A Slight Change of PlansNew episodes are coming your way in October, but in the meantime Maya wanted to share her conversation with renowned chef Christine Ha. When a rare neurological condition left Christine legally blind by age 24, she worried she might never be able to cook again. Her story shows the power of imaginative courage in the face of change.
If you enjoyed this episode, you can watch Maya’s TED talk here, which also features Christine’s story. You might also like the episode “The Science of Motivation”.
In the meantime, you can connect with Maya on Instagram @DrMayaShankar.
Pushkin Hey, Slight Changed listeners, It's maya. New episodes of A Slight Change of Plans are coming your way this October. In the meantime, I wanted to share an episode that I returned to again and again. It's a conversation I had with the world renowned chef Christine Haw and I featured her story in my ted talk earlier this summer. When Christine was twenty four, a rare neurological condition left her legally blind, and she was concerned she might never be able to cook again. Her story shows the power of imaginative courage in the face of change. I hope you enjoy it.
I remember noticing that the vision in one of my eyes was blurry, and I assumed it was my contact lens. I took it out and I cleaned it, popped it back in. I still realized that my eyesight was blurry, so I ended up going to an optometrist and he checked out my eye, did all the usual eye exams, concluded that it was actually something neurological. My brain was fine, but the nerve tissue that connects the eye to the brain transmitting the image that my eye was taking in was on the Fritz.
That's Christine Hat describing a rare neurological condition that caused her vision to rapidly deteriorate and left her legally blind by age twenty four. Christine had to relearn how to navigate so much in her life, the ins and outs of her home, opening mail, and cooking food for herself. Making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, which had once been so straightforward for her, now felt like a daunting task.
I noticed that when I put the jelly on the slice of bread, and all of the jelly got all over the counter. It dripped down my arm. When I tried to line the two slices of bread together like the sandwich seemed not perfect. And I remember being very frustrated with myself, throwing that sandwich away and just telling myself, I don't know how I'll be independent again. I don't think I'll be able to ever cook again.
Spoiler alert, Christine did cook again, and she's found her independence again. Today. Christine's a world renowned chef who goes by the nickname the Blind Cook. She won season three of the hit reality TV show Master Chef in twenty twelve, and she's written a New York Times best selling cookbook and owns two restaurants in Houston, Texas. On today's episode, a blind woman becomes a master chef and redefines what independence means to her. Along the way, I'm Maya Shunker and this is a slight change of plans, A show about who we are and who we become in the face of a big chain. Christine Ha grew up in a Vietnamese American family, and she loved the traditional dishes her mom would cook for her. When Christine got to college, she was eager to recreate some of her mom's recipes to reconnect with her Vietnamese heritage and also to feel close to her mom, who had died of cancer when Christine was thirteen. The more Christine cooked, the more she realized just how much she loved it, the recipes and the experience of sharing food with her friends and family, so she turned it into a full on hobby. But that all changed for Christine when she was diagnosed with neuromielitis optica in her early twenties. She experienced blurry vision, numbness in her arms and legs, partial paralysis, and seizures. While medication would help with many of these symptoms, doctors told her to expect severe and permanent vision lie loss. I asked Christine to share what it was like to receive this news.
I was very fearful. I felt very alone because at the time, I was in my early twenties, and of course most of my friends were not experiencing that. None of them I really knew how to deal with chronic illness, vision loss, those types of things. I think when you're in your twenties, you assume you're invincible and you don't think you're going to be dealing with stuff like that until you're much much older. So I felt very alone in what I was experiencing, and no one could really relate, And so in my head, I was thinking, why are my friends not caring as much as I do about what I'm going through? Or why are they still able to laugh and do normal everyday things and feel like that's okay when I can't.
Can you say more? You mentioned that you felt socially isolated, and I'm wondering if you can. I think this is so relateable. Well, for so many people who go through unexpected and rare challenges right that they don't feel that other people can relate to them.
So it's definitely a grief experience. So earlier in life, I had to agree the loss of my mom when she passed away when I was young, but it's similar in that you go through the same motions. I was in denial and then I felt upset that I was going through this and other people didn't understand. I felt alone. Then I felt sad. I felt at times, not often, but at times I felt sorry for myself, like wondering why this was happening to me and not somebody else. And then I think I had to allow myself to sit in that space and feel that sadness and feel that loss. I basically allowed myself to pity myself and allowed myself to cry about it and ask why is this happening to me and tell myself this really sucks. And it took some time a lot of thinking and just kind of ruminating with my own thoughts in my head. It helped me come to the realization that no matter what happens, the world is going to keep on moving on, so the sun will continue to rise, continue to set regardless of what happens. And it is a weird feeling and I feel like I've gone through this before. With the loss of my mom. Is like you wake up the next day and you're like, there are still people driving to work, there's still people going to school, there's still you know, people are still living their lives, even though my life feels like it just got turned upside down.
