José Andrés (chef and humanitarian)

[0] Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair, expert, experts on expert.

[1] I'm Dan Shepard.

[2] Hi.

[3] Who are you?

[4] I'm Rob Hollis.

[5] Oh, my God.

[6] And how are you spelling Hollis?

[7] Let me guess.

[8] H -O -L -I -S?

[9] Nope.

[10] H -O -L -Y -S -Z.

[11] I'm so sorry.

[12] I heard there's a Y in there and a Z, a C. Yes, I'm very unique.

[13] Oh, my Lord.

[14] You deserve every one of those consonants.

[15] That's right.

[16] We have an incredible chef.

[17] today.

[18] Jose Andres.

[19] He is an award -winning chef, best -selling author.

[20] He's got a bunch of Michelin stars.

[21] He's the founder, very impressively, of World Central Kitchen, a nonprofit, which uses the power of food to nourish communities and strengthen economies in times of crisis and beyond.

[22] What he's done in the Ukraine is absolutely mind -blowing and we'll get into at length.

[23] I love the way he talks about food.

[24] Yeah, me too.

[25] I love it.

[26] He has a really cool show, That's what he is here to talk about, which is Jose Andres and family in Spain.

[27] And he is from Spain and he takes his three daughters and his wife, although she's not on camera, down to Spain.

[28] And they eat their way through the entire region.

[29] Iberian Peninsula, I think it's maybe referred to.

[30] Also his restaurant's beefsteak, mini bar by Jose Andres.

[31] Mercado Little Spain, that's, we'll hear about that.

[32] That's the one.

[33] This got a burger that we talk about.

[34] And so many more, I think 30 plus restaurants are on.

[35] the country.

[36] He's incredible.

[37] A burst of life this guy is.

[38] Eroticism to the apex.

[39] Yes.

[40] Okay.

[41] Promps for the month of February.

[42] That's right.

[43] A .A. Armchair Anonymous.

[44] Armchair Anonymous.

[45] February prompts.

[46] Here we go.

[47] Four prompts coming your way.

[48] Tell us about a crazy ride share experience.

[49] It's got to be a million at this point.

[50] Tell us about a crazy Valentine's Day debacle.

[51] Yep.

[52] Tell us about a pet sitting situation that went awry.

[53] And lastly, tell us a crazy sleepwalking story.

[54] Yeah.

[55] So sleepwalking, ride chair, Valentine's Day, and Pet City.

[56] Yes.

[57] Remember to go on the website and submit.

[58] www.

[59] www .com.

[60] Yes.

[61] And submit your story.

[62] And hopefully we'll get to talk to you about one of these four debacle areas.

[63] Please enjoy Jose Andres.

[64] Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to armchair expert early and ad free right now.

[65] Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

[66] Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts.

[67] Oh, we're frozen.

[68] Oh, now we're unfrozen.

[69] Now we're fast -forwarding.

[70] Now we're sideways.

[71] Hello, hello.

[72] Hello.

[73] Hi, can you hear us?

[74] Okay, see you later.

[75] How are you?

[76] Here in Vegas.

[77] You're in Vegas?

[78] Oh, yeah.

[79] Yeah.

[80] Are you opening a restaurant there?

[81] You wouldn't be there intentionally, would you?

[82] I'm not opening a new one, but they came to check the restaurants I have here.

[83] How often do you do that?

[84] Two, three times a year.

[85] Are you like Ray Kroc, where Ray Kroc would just drive around America and pop into a McDonald's and order a Big Mac and see how it was going?

[86] Quality control.

[87] Very much.

[88] We drove days ago from.

[89] Newark Airport down to D .C. because we came from Spain.

[90] We don't like to take extra planes, especially during the holidays.

[91] We stopped in one of the stops in the highway.

[92] And my daughter's check on the new chick -fil -a kind of sandwich.

[93] Okay.

[94] How was it?

[95] Oh, there's a new one?

[96] I got upset with them because they decided that my calories intake for the day was above.

[97] They didn't buy me one.

[98] Oh, so you just had to watch them eat Chick -fil -A?

[99] Very much.

[100] Do they monitor you pretty thoroughly?

[101] No, but they have their ways to fuck me up when they want to.

[102] Do you have a favorite fast food restaurant?

[103] No, I don't.

[104] I'm not against them.

[105] It's only that when I have a burger, I want to be a good burger.

[106] Yes, yes, yes.

[107] You can only have so many meals in your life.

[108] I want to make your mind count.

[109] Ooh, I like that.

[110] That's true.

[111] Okay, but would you agree that there's a certain magic to some of the simplicity?

[112] I could hit you with a couple.

[113] The rectangle chicken sandwich at Burger King, I'm not sure what that's made of, but some magic happens with the mayonnaise and that sesame seeds.

[114] It's a paste.

[115] Log bread.

[116] Something happens that's pretty special.

[117] There's none of that for you?

[118] Do you have any fast food that you're like, you know what?

[119] This thing is great.

[120] I'm going to concede that this is delicious.

[121] You're shaking your head, no, for the listener.

[122] Listen, when I eat a whopper or whatever.

[123] Now we're talking.

[124] Here we go.

[125] Here we go.

[126] But it's very uneventful.

[127] I mean, it's dog food.

[128] I have nothing against it.

[129] It's dog food.

[130] This is the amazing thing of humanity, right?

[131] That we are able to make food that can be there for 100 years.

[132] And 100 years later, it will still look the same as when it was made.

[133] And this is great that shows how good humans we are and coming up with crazy, amazing stuff.

[134] But when you can have a fresh piece of pineapple, a fresh piece of pitaia, sexy, Usy, Yucy.

[135] Ooh.

[136] Or the uses around your mouth.

[137] Oh, the uses around your mouth.

[138] Tell me more.

[139] When you can have a burger with a good ban, with good sesame seeds, with a homemate.

[140] So, I mean, go to Mercado Little Spain in New York.

[141] Yes, this is a commercial.

[142] This is your 35 ,000 square foot marketplace slash restaurant.

[143] I need the burger we are making there.

[144] And at the end, you say, yeah, but it's a $15, $18 burger.

[145] Well, I mean, the other day, chickfish.

[146] It was like $12, $13 between the fries, which I don't even know if they are real potatoes.

[147] It's great.

[148] Chifelais have nothing against them.

[149] I have nothing against McDonald's.

[150] I have nothing against all of them.

[151] But at the same time, it's like, life can be so much better.

[152] Yes, yes.

[153] A taco in the streets in Mexico, you can pay in Mexico a dollar for two little tacos.

[154] And you eat that taco, and it's unbelievable.

[155] It's 10 times better than anything else.

[156] My life, I don't know if I'm going to leave 50 or 100 more years.

[157] but I'm going to make sure that every bite counts.

[158] Okay, that's a good goal.

[159] It is.

[160] Okay, burgers, New York.

[161] So I'm going to try yours.

[162] Me too.

[163] What are your other favorites in New York?

[164] Because I have a few, and I want to know how we pair up.

[165] If you and I were going to hang out, I want to know this would work.

[166] So I'll hit you with a few.

[167] Corner Bistro?

[168] I'm very biased.

[169] I'm very chauvinistic.

[170] Okay.

[171] Let me put it this way.

