Mark Bittman

And Wednesday was his day of great exaltation and relief, right?

Yeah.

And then Thursday was kind of a day off.

And then Friday, I'd start to get a little antsy.

And the weekend, what am I doing?

And Monday and Tuesday were like... And that just never stopped.

And I think when it did stop, there was just this withdrawal period from this cycle that I knew.

I didn't particularly love the cycle, but...

It was my cycle.

And I think anyone who's had a column for any period of time will say the same thing.

But you're a journalist now.

Frank Rich said, when I got the opinion column, Frank Rich said to me,

Yeah, it's really great, only it's like being tied up under a windmill.

The blade comes down and you duck it and then you look up and it's like, oh, no.

Yes, I'm hopeful.

There's days that I despair, but there's days that I'm hopeful.

I do think food is a particularly strong example of things going wrong and not going right again.

But I think the big picture is that many things have gone right.

And if you're looking at...

women's rights or you're a gay person or you're a person of color and you look at your life compared to what your life would have looked like 50 or 75 years ago, I think those trends have been in the right direction.