You know, you mentioned that you had lost your mother at a young age. I imagine that this forced a kind of independence on you, and I'm wondering whether that independent mindset in some ways prepared you for this moment of deteriorating vision.
It's interesting you say that, because I almost thought it was the opposite. So, because I lost my mom when I was young, I did feel like I had to grow up fairly quickly and become very independent and rely mostly on myself. And when I lost my mom, I realized that you cannot depend on any person in your life because in a second that person could be gone and then your whole world gets turned upside down. So I think for me, losing my mom forced me to be independent and not dependent on other people. But actually, when I started losing my vision, I had to give up independence and I had to depend on people more and ask for help for even the most mundane of tasks like reading my mail or trying to identify things in the refrigerator, or pouring myself a glass of water to drink. And so it stripped me of my independence. So in a way, I really wasn't prepared for that, because losing my mom did make me independent, and then losing my vision made made me learn to be dependent again.
Yeah, and it sounds like from what you're describing that being independent had become a large part of your identity. So maybe you were in part grieving a loss of independence since you were now going to have to rely on people in a way that you hadn't before.
Oh, definitely. I always say the hardest thing about the vision loss was the loss of some of the independence that I was used to.
So your vision is slowly deteriorating. Is there a moment where maybe it hits you for the first time, this is not getting better? You know? In the past, maybe I've been able to fight my way through problems that this is one I just don't have any chance against it.
I think I had several moments like that, one of which I that really stands out of my head was a moment when I had lost some more vision. And like I'd mentioned, it was gradual over the years, so anytime it would decrease a little bit to a new baseline, I would start getting used to that base one be like, Okay, well this is I can live with this. I'm getting used to it. I can figure out how to still walk around without a white cane, or I can enlarge the font on my computer to thirty five point font and still read my screen or whatnot. And then I would as soon as I would get used to that new baseline of my vision, it would decrease more and I would lose more vision, and I have to feel like I would start over. So I remember there was one particular time when my vision pretty much decreased to the level that it is now, which I describe as very very blurry and very washed out colors, and I just see some foggy shapes, as though if you were to step out of a very very hot shower and your mirrors all fogged up and with the steam. That's kind of how I see. So it's very very very blurry, don't see much color, maybe some slight shapes, but everything's foggy and hazy. When it decreased to this level. I remember I was living alone at the time, trying to make a sandwich for myself, and I thought the easiest thing was going to be peanut butter jelly. So I was like, Okay, I could find the bread. It's already sliced up. I just pulled the slices out, and I would just find the peanut butter by smell, find the jelly by smell, and then use a butter knife to spread the peanut butter and jelly on the two slices of bread. But I think I was in a very precarious mental state at that time already. And it's not that the sandwich has to be perfect to be edible and good, but I noticed that when I put the jelly on the slice of bread and all of the jelly got all over the counter, it dripped down my arm when I tried to line the two slices of bread together, like, the sandwich seemed not perfect. And growing up too, I'm very much a perfectionist and I still sort of am, so I think just not being able to make a perfect PEBJ sandwich at that time was kind of like the straw that broke the Camel's back, and I remember being very frustrated with myself, throwing that sandwich away and just telling myself, I don't think I'll be able to ever cook again. I don't know how I'll be independent again. You know, that's a moment that stands out in my head, but I've had many of similar moments like that.
Yeah, it strikes me that in the face of protracted vision deterioration. You know, the obvious upside is that it's giving you time to adapt to your new world and find new habits and restructure your life. But on the other hand, there is this tortuous aspect that you described, which is, you know, you're clearly a highly motivated and adaptive person, adaptable person, and at every step you're saying, Okay, I got this, I got this, folks, I can I can work at this level, and then you're taunted by the fact that it just keeps getting worse. And so I imagine, yeah, you just kind of want to rip off the band aid at a certain point and know what the end outcome is.
Yeah. I'm always the kind of person too that would rather know the bad news than not know. So it's all so much more anxiety of not knowing, like, oh, will my vision get worse or will I be able to do this? You know exactly?
