The New Paris Podcast

One of the first English-language journalists in Paris covering women’s issues both in France and abroad that I first connected with online was today’s guest, Megan Clement. Her reporting has appeared in The Guardian, Bloomberg, The Sydney Morning Herald, Al Jazeera, The New Humanitarian and many other publications. She is now editing Impact, a bilingual weekly newsletter dispatch by Les Glorieuses, which may be familiar to you if you’ve read my second book, covering feminist movements and women’s rights worldwide. She also teaches journalism at the Sorbonne Nouvelle.

Given our impending Presidential election, the repercussions of the pandemic on women and their advancement, and the ongoing struggle to curb violence against women, it felt like the right time to discuss it all with Megan.

Mentioned in this episode:

The Wolfpack case Spain

Malta’s view on abortion

Malta continued

Impact interview with Mariana Ardila on Colombia’s historic abortion victory 

The situation for women in Poland

One of my goals with The New Parisienne was to highlight the richness of talent coming from women in and around the capital. There’s tremendous creativity, knowledge, innovation, and inspiration and it’s these women and so many others who fuel my own work and thinking. Rahaf Harfoush, one of the women in the book and a longtime friend, is one of the women I admire and whose research, writing, and thinking on technology and the culture of work has been endlessly illuminating.

She joins me today to talk about the research she’s been doing, her work with a French commission on the digital space, and how we can all exert control over technology’s impact on our daily lives.

Rahaf Harfoush's work

Running a restaurant in Paris is fraught in the best of times but the last several years have presented additional challenges. Some have closed as a result but I’m happy to report that many of the city’s best independently run establishments spanning street food to fine dining have held on and even grown stronger. I know my own desire to support them has grown — certainly a result of having experienced more than 6 consecutive months of restaurant closures between 2020-2021 — as well as my desire for more immersive, memorable dining experiences. One of two meals that delivered that for me in the last year was at Comice, a contemporary family-owned fine dining restaurant in the 16th arrondissement run by Canadians Noam Gedalof, the chef, and today’s guest, Etheliya Hananova, the sommelier. She talks about the journey from Montreal to Paris, the type of dining environment she and Noam set out to create, and what it means to be working in wine, in Paris, on her own terms.

Links:

With less than three months to the French presidential election, 59 days to the first round to be exact, there are a number of worrying discussions taking place online and in the media that risk distracting from the most pressing issues for French citizens but have taken up considerable airtime. In 2020, that was the controversial idea of islamo-gaucmhisme, or islamo-leftism. Since, the buzzword in heavy rotation trotted out by talking heads and politicians has become wokism, a term that has become completely bastardised and distorted from its original meaning, weaponised in political discourse and used pejoratively to condemn both political correctness and perceived excesses of social and racial justice movements. All across Europe, the anti woke brigade has been in full force and that includes France.

To talk about this term, how we got here, how it has been weaponised, what it means moving forward, particularly as we anticipate election debates, I’m joined by Cole Stangler, a French-American journalist who regularly covers labor and politics.

Mentioned in this episode:

France's New Culture Warriors (Cole for The Nation) 

France is Becoming More like America. It's Terrible. (Cole for NYT)

At the very end of 2021, one of the highlights was getting to meet a whole new batch of readers when I did a book signing for The New Parisienne at the home goods store Landline which I discovered during the lowest moments of Covid. This is in the 11th arrondissement which is an area I know intimately. The French American owner Caroline Morrison opened the doors to her nostalgic general store at the end of 2020 and has become, like the most charming independent bookstores and thoughtfully designed toy stores of yesteryear, a space I not only feel joy being in but can also feel good about buying from.

I’ve spent a lot of time in the last year thinking about consumption and needs vs wants. Finding satisfaction in reusing and repairing. The most sustainable way to shop, realistically, is to not, and to wear and use what you already own. But for the moments you do need a new pan, a pair of slippers, or an indestructible kid’s toy you can pass down, there’s an opportunity to make the right choice. That’s what drew me to Caroline’s store and I why I wanted her to help me kick off this new season.

Landline

Landline on Instagram 

If you’ve followed the news out of France in recent weeks, you know a couple of things. One, France has entered campaign season, with the Presidential election awaiting us in April 2022. Two, among the many disconcerting absurdities in said campaign, we have a far right, antisemitic, misogynistic pundit whose message at his first public rally last weekend played on the French perception and panic surrounding their own country’s decline and took an expected anti-immigration, make-France-Great-Again style stance. The left is in disarray, to put it politely, the right has a real challenger, and Macron hasn’t formally begun his reelection campaign yet but is surely analysing this hot mess of a political landscape.

Making sense of the French political apparatus to even begin to follow this election process means understanding a whole number of historical events that are rarely explored in any great detail in foreign media.

