then I figured, look, I better keep my day job here. But eventually the restaurant was filling up with journalists. It was like a hard news story. I never got it. I had no clue that this was coming. I had no Expectation that anything would come of this. Even after the book came out, I thought I kept working. Who could reasonably expect to make a living writing? It seemed like a delusional notion.

[David Remnick]

And how did it become a television invention? How did it all start?

[Anthony Bourdain]

It was an opportunistic thing. I mean, some guys came into the restaurant and said, we'd like to make television with you. And. And I'm sure you've had this. Someone comes to pitch you an article. I got a great idea for an article. Best beaches of Southeast Asia. You're going to say, nice try, buddy, but I figured I was in Good odor with Kitchen Confidential, and I went to my publisher and said, I got a great idea for a second book. I travel all the cool places I always dreamed of going, and you pay. And so that's what I had for the TV guys who came in. And to my complete surprise, they actually went for it. I thought that they were just gonna shoot over my shoulder as I ate a lot of stuff to write this book that was. I figured it would last a year. But at some point, I remember I was laying in a bed in Vietnam, one of the first or earlier shows. And I'm looking up, they're filming me laying there, feeling sick to my stomach. And I'm laying there, and I look up and I saw the ceiling fan overhead. And I said something like, oh, it's like the first scene in Apocalypse Now. And they shot it. And I started realizing this could be a creative enterprise. We might actually be able to have fun here. So I.

[David Remnick]

And I take this as both a compliment to you, but also a frustration with television news. I watch your show with the knowledge that you're going to places that TV news crews generally don't go. I'm not seeing Burma in my living room. I'm not seeing Thailand. I'm not seeing so many places in the world. And I don't think that you make any pretense in your show of being Edward R. Murrow or pure news, but you're accomplishing something more than eating rattlesnake or whatever it is you're eating. I haven't seen Congo on television.

[Anthony Bourdain]

It was in a very difficult. I'm really proud of that because nobody shoots. Very few people shoot an hour of television in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is very difficult. And generally speaking, I think most networks would say our audiences don't even want to see it.

[David Remnick]

What goes into preparing for a trip like Congo? If I go to do a story, and I still do some here and there, I mean, I basically bring a pencil and that's it. It's just me. And maybe if it's someplace dangerous or complicated, I might get a fixer here or there. What do you have to do?

[Anthony Bourdain]

Well, I'd read a lot on the Congo. It's why we were there. It's a subject I was obsessed with. But you're shooting in a place like Congo, you need a good fixer. And in this case, we were very, very fortunate. We had a great fixer with great local contacts. They knew exactly when, when confron these various people representing, claiming to be the local secret police chief, when to say, do you know who I am? And when to say, oh, I'm terribly sorry for having disrespected you, sir. What might we do to ameliorate the situation?

[David Remnick]

Was that your most dangerous trip, Congo?

[Anthony Bourdain]

Probably. I mean, we shot in post Benghazi, Libya, wartime Beirut in Iraq. But I think, you know, Congo is a place where everything's fine until it's not. And that can happen really, really quickly.

[David Remnick]

To some extent, do you feel that you're carrying the burden of television news.

[Anthony Bourdain]

Oh, God.

[David Remnick]

And foreign correspondence?

[Anthony Bourdain]

No, I feel really, really, really lucky given the way things are and the pressures that are clearly on every news organization as far as, you know, how many bureaus they can maintain and what stories people are willing to watch because they're clearly given a choice between a Kardashian and a story. In Congo, everyone's gonna go with a Kardashian every time. What I do is I'm telling stories in places about people that it's probably useful to know a little more about. So when news does happen, maybe you've seen my show, so you know who we're talking about.

[David Remnick]

How much is the show still about food in your mind? Is that a diminishing proportion of the way you block out the show?