[172] I like my things.

[173] And that's the way I am.

[174] I don't shy away from telling people in the old days.

[175] when I will do research and my body could take it maybe more, I will go to do the 10 burgers of New York or the 10 tacos of Mexico or the 10 paellaes of Valencia.

[176] I don't do it anymore because it's not enough time in the day.

[177] But now, you know, you're talking, I don't know, there's so many out there.

[178] We need to be defining a burger, right?

[179] Because it's people making burger with I very good pork.

[180] Obviously, you will say a burger should be always with beef.

[181] I won't.

[182] But for me, obviously, the burger we make at Mercado Little Spain, is great in many ways because it's very simple, has a great sauce, has a great band, the meat we grind it almost by the order.

[183] We don't take any fat away from the meat.

[184] You know how much meat we waste every time we make these big steaks with all the fat, and nobody eats the fat because it's too much fat.

[185] But when you make that big ribeye into a burger, you use every piece of the fat because then you create the perfect percentage of the lean meat versus the fat.

[186] Everybody always tells me, what is the perfect mix in a burger, the lean meat versus the fat?

[187] And I'm always saying, whatever the steak is, some people are going to tell me why you don't use second or third quality parts of the beef to make the burger?

[188] I'm like, I told you before, I only live once.

[189] The best burger is the one you can make with a ribeye.

[190] If you never had a burger out of a ribeye, I'm sorry, you never had the burger, period.

[191] So your place in New York, you're using a ribeye to make the burger meat?

[192] Will.

[193] Oh, my God.

[194] I'm on my way.

[195] Oh, my gosh.

[196] Yeah, because that's my favorite steak.

[197] Okay, I'm watching the show.

[198] The show's fantastic.

[199] It's so colorful.

[200] It's so fun.

[201] I have two daughters.

[202] I, of course, I'm imagining myself doing this with my two daughters as they get older.

[203] So much to talk about.

[204] One of them is you go for it.

[205] You really put the pedal to the metal.

[206] You're eating an enormous amount every single meal.

[207] You're drinking every single meal.

[208] I was just kind of.

[209] have distracted with, how are you feeling throughout the day?

[210] You're also very high energy.

[211] You're a dopamine addict.

[212] I very much relate to you.

[213] You're a party.

[214] You're loud.

[215] You're exuberant.

[216] But the fucking pace of it scared me. I am not loud.

[217] It's only have a very high pitch.

[218] No, no. You're extremely loud and flamboyant.

[219] Vincero, Vincero.

[220] Vincero.

[221] Okay.

[222] Believe me, my don't.

[223] are like, Daddy, don't overdo it.

[224] I'm like, I'm not overdoing it.

[225] And they say, yeah, we know.

[226] That's why we are afraid.

[227] Don't overdo it more because we barely can handle you in the way you are.

[228] Obviously, I'm 53 now.

[229] I think it's the moment that I'm realizing that, yes, I'm not a machine and I get tired like every other human being.

[230] Obviously, in the show, you only see the moments.

[231] Were you napping at least?

[232] Were you taking naps throughout this?

[233] Oh, it's very funny napping for me. I can sit in a car and I don't know if it's the motor or what, if I'm not driving.

[234] I can disconnect and sleep 10, 15 minutes in any moment.

[235] Some of my friends, they know I'm going to fall asleep immediately.

[236] And sometimes in the middle of a conversation, and it's not like their conversation is not interesting, but it's like my 10 minutes, I have to relax.

[237] And then I go full speed again.

[238] My body has this amazing mechanism, almost like a computer.

[239] You know, when you are in a computer and you are not using it, that then goes to sleep.

[240] I am like the human going to sleep, iPad kind of.

[241] So, yeah, in between, you know, my coffees, to check, news, to read, to have a conversation with my wife, who is the one that made the show really behind the scenes.

[242] Without her, my daughters and I, we wouldn't survive.

[243] She was everything.

[244] She was the whisperer, the peacemaker.

[245] Without her, the entire production would go to hell.

[246] Obviously, the teams we had were amazing.

[247] They were so nice to my daughters.

[248] It was a mix of English and a Spanish cruise.

[249] For people who might not know, so you're clearly from Spain.

[250] You came here 30 years ago.

[251] daughters are as American as they come.

[252] That's funny to me in and of itself.

[253] I'm curious how that feels for you.

[254] They speak Spanish, I assume, though, right?

[255] Yeah.

[256] And actually, there are no girls that follow social media too hard, but this is probably the first time they are in the spotlight.

[257] Probably it'd be the last because they like to have more calm, quiet life.

[258] And they did this because they felt was good for Spain, good for family, coming out of the pandemic.

[259] But my daughters, They are very American, and at the same time, they are very Spanish.

[260] And I think my wife is the cause in a good way for all of that.

[261] Because your wife's from Spain as well, yeah?

[262] South Spain, even we met in Washington, D .C. 30 years ago.

[263] They will be having dinner, and in America, you have the left hand, it's under.

[264] And you have the right hand above in the table.

[265] But in Spain, you have to have both hands above.

[266] It's much more polite in America to have the left hand under.

[267] If they are in a table that is Spanish people and American people, depends who they are addressing.

[268] Oh, and they'll switch it up.

[269] That's fascinating to me in a way.

[270] Yeah.

[271] That's why I'm very proud.

[272] They embrace who they are.

[273] They embrace that they are these three young American -born daughters that grow up here, going university here, American and international friends.

[274] But the reality that every summer they will spend 30, 60, 90 days in Spain, they leave both walls very happily.

[275] And they adapt to both.

[276] They can go to a tailgate party in Baltimore to see the Ravens or they are dancing in Flamenco in the streets of Seville.

[277] And this is the type of young people we need to be celebrating.

[278] If I could give a wish to every person in the world in America and beyond, every young student should be going to study overseas for one, two or three years, period.

[279] Why?

[280] Because then we meet other people, we meet other cultures, we learn maybe other languages, we see that the people that they are not like us, they are actually more like us than we think.

[281] I'm very, very happy that my daughters are able to embrace both cultures, Spain and America, in such a simple way.

[282] We all need to be embracing many cultures.

[283] I think the world will be always a better place if we do that.

[284] Yeah, they're making their perspective much bigger.

[285] The arguments you have in your head, many other people's opinions are making their way in, which is healthy.

[286] Now, if my daughters took a job with anyone else, they would be 10 minutes early.

[287] But if they took a job and I was the boss, I'd be lucky if they showed up.

[288] Like, your kids don't give a shit if they're upsetting you.

[289] If they had a normal boss, right, they would be there ready to rock.

[290] But I imagine behind the scenes, mom's probably having to go, like, you guys got to get out there and do this show with your dad.

[291] In a way, was their decision.

[292] The amazing thing about this show is that it began happening during the pandemic when we began doing these videos.

[293] My daughters have been cooking with me randomly here and there in front of people.

[294] They were very little in Aspen when I will do the food and wine.

[295] In the middle of my class, they will show up in the kitchen where I was doing a job.

[296] show for hundreds of people.

[297] And they began being kind of comfortable.

[298] They did a couple of other shows 10 years ago with me, but 10 minutes here, 10 minutes there.

[299] But this one was the one that during the pandemic, we were cooking at home.

