Bonnie Tsui, WHY WE SWIM
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[1:32]Bonnies, we spelled T-S-E-Y was born in Queens, New York and raised on Long Island.
[1:39]Her parents met in a swimming pool in Hong Kong, which perhaps was part of the reason why
[1:43]she developed a huge love of swimming and wrote the book, Why We Swim.
[1:48]She attended Harvard University where she rode crew, snowboarded and graduated magna cum laude
[1:53]in English and American literature and language.
[1:57]She wrote a book in 2009 called American Chinatown, A People's History of Five Neighborhoods,
[2:02]which won the 2009 to 2010 Asian Pacific American Award for Literature and was a San Francisco
[2:08]Chronicle bestseller.
[2:10]She's been a recipient of the Global Thomas Gold Award for Travel Journalism and the
[2:14]Jane Rainey Opel Young Alumni Award at Harvard University.
[2:18]In 2017, she was awarded the 2017 Corolla Cycle, Crave Excellence in Food Journalism
[2:24]by the San Francisco chapter of Laidam Descoffier, a frequent contributor to the New York
[2:30]Times in California Sunday Magazine.
[2:33]Bonny has performed many times at pop-up magazine and other live storytelling events.
[2:37]She helped launch F&B Voices from the Kitchen, a storytelling project from La Cochina.
[2:43]She currently lives and serves in the Bay Area and works at the San Francisco Writers'
[2:47]Grata.
[2:48]Welcome, Bonny.
[2:49]Thanks for coming out, Mom.
[2:50]So no time to read books.
[2:51]Thank you so much, Zibi.
[2:52]I'm so glad to be here.
[2:53]So, poor Bonny.
[2:54]We just did like 10 minutes of this without recording it.
[2:58]So I'm making her do this again, like right away.
[3:00]So I'm sorry for the technical issues, but here we go.
[3:03]We'll have some of the same conversation, but I'm sure it'll be better the second
[3:07]time.
[3:08]Actually, the third time, because you were on my Instagram live show, which was amazing.
[3:11]And made me want to have an even longer conversation with you.
[3:13]So here we are.
[3:14]Zibi, I will talk to you anytime you'll have me, so it's a joy.
[3:18]I like you.
[3:21]So why we swim, is your book?
[3:24]Why do we swim?
[3:26]Why did you write this book?
[3:27]And what's it about?
[3:28]This book is a cultural and scientific exploration of our human relationship with water
[3:33]and swimming.
[3:35]And we've been talking a lot about survival and community and competition and flow and
[3:41]all these reasons why we do it and well-being.
[3:44]And before all of this, I would have said survival definitely is the most vital reason
[3:50]for swimming.
[3:52]But now I keep thinking about survival in all these different ways in these times, and you
[3:57]and I were chatting about this before, just that we are in this moment of great uncertainty.
[4:05]And we need time to recalibrate and be with our thoughts to understand what it is that
[4:12]we're thinking.
[4:13]And right now, getting in the water is one of the best mental health things that we can
[4:17]do.
[4:18]And you're just telling me about how you've been getting in the water for the first
[4:22]time this season, right?
[4:23]Yes.
[4:24]After our Instagram Live, when I realized I hadn't gone swimming in, I don't know, months
[4:28]for it.
[4:29]After hearing about all the benefits and reading about them in your book, all the physiological
[4:34]and emotional benefits swimming, I mean, I've always loved to swim like you.
[4:38]I mean, I was like in the pool at age three and just like, you know, I just love it.
[4:42]I swim laps in all the time and I love it.
[4:44]I haven't ever competed, but it's just something that I always have had a huge affinity
[4:48]for which probably draws me to your book maybe more than other people because I just
[4:52]love it.
[4:53]But anyway, even in the chaos of kids and, you know, podcasting and everything else, I've
[4:58]been like, you know what, getting in the pool is so, you know, it's so, it's such a luxury
[5:02]A, but B, just so easy a way to deal with like any sort of stress.
[5:09]And it always makes me feel better.
[5:11]And if you have the opportunity to swim, like you should just do it.
[5:15]I'll just say that.