[Anthony Bourdain]

I never lose sight of the fact that most of my adult life was spent preparing food. That that is the way that I often connect with people talking about, asking simple questions. I think I discovered that really early on, kind of accidentally. If you ask people simple things like what food makes you happy, they also start telling you these rather extraordinary things many times that they might not tell a journalist in a hurry asking about a specific issue that people are often very cautious, for example, and careful about. Well, they might not want to talk about the way they feel about the government, but after a few beers and talking about what makes you happy at 2 o' clock in the morning when you're drunk, and you're hungry also. There's nothing more political than food. I mean, we shot at Egypt before the Arab Spring and of course we had fix, as happens in places like Cairo. Chances are some of your fixers and drivers work for or some Interior Ministry group. Their job is to keep an eye on you and to make sure that you don't wander or point your camera at military infrastructure. We want to do a scene showing the ubiquitous street food Fool. It's basically these watery beans with a stack of bread that everybody in Cairo and much of Egypt seems to eat as a staple. We want to shoot a fool scene. No, no, no, we can't do this. You must not do it. It's not interesting. You must not shoot fool, or we will cancel permits and you're out. One of our executive producers feigned an attack of violent diarrhea to distract the fixers, and we shot the scene. What was it? They understood what we did, not most of the country. That's what they eat. That's the meal. That's not just a meal. That's the meal. There'd been bread riots. The army apparently controlled the flour and bread production. And I don't think it was that. They were worried about what other people outside of Egypt would think. Our show was shown in Egypt and I think they were worried that there'd be a France show and then, you know, like, and they're eating an Italy show and then they see themselves eating Fool. I think they saw it as potentially angering to their own people when they saw how they. I mean, they knew well, that this is all we got. Who's eating what is something that we inadvertently started to show and. And had maybe more importance than we realized.

[David Remnick]

You've been around a lot of cooks, a lot of chefs for a long period of time. And there are people that have meteoric careers and they burn out. Even for people who've come into big financial success, it seems to be a brutally difficult business, as opposed to some others. What do you want ahead for yourself?

[Anthony Bourdain]

I'm not goal oriented. I have a few business principles. One is that quality of life is really, really important to me. I live by something. I hope I can use the word, I live by something called the no asshole rule, meaning you don't want to deal with them. I'm very fortunate. I like everyone I do business with. Absolutely everyone I do business with I like. I always ask myself, look, there's a lot of money involved here, but if the phone rings at 10 o' clock at night, am I going to go, ah, damn, I'm not going to do that. I'm just not going to do it. Life is too short and bad things, as I found on the road in my travels, can happen at any minute. I want to be happy and I want to be having spent a lot of my time, a lot of my life waking up in the morning, looking in a mirror and seeing somebody I'm ashamed of. I don't want to be ashamed of anything I do from this point on either.

[David Remnick]

When you come off the road from Hanoi or Paris or wherever it is, are you just having hot water and maybe a slice of toast with no butter?

[Anthony Bourdain]

When I get back to New York, no matter how delicious the food is, wherever I've been, when I come back to New York, I want what I mean, I want a pastrami sandwich or a burger, you know, America, call out, get Shake Shack or something.

[David Remnick]

So it's your last day on earth and that's what you're having as a burger?

[Anthony Bourdain]

No, my last day on earth. If I had to choose one meal, it would be sushi. It would be, you know, I'd be at Jiro or Masa or something like that. I'd eat some high end sushi. But then, you know, around the time they serve the omelet, the tamagot, you know, I'm ready to go then.

[David Remnick]

Tony, thanks.

[Anthony Bourdain]

Thank you.

[David Remnick]

Anthony Bourdain, journalist and chef. His new cookbook is called Appetites. Ahead this hour, how to build a really big, huge, beautiful wall all on the cheap.

[Chris Eigeman]

April 13th. Two Mexicans busted through the wall today. Turns out they didn't even want to come to America. They just wanted to show us how shoddy our craftsmanship was. I have a master's degree in semiotics. It's all so demoralizing.

[David Remnick]

That's later in the hour. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Stick around. Welcome back to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Now, about that wall.

[Anthony Bourdain]

I would build a great wall and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me. And I'll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border and I will have Mexico pay for that wall.