So where do you go from the peanut butter and jelly sandwich moment?
I allowed myself for however long I needed to feel bad about not being able to make a peanut butter jelly sandwich. And then slowly I think I just thought more about, Okay, well, I didn't get it right that time, but when I'm in a better headspace, so let me try again. And then I would notice I could incrementally improve at little things in the kitchen. I noticed that as days went by and weeks went by, and I would attempt a little bit more things in the kitchen to try to just feed myself. I would be like, oh, today I was able to cut an orange and eat an orange. And then maybe the next day I was able to scramble an egg. Maybe some of it was burnt, but I was still able to do an egg. And then then a week after that, I was able to scramble an egg that was burnt. And then looking back, I would notice my progress and the steps forward that I was taking. So I had to tell myself, like, Okay, well, I couldn't do this a week ago, or a month ago, or six months ago. And then when you realize that you're making progress, I think it helps build confidence, and then that confidence gives you the courage to keep trying bigger and better things and putting yourself to the challenge and realizing that even if you fail the first time or make a mistake, you learn from that and you reassess and you try again.
Yeah, you know, you mentioned the victory you felt at being able to peel an orange, and I'm wondering if you can tell me more about how it is you had to change your relationship with cooking. You know, at the time it was simply a hobby of yours, but what was involved in relearning how to cook and navigate the kitchen safely.
It remained a hobby of mine for quite a long time, and I was losing my vision in this at the same time when I was voraciously teaching myself how to cook and reading all sorts of cookbooks and experimenting in the kitchen. So each time I would lose a little bit more vision and it would decrease to some new level. I would have to teach myself again how to accomplish the same things in the kitchen, And like I said, it was kind of a matter of taking these small steps and celebrating these small victories. But eventually I would just focus on being able to do things with my remaining four senses, and that actually taught me that cooking is much more of a multisensory ordeal than we often expect. Like, you can definitely get by in the kitchen with your sense of touch and your sense of smell and your sense of taste. Those things I would say are the most important in the kitchen. And yes, it would help visually probably to tell if something is cooked in a pan, But over the years, with a lot of experience, I'm able to tell if something is cooked by the texture and how it feels at the end of my cooking utensil, or by the smell of garlic. You can tell if it's raw, or if it's fragrant, or if it's burnt. So just learning over time to rely on my remaining four senses much more so than my sense of vision, was really how I got back into the kitchen and taught myself how to cook a lot of the dishes that I'd cooked before. And I actually think with my sense of sight out of the picture, I became much more of a nuanced cook in the kitchen, and I would pay much more attention to the small changes that a seasoning would make in a dish, and I'd pay much more attention to how things taste in your mouth when it comes to temperature and texture. And so I think that allowed me to focus more on those aspects of food, which helped me in some way become a better cook.
So you end up writing a blog about your experiences in the kitchen at a website you create, which is called the blindcook dot com, and somewhat unexpectedly, the casting crew reality TV show Master Chef catches wind of your blog and ends up reaching out to you. Yeah.
It was a strange one at first because I didn't believe it. And I remember I received an email through the contact form and they said, Hi, I'm the casting producer for a show called Master Chef. It's with Gordon Ramsey, it's on Fox. We wanted to see if you would like to audition. And I asked my husband and I was like, Hey, isn't this name familiar Gordon Ramsey, and John's like yeah, that's the chef that's from the UK that's on like Hell's Kitchen and all stuff, and he's always known for cursing at people blah blah blah. And then he was like, Oh, if that's legitimate, you should totally go an audition for the show. But we were like, is this for real? So at the time, too, I was very anonymous, like I'm naturally an introvert and a you know, pretty private person. So my blog had no pictures of me, didn't have my real name on there. I kept it very anonymous so that if you went to that blog, you would never know who it was. And they reach out just wondering if I was a real person, because you know, there were no photos of me. There was nothing about my bio really on there except I just wrote recipes and what it was like to be as someone who's visually impaired. And so I said, uh, okay, I will come audition, and you know, I went to the open casting call and auditions in Austin and when the producers were traveling around the country trying to look for of season three cast, and then the rest was kind of history.
Well, it's not going to be history right now. I want to hear all. I want to hear all about your experience on Master Chef, So you know, I personally remember seeing you walking out on a set to make your first dish as a competitor in a kitchen that was largely unfamiliar to you and that you're not able to see. And on top of all that, there's the added pressure of making a dish that's going to be judged by three of the most famous chefs in the world. What was that like, Christine, Like, I can't imagine that mounting pressure.