[5:16]Right.
[5:17]It's just, it's so restorative.
[5:18]And I know that a lot of people these days aren't able to get into pools because most
[5:23]public pools are closed.
[5:24]But I, you know, I've been getting into San Francisco Bay and doing open water swimming.
[5:29]And I was just thinking about how the other day I was, I ran into a doctor friend of mine.
[5:34]She had never been an open water storm.
[5:37]And you know, of course, I'm watching all these people and adapt and putting on wet suits
[5:42]and figuring out, you know, inflatable gooies and things to get out there and feel safe.
[5:47]And, you know, we were walking out from the beach and she said, I just feel so much better
[5:52]now.
[5:53]You know, this has been a week.
[5:54]And just, you know, just the moment of like stepping into the water and seeing the expansiveness
[6:00]and experiencing the, you know, the connection to water and the world.
[6:05]I think that was, it is just so important and we're wired to respond to that.
[6:10]And again, like the science is just, you know, resoundingly supports how we find so much
[6:18]benefit and immersion.
[6:19]And I know your parents met at a swimming pool and you've been swimming your whole life
[6:24]and competing and you and your brother and life guarding and all the rest.
[6:28]And it's just like a huge part of your DNA and what you do.
[6:32]But there's a big difference between enjoying swimming and writing an entire book about why
[6:37]we swim.
[6:39]How did you end up writing this particular book?
[6:42]Why make it into a book?
[6:44]You know, I spent a lot of years, I mean, it was really six years ago when I started to think
[6:50]about swimming as maybe a book that I'd want to do.
[6:53]And it was because I'd written an essay for the New York Times about, you know, the water,
[6:58]swimming being this last refuge from connectivity.
[7:00]And at the time, I remember thinking, oh, you know, it is a place where we can not hide
[7:05]or escape exactly, but just sort of be unreachable for a while.
[7:11]And that was so healthy.
[7:13]That was so something that, you know, we're not used to being anymore.
[7:17]And we're not used to having just time with our thoughts as, as, you know, this is getting
[7:23]in the water is a kind of enforced isolation.
[7:26]And unfortunately, most of us are pretty accustomed to this enforced isolation now.
[7:30]But it is a certain kind of restorative isolation where you like get in the water.
[7:34]You're totally in a different, you are in a different medium.
[7:36]And you are able to do this, like, you know, check in with yourself and just to be, just
[7:43]to be like, just to be very present.
[7:45]And I started to think about that.
[7:47]And I started to think about the ways that being a swimmer over the course of my life
[7:51]is helping to work through all these, you know, hard things.
[7:54]And then I thought, just I want to hear from other swimmers.
[7:58]I want to hear from extraordinary swimmers.
[7:59]I want to hear from competitive swimmers.
[8:01]I want to hear survival stories.
[8:03]And so this book is, you know, the frame of the book is a personal one because of my
[8:08]family story, you know, my parents meeting in a swimming pool hall hall and just having
[8:11]a lifelong relationship with the water.
[8:13]I'm assuming, but it is filled with stories of, of other people because I am a journalist,
[8:19]you know, and I'm drawn to other people telling me about themselves.
[8:24]And I wanted to weave all of that into, like, a story that felt really expansive that
[8:29]had all of these, you know, had something for everyone.
[8:33]And something for someone who is a swimmer, you know, like, like you and me, who, you
[8:37]know, we instinctively know that it does something for us that's really valuable.
[8:41]And then for people who don't call themselves swimmers that who say, I'm so afraid of
[8:46]the water.
[8:47]And I've always wanted to be a better swimmer, but I'm just so afraid of it.
[8:50]And I want to know why and why is that and to kind of learn more about our human relationship
[8:54]with it.
[8:55]And so I wanted to do that with this book.
[8:58]You do a great job of talking about the emotional benefits, psychological benefits of swimming
[9:02]and I just, I know I just read to this quote when we didn't record it, but I'm reading
[9:06]it again because I just love it.
[9:08]Even in grief, the breakup of my parents, a miscarriage, the death of a friend, I have marks
[9:12]time by water.