[Chris Eigeman]

March 27, 2018. We are issued a winter jumpsuit and a summer jumpsuit. But the early spring Texas weather is kind of in between. Today I went with the summer suit. Hopefully the hard labor will warm me up. April 4, there were taunts again from the Mexicans on the other side of the wall. They keep making fun of our inexperience with manual labor. Most of us used to work in the arts, entertainment, or media, so we don't really know how to use things like tools. At night, we're too tired even for reruns of the Apprentice, which is the only thing that's on TV now. April 13 Two Mexicans busted through the wall today. Turns out they didn't even want to come to America. They just wanted to show us how shoddy our craftsmanship was. I have a master's degree in semiotics. It's all so demoralizing. April 20th as a special treat for completing section 4568 of the wall, our section boss let us share some lemons. Granted, it was 20 workers to one lemon, but still, ever since all the farm workers were deported, nobody knows how to grow lemons or avocados or grapes or lettuce. These days we eat corn and astronaut food. May 1 they say we've built enough of the wall that you could see it from space. But because we canceled the space program to pay for more Sheetrock, no one will actually get to do that. May 6 the hipsters used to talk about making their own shoes and beer, but now they're mostly depressed. The Ivy Leaguers are a cunning tribal bunch. Early on, they tried to drum up support for a resistance movement, but these days they're focused on advancing within the system. May 11 I got a letter from my cousin Kevin today. As a Trump voter, Kevin is now allowed to take justice into his own hands. To shoot someone, he has to ask permission, but he can beat people up pretty much whenever he likes. It sounds like he's flourishing. May 18 the astronaut food is gone, so there's only corn to eat. And not much of that, even after Trump declared it should only be distributed to citizens who were a 9 or a 10. May 27th at night, we whisper about escaping through the wall to Mexico, that golden land of lemons and opportunity. It won't be easy. Mexico is building its own wall now. Rumor has it there's actually.

[David Remnick]

Another brick in Trump's wall By Jesse Wan, performed by Chris Eigeman. It was published in July of last year. Now the real live Trump presidency is all of three weeks old, and US Foreign policy seems to shift on an almost hourly basis from tweet to tweet, from eruption to eruption. One day the President is having tough conversations with longtime allies like Australia, and the next day he's backtracking on his own blustering rewrite of our official position on Israel and the settlements. Robin Wright has Reported on foreign affairs for decades for the New Yorker and many other publications. She recently sat down with Ryan Crocker, a longtime diplomat who served in some very troubled and unstable countries, and with John McLaughlin, the deputy director of the CIA under two presidents.

[Robin Wright]

Welcome to the show. I'm so delighted to talk to two men whose lives have intersected with mine now since at least the 1970s. Both of you have served eight presidents, one as one of America's finest diplomats and the other as one of the highest ranking intelligence officers. President Trump's doctrine appears to be based on America First. In the 21st century, in an era of globalization, is it possible to actually craft a foreign policy that is America first to the exclusion of others? What are the consequences of an America First?

[John McLaughlin]

Well, America first interpreted literally just won't work. America first, if you mean think about what our interests are and advance them, sure. But America first in interpreted literally won't work because every problem we have is one that crosses national boundaries. Problems, whether it's terrorism, proliferation of weapons, concerns about cyber, everything. Everything is a problem for many nations. And they have to pull together policies that help everyone. So the whole idea of America first cuts against all of the trends that we are now seeing evident in the world.

[Robin Wright]

Ryan, do youwhen you look at the Trump administration's foreign policy and what's transpired so far, do you have a sense that the chaos that comes across is intentional? Is this lack of experience?

[Ryan Crocker]

Well, I don't think anyone could deliberately produce chaos on this scale as a matter of policy. So I do think it reflects experience inexperience. I also think that it reflects the president's view that he needs to fulfill the promises he made in the campaign. That as you look at these various steps, I would hope as the extraordinary weight of that office settles in on him, he will take a broader view of those in government careers who are there to help him. Look, the President really needs the Foreign Service. We're a pretty small organization, but we're everywhere in the world. And, you know, an ounce of diplomacy up front may save an administration from having to deploy a 100,000 ton aircraft carrier for military solutions when diplomatic ones were possible. So I think they need to take a deep breath over there, sit under a tree for a while, contemplate the verities and consider how they actually run a government, because they're not running a government right now.

[Robin Wright]

John. President Trump appears to have picked his first foreign policy fight with Iran. The national security adviser came out rather dramatically at a press briefing and said the Trump administration was putting Iran on notice. And the Treasury Department has slapped new sanctions on Iran for its ballistic missile test. And I'm interested in your reflections on how dangerous this is. President Trump tweeted iran is playing with fire. They don't appreciate how kind President Obama was to them, not me. And so what do you think the intentions are? What's your sense of how policy might change? How confrontational is this administration getting with the Islamic Republic?

