Podcast #176: How Judy Collins Conquered Her Cravings
The New York Public Library Podcast features your favorite writers, artists, and thinkers in smart talks and provocative conversations. Listen to some of our most engaging programs, discover new ideas, and celebrate the best of today’s culture.
Today’s episode: Grammy-winning singer, songwriter, and best-selling author Judy Collins. It was that last credit that brought her to the Library back in February, to celebrate the publication of her most recent book, Cravings.
Cravings, to quote its opening lines, is a memoir of Collins’ long struggle with an eating disorder—and the story of of a search for a spiritual solution to her problems with food. “As an active, working alcoholic with an eating disorder,” she writes, “I yearned for serenity and was tormented for much of my life by longings, addictions, and painful crises over food: bingeing, bulimia, weight loss and gain.” Collins spoke with William Kelly, who is NYPL’s Andrew W. Mellon Director of the Research Libraries.
Collins speaks with a bracing and admirable honesty about a lot of very personal, very difficult subjects. She mused on ideas of surrender and spirituality, discussed theories of the relation between addiction and allergy, and she shared memories of a pretty incredible cast of characters who have come through her life: Jean Nidetch the founder of Weight Watchers, Leonard Cohen, Janis Joplin, Andrew Weil, and a sort of psychosexual cult that used to live together in an apartment building on the Upper West Side. And if you want to learn what she means by how today she uses food to treat her eating disorder…well, you’ll just have to listen.
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