Chapter 1: What makes Julia Child a significant figure in American cooking?
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Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here, too. And we're stuffed on turkey, wearing aprons, got a little gravy on the sides of our mouths. And it's stuff you should know. That's right. Happy Thanksgiving for those who celebrate Thanksgiving here in the U.S. And happy belated Thanksgiving to our Canadian listeners who celebrate it early. That's right.
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Chapter 2: How did Julia Child's early life influence her culinary journey?
Yeah, they see to it that kids who would almost certainly otherwise not have gotten any real education at all get a really great education for fairly cheap, too. They're a really, really great, effective charity, which is why we've been working with them for so long. And one of the ways we work with them every year is to raffle off a chance to hang out with us online. Yeah, virtually.
That's how we do things. But we've done this for a few years in a row now, like a Zoom, a co-ed Zoom hangout. And it's always super fun. We look forward to it. And this is how you can do that. You can join the Cooperative for Education for 20 bucks a month and you can collectively sponsor students in the RISE Youth Development Program.
In 2026, more than 1,200 students are going to start school in rural Guatemala through this program. And that's their biggest class ever. And they really count on us and you guys to help make that happen. Yeah. You can also give any donation that you like. They're happy with that. But do this by December 19th.
And you will be entered into a chance to hang out with us, I think, in January at some point. And also, just a little FYI, Giving Tuesday is December 2nd, so that could be a good day to do it, too. And whenever you're ready, go to cooperativeforeducation.org slash SYSK, and you can make your donations there. That's right. Twenty bucks a month can really go a long way.
And just to brag a little bit about the stuff you should know, Army, since we've been working with co-edā over $1.4 million in charitable contributions have come from the Stuff You Should Know Army, sponsoring a total of 172 RISE students over that time. That is so cool. Thanks, you guys, for supporting COED so well. That's right.
Well, Chuck, I see we get cracking with our episode today because I'm excited about this one. We're talking about Julia Child, arguably one of the most well-known cooks, chefs of all time. Yeah, but I have to step out real quick because I've cut the dickens out of my finger. That was pretty good, actually. I wasn't even going to try it, but that was a dead-on Julia Child.
Well, that was a dead-on Dan Aykroyd as Julia Child. I think you topped him, to tell you the truth. Yeah, you know, if you grew up in the 70s and the 80s and even into the 90s and you ever surfed around your cable TV and crossed PBS, there was a good chance that the wonderful Julia Child came into your life in some way.
I remember watching her a little bit when I was a kid even and just thinking, like, who is this giant tall woman that talks funny cooking in front of my face? But you were never intimidated by her, were you? No. I mean, she was always just so friendly and gregarious. I just had an instant liking for her.
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Chapter 3: What role did Julia Child play during World War II?
Yes, she was a very, very likable person. But even if you're not familiar with Julia Child and you live in the United States and you like decent food that's not processed, you owe an enormous debt to Julia Child because you can argue that she almost single-handedly introduced America to real food through French cuisine. Yeah.
I mean, these days it's taken for granted that, you know, farm to table and ingredients that matter and food preparation and sort of taking pride in cooking at home like that is just so commonplace. But that was not the case when Julia Child was coming into things. She really revolutionized and sort of rocked America's culinary world.
Yeah, like this was the time when she came around when people were making Jell-O molds with like ground beef in them. That was nice. That was like showing off for a dinner party kind of stuff. Yeah, for sure. So we'll talk about all the impact she had and why she was so beloved. But to start, we'll go a little further back toward the beginning.
And if you've ever heard her speak, you really did do a pretty good impression. A lot of people think that she's British. And she was not British. She was American. She was born in Pasadena. Apparently, her accent was one of those mid-Atlantic accents that she was taught growing up in private schools and private college, Smith College in Massachusetts. Yeah. Yeah, she was Julia McWilliams.
That's how she was born and didn't have British parents either. They were they had some money, though. Her parents were pretty well to do. Her dad was a financier and her mom was an heiress of a paper company. So she grew up with a cook in the house. But it wasn't it wasn't that that did it. As you'll see, she had quite a circuitous route.
to becoming the most famous cook in the world and had a pretty interesting life up until that point. She really did, like a surprisingly interesting one. She was apparently a disaster in the kitchen and really didn't start cooking until I think she was in her 40s, maybe late 30s.
I saw that the closest brush she had with being a gourmand and a host was when she was the chair of the refreshment committee. Yeah. for the senior prom and the fall dance one year at Smith College. And that's not really much of an exaggeration. That really probably is the closest she came to being a foodie before she got into cooking later on in life. Yeah, she was a history student.
She was going to be a writer. And like I said, she was tall. She was six foot two and she was athletic. She played basketball.
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Chapter 4: How did Julia Child revolutionize American cuisine?