[John McLaughlin]

Well, you know, we can all have complaints about Iran on various levels, so let's not pretend that they're doing everything we like. But here's the point. The administration has to be careful here for a number of reasons. First, having drawn this line of sorts, let's call it that, if you're put on notice, you are drawing a line of sorts. I would bet anything that Iran will now launch other missiles. That's what they will do. It's virtually certain they will do it again. So does the administration know what they will do then? And if they're intending, and if they don't, then they've just drawn a line that will ultimately come to haunt them. And if they do wish to get into a fight with Iran, One thing I've learned in my government career is when you inflict violence, you don't know where it's going. Even if it's justified, you don't know where it's going. So you have to be prepared for that. You have to be prepared for retaliation, because Iran, if it's in a fight, is not going to sit there. It's going to do something, either through proxies or directly, and their proxy, Hezbollah, is quite capable. And the final thing is, some weeks ago, I wrote an article said, can we handle the truth about isis? And one of the truths I put on the table awkwardly is that one of the few other countries fighting ISIS is Iran. So it's a complicated world. It does not yield well to tweets. And I think they need to be a little careful and just think it through. It's not to say that Iran is our pal, but think it through before we get in a fight.

[Robin Wright]

Ryan, your very first posting was in Iran in the 1970s, and you were the one who actually started the first dialogue with Iran when you were ambassador in Baghdad. This was a tentative dialogue that ultimately led to sporadically, erratically, a kind of discussion and two years of torturous diplomacy that produced the nuclear deal. What is the danger that the process that you helped launch begins to unravel?

[Ryan Crocker]

Well, that follows right on to what John said, the world is a very complicated, messy place, and no part of it is more complicated than Iran.

[Anthony Bourdain]

So.

[Ryan Crocker]

And there is no country in the Middle east we know less about than Iran because we haven't been on the ground there since 1979. I started the conversation with the Iranians right after 9, 11 in Geneva.

[Robin Wright]

Over Afghanistan.

[Ryan Crocker]

Over Afghanistan. And we were getting some stuff done, including turnover of some Al Qaeda operatives. And then we had State of the Union 2002, Axis of Evil. That pretty well finished the dialogue.

[Robin Wright]

The president has openly advocated for taking Iraq's oil. He said that at the CIA. He's said that torture works. He's advocated what some people think are war crimes. How alarmed are you by this rhetoric, John?

[John McLaughlin]

I think he's not aware of what he's saying yet. I think this is just stuff that's popping out because he speaks extemporaneously and he's still caught to some degree in campaign mode. So I'm not particularly alarmed. When I think about a statement like, let's take Iraq's oil, I have always thought that that is beyond stupid. In other words, I don't even know what it means. Try and operationalize that. Does that mean sending troops to surround oil wells while you pump it out and then transport it out of the country, or does it mean something else? I have no idea what he's talking about, so I assume it won't happen, so I'm not worried about it.

[Robin Wright]

Ryan, there was a dissent. Communication by something over 1,000 diplomats. Put this in context. Was this a big deal? Was this unusual? And what impact do you think it might have?

[Ryan Crocker]

Well, Robin, it's a huge deal, and normally the way it works is you file your dissent, it is completely ignored, and then six months later, you will be given an award for dissent. So it's an institution. It's part of the fabric of the Foreign Service and the State Department. But never have we seen anything on this scale. I guess the highest we may have gone on signatures before maybe 50, 60. This is over 1,000.

[Robin Wright]

And what does that reflect about sentiment in the State Department right now about the Trump administration?

[Ryan Crocker]

Well, clearly a lot of angst there. Secretary Tillerson will need to grapple with that. I frankly think he was a good choice. There were a few good choices for that Cabinet. I'm delighted that Jim Mattis is our Secretary of Defense and John Kelly for Homeland Security.

[John McLaughlin]

These are all good people.

[Ryan Crocker]

They are great people. I know them all.

[Robin Wright]

What would you say to young, foreign or old foreign policy officers when they have to make this decision, they dissent from policy. Should they quit or should they continue to serve, hoping that they can help craft policy in a different direction?