There's definitely a lot of pressure. It was nerve wracking. I mean I was in a space that, you know, in a big warehouse, with a lot of people I'd never met before, all of the other contestants. I've never been familiar with what the entertainment world or television world was like, so I had no idea what to expect with all these lights, these directors, all these like cameras rolling on Dolly's and of course a lot of it I couldn't even see, so all I could hear was just a lot of noise around me. So it was not only stressful knowing that I would have to cook a dish for these judges to taste, but stressful because I'm in a foreign environment as someone who's visual impaired and has no idea what's going on around me except with the context clues of what I hear, what I smell.
Wow, well, I mean, things obviously went very well for you after that first dish. You kept advancing through the rounds, and such a poignant moment is when Gordon Ramsay said your apple pie looked stunning and of course tasted amazing and delicious.
He was just really blown at the fact that I totally thought I fed him a pile of rubbish, which is now the running joke. So at my restaurants, my apple pie that served there as a dessert is called the rubbish apple pie because when he asked me, I'm like, I think it looks like a pile of rubbish. And I only use that word too, because in my head, I was like so nervous and I really wanted to say it looks like a pile of shit, but then I was like, oh, I'm on television. I can't use that word. So I'm like, naturally, I'm like, oh, he must use the word rubbish because he's from there. He's from the UK. He's pretty I was like, oh, it must look like a pile of rubbish, and you know he he told me. He was like, no, it definitely doesn't. It looks great. The crust is golden and flaky. And then he scraped a knife or a fork on top of it to let me here that it actually baked to the correct flakiness level. And then he cut out a slice of pie that I guess held together and then taste it and said it tasted good.
We'll be back in a moment with a slight change of plans when we'll hear more from Christine about her experience on Master Chef. There was this one moment when you were on Master Chef that really affected me, where you said you felt your vision impairment was affecting people's ability to focus on what mattered most, which was your cooking skills.
I didn't want people to think that what I was doing was so great or even better because it was someone that's visual impaired. I wanted to compete on the same level and be judged as the same level as everybody else. While yes, maybe it's going to be harder for me to do things because I'm visually impaired. But I didn't want that to be my quote unquote handicap. I wanted people to focus more and judge me and give me true constructive criticism based on my merits in the food I was putting up to be judged.
Yeah, And did you feel that by the end of the process that was happening for you?
I do. I mean it wasn't easy, so coming into it, they had to adapt my particular cooking stations so that I could use it as a cook who's visually impaired. So I needed some assistance in certain ways or adaptations that made sense. But it's not like I would ask for more time for my challenge or expect like a different ingredient, or expect special rules to be made for me. So at the beginning, yes, I did feel that insecurity that I wasn't sure how I would be treated because I'm sure a lot of people had never expected someone who is visually impaired to be able to cook. And I remember some people asking me like, well, how are you going to cook? Like are you going to stand on the side and call out your recipe and have your husband? My husband John was there at the time to assist me as my sided guide. They were wondering if he would do all the cutting and I would just be on the sidelines, like telling him what to do. And I'm like, in my head, I was dumbfound and I'm like, no, I'm going to use the knife of course, like that would be weird. So there was those kinds of questions from people who I think were completely surprised to see someone who's visual impaired, or they thought that I was like a gimmick that was brought on by the producers for just for the ratings. And I was also insecure because still in the back of my head, I'm like, yeah, I do have a disability. Will that will make it harder for me to compete with everyone else who's sited. But I think as the competition went on, I started understanding what my strengths were, and I started playing to those strengths, and I think that's what helped me go all the way to that end.
And what did you feel those strengths were.
Well, the strength was the fact that I couldn't see. I paid much less attention to or and was not distracted by what the other contestants were doing. And I feel like what happened to some of us at sometimes and even I've done it in some of the early challenges in my season was I would hear like, oh, someone else, so and so next to me is using really fancy ingredients or using a very fancy cooking technique, and then I would you know, then you would think to yourself, oh, maybe what I'm doing is not good enough, it's not fancy enough, it's too pedestrian. And then we would change our dish that we planned to make halfway through, and then by then you only have thirty minutes left to achieve your new dish, and then at the end you can't finish it, and then you serve up only part of a plate. And for me, I think what I realized was that these judges have tasted some of the best foods in the world, and there's nothing I'm going to do going to be like that's probably going to blow their minds. So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to cook something that I feel like eating that I would be happy to eat myself or serve my friends and my family, and I wouldn't worry about what other people are cooking. I'm just going to compete against myself, and as long as I went into that kitchen and I was a better cook that day than I was the day before, then that's really all I could ask of myself. And so I started concentrating and focusing only on what I was doing and not paying attention to what the other contestants were doing. And I think that allowed me to stay more focused and know what I was going to cook and follow that course and that plan of action, and then I was able to finish my dishes on time and follow through.