She played tennis. She played golf. She graduated in 1934 and moved to New York and was, you know, I said she wanted to be a writer. She was an advertising copywriter for Sloan's, which was a furniture company. So that was her first gig. But she was always a well-liked person. She was very, like I said, gregarious. That wasn't just a TV persona. Very, very sociable.
People really seemed to like her her whole life. She was the life of the party, but she wasn't like just, you know, even though she loved her wine, she wasn't just some souse at the party. She was apparently a pretty responsible human, even early on. Like if she put a lampshade on her head, she remembered doing it the next day. It was on purpose.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly. She also had a really great work ethic, which served her well throughout the rest of her career, but really from the outset helped her because when World War II broke out, she's like, I want to become a spy.
So she joined the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, the direct predecessor of the CIA, and worked directly under no less than Wild Bill Donovan, the guy who founded the OSS. Yeah, he was a general, and apparently she didn't have a whole lot of direct interaction with him, but it was a very big gig for her.
It was pretty menial work, even though it was a job of responsibility that she was put in. It was kind of pre-computer work, like they needed human beings to do stuff that computers would do.
So she would type up profiles on note cards of OSS officers just to keep sort of in the file cabinet before they had, you know, computers to do that kind of thing, along with several other women that she worked with. And like I said, she was charming. You said she had a great work ethic and she got promoted like several times through that job. Yeah.
And she actually was promoted to become a member of the emergency sea rescue equipment section, which was tasked with coming up with a shark repellent because sharks were a problem for downed pilots, shipwrecked sailors. I think at least 20 sailors had been attacked by sharks since the beginning of the war. And this is only a couple of years in.
So they needed some sort of shark repellent that would keep sharks away, but that was also highly portable. Apparently, shark repellent did not exist to this point, and the shark repellent they came up with was so effective, it's still the shark repellent that's used today. Yeah.
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Chapter 5: What is the significance of 'Mastering the Art of French Cooking'?
Oh, no. We had one person that wrote in and said they couldn't get through it. I know. I felt kind of bad for them. Oh, that's right. From 44 to 45, I think these were her last two years in the OSS. She served as chief of the OSS registry and was sent to some pretty faraway places. She went to China and Ceylon, which is modern day Sri Lanka, and had some really top notch security clearance.
It was, you know, she really worked her way up the ladder in the OSS. I saw that she had top secret the highest level security clearance for that assignment, which is, it's just nuts. One thing that we'll see later on is that she's basically always considered herself a feminist.
And that's a good example that she worked her way to the top of the OSS to have the highest possible security clearance during the 40s at a time when women were not really, I know that women worked a lot to support the war effort, but that seems like an unusual position for a woman at the time. Yeah, for sure. All that, you know, due to her hard work.
One of the biggest things that happened, though, in the OSS was that she met her future husband, Paul Child. He was an officer. And I say that not, you know, and like, oh, she met her husband there. So that's what matters. But she met her life partner and love of her life who died. helped nurture her career and serve her.
And they by all accounts, they just seem like this really, really wonderful couple, like the kind that you've always, you know, want to be in yourself, that kind of relationship, you know. Yeah, I saw from basically every source that talked about it that they were the envy of their friends. Yeah. So, yeah, they stayed together.
They were married for almost 50 years from 1946 until Paul died in 1994. That's right. And the takeaway here is they landed in France at one point in 1948 as part of his assignment in the USS. And when they were in Franceā And, you know, it's that sliding doors thing. Had they not gotten stationed in France, who knows if we ever would have gotten Julia Child. Yeah.
Because he was a foodie and she wasn't. And he said, hey, I'm going to take you out to a real French meal and see what you think. So he took her to this very famous restaurant. How do you pronounce that, Josh? La Couronne. La Coronne, which is the crown. This is in the Normandy region along the river there in northern France. And it has been a restaurant since the 1340s. So it is legit.
Some people claim it's the oldest inn in all of France. That's pretty cool. So they know what they're doing with French cuisine, which, by the way, if you don't really understand French cuisine and I don't really claim to, I appreciate it. But it's not like that's what you me and I are making on Tuesday night at home yet because I got her cookbook recently and I'm very excited about it.
But just to kind of like a little back of the envelope sketch of it, French cuisine, French cooking was the first cuisine in the world to be recognized as a world heritage by UNESCO. That's how distinct and important French cuisine is. And this is the moment when Julia Child was introduced to it, this lunch at La Couronne.
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Chapter 6: How did Julia Child's television career impact cooking shows?
Yeah, generally. So at this lunch in 1948, her first French meal, she had oysters. All right. Poulet fumƩ wine, which is the official Sauvignon Blanc. Okay. And sole meuniere. Meuniere means Miller's wife. So like you were saying, humble, simple dishes. It's sole fish that's floured and made with capers, lemon, butter, parsley, and not much more.
And she said that that first true culinary experience, there's a few quotes I think we should trade off with. She said that it was an opening up of the soul and spirit for me. That first meal, it changed her life quite literally. Yeah. She also said it was a kind of coming to Jesus. And what else? She said it was the most exciting meal of my life. Yeah.