[Ryan Crocker]

There is always the option to resign on a matter of principle. It is very seldom done in any of the services, not in the Foreign Service, not in our military, not in the CIA. So my advice would be, look, this may be the time your country needs you the most to provide your analysis, your recommendations, steps forward based on your experience and judgment in the Foreign Service, the government spends a lot of money to give you the language skills and all of the other training that you need to be a professional diplomat. So the bar would have to be pretty darn high, I think, before I would support anyone taking the step of resignation.

[Robin Wright]

Prediction is the low form of journalism. But every president eventually confronts a foreign policy crisis. Where and when do you see that first crisis happening?

[John McLaughlin]

There's so much to watch. I think if you were trying to think of the things that will come and hit the administration in the face early, it's a long list and probably something that I won't think of is on it. Typically, at the beginning of an administration, the thing that surprises you and shocks you and creates the first crisis is something you haven't thought of. For example, in the bush administration, in 2001, when a hotshot Chinese pilot nipped one of our planes in the Pacific and sent it down on Hainan island, we had about a month of crisis with China over what happens to that plane. No one anticipated that. A fruit seller ignites himself in Tunisia and you have the Arab Spring. People knew there were pressures building in the Middle east, but no one anticipated that that would be the spark. So right now I'd say watch North Korea. I've been watching North Korea's missile program since the mid-90s. I am pretty confident that within the term of this President, North Korea will acquire the ability to send an ICBM across the Pacific to us with a nuclear weapon on it. And we will probably detect that development in advance. And the question will arise, what are you going to do about that.

[Robin Wright]

Ryan? What are you watching most closely now?

[Ryan Crocker]

Well, again, my entire experience has been in the Middle east, so I am sure my favorite region in the world will distinguish itself by once again producing a White House level crisis. You know, whether it will be with Iran, whether it'll be in Syria, whether it will be someplace none of us have thought of yet. We are looking at a critical moment in world history. The international order established after World War II persisted for 60 odd years. That order was designed and led by the U.S. i think we're at a moment now when the U.S. isn't really sure it wants to lead anymore. And frankly, that didn't start with Trump. That started with President Obama when he referred to our NATO allies as free riders. That's a term that President Trump would be very comfortable with. I would simply caution with a world order now over seven decades, that has prevented a major war in Europe. Before you throw it over the side, you better have a plan for the coming order. Or if we think the chaos in the White House has been significant, we'll see it on a global scale. If we and our allies do not work together either to endorse an order that has stood as well or to fashion a new one before we walk away from it.

[John McLaughlin]

You know, we talk about global order. It's not an abstract concept. Global order is very concrete. It consists of allies we've made, alliances we've made, coalitions we've built. It consists of rules that we all follow. One of the rules is that borders are inviolable. And yet Putin has broken at least three different treaties in invading Ukraine. Are we going to accept that? We could, but if we did, it would have consequences for a global order. You would have thrown away that rule. So here's the problem. No one else aspires to lead the world, really. They aspire to follow their own interests and secure them. And even though US Leadership is often criticized, it's hard for me to imagine a better circumstance, because the United States, for all of its flaws and all of its mistakes, still leads with the interests of others in mind, as well as its own interests, and leads in a way that advances values, not just narrow interests. And I think that would be a terrible thing to lose, and the world would. That's the story of the 20th century. That is the story of the 20th century. That's why the 20th century was the low point in human violence and the Second World War, the largest single event in human history.

[Chris Eigeman]

So.

[John McLaughlin]

That'S what global order loss looks like.

[Robin Wright]

Ryan, if you had one piece of advice to give the Trump administration, what would it be?

[Ryan Crocker]

Engage with whom for some years have been the dean of the Bush School of government and public service at Texas A&M, that is Bush 41. Take a page from President Bush's notebook. Start to build relations. As soon as he got to the Oval Office, he was making calls, not because there was a crisis to solve, but just to build relationships. That paid off for us in the first Gulf War, where Syria and Egypt each sent a division to be part of the action there. This only happens if you've got a president who is engaged. Sadly, President Obama, who's a remarkably, a remarkable individual at every level, wasn't very good at engagement or wasn't very interested. So I hope President Trump and Secretary Tillerson in particular, Secretary Mattis is already out doing diplomacy with our East Asian allies, that they understand that to make America work, you've got to make the world work. And that doesn't come from just tweeting at the world. You've got to build relations. And I hope very much the President and his key aides take that step.