[9:13]I won't linger on these sorrows because I don't mean to say that swimming cured me of
[9:16]them, but I will say that swimming in all of its permutations in a pool in a lake, paddling
[9:21]a surfboard out to sea has always helped me come out on the other side of a difficult
[9:25]time that I'll keep reading now.
[9:27]The tides keep changing twice a day.
[9:29]Water is in a forever state of flex.
[9:31]To swim is to witness better more physicists and our environment in ourselves.
[9:35]To swim is to accept all the myriad conditions of life.
[9:38]That is so awesome.
[9:39]It's just as awesome a second time in ten minutes.
[9:43]I mean, it's really beautiful how you, and you know, you talk in the book about how these
[9:48]difficult moments in your life were so, you know, not mitigated, but you know, made a little
[9:54]bit better by how you handled them in this way.
[9:57]And that's a powerful tool.
[9:58]Right, it is.
[10:00]And it's, I mean, you know, we go back to survival.
[10:02]It's a survival tool for our times, you know, like, you know,
[10:07]maybe it was back in the day.
[10:09]It was because we were, you know, diving for shellfish
[10:12]or, you know, seeking new ions.
[10:13]But now it's something that feels equally vital.
[10:17]And it's a way of coping with just a lot of the things
[10:20]that we're dealing with right now.
[10:22]And then tell me a little more about Kim Chambers, right?
[10:25]And how her water-based therapy helped her recover.
[10:31]So Kim Chambers is a world record holding marathon swimmer
[10:34]for those of you who don't know.
[10:35]And she only really started swimming as rehab
[10:39]after almost losing a leg to amputation after an accident.
[10:43]And turns out she's freakishly gifted
[10:46]at long-distance swimming.
[10:47]And she started to swim in San Francisco Bay.
[10:52]And as part of our rehab, and she noticed that her leg,
[10:55]she got her feeling in it, you know, she had more,
[10:58]it seems like maybe the nerves were regenerating.
[11:00]And she felt like she had this rebirth,
[11:03]like a second chance at life, really, to be swimming.
[11:06]And she has since become, you know,
[11:08]one of the best marathon swimmers in the world.
[11:11]And she has held, you know, she was the first woman
[11:15]to swim from the fair lawns to San Francisco.
[11:17]And, you know, in the notorious red triangle of sharks,
[11:21]but she is a really extraordinary person and swimmer.
[11:26]And her story anchors the section of the book
[11:29]that is called Well-Bea, you know,
[11:31]so it's about how we have always thought about water
[11:36]as a cure-all for all kinds of crazy ailments.
[11:39]And that it turns out there's like some pretty good basis
[11:42]for that.
[11:43]So it's always good to hear.
[11:46]There's a reason why.
[11:48]It's awesome.
[11:50]One more thing about swimming,
[11:52]which you talk about is how it kind of relates to mortality
[11:54]in your view of that.
[11:55]You write, this is another quote, swimming in open water
[11:58]is one small way of confronting that,
[12:00]of getting closer to the fire,
[12:02]of wanting to stay alive, of warding off death
[12:04]without the terror of having to do it for real.
[12:07]Maybe it's a kind of dress rehearsal.
[12:09]Talk to me more about that.
[12:11]I have always been really afraid of death
[12:14]from when I was a kid.
[12:16]I think I just remember my, you know,
[12:17]going to a, to visit my grandfather's grave
[12:22]and just feeling that things were beyond my control
[12:25]and understanding.
[12:26]And I have always had this, you know,
[12:30]this sense of mortality as something
[12:32]that I wanted to be able to grasp
[12:34]and understand in some way that, you know,
[12:36]it's beyond our control and yet we,
[12:38]and we all face it.
[12:39]And yet how do you live every day knowing that?
[12:42]And swimming is weirdly enough
[12:45]and I've done a lot of research and reading into this,
[12:47]that because of the porousness between states, you know,
[12:50]swimming and drowning, life and death,
[12:52]that it's an exercise.
[12:53]It's like a practice.
