Mark Bittman — a key player in 'how we eat today' — reflects on how he became the unique writer he is: both a writer of popular cookbooks and a forceful advocate for changing our food system. In the first part of his discussion with Scott Saul (English), he opens up about the people and cultural forces that shaped him in his teens and twenties. In the second, he reads and discusses one of his more personal New York Times columns, "Bagels, Lox & Me," and describes what it was like to be a columnist for the Times.