And then that dish, that Dover sole that, you know, it's fried fish. You flour some sole, fry it up in some butter. I think the lemon and parsley and capers is part of any, what is it, the meuniere? Mounier. Mounier. I think any Mounier. That's basically what it is. But a very simple dish. And that became one of her, you know, one of her big signature dishes. Yeah. Put a little ketchup on there.
You're in hog heaven. Oh, man. You and my daughter. So because she was moved by, she likes ketchup, huh? Oh, God. It's so annoying. She's very cool. We have a lot in common. It gets her to eat some stuff she wouldn't normally eat. So that's good, I guess. Like broccoli? No, she doesn't put on broccoli. She doesn't like broccoli, but she eats. I don't like broccoli either. Does she hate peas too?
No, she loves peas. She in fact, she eats frozen peas as a snack. Well, they're really, that's probably like that distinction erases all of the similarities because I hate peas so much. Oh yeah. I hate them so much, Chuck. Yeah, she loves sushi now, which was a big surprise for us. That's awesome. She just kind of started eating it when I got it, because I think she likes stealing my food.
So it started as a joke, and then now she's just eating it. Do you remember what kind she eats? Is it like California rolls or nigiri? Yeah, man. Like, yeah, nigiri and just any kind of crazy roll I get, she'll eat. Man, that's awesome. That's great to start. No soy sauce, though. You're not supposed to eat much soy sauce, if any, with it.
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Chapter 7: What were some famous mistakes Julia Child made on air?
I don't care if you're supposed to or not. I'm telling you what I like. Oh, that's fine. I'm just saying, like, she's actually, she could go to Japan right now and they wouldn't bat an eyelash at her for it. Hey, you think I don't remember our sushi episode? I didn't know. We did the black hole episode twice. That's a good point. All right. So where are we? Julia Child has eaten this meal.
It blew her mind because she was raised on American food, like you said, was not a foodie. And not only American food, but in recent years, post-war American food, which is when stuff started to get really sort of mass produced and not very good, like very processed. And this French food just blew her mind. Yeah. So she wanted to understand how that could happen. Right. Yeah.
So she started taking cooking classes. And again, like she's a total novice here. And I think she's again in her late 30s. So this is 1948. She's about 36 at this time. And her life has just changed. Like she's just figured out what she wants to do in life. So she starts taking classes, ends up enrolled in Le Cordon Bleu in 1951.
That same year, she founds her own cooking school that she runs out of her own kitchen with her, who would become longtime collaborators, Simone Beck and Louisette Berthold. And they founded the school called L'Ecole des Trois Gourmands, which means the School of the Three Gourmands. That's right.
I didn't get this verified, but I did read somewhere that she was either the only woman in her class at Le Cordon Bleu or one of only two, maybe. It just, you know, back then, and, you know, there's still a lot of sexism in chefs' kitchens and restaurants. It's come a long way, but for many, many years, it was a profession of white men.
You know, I feel like that's something we say a lot on this show, but that's the case. Within 10 years of Being at Le Cordon Bleu, she had sold her best-selling cookbook that you just bought, I guess. Did you get the OG? Yeah. Yeah. What's the name of that? Mastering the Art of French Cooking. That's right. 700 plus pages.
And then about 50 years after she enrolled at Le Cordon Bleu, her actual kitchen that she cooked in would be in the Smithsonian Museum of American History as a permanent exhibit. Pretty neat. Pretty amazing. I say we take a break and we'll come back and we'll talk about that cookbook that I got because it was groundbreaking to say the least. All right.
Thank you.
Learning stuff with Joshua and Charles Stuff you should know
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Chapter 8: Why is Julia Child still celebrated today?
I sat through with y'all 22 times. The police, right? But what if the person you're supposed to go to for help is the one you're the most afraid of? This dude is the devil. He's a snake. He'll hurt you.
I got you, I got you, I got you.
I'm Nikki Richardson, and this is The Girlfriends Untouchable. Detective Roger Golubsky spent decades intimidating and sexually abusing Black women across Kansas City, using his police badge to scare them into silence. This is the story of a detective who seemed above the law until we came together to take him down.
I told Roger Golubsky, I said, you're going to see my face till the day that you die. Listen to The Girlfriends, Untouchable, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Dad had the strong belief that the devil was attacking us. Two brothers, one devout household, two radically different paths. Gabe Ortiz became one of the highest-ranking law enforcement officers in Texas. 32 years total law enforcement experience. But his brother Larry, he stayed behind and built an entirely different legacy.
He was the head of this gang, and nobody was going to tell him what to do.
You're going to push that line for the cause.
Took us under his wing and showed us the game, as they call it.
When Larry is murdered, Gabe is forced to confront the past he tried to leave behind and uncover secrets he never saw coming.
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