[12:54]It's a meditation in being smaller
[12:58]and then the world and being okay with that, you know,
[13:01]and understanding that we're always at life is fragile,
[13:04]but it's still really beautiful
[13:06]and to be attuned to the sensory elements
[13:09]and enjoyment of every moment.
[13:10]And it allows you to be, to be in the present moment
[13:14]and to acknowledge where you are right now.
[13:19]And I think that that's a really beautiful thing.
[13:21]And how did you get into journalism to begin with?
[13:24]Like, did you always know you loved to write
[13:25]or how did that start?
[13:26]I did always know that I liked to write,
[13:29]but my dad was an artist, isn't artist.
[13:32]And when I was growing up,
[13:33]I always thought I was gonna be an artist
[13:35]and he actually said to me,
[13:37]oh, you should be an artist.
[13:39]It's very hard to be a painter
[13:40]and you should just be a plastic surgeon
[13:43]because then you can still play with people's faces.
[13:45]But then you can make money doing it.
[13:48]And I said, I don't think that's really
[13:50]what I'm going for here.
[13:52]But then I became the next best thing
[13:53]to be an artist, which is a freelance writer.
[13:57]And so stable, so stable, right?
[13:59]But I, you know, I love storytelling.
[14:01]I loved drawing when I was a kid
[14:03]and I also loved writing.
[14:04]I loved just the combination of those two things.
[14:08]And then once I got to college, I realized, you know,
[14:10]I wanted to, I discovered that nonfiction
[14:14]could be just as creative and innovative as fiction.
[14:19]And I wanted to kind of pull in those elements
[14:22]of telling a true story,
[14:24]but being able to tell it in such a way
[14:26]that there'll be characters, there's a narrative to it,
[14:28]there's a tension you can hold.
[14:30]And because the stories are real,
[14:32]they're, you know, just as meaningful as a story
[14:34]that you spin out of your head.
[14:35]But it's all about, you know, how we tell that story.
[14:38]Because, you know, we humans love to hear stories
[14:41]and I feel like the story of us
[14:43]and the story of swimming and story about how we pass on,
[14:47]you know, these skills over time,
[14:48]it's just what we are as human beings.
[14:51]And we pass on meaning that way.
[14:53]And so I've always been really gripped by that power.
[14:56]Now, do your kids like to swim?
[14:58]They love swimming.
[15:00]They love swimming and it's one of, you know,
[15:02]my greatest accomplishments that they do, I think,
[15:05]basically just because they've watched me over,
[15:06]I mean, when they draw a picture of me,
[15:08]you know, they're seven and nine.
[15:09]And if they draw a picture of me,
[15:11]they draw me on a surfboard or swimming in the ocean.
[15:15]And so I would say that they know me pretty well
[15:18]and they have absorbed the love of the water from me
[15:21]and that is really something that I take a lot of pride in.
[15:25]It's great.
[15:26]Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?
[15:29]Oh, gosh, that is a great question.
[15:31]And especially now, I would say,
[15:34]I think with, especially with books, you know,
[15:37]I'm a journalist, I am often mostly writing magazine
[15:40]and newspaper stories, but I've written a few books
[15:42]and this book, why we swim was such a joy to write
[15:45]every step of the way.
[15:46]And it was because I knew that over, you know,
[15:49]the years I was thinking about it,
[15:51]that it was a book that I had to write no matter what.
[15:53]And I would say that if you find yourself thinking
[15:56]about something so much, like in your downtime
[15:59]and your weekends and your vacation,
[16:01]and you just have a story that you need to tell
[16:04]that you can't stop thinking about,
[16:06]then you know that you have to write it.
[16:08]And so do it.
[16:09]What is coming next?
[16:10]Are you still writing?
[16:11]Are you working on another book
[16:12]or just more shorter pieces?
[16:14]Or what are you doing now?
[16:16]I am actually writing another book called
[16:20]The Follow Time Handbook.
[16:21]And this was also based on an essay I wrote
[16:25]from The New York Times last summer.
[16:27]And it is about what I call Follow Time,
[16:29]which is active rest, right?
[16:31]So it's like the restorative time
[16:33]that you need to do the work that you do well.