[300] We began getting the phone and we began filming in real time, even passing the phone person to person, singing in real time without cuts.

[301] And we began posting those in Instagram and Twitter and social media.

[302] And they became very popular.

[303] Everybody it was doing whatever we could to bring happiness in a moment that was dark.

[304] We did many shows.

[305] And this is a moment that I thought, oh, my God, hey girls, why we don't do a show?

[306] So it's when we went shopping and Discovery and others were interested.

[307] And Discovery Plus gave us all the facilities to make the show we wanted.

[308] And here we are.

[309] We did it as a family.

[310] And my daughters wore hard because they were in the middle of university.

[311] On top of that, the pandemic, everyday testings.

[312] I mean, you know how many times our noses were infiltrated by, by those wooden sticks.

[313] Oh, my God.

[314] So I'm very proud of my daughters because they really were hard.

[315] They will be filming for 10 hours and then they will have to get on the computer because they will have to be studying another six hours.

[316] So for them, this was hard and I'm glad they did it.

[317] Well, listen, they're beautiful, they're intelligent, they're very poised.

[318] They know how to handle you, which is comical.

[319] Did you feel when you were shooting like, oh, I got to protect them.

[320] Oh, if they're uncomfortable right now, if they're feeling shy.

[321] If I'm working with other people, I don't really care if they're struggling.

[322] I mean, I'm a human.

[323] I care a little bit.

[324] But, of course, my children, I might get taken out of the thing I actually do because I'd be so worried about their comfort level the whole time.

[325] Was that happening at all?

[326] Yeah, the production team became family.

[327] They really were looking after them.

[328] Me and more, maybe the daddy that is more like, come on, just do it.

[329] They were comfortable when they were not, their mother is their friend.

[330] too.

[331] Also, my friend Richard Wolfe, who is the president of what we call the Jose Andres Media.

[332] We call it Jam.

[333] Anwar, who was the showrunner for Nutopia, who was this production company I partnered with to do it.

[334] Everybody became family, and my daughters were, if anything, feeling very well protected, probably more by everybody else than me. They didn't do anything they didn't want to.

[335] My daughter, Lucia, the youngest, she was only able to do three shows because she was going through exams and she had a lot of pressure.

[336] She was on her last year of high school.

[337] And for her, this was very, very important.

[338] So the long story short, I think it shows in the show.

[339] They were not trying to act.

[340] They were trying to be them.

[341] They're wonderful.

[342] They really are.

[343] What do you think the most dangerous thing you did in the show is because I have an opinion and it's probably not the same as yours?

[344] Well, I wanted to do things probably more dangerous, but it's always lawyers and insurance.

[345] and we went for goose neck barnacles.

[346] I didn't go.

[347] You want to have a conversation on burgers with me and you don't know what the goose neck barnacle is?

[348] Tell me the goose neck barnacle.

[349] You never had the goose neck barnacle?

[350] No, I'm a failure and a coward and everything else.

[351] No, no, I will not go to a failure, but it's amazing that they're giving you this podcast without ever having a goose neck barnacle.

[352] Well, first of all, who's they that gave it to me?

[353] No, no, you made it happen, but you know what it is.

[354] Yes, yes, yes.

[355] Okay, you never had the goose neck burnacle.

[356] No, tell me about it.

[357] Sell it to me. Ventize it.

[358] Do you need to take your shirt off for this?

[359] No, no, but the goose neck barnacle is a barnacle that is on the rocks.

[360] Okay.

[361] And he's one of the most amazing sea creatures ever created by God.

[362] It's goose neck because it has like the neck of a goose.

[363] Actually, I'm not going to get into the story, but the people thought that goose grew up in Northern Ireland out of these things in the rocks.

[364] That's why they called them goose neck barnacles.

[365] they didn't know that they're reproduced by eggs, believe it or not.

[366] They thought that they will come up out of these barnacles in the rock.

[367] Anyway, they look like the nails of the foot of an elephant, many of them, one on top of the other, and it's this hard black shell, and then you kind of separated from the rocks.

[368] It's very dangerous because it's in the tight areas where the sea is hitting against the rocks.

[369] It's the only place they grow.

[370] They like very heavy, wild places, and you have to go there and catch them.

[371] and can be dangerous, and then once you cook them in seawater, you open them up and you eat the inside piece of meat that is fascinating, sweet, seabory, sea urchin meets baby eels, meat's Maryland blue crabs, meets abalone.

[372] That's a gooseneck vernicle.

[373] And my daughters went to hand harvest gooseneck barnacles with a friend of mine who is a fisherman.

[374] man. I didn't go with them the day, but one thing didn't make it into the show, and I wish I did.

[375] I'm going for a coffee as the crews are filming my daughters with my youngest daughter, and I opened the newspaper.

[376] This is 7 a .m. in the morning, because that day, the tide was very early, it was dark.

[377] I read the news, and the news said in the front page of the local newspaper, 20 -foot white shark has been seen.

[378] Oh, boy.

[379] And I'm like, what the heck?

[380] One day I sent my daughters for goose, neck barnacles and it's a white shark in north of Spain, that for me was the most dangerous moment in the show.

[381] What was yours?

[382] Oh, God, Jose, the scooter riding.

[383] Now, I race motorcycles.

[384] Watching you guys chat and ride scooters in Barcelona was terrifying.

[385] And your oldest daughter, she has a passenger on the back.

[386] Oh, I was pins and needles that whole time.

[387] It doesn't look like you guys had done a ton of scooter riding in your life.

[388] We don't have scooter bikes in our family.

[389] random, randomly.

[390] It looked dangerous, but we were under control.

[391] Also, Monica, you see the flamboyance in the movement.

[392] That's all happening while he's riding a scooter.

[393] He's looking behind him.

[394] He's talking to his daughters, buses passing.

[395] I'm like, this is terrifying.

[396] Okay, you started so young cooking.

[397] 15, you go to cooking school.

[398] What predates that?

[399] Do you have a parent that cooked a lot that you were obsessed with?

[400] Why the interest so young?

[401] My mother and father were nurses.

[402] They work in hospitals.

[403] They love to cook.

[404] My dad, he'll make the very big meals when we had to feed a lot of family and friends.

[405] My mom will be more the everyday today.

[406] You have to make things happen.

[407] My mom will be the one making magic with leftovers at the end of the month.

[408] You know, when you go to the fridge and looks like a best buy commercial, that the fridge is so empty and so shiny that looks like brand new, but not food.

[409] inside.

[410] I always wonder why Best Buy and other companies don't put food.

[411] They will sell more fridges, I think.

[412] Anyway, but that's another story.

[413] So my fridge will be empty.

[414] But my mom will be able to go there like if she was Indiana Jones searching for the last creature alive in that fridge.

[415] And she'll always come out with the half -boiled egg that was so forgotten in a corner that the egg yolk will be already kind of dry and the yellow changed colors and even some creatures begun.

[416] And the last slice of ham in the fridge.

[417] And she will get those leftovers and with some flour and some butter or olive oil.

[418] She'll make this kind of bechamel that thickened until it was the perfect thickness to the sauce.

[419] And she'll add the leftovers, the egg and the ham or some chicken that was left over from a roasted chicken we made the week before.