[Robin Wright]

John.

[John McLaughlin]

I would say think about the difference between tough and tough minded. You know, everyone in Washington likes to beat their chest and show how tough they are. Tough minded is harder. Tough minded is hard government. Tough minded means put your heads together, think hard about the secondary and tertiary consequences of what you're thinking about doing. That's a lot harder than acting tough.

[David Remnick]

John McLaughlin was deputy director of the CIA under Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush. Ryan Crocker has served as the ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Kuwait, and Lebanon. And they spoke with the New Yorker's Robin Wright. Now, in October, we aired a program about the war in Syria. And we heard from journalists trying to cover the war, from officials making U.S. policy, and from people on the ground living through the absolute horror of it. One of the people we talked to was a man named Omar Dawood, who was in Aleppo with his family as it got more and more dangerous every day. He talked about his hopes for his kids for after the war. But at the same time, he seemed to be losing faith that there was going to be a future after the.

[Yasmin Al Sayyad]

War.

[Yasmeen]

To be honest, after the world has given up on us and humanity shown its true colors, not just to the people of Aleppo, but to Syrians everywhere. We feel that death is everywhere. If we continue to live this way, we'd most likely die, whether by an airstrike or of starvation.

[David Remnick]

Our fact checker Yasmin Al Sayyad, kept in contact with Omar. But when the heaviest bombing of Aleppo was underway, she lost touch with him. And frankly, we were starting to assume the worst. But then Yasmeen poked her head in. What's up?

[Robin Wright]

We have good news.

[David Remnick]

We have good news.

[Yasmin Al Sayyad]

Yeah?

[David Remnick]

What's the good news?

[Yasmeen]

Remember Omar?

[David Remnick]

Yeah, I do.

[Yasmeen]

Yeah, he's alive.

[David Remnick]

Oh, well, thank God. Where is he?

[Yasmeen]

They're in Antakya in Turkey.

[David Remnick]

Amazing. I mean, we were talking with him, and he was basically looking out the window of his apartment building and seeing, you know, the equivalent of Dresden taking place all around him, just utter destruction, death everywhere. It's amazing that he's still alive.

[Yasmeen]

It is, it is.

[David Remnick]

And I do we know how he got out.

[Yasmeen]

So they were evacuated to the western countryside of Aleppo and he left with all the family and he got himself smuggled across the border to Turkey for the longest time. Like I last heard from him on Thanksgiving Day. And then just nothing. None of my messages were going through. But he, he sent me a message from a different number and turns out he's alive.

[David Remnick]

And the idea is to make a life of it in Turkey or somehow to return to Syria.

[Yasmeen]

So his idea is he's now waiting for his brother to come out and as soon as the brother is with the rest of the family, that he would get himself smuggled back in to Syria. It's pretty hard to get a job in Turkey in Antakya with the number of refugees there right now. Before he left Aleppo, he used to do relief work and he's trying to go back and find a job with an organization that he used to work with. He thinks that's his best shot to provide for his family.

[David Remnick]

Well, it's kind of a miracle to hear that he's alive. I mean, it's obvious though that he's one of the lucky ones and there are hundreds of thousands dead.

[Yasmeen]

Yeah, it's quite miraculous. I mean, when I heard from him, I hesitated to ask about the rest of the family, just sort of, what are the chances? But they all made it. Him, the wife, the three kids, they all made it.

[David Remnick]

Thanks for letting me know.

[Yasmeen]

Sure.

[David Remnick]

You can find our conversations with Omar Dawood and our whole program on [e-mail] this is the New Yorker Radio Hour. There's more to come. I'm David Remnick and this is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Thanks for joining me. The comedy team of Key and Peele does some of the best, most pointed humor on race and politics. Athletes like their sketch about President Obama's anger translator who expresses all the emotion the President didn't.

[Anthony Bourdain]

Hello, my fellow Americans. This is my anger translator, Luther.

[Ryan Crocker]

Hi.

[John McLaughlin]

Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

[Anthony Bourdain]

A day in which we celebrate a great leader and all y' all do is remember him one day a year and they name some lame ass streets after him.