That’s where Manu Saadia has stepped in. The author-historian started a free newsletter called La Campagne where he digs into the political machine, the perspectives and key moments that have shaped policy and thinking, and what to know about the coming election. His dedication to this storytelling, as you’ll hear me tell him, is nothing short of a public service.

A recent New York Times story had a lot of us Parisians up in arms. It’s mayhem on rue de Rivoli and streets across Paris, we’re told, as bikes take over and the mayor pursues an ambitious goal of making the city a European cycling capital by 2024. The journalist includes comments such as “it’s like anarchy! everyone is just doing as they please. There are no police, no fines, no training and no respect.”

Not only did it sound like a car wrote most of the piece but it was sensational and in many cases, incited fear of a process that is quite standard. The growing pains of a city in the midst of a transformation like this are to be expected. But the automobile lobbies make a lot of noise and so, what is a necessary change to the very urban fabric of Paris is seen as an unbearable complication to daily life.

To talk about this cycling revolution in the city I’m joined by a former guest of the show, Nicolas le Goff, an urban scout, author, and longtime cyclist. How safe is it to ride in Paris? You’ll find out.

First, some real talk. I know little to nothing about French cinema but I do know that when the actor Jean-Paul Belmondo died in September, it came as a massive loss to a great many French people. As it happens, talking about Belmondo online, and what little I knew about him, connected me to someone who knows quite a lot about French cinema and I thought, now’s the time to do an episode on film. But not just any discussion — I’ve brought on Laure Astourian, an assistant professor of French at Bentley University, a specialist in French cinema, an occasional translator, and a current Fulbright research scholar in Paris. Her research looks at the role of imperial ethnography in shaping 1960s French cinema. We’ll be talking about that, her connection to France, and how the new wave movement contributes to a modern understanding of French society (16:28). So with that, let’s go to the movies!
Mentioned in this episode

Laure Astourian

"The French Melting Pot" book 

Laure’s piece on “Si Le Vent Tombe” in the LA Review of Books

The films:

Les Statues Meurent Aussi

Cléo de 5 à 7

La Noire de... (Black Girl)

Chronique d'un été

À bout de souffle (Breathless)

Si le vent tombe

Chacun cherche son chat

Moi, un Noir

Also mentioned...

Manon des Sources

Les Enfants du Siècle

Which country has the best healthcare system? It’s a question that is regularly tossed around, particularly as America’s healthcare system looks more and more broken with every passing year. The stories of Americans putting off doctor’s visits due to fees and the fear that a costly ailment will be discovered are so common they seem pulled directly from a dystopian novel.

In comparison, experts look to the Australians, Brits, Dutch, Germans, Swiss, and French who have strong public health systems, some reliant on government and some on private insurers for their universal coverage. In France, Public insurance covers between 70 percent and 80 percent of costs. Voluntary health insurance, which we call mutuelles, can cover the rest. The Ministry of Health establishes funds and budgets and regulates everything from number of hospital beds available to the price for procedures and medications.

Over the last five to six years, I’ve seen more doctors and specialists for a variety of reasons than I ever have in my entire life. My out-of-pocket costs are relatively low and my reimbursements come quite swiftly. What I can’t speak to with firsthand experience is what it’s like navigating the French system with a life-threatening health issue.

Robin Davis, an American journalist and TV producer currently working in an international organization in Paris, was diagnosed with breast cancer nearly 3 years ago. She joins the show today to talk about that experience, the quality of care she received throughout a traumatic time, and how the French system really stacked up when she needed it the most.

Which country has the best healthcare system? 

Follow Robin on Twitter 

Robin’s website

Robin's recommended resources:

Rose Up (France) 

I didn’t grow up with much exposure to Vietnamese cooking so it wasn’t until I arrived in France 15 years ago that I actually discovered the nuances in the cuisine. That’s not all that surprising: France is home to the oldest Vietnamese diaspora, which pre-dated the fall of Saigon. The first waves of Vietnamese immigration to France started over a hundred years ago, following colonization in the 19th century. While Vietnamese restaurants in Paris have long been tied to the 13th arrondissement where many refugees resettled in large housing complexes in the mid 1970s, they’ve popped up all over the city in recent years, many run by first generation French-Vietnamese. Including today’s guest, Khánh-Ly Huynh, the chef and co-owner of The Hood, a southeast Asian canteen in the 11th and Nonette, a new spot just across the street. We talk about growing up with parents in the restaurant business, finding her way into food, and what so many Parisians get wrong about southeast Asian cooking.

And a quick note: I recorded this interview with a new mic, outside. You’ll hear some cars and wind, among a few other noises. Hopefully these imperfections won’t take away from what was a super engaging conversation. Enjoy!

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:Khánh-Ly x Master Chef 2015 

The Hood 

Nonette

Khánh-Ly on Instagram 

Her favorites:

Les Arlots

Osteria dell’Anima

Tempilenti