[420] And overnight, this will become this kind of dough that once became hard, you will roll in flour and eggwash and the breadcrumbs.

[421] And the breadcrumbs will be made out of the leftover bread and she will use the coffee grinder.

[422] That's why the coffee was so thick in my house all the time because they forgot to clean it from the breadcrumbs.

[423] And she will roll them and then she'll fry them.

[424] Oh my God, we call these croquettas.

[425] Oh.

[426] They croquettas on my mother, they were legendary.

[427] Probably the croquettes of every mother and grandmother in Spain are legendary to every family.

[428] This is the dishes I remember in my childhood.

[429] Not the dishes at the beginning of the month, where maybe my father would buy the big fish or the big steak, the dishes I remember were at the end of the month, when the next page check will have to come to buy more food again.

[430] Those dishes are leftovers, making something magic out of nothing, are the dishes I remember, the garlic soup only with water and garlic and all bread and one egg.

[431] These kind of dishes are the ones I have amazing, fun memories in my childhood.

[432] Because of the taste or you somehow were aware of the ingenuity?

[433] Because the taste.

[434] It's in the old days.

[435] You don't know if your mother has, your father has money left in the bank or not to buy food.

[436] It's used the way it was.

[437] It was the ritual of, let's get red of everything we have in the refrigerator.

[438] Versus now we have the refrigerators full and our kitchen full and not for six months of food.

[439] But then we go and we go to the supermarket and we say we have nothing.

[440] It's kind of funny when we say we have nothing.

[441] I always challenge everybody to say, when you think you have nothing, don't buy and try to do anything you have until you run out of everything.

[442] We never do that anymore.

[443] But I remember my mom being an expert, a magician.

[444] And I don't know if this came out of a Spanish civil war that was a lot of family suffer.

[445] But I think some of that remained.

[446] I would say that in the 70s growing up, I saw that people will do magic out of nothing.

[447] They will be able to multiply fishes and loaves.

[448] I don't remember that this because we had had money to buy.

[449] buy new things.

[450] It's only that the dishes were great.

[451] The croquettes were amazing.

[452] And the garlic soup was to die for.

[453] And her roasted red peppers were amazing.

[454] When they were available in season, they will be very cheap.

[455] And she will roast all these red peppers in my house with a smell of roasted red peppers.

[456] And she'll peel them.

[457] She will saute them with garlic and only foil.

[458] And then she'll add vinegar and water.

[459] And she'll boil them for one hour.

[460] And at the end, when the water is all reduced, the peppers will be shiny, silky, smooth, and you will put them in your mouth and he's like, oh my God, what is this with the sauce to deep bread and one fried egg?

[461] Those peppers were for me one of the most delicious things I could ever eat.

[462] So you see, sometimes in very humble products, we forget that this is where the magic is.

[463] We think that for gras and truffles and caviar, which I like to, are everything.

[464] But actually, it's amazing when you can do something extraordinary with a humble fresh peas or on -seasoned green peppers or baby broccoli.

[465] It's amazing.

[466] I'm just thinking of this now.

[467] I've never thought of it before.

[468] But obviously we would agree.

[469] Some people are born with better eyesight than others.

[470] Some people are born better hearing than others, a better sense of smell.

[471] Do you think it's quite possible that you have a really engaged and high end on the spectrum sense of taste that you're having this reaction?

[472] Or do you think everyone does and they just haven't discovered it.

[473] Obviously, we know that there are superwoman and very few supermen.

[474] For me, every woman is a superwoman.

[475] I mean, humanity rests on the shoulders of superwoman.

[476] If the world were only men, we will be already extinct.

[477] This is clear to me. But I'm only saying that when you see the best chess player or the best motorbike runner or the best Formula One or the best basketball player or any other thing in life, obviously to become the best basketball player, you have to train a lot.

[478] You have to have some talents.

[479] But nothing happens if you don't try.

[480] And so I'm sure as many people are there that they have talents they don't even know about.

[481] But maybe you are super talented in the smells and flavors and aromas, and you decide that you don't like things.

[482] I have to thank my mom because I remember being young.

[483] I didn't like green peppers.

[484] One day she put me fry green peppers.

[485] And I didn't want to eat them.

[486] I thought, I don't want that shit.

[487] I don't want that.

[488] She sent me bad, no eating anything.

[489] Next morning, she sent me the green peppers.

[490] She puts them for breakfast.

[491] I don't eat them.

[492] she takes them to the school.

[493] She gives them to the director.

[494] My son is only eating green peppers and cannot eat anything.

[495] Okay, I didn't eat them.

[496] Okay?

[497] She brought them back home.

[498] That night I was so hungry.

[499] I ate the green peppers.

[500] Now one of my favorite things ever are fry green peppers.

[501] That's like Stockholm syndrome.

[502] Do you know that syndrome?

[503] You fall in love with your captors?

[504] Very much.

[505] I had to fall in love with the green peppers or I wouldn't be here.

[506] But the only story short, I don't know if I have a talent or not.

[507] I only know that I love flavors.

[508] I don't like to repeat dishes.

[509] We all should be having an app in our phone that you put an estimate of how many years you have left to leave and divide that between the lunches and dinners and breakfast you have left.

[510] And then you do a list of all the dishes you want to eat for the rest of your life.

[511] And very soon, you're going to realize that you have less meals left in your life that things you want to eat.

[512] I have so many dishes that still I don't have time.

[513] I think we can all develop the senses by smelling different grapes.

[514] We can differentiate Cabernet Sauvignon from Shirah.

[515] I think this is something you have to spend time doing.

[516] And at the end, if you eat, like my mother did everything, things you didn't like today, you'll end enjoying them tomorrow.

[517] Why?

[518] Because you're getting your senses used to, flavors your body was not used to.

[519] And at the end, goose neck vernacles can be delicious.

[520] I heard someone recently say, I thought this was a good breakdown of why you should invest in the food you eat.

[521] I come from a very humble background and the notion of spending a lot on food was very foreign to me. I had to have a lot of money before I was like, okay, I'm willing to spend a lot on food.

[522] But someone broke it down to me and said, you know, if you look at the amount of money we spend pursuing the sounds we like hearing, we spend a lot of money to go to the concert and hear it, for the things we like visually, for paintings, for clothing, all the things that nurture those senses were very comfortable with spending money on, even though they too are transient.

[523] If you listen to the song at the concert, that's the one time you're going to hear the song.

[524] We have a roadblock between that, which we agree we should invest in, and then eating.

[525] I myself have it.

[526] It's a sense.

[527] Either we believe in investing in your senses or we don't.

[528] Obviously, life is about decisions.

[529] We all need to know the work we put into earning the money that allow us to live the life we want.

[530] Everybody needs to know how they want to do that.

[531] For me, obviously, food has been always part of who I am.

[532] The way to express love to others is through food.

[533] Remember that the relationship we have with food begins in a moment we are highly unaware.

[534] Just think about it.

[535] When is the first time we receive love in the form of a tangible milk?

[536] It's when we come to the world and our mom, if she's able, or our dad, or our loved ones, feed us.

[537] When the mother brings you to her body and gives you warmth and gives you love, and he's telling you, I'm here for you.

[538] And the I'm here for you means I'm going to feed you.