[David Remnick]

Fuck y'. All. Next week on the show, one of the duo, Keegan Michael Key, talks about performing the routine with the President himself at the White House Correspondents Dinner.

[John McLaughlin]

What was that experience?

[Anthony Bourdain]

It Was. It was. It was glorious. It was one of. One of the greatest moments.

[Chris Eigeman]

Certainly one of the greatest moments in my entire life.

[Anthony Bourdain]

He's so cool. He's cooler than you think he is. He smells great.

[David Remnick]

That's next week on the New Yorker Radio Hour. We've got one more story for you this hour. This from Yiyun Li, who's published some great short stories and essays in the magazine going back to 2003. Li grew up in Beijing in the 70s. She was a child of communism who spent a year in the Chinese army. But she kept a journal and kept it hidden under the bed. And at night she would lose herself reading American novels. She moved to the States after college and started writing her own books in English, her second language. Lee eventually settled in Oakland, California, and she took us recently to one of her favorite places in the city.

[Yasmin Al Sayyad]

And he's really a melancholy day for East Bay or for the Bay Area. It's wet and cold and chilly and windy. So it's a great day to visit cemetery in a way. So this is the entrance, and so there's a main avenue. We are driving in Mountain View Cemetery Cemetery in Oakland, California. Wherever I go, I visit cemeteries. You know, I love Paris, and mostly I go to the cemeteries. And when we visited Zagreb, we walked all the way uphill to, I think, one of the oldest cemeteries in Central Europe and in Ireland, of course, you know, in America, too. I think part of the reason I'm drawn to cemeteries, I think there are a lot of human stories buried in cemeteries. And I write fiction, so I like to imagine lives already lived and lives that are in the past so I can reimagine their lives. And then I couldn't make up a story. I think that's the main road, and we can try to go up on the other side. You know, this is very much hilly. California, Berkeley, it's all hills. And so all the roads are winding around the hill. And I think a lot of cemeteries you can easily find in a. Each lot who is buried there. And here it's a little difficult because it's a little bit like a maze. And every time you walk up there, you find new things. Look at this. I don't know what this tree is. It's beautiful. And I think sometimes you. You notice names that you know right away, like Ghirardelli, the chocolate person. Some of the names are interesting to me. I think mostly because of the local history. You know, I'm not from California. I immigrated from China. And so I thought, you know, it doesn't matter if I'm from elsewhere, once I settle here, I want to know a little bit of this place. I want to know what happened. The making of California. It's almost like in itself a little story about this nation which to me is interesting. Different nationalities, different ethnicities. And I always imagine the people I read in the book, some of them probably are buried here. So now we're on top of the hill and if you look far you can see San Francisco. But look at here, George J. Mazanti. So if you see it's two hearts and that is Angelo Guy Mazzanti. So it's a five year old little boy with a little picture of a five year old boy that says forever young. So you know, the grandfather died in 1990 and the grandson died in 1988. So the grandfather outlived the son for almost two years. And just, just think about that man, how that man felt. I like this lot, this plot a lot because they are from different places. A lot of immigrants buried here. United States Ambassador to the, the Federal State of Micronesia, California Secretaries of State, California State Assemblyman. So this is a Chinese American who was, who held all these positions. And this is an old fashioned Chinese character that looked almost like paintings to me. It's interesting as a writer you need years of accumulation to understand the place. So I think I've written about for 10, 12 years now, I think. But now I have lived in California for a little bit over a decade now. I realized California is coming into my fiction too. So more and more California feels native to me in a way. You know, looking at the trees, the land. I've been working on this novel and one of the main character is really the narrator. She's an old woman and she actually in my imagination she's in a retirement home not far from here, probably like five minutes away. And she in my imagination would one day be buried here.

[David Remnick]

Yiyun Lee at Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, California. Her new book of essays comes out this month. It's called Dear Friend from My Life. I Write to youo in youn Life. That's it for this week and thanks so much for listening. You can always catch up on our previous programs on newyorkerradio.org I'm David Remnick. See you next time.

[Anthony Bourdain]

Time the New Yorker Radio Hour is a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of Tune Yards with additional music by Alexis Cuadrado. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.