Okay, So I would love to revisit an incredibly joyful moment, obviously for you, but for so many people around the world who are celebrating along with you. What was it like to win Master Chef?
The winner of Master Chef, congratulations Christine. Yeah, my first thought was, thank God, this thing is over. It actually took me like two days for it to really sink in. I think it was the biggest shock I'd experienced in my life. And I remember that first night after winning, I could not sleep at all, and then it didn't really sink in that I'd won the whole thing until about forty eight hours later.
I'm wondering if there was anyone in particular that you heard from after your win that had a particular impact on you.
There are a lot of people that have reached out over the years, and I was just flooded with different stories about people recounting their own struggles, whether it was with vision loss or any sort of disability, whether it's mental or physical, And all of these people just came with their shortcomings to me and be very honest about how seeing my story helped them try and turn their lives around or pick themselves up. And you know, some things in particular all the way from like just young children saying that I gave them the courage to try out for the soccer team, to someone a woman who said that she had been battling depression for many months and she couldn't get out of bed, and so she was flipping through the TV and then saw me on Master Chef and then started following it and watching the whole season, and then after that she stopped thinking about suicide and left her bed and started cooking again for her family. So those sorts of stories, like they're so moving, and I still can't fathom the impact that I've been able to have on so many people. But I think, if anything, I remember on the show, my friend Scott, who's one of the contestants, he was like, you realize that after the show, even if you don't win, you're so much bigger than what this show is. And I was just like, oh, shut up, Scott, Like I was like, I don't know what you're tom about. You know, we were like getting into the casting van. I was like, I don't know, that's weird, and even then, like I had no idea like the impact my story would have on people. And years later, now it's been ten years and I still hear people watching the season for the first time and my story helping them through whatever it is that they're struggling, and knowing that I've been given this platform and blessed with this ability to help other people just simply by sharing my story or being who I am, that is like the biggest gift of all.
So have you have you internalized what Scott told you?
Like?
Do you believe him now?
I sort of do, but it's still very strange, but yes I do. I had no idea like when I yeah, it is still weird to me when I think back and I guess I just didn't have that outside perspective because I'm I just feel like I'm just me, you know, And I'm just like Lotti Da, I'm just Christine, Like, yeah, I'm line, but I just do whatever I do.
Yeah, I mean, I appreciate your humility. But it's one thing to say in the face of adversity that you have big dreams, right, It's another thing to put in the hundreds of hours of work to actually achieve those dreams, to relearn fundamental things that you had taken for granted in the early part of your life. That translation is what you know. I personally find so impressive about your story, and I don't want it to be lost. Just how challenging it is to get back into a kitchen or to adapt to life in a kitchen where you're losing your vision and you are in the presence of danger, and you are brave enough to learn how to use knives and heat on a stove, and beyond that achieve artistry, right like mastery at the highest levels.
I truly believe when people tell me these things like what you just said, Maya, I'm like, honestly, I feel like any person that would be put in my position, will figure out a way, and you could do the same exact thing that I've accomplished if you were put in that same position. Because not true. I'm sorry.
I used to believe that.
I think people are much more resilient than they give themselves credit for. And I'm for one of them, because I used to think. I was like, there's no way I can, like I find these goals insurmountable and lo and behold like day by day, like you just figure out a way, and then I was able to accomplish things. But I don't think like I've accomplished like I think I just am. I was lucky and that I was in the right place at the right time. And yes I do work hard, I do concur with that, and yes I have some talent, but I don't think I'm any more special than the next cook, or the next blind person, or the next whoever next to me. We always look to other people people and think, oh, they've accomplished something we can, But it really comes down to how much do you want something and how much you're going to prioritize something. And for me, cooking was it was it was something I just really really enjoyed, and I didn't want to give that up because I lost my vision, So I knew I had to find a different way to go about it. And part of it is cooking as a means of survival. Like I lived by myself when I was losing my vision, I had to you know, there was no such thing as uber eats or deliveries that then that you were easily attainable. So I had to figure out a way to make food for myself to eat. And you know, it was something for me to concentrate on and focus on when I was dealing with the vision loss because cooking gave me joy and I didn't always want to think about the sad things that were happening to me.