[539] I'm going to feed your body, but I'm going to feed your soul, and I'm going to protect you.

[540] That moment, the connection with food is imprinted in our DNA forever.

[541] That's why Briad Sabarand is a French philosopher, and I don't mention in public French people.

[542] There's a lot of drama between the Spanish and French chefs.

[543] But Brianne Sabaran, in 1826, he said, tell me what you eat, and I'll tell you who you are.

[544] And this is true.

[545] So for me, I have a profession that is no work for me. It's just a way to express myself.

[546] Cooking and feeling others is something I love because I saw my mom doing it very young and my dad doing it very young and many other people.

[547] I spend a lot of time cooking.

[548] In my free time, I'm cooking.

[549] When I'm working, I'm cooking or directing others to cook.

[550] I remember being very young when my father came back from the market one day and he spent, I don't know how much money.

[551] I remember my mom had a verbal fight with my father.

[552] How do you spend so much money on this?

[553] and he bought four Kiwis.

[554] It's the first time we saw Kiwis.

[555] I'm talking 76, 77.

[556] The first time I saw the Kiwi, it looked like a puppet because it had the hair, right?

[557] It looked like an animal.

[558] They're like, what the heck is this?

[559] And then you open and it's green and the seeds and white and the smell and then it's sour, but it's sweet.

[560] It's like, ah, I think that moment is what putting me the love of discovering new ingredients, discovering new dishes, was a great way to be a splutter in planet Earth in very simple ways.

[561] We can all go around any city in the world.

[562] And if we are really willing to discover smells and taste and dishes, and more important, the people that make them, and be fascinated every time you eat something new that you never had before.

[563] To me, is one of the most amazing moments in my life when I eat something like I never eat it before.

[564] The ingredients, I almost eat everything so far in my life, but it's still probably many things I didn't.

[565] But every time I discover a new dish, to me, it's a happy moment in my life.

[566] I also think it is so ingrained in us that food is a right.

[567] Other rights are on or off the table, but having food is something that we think absolutely every person should have.

[568] So much so that even people on death row get a last meal.

[569] That's the last thing we give to them.

[570] I like that.

[571] I think food more than anything should be, universal human right that should never be about Republicans or Democrats about right and left.

[572] I know that sometimes we get in the conversation if you give food to everybody or you make sure nobody's hungry, you are a communist.

[573] Well, excuse me, when you give a subsidy to a company, which is on paper pure capitalism, I'm a business guy and I always will be, but I want to be a smart business guy.

[574] I don't want to have hungry people around me. No, because I don't want to feel bad.

[575] It's only because I don't want hungry people.

[576] We should not have hungry people when we are producing so much.

[577] So food should be a right that everybody should be supporting.

[578] America should not have one person going hungry ever.

[579] We are a country that produces more than we consume.

[580] We export.

[581] America is a gigantic democracy full of restaurants, if you think about it.

[582] We are a machine in production.

[583] So yes, food should be a human right that should be truly enforced by every single democracy in the world where nobody should ever go bad thinking they don't know what they're going to be eating tomorrow.

[584] for more armchair expert if you dare what's up guys this your girl Kiki and my podcast is back with a new season and let me tell you it's too good and I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest okay every episode I bring on a friend and have a real conversation and I don't mean just friends I mean the likes of Amy Polar Kell Mitchell Vivica Fox the list goes on so follow watch and listen to baby this is Kiki Palmer on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcast guess.

[585] We've all been there.

[586] Turning to the internet to self -diagnose our inexplicable pains, debilitating body aches, sudden fevers, and strange rashes.

[587] Though our minds tend to spiral to worst -case scenarios, it's usually nothing, but for an unlucky few, these unsuspecting symptoms can start the clock ticking on a terrifying medical mystery.

[588] Like the unexplainable death of a retired firefighter, whose body was found at home by his son, except it looked like he had been cremated.

[589] or the time when an entire town started jumping from buildings and seeing tigers on their ceilings.

[590] Hey, listeners, it's Mr. Ballin here, and I'm here to tell you about my podcast.

[591] It's called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries.

[592] Each terrifying true story will be sure to keep you up at night.

[593] Follow Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts.

[594] Prime members can listen early and ad free on Amazon Music.

[595] Okay, you're not going to like this next question.

[596] I'm learning a lot about you by watching the show.

[597] I've also then watched a lot of different things about you recently.

[598] And you have this really informative experience, life -changing experience where you get a job at 18 at Ibuli.

[599] Is that how you say it?

[600] Yeah.

[601] Most famous restaurant in the world at the time.

[602] With the most famous chef in the world, you say he's the best chef on planet Earth at that time.

[603] You leave after three years.

[604] You then catch up with some of your colleagues from that time period.

[605] Three guys who open a restaurant in Barcelona that's exceptional.

[606] Here's my question to you.

[607] I've gotten to interview quite a few great chefs.

[608] I've also interviewed a lot of surgeons, and I can tell you what makes a surgeon, and it's arrogance, which is a good thing if you're a surgeon.

[609] I don't want someone second -guessing themselves.

[610] I can afford my surgeon to be arrogant.

[611] This seems to be a prerequisite quality in a surgeon.

[612] What is it all of you chefs have in common?

[613] You're friends with your colleagues.

[614] That's very clear.

[615] You have great relationships with other chefs.

[616] You were friends with Bourdain.

[617] I know you know a lot of chefs.

[618] What do you think it is?

[619] If you were meeting a young person and they wanted to leave a bully, you'd say, well, you better have X, Y, or Z. It's not like I don't like your question.

[620] I think it's a brilliant question.

[621] I hope I can prepare for it because it's really a very deep question.

[622] Chefs in general, I think there are people that understand they cannot do what they do without others around them.

[623] I don't think it's the chef profession.

[624] I think humans, especially men, But humans, we are very egocentric, and I don't think egocentrism is a negative.

[625] Can be a positive if looking after yourself means you're looking after everybody else around you, too.

[626] But to be a good cook, I think you have to please yourself.

[627] We are very pragmatic people, and we realize that it's not about pleasing the guests.

[628] It's about pleasing you.

[629] Because if I cannot please myself, I cannot please you.

[630] Yeah, and then you just hope what pleases you pleases other people.

[631] You know, it's like if you come to my restaurant and you ask for paella with chorizo, it's not going to happen.

[632] I'm going to tell you, go to a Gordon Bramsey restaurant.

[633] Go to a Jamie Oliver restaurant.

[634] But at the same time, it's nothing wrong.

[635] Because my role in America is to make sure that Spanish cooking is known from the beginning as it should be.

[636] It'll be up to others what they want to do with it.

[637] I always say to people, guests that tell me, oh, I went to a restaurant, and the chef didn't want to change any ingredient in his dish.

[638] I don't like the restaurant.

[639] I don't like the chef.

[640] If you don't like that, you have other restaurants you can go.

[641] you are as free to go up to that restaurant as a chef is to say, I don't know how to please you in the way you want me to please you.

[642] So I think chefs in this way we've been always highly misunderstood.

[643] There's certain things obviously we can do.

[644] If you don't want salt because health, I'm not going to put salt.

[645] I know the dish is not going to be as tasty, but shit, if you're telling me you're going to have salt in your diet.

[646] You die tonight in the cab on the way home, yeah.

