What's Eating Us | #AuthorInterview with Emmy Award-winning journalist, author, & live storyteller Cole Kazdin

@bowie · 1yr ago · 1:55

#writinglife

I want to start out by getting a little vulnerable and admitting that I actually discovered your book due to my interests in this topic. Because I am also someone who is in recovery for disordered eating and have been for a number of years now. And it's kind of something that I've just accepted will most likely be a part of my life and I'll be healing from for the rest of my life. Something that has been hugely important in my own journey has been the community aspect

@bowie · 1yr ago · 1:17

#amreading #bookrecs

I know that may sort of tie into the first question, but would love to hear of any books or work in particular that you think most heavily influenced you being able to do the work of this particular book

@bowie · 1yr ago · 1:26

#writingadvice

Was that something that felt challenging to do or did it come very naturally for this particular project? And why is it that you decided to blend the two rather than telling just a straight up memoir or making it a slightly less personal book? Is there anything in particular, any advice that you would give to writers who are attempting to blend both personal narrative and reporting? As far as boundaries, certain challenges, things to watch out for?

@bowie · 1yr ago · 1:15

#askafailure

I have an ongoing series here on Swell and also my newsletter called Aska Failure in which I pretty much talk about anything in relation to failure, cultural failures, personal failures, how we can subvert and resist oppression through failure. And I thought it was a really interesting thing to potentially explore together in relation to your work and your book, because is part of it is talking about why it felt like full recovery felt so impossible and the failures of just like the general diet industry and all of those things

@Kazdin · 1yr ago · 2:24

And I thought, we really need to talk about this on a larger scale. And that is really what drove me to write the book. Ah wanting to connect with others, wanting to get their stories out and wanting to sort of treat this like a detective's mission, a detective story, really. Why aren't there better solutions for such a massive problem in our country?

@Kazdin · 1yr ago · 1:14

And I reached out to her, and we had a wonderful conversation, and I think seeing really incredible researchers doing great work to support what I was really interested in building on, I found very inspiring. So that's one book that comes to mind, and I include that in the back of What's Eating US with a whole other list of of books that I referred to and books written by people that I interviewed just because I wanted to be really transparent

@Kazdin · 1yr ago · 4:08

I wanted a list of real things that could provide hope when there are so many challenges to get better. So for me, going into the research helps me get to the other side of writing a chapter, right? Because it gives me material beyond only my own story, which is one small person, one small piece of this when I do the research to look at oh, is this maybe why I felt this way? Or is this what I was in the middle of?

@Kazdin · 1yr ago · 3:11

And that's so often why we don't feel healed while we don't feel like we are better. I think it's so important that we talk about this if it feels safe to do so. And for me, it did in the book, because it is so common. I love your ask a failure idea, right? Because that's exactly what relapse feels like

Swell Team

@Swell · now · 0:15

Welcome to Swell!