Yeah, I mean, I do find it reassuring and inspiring that initially you were reliably underestimating your own resilience, because maybe that means so many of us are too.
That is what I learned about myself is hey, I am resilient. You're totally right. It's I don't think people realize that, and it was something I had to learn as well. When you realize that you are just one blip in this world or in this universe, but things will still continue to happen in the world around me. So I have the choice of either dropping out of society and feeling sorry for myself and not contributing to the world, or I have the choice of figuring out how can I, in spite of the hand that I've was dealt with, or in spite of the challenges that I'm trying to overcome, how can I pick myself up and plug myself back into the society as it continues.
You've said that if you could get your vision back, you wouldn't and I'm wondering, well, one, if you still feel that way, and if you can say more about that.
Okay, Well, if I could get my vision back for like five minutes or like a day or a week, I totally would because I want to know what like four K filming looks like. I always hear you know, I'm still stuck back and like I don't even know when. I don't know what Ariana Grande looks like. I don't know what Justin Bieber looks like.
I do believe that it is a gift to be able to see Ariana Grande. I think you could pass on Justin Bieber in current form.
There's a lot of just things that I've happened or cars nowadays, I don't know what the Tesla looks like. They're just things that all of my friends talk about that I feel. I'm just at a loss. I don't really I can't fully experience these conversations. So I definitely want to see what my friends and my family look like today. I don't necessarily want to know what I look like, because it's been a long time. You look great. But I think it would be really weird for me to completely gain my vision back permanently, because I'm so used to living the life that I have now, and I feel like doing some of the things that I do without with that vision, it seems kind of more fun or more accomplished in a way that I think it would just be weird to have my vision back.
I want to dig into your relationship with independence today because my personal perspective kind of crushing the independence game. Christine. Also, it was a huge part of your identity during a very formative moment in your life, and so what role does independence play in constructing your self identity today?
Before? If you were to ask me this when I was maybe in my teenage years or my early twenties, I would say independence is not depending on other people and being able to do everything yourself and rely solely upon yourself. I think if you ask me now, what does independence mean, It's changed for me because I'm not going to be unrealistic and deny the fact that I cannot drive myself somewhere until you know, we're close to having like self driving cars, but until then, I can't drive myselflf somewhere independently. So realistically, I don't feel like I'm independent in that way, but I'm independent in the fact that I'm living the life that I want to live. When I want to ask for help, I'm able to ask for help and I do it willingly. And then also knowing when I don't need help, and doing things on my own, even if it's a struggle. Like sometimes my husband watches me, like try to open a package or do something, and he's just like, why don't you just let me do that for you? Because he gets frustrated I take ten minutes. But then sometimes I'm like, no, I just want to do this on my own, and so I will do it because I'm stubborn like that. And that's my definition of independence is asking for help when you want it or feel like you need it, but then also knowing when you want to do things on your own, and so basically living the life that you want.
Hey, thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed my conversation with Christine Ha, I'd recommend you listen to a conversation I had with psychologist doctor ael At Fischbach. The episode is called The Science of Motivation. We'll link to it in the show notes. A Slight Change of Plans is created, written, and executive produced by me Maya Schunker. The Slight Changed family includes Tyler Green, our senior producer, Jen Guera, our senior editor, Ben Tolliday, our sound engineer, Emily Rosstek our producer, and Neia Label our executive producer. Louis Scara wrote our theme song and Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocals. A Slight Change of Plans is a production of Push Industries. So big thanks to everyone there, including Malcolm Gladwell, Jacob Weisberg, Lee talm Allott and Heather Fame, and of course a very special thanks to Jimmy Lee. You can follow A Slight Change of plans on Instagram at doctor Maya Schunker see you next week. I'm wondered, Christine, what parts of your identity do you feel have stayed the same over the years, and what parts have maybe changed?
I like this question things that I think I've stayed the same. I think I'm still the same goofball, I still have the same sense of humor. I remember I joked with all of the producers or Mastersholm I'm like, I said so many witty things and you cut it all out like in post production, and they were like, yeah, well, you know, we didn't have time for everything.
Yeah, don't silence.
My humor people.
I should let you know that every time my editor Jen tries to cut a joke from one of my interviews, I feel emotionally wounded and deeply deeply offended. I'm like, do you not understand that this podcast is a launching pad for my future career in comedy? Okay,