[647] Correct.

[648] It shouldn't be happening.

[649] I think it's a weird mix of at some point in your journey you have to be coachable.

[650] and you have to be subservient, and you have to follow, because you've got to learn the base knowledge.

[651] But all the chefs I've met, I guess the ingredient to me is they're all punk rock.

[652] They're kind of all a conicalast.

[653] They were able to follow it for a minute.

[654] Pretty soon they're like, I think I know better.

[655] I think there's an irreverence among the good chefs and a confidence that, no, the spin I think I can put on it, is relevant.

[656] Yeah, but I think this is, not use chefs.

[657] That's human nature, right?

[658] It's like painters.

[659] You have so many surface that you can use to paint, so many different colors, so many different utensils you can use to paint.

[660] The same with cooking is so many techniques.

[661] One reality is this is that it's an amazing way to express yourself.

[662] And people that want to be cooks, I like the word cook because cooking in Spanish means cocinero chef.

[663] To me, you can be running a kitchen, you can be running an entire hotel.

[664] It's great.

[665] But me, I like to call myself cook.

[666] With these two, hands, I can feed you.

[667] And that's what I know how to do.

[668] I don't know if I know how to run a restaurant or even a company, but I know I can feed you.

[669] This is my promise.

[670] And the amazing thing is that you can express yourself through that cooking and those ingredients.

[671] And the amazing thing is you don't have to do it every day the same way.

[672] You can change every day for the rest of your life.

[673] And where the same ingredients, you can come up with thousand ways.

[674] And then you come to realize that you want to be free.

[675] And the way for you to be free is to be creative.

[676] But then as you grow you realize, the more you know, you realize that shit, so much more, I don't know.

[677] And then you become like, oh, my God.

[678] When you were young, if you grew up in Europe, you would think the heart of the world was French cooking and was nothing else out there.

[679] And if you learn the French cooking words and fresh cooking techniques and the French cooking traditional dishes, you mastermind cooking.

[680] And then you realize that the world is bigger than France.

[681] Spain has cooking, too, and it's no Spanish cooking.

[682] is the cooking in Catalonia is different than the cooking in Asturias and the cooking in Andalusia.

[683] And in those regions, it's cooking that has nothing to do 100 kilometers away, one town with the other.

[684] And then you realize like, oh my God, this is crazy.

[685] Yeah, yeah.

[686] And then you realize that the wall is bigger than France and Italy and Spain.

[687] Even the English know how to cook or they think.

[688] Well, they knew how to do a lot of great things, but I don't know if I'm going to throw cooking in there.

[689] Africa, and then you have Latin America, and you have the Caribbean, you have North America, and you have Asia, and Asia is a very big place.

[690] Just go to China.

[691] It's like, what in Chinese cooking?

[692] My God, you can go to a town in China that is 20 million people, and they have sequence of dishes traditional to that one town that will be bigger than many national cooking in many other countries around the world.

[693] So what I'm only trying to say is that cooking, the universe of food, It's like when you are a night, look in the beautiful sky, and you see all those hundreds of thousands of stars.

[694] Cooking is that.

[695] All those ingredients, all those dishes, all those people, all that history, centuries, thousands of years of building the melting pot of civilization that expresses itself one dish at the time in different places around the world at once.

[696] That's the magic of food.

[697] Are you ever watching a show like Game of Thrones?

[698] just realized this would be your nightmare to live back in a time period where they didn't have shit to eat?

[699] I mean, that would be the worst death sentence for you, huh?

[700] Yeah, Game of Thrones.

[701] There was no much food there.

[702] Yeah, they had like some stews and some cuts of meat, but there's no vegetables or fruits.

[703] I felt a bit sad.

[704] There was no more food.

[705] The other day, I was watching the Medici's.

[706] And in one scene, I realized that they were serving wine.

[707] But actually, they didn't had wine.

[708] They had water.

[709] I was very disappointed.

[710] And he said, oh, this wine is great.

[711] Was no wine?

[712] It was water.

[713] My God, they forgot to put wine in the thing.

[714] How can you be a good actor if they'll give you the ingredients to be a good actor?

[715] Yes.

[716] You're faking it.

[717] The wine was so great.

[718] I could see that he was faking it.

[719] Yeah.

[720] They didn't give them the right ingredients to make the performance.

[721] I want Monica to tell you really quickly.

[722] You want to tell them about your trip this summer?

[723] Yeah, I do.

[724] But also real quick, one thing, you already said it.

[725] I think you already inadvertently gave the answer to your question, which is cooks are explorers within the food, within the world.

[726] I think that's really a through line.

[727] I like that.

[728] And then also, yes, I went to San Sebastian this summer.

[729] Specifically to eat.

[730] Yes.

[731] I went with my friend who is an amazing cook and that's his favorite food town in the world.

[732] So we went and oh my God, it was unreal.

[733] And kind of like what you said, there was this one restaurant.

[734] I don't even know if we can call it a restaurant.

[735] It was like a quarter of the size of this small attic we're in.

[736] And they served three things.

[737] They served steak, tomatoes, and green peppers, and then the tortilla, the egg dish.

[738] But that was it.

[739] We had to wait in line.

[740] It was a hold to do.

[741] It was the best meal I've ever had.

[742] It was three things.

[743] That's what he loves doing on his show.

[744] He'll take you to this pastry chef who's famous.

[745] And there's nothing there.

[746] And it takes you to, you know, eat those onions.

[747] There's nothing there.

[748] I was like, how are they doing this?

[749] Yeah.

[750] They didn't serve you cutfish, bacalalau?

[751] No. I'm trying to remember what place is that one, very tiny.

[752] In San Sebastian itself, right?

[753] In the town, yeah.

[754] I'm supposed to know.

[755] There's many places like this.

[756] No, only in San Sebastian is very traditional.

[757] Some of the places that are called Sidrearias, and what you're describing is almost a typical menu where they're going to give you the steak, El Chuletone.

[758] They're going to give you the bacalow, which is the cutfish, that is you spun fried simply.

[759] They're going to give you also maybe some eggs.

[760] and potatoes.

[761] The tortilla patata is very traditional.

[762] So good.

[763] This is very much one type of places you can be finding.

[764] And in some places, you eat all of this with cider in Basque Country.

[765] Oh yeah.

[766] I had so much cider and so much Chocolina.

[767] Yeah.

[768] And the chagolina, which is the white wine from the Basque Country, which it's a cedarie.

[769] There are binds that they are very close to the ocean, to the sea, to the Cantabrico Sea.

[770] Anyway, it's fascinating.

[771] So I'm so glad you had that experience.

[772] Obviously, they are, you see, they have a lot of tapas, even the best country people we like to call them the pinches, which are all these different bites of food that they are right at the bar.

[773] You pick up yourself and you're drinking and eating one bite at the time.

[774] It's such an experience.

[775] Yep.

[776] It's so fun.

[777] It's more than just the food.

[778] It's the, yeah, going from bar to bar and walking up and getting like a sip of cider and then one or two pinches there.

[779] It's an event.

[780] It was.

[781] It was.

[782] It was.

[783] and it was shared.

[784] This is the way I like to eat.

[785] My favorite moments is when I'm in cities like San Sebastian.

[786] I do it in Washington, D .C. I don't sit.

[787] I go bar to bar, always standing up.

[788] It was for me I will make mandatory that every bar in the world will have no stools.

[789] Yeah.

[790] The bar should be used to be standing up.

[791] Because then you realize if you're getting drunk or not.

[792] If you sit down, you don't realize.

[793] You keep moving.

[794] You keep moving.

[795] And you go to the next bar and you have another shoulder whatever you're drinking sherry or beer or wine or cider or whatever your cocktail and then you eat whatever they're known for and then you keep going place to place for me my happy moment is when in one night one lunch i can go to three four five places oh wow and be followed by friends and meeting new friends in the process this is how life should be run yes you're a shark keep moving it's fun watching the barcelona episode broke my my heart because I've only been there once.

[796] I was 19 and my food budget was like $5 a day.

[797] I didn't eat anything good.

[798] I ate shit.

[799] And I actually thought, I've got to go back there now.

[800] Probably the most important reason to go there.

[801] I missed.

[802] But the good thing is that you can, after we finish this podcast, buy the ticket to Spain.

[803] Okay.

[804] Land in Barcelona.

[805] You text me. I join you.

[806] Get eaten.

[807] Or I send you the list of places to go.

[808] And when we finish Barcelona, then we can go to Copenhagen and then when we finish there we can go to Tokyo and then when we finish Tokyo we can go to Sydney and then we finish Sydney we go Johannesburg and then we go to Mumbai and then when we finish we go to Lima.

[809] Oh my God that's what we should do for the rest of our lives sweet me away.

[810] Take me with you.

[811] Don.

[812] By the way you asked me at the beginning of the podcast about burgers is this one called Emily in Brooklyn?

[813] That's our game.

[814] Are you fucking You told you to say that.

[815] No, no. The pretzel, with the onions and the orange sauce.

[816] It's like a soup.

[817] We are obsessed.

[818] Yes, medium rare.

[819] Okay, listen, listen, listen.

[820] We call it a paste.

[821] We're obsessed with the paste.

[822] You can't imagine what you just said.

[823] It's the whole reason I asked you about burgers because our religion is that hamburger.

[824] We've been talking about it for five years straight.

[825] Monica took me there.

[826] We did a live show in Brooklyn.

[827] She said, we got to eat at this burger.

[828] I saw it on a list somewhere.

[829] I was like, oh, got to try this.

[830] Yeah, they either or some of them.

[831] We sit down and I see that it's $27.

[832] And I say to Monica, that's a very expensive hamburger.

[833] This better be good.

[834] And I want you to know, Jose, when I finished eating it, I looked at Monica and I said, that's the most underpriced hamburger I've ever had in my life.

[835] That hamburger is worth $80.

[836] We were dying.

[837] I can't believe you said that.

[838] That's number one for us, number one.

[839] Yeah, especially if he's done a red.

[840] This is great.

[841] But you have to eat the one I have because you're going to love that one.

[842] I'm going to.

[843] That's a promise.

[844] That's a certainty.

[845] Okay, I want to talk really quick about World Central Kitchen.

[846] You started it in 2010 in the response to the Haiti earthquake, and you've served 200 million meals since then, working with 510 different restaurants.

[847] That is so extraordinary.

[848] And, of course, this year took you to Ukraine.

[849] You were in Poland within 24 hours of Russia invading, giving meals to people that were fleeing the country.

[850] It's so cool.

[851] Forget the humanitarian aspect, obviously amazing.

[852] I can relate to get me there.

[853] Let's go.

[854] I want to be there now.

[855] How great is it to have the infrastructure and have built the life where you can do that?

[856] Where that happens and you go, you know what, I'm going to be there tomorrow cooking food.

[857] That's a superpower.

[858] Sometimes I get fearful when I think about it because I just realize that everybody wants to do that.

[859] And what's in the kitchen has only provided the platform.

[860] for having amazing people doing as a team what many people want to do, and sometimes they don't do it because they don't know how to start doing it, or they don't do it because it's far away and you feel powerless or whatever reason.

[861] And then at the end, the Central Kitchen is giving many people the possibility used to be there.

[862] Sometimes physically, the people that are able to join us and volunteer or people we hire, but it's always a wrong word to use because you cannot hire people.

[863] It's just people that they are there serving others.

[864] come part of the team and all the people that support us with money or with connections or with other type of donations.

[865] So now it makes me very teary sometimes when I see what World Central Kitchen is becoming.

[866] It has to be so much bigger than you could have fantasized about.

[867] Just as an organization, it's overwhelming.

[868] I don't know how one builds something that effective.

[869] I don't know it either.

[870] Obviously, it had very good teams since the beginning.

[871] Everybody did their part, right?

[872] From the day that was Central Kitchen was used one person.

[873] Fred is an amazing friend of mine and my wife, an amazing woman that used to work at the World Bank, and she knew that they wanted to create this organization after my first trip to Haiti.

[874] And she said, I'm thinking about taking a break from the World Bank.

[875] I'm going to help you put Bolsenra Kitchen up and running.

[876] She was one person.

[877] Wow.

[878] Without her, Wold Central Kitchen wouldn't exist.

[879] And nobody remembers she did that, but I remember.

[880] Without her, Wold Central Kitchen wouldn't ever happen.

[881] It'll be used me showing up somewhere.

[882] Yeah.

[883] Yeah, it was a hot plate.

[884] 100 meals here and 100 meals there.

[885] And that's it, right?

[886] And then all the people came and we began doing more things and bigger things.

[887] And I guess one day we were in the right place at the right time.

[888] That was Puerto Rico that we reached almost 4 million meals.

[889] Yeah.

[890] And that's the first time we did something massive.

[891] A few weeks before I was in Houston, we did hundreds of thousands meals there, three weeks before we had the other hurricane.

[892] That moment was the moment of beginning.

[893] Houston followed by Puerto Rico.

[894] The momentum was there now.

[895] And the issue was the moment.

[896] beyond Haiti many years before, that we realized that when things get very difficult, sometimes the big organizations are way too big to be quick.

[897] They're not nimble, yeah.

[898] And we realized that we were quick and adaptable.

[899] We need the big organizations.

[900] But sometimes they're trying to do things they're not prepared anymore to do.

[901] When they are so big, they cannot be fast for different reasons, because bureaucracy.

[902] And we realized that we had no bureaucracy that our decisions were quick and fast.

[903] Bahamas, Guatemala, fires in California, tornadoes in Kentucky, you name it.

[904] War zones, Ukraine, refugee crisis in the south, in the States, or in Colombia or in Venezuela, islands, tsunamis.

[905] Ukraine was the perfect example.

[906] We were there within 12 hours, feeding in the border.

[907] I think I landed there in Poland 24 hours later, 36 hours at the most.

[908] The teams were already feeding.

[909] Before we knew we were in every single border, point feeding refugees living in Ukraine.

[910] Wow.

[911] At the same time, we move in into Ukraine.

[912] I remember I was there inside Ukraine maybe, you know, a week later.

[913] 80 days you spent there last year, yeah?

[914] Yeah, probably a little bit more.

[915] My daughter came with me in the middle of shooting the show.

[916] Ines, she came one week with me and she came to LaVib.