[16:36]And oftentimes that's creative work
[16:38]that may not look like work
[16:39]or what we kind of recognize this work.
[16:41]Now, the weird thing about that
[16:42]is that since I have signed the contract
[16:45]to write this book,
[16:46]everyone has been ushered into a forced follow time.
[16:49]And it's like the greatest, you know,
[16:51]natural experiment in follow
[16:53]that I could possibly imagine.
[16:55]And so it's complicated things
[16:57]in really interesting ways.
[16:58]And so I'm thinking about it
[17:01]and talking to people and interviewing folks.
[17:03]And that's what I'm doing.
[17:04]It's been a little bit,
[17:06]it's been challenging as you know,
[17:07]to concentrate on anything for any period of time.
[17:11]I keep thinking about it as this, like the,
[17:13]I think we talked about this last time.
[17:14]Like the Zino's paradox of like
[17:16]divided, sub-divided, micro-divided time.
[17:20]And how can you do anything
[17:22]when you hold these slivers of time in your hand?
[17:24]Like of any meaningful, you know,
[17:26]purposeful, you know,
[17:28]how do you create, how do you make things?
[17:30]And it's just, right now I'm trying to manage
[17:33]I wrote four sentences yesterday
[17:34]and I thought, that is a great day for me right now.
[17:39]And to be, you know, content with that
[17:41]and to understand that this is like a really strange time.
[17:45]And we're all working through it.
[17:47]And as a writer, I think there's a lot to notice
[17:51]and observe and, you know, document right now.
[17:55]But I also feel like there's plenty of people doing that.
[17:57]And right now I'm just listening and watching,
[18:00]I'm observing and hoping that, you know,
[18:03]on the other side of this that I can make meaning from it.
[18:06]And speed of home.
[18:07]Well, thank you.
[18:08]Thank you so much for repeating yourself on one
[18:11]because my mistake and for coming out again
[18:14]and for being on Instagram Live
[18:15]and for this great book and all your time and research
[18:19]and how you turned it into a story,
[18:22]but also a handbook and it's really awesome.
[18:25]It's great.
[18:26]And I know I think of you whenever I swim.
[18:27]So there we have it.
[18:29]Thank you so much, Sibi.
[18:30]I also want to give a shout out to my mom
[18:32]because my mom was the one who put us together
[18:33]in the first place.
[18:34]She said, that's right.
[18:35]That's right.
[18:36]That's right.
[18:37]That's right.
[18:38]She saw you on TV and she said, she called me up.
[18:41]And she doesn't do this.
[18:42]And she called me up and she said,
[18:44]Bonnie, I just saw this wonderful woman on TV.
[18:47]Her name is Zibi Owens.
[18:48]Got that.
[18:49]Zibi Owens.
[18:50]You have a new book.
[18:51]You should talk to her.
[18:52]I said, okay, mom, I'll call her a contact her.
[18:55]And thanks, mom.
[18:57]She's chatting out to you.
[18:58]And Zibi, she was not the only mom.
[19:02]I had so many moms, grandmothers, friends,
[19:06]say my friend has a book.
[19:07]My daughter has a book.
[19:08]My son has a, so don't worry.
[19:09]I got a lot.
[19:10]And that you are like the shining beacon, you know,
[19:12]like before them.
[19:13]Like, you need to talk to Zibi.
[19:15]So thank you for having me.
[19:17]It's really a joy to talk to you.
[19:19]You too.
[19:20]Have a great day.
[19:21]You too, bye.
[19:22]Bye, Mimi.
[19:23]Bye.
[19:24]Thanks for listening to moms.
[19:25]Don't have time to read books.
[19:27]Please don't forget, subscribe, rate, and review this
[19:31]on iTunes, tell your friends about it, spread the word.
[19:34]Thanks so much for listening.
[19:35]I really appreciate it.
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[19:39]episode, moms don't have time to read books.
[19:41]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound
[19:44]for the Sound Editing.
[19:45]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[19:47]for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.
[19:49]Thanks for listening.
[19:50]You can always email me at zibi at zibi Owens.com.