[917] My wife almost kills me. My daughter told me, Daddy, you are telling me that to change the world, we need to be in the know -how and to get know -how.

[918] have boots on the ground.

[919] How do you want me to get know how if you don't let me have boots on the ground?

[920] Yes, she's right.

[921] Very quickly within weeks, we reach 500 ,000 meals a day using 550 restaurants.

[922] Then we realized that that was not enough, that in some places we didn't need to give them had meals.

[923] In some places, we could use bags of food in the places without infrastructure.

[924] So we began acting like a supermarket, giving bags of food for a family for a week, 30 pound bags.

[925] We had almost 30, 40 warehouses.

[926] Four of them were making those bags, 60 ,000 bags a day, 20 meals each bag.

[927] So it was half a million meals in hard meals, 1 .2, 1 .3 million meals a day in the form of packs.

[928] We reach 1 .5, 1 .8 million meals a day very quickly.

[929] We are on our way to reach 200 million only in Ukraine.

[930] Wow.

[931] Unfortunately, we lost two people in Shui Hif a few weeks ago.

[932] They were sleeping in the cultural center.

[933] If anybody has any doubts, what Putin is doing.

[934] because this is not about Russians.

[935] This is about one leader that is making Russians support a war that should never be happening, where mainly is more civilians dying than even soldiers.

[936] When this is happening, you know something is wrong.

[937] And obviously, we all need to be claiming that a person like Putin has no space on this earth, and we all need to be speaking up.

[938] Anytime we have leaders that try to bring the wars out of us, those leaders should not have space.

[939] may be on the right, they may be on the left.

[940] I don't care.

[941] Any leader that tells you that the other person is bad without really being true, it cannot exist.

[942] We need leaders that bring the best out of all of us, that you're entitled to think different, that you can have different points of opinion, but you cannot try to bring the wars out of people to make people fight each other.

[943] So anyway, going back to Ukraine, I'm very proud of the team in Ukraine.

[944] We spend millions and millions and millions of dollars.

[945] We were able to do what we do because the American people mainly support us.

[946] 100 % of everything we've done there is been private money.

[947] Much of it is from people that give us one, five, ten dollars.

[948] We've been able to do it because the American people wanted to help the people of Ukraine.

[949] And Wall Central Kitchen has been the amazing way to do this fast, but very effective, making sure that the money was being spent inside Ukraine.

[950] Ukraine has food.

[951] Don't forget that.

[952] Ukraine has food.

[953] What happened is, is a country at war with 50 million people displaced or outside the country as refugees.

[954] When you have so many people outside the normal places where they leave, everything falls apart.

[955] But Ukraine has food.

[956] What we did was helping create emergency structures to make sure that nobody will be left hungry and forgotten.

[957] That's what we've been doing next to the Ukrainian people.

[958] Are they not the biggest wheat grower?

[959] What Ukraine produces feeds close to 400 million people a year between the cereal, the corn, and other things.

[960] So it's a country that has food.

[961] And that's why it's so important that that war ends because we need that food to feed other parts of the world.

[962] We are taking food for granted, let me tell you this way.

[963] Can you tell me what I'm not seeing on the news?

[964] I mean, you've met with Zelensky over there.

[965] You are so in the know.

[966] I guess from the outside, I think all of us are so incredibly impressed with the Ukrainians.

[967] In the history of the world, this is one of the great David versus Goliath stories to ever happen.

[968] And the resolve and the heroism, it's once in a lifetime to witness.

[969] Are the people carrying the pride of that?

[970] I sure hope they are.

[971] We are in the middle of winter, as we speak, in the last few weeks, it's been a massive attack towards infrastructure, civilian infrastructure.

[972] So it's been many big cities without electricity, many big cities without water.

[973] In the middle of winter, this is a hard one.

[974] But the amazing thing is that they are very, very resilient.

[975] In the worst moments of humanity, the best of humanity shows up.

[976] And this is people that obviously they are under attack for no clear reasons.

[977] Zero reason.

[978] One man's ego.

[979] And this has made all the Ukrainians become one.

[980] This has shown us that a person, a president that was a comedian, to be a comedian, it's a difficult profession.

[981] And I have many friends that they are comedians.

[982] And I say that with the most respect.

[983] But, you know, there's a lot of people.

[984] Oh, he's a comedian, a president who make movies and what's wrong?

[985] President Ronald Reagan made movies, too.

[986] And you may agree or no with his politics, but he was an honorable man. And I think it's good for the country in the years he served the country.

[987] But I think President Zelensky, which I remember finding people in the streets, I mean, you know, I never voted for these men.

[988] I didn't thought he was going to be a good president.

[989] But right now, I will vote for that man. close eyes because he's brought all of Ukraine together.

[990] It's beautiful to see when everybody comes around not only a president, but the idea that all the people together, they can fight against tyranny, they can fight for freedom, they can fight for democracy, and they love the support that America has given them, they love the support that Europe has been given them, but they are the ones fighting.

[991] It's our role to be there.

[992] I am not a man of war.

[993] I like guns.

[994] I'm a hunter.

[995] I have no problem with guns.

[996] But for war and killing people, this is something we should not be allowing to happen.

[997] In America, anywhere in the world, there's many ways to fight a war.

[998] We call ourselves food fighters, but it's amazing to see how many people in the hospitals.

[999] Children doing cookies and lemonade stands to raise funds to send to the front line so they can buy, I don't know, coats for the soldiers or blankets for the elderly or barners so people can cook outside home if they don't have electricity or gas.

[1000] everybody seems have a mission and it's very beautiful to see entire country that everybody has a mission everybody has a role and everybody is trying to find the way to serve others obviously is the man and woman as many women in the front lines that they are dying every day I feel sorry for everyone of them because many of them which I met they're nurses they are students they're teachers they're farmers and all of a sudden they have to be people of war defending their country, obviously on the Ukrainian side, but you have to feel sorry, too, for those Russians that obviously they are the enemy, and I'm not going to be saying nice things about them, but I'm guessing that these people, they are on the Russian army, that they don't want to be there either.

[1001] That's clear from a lot of it, yeah.

[1002] And they are making them shoot others, and sometimes they're shooting the back maybe because they don't want to fight, or they end in jail because they don't want to fight.

[1003] This has been the case.

[1004] But that's why we cannot put leaders like Putin never again in power.

[1005] It's crazy that this one man is creating so much.

[1006] man yeah okay my last question for you thank you so much for talking you're so god damn charismatic i would love to be standing at a bar with you and then moving to the next one but i didn't even know this existed this courage and civility ward that you received so do you know about this jeff bezos will give a hundred million dollars to someone for them to distribute oh that's and you got this yeah how does one when you get a call that says Hey, man, why don't you give out this $100 million?

[1007] That's got to be a fucking surreal moment in life.

[1008] Is it a burden?

[1009] My life is a little bit like a Forest Gump.

[1010] I'm here doing this podcast with you.

[1011] The things that has happened in my life are very absurd.

[1012] Somebody will tell me four years ago that a guy called you a Bezos, who is the richest man in the world, is giving me $100 million.

[1013] Like, really?

[1014] It looks like a movie if you think about it.

[1015] Yeah, no, it'd be a bad movie.

[1016] It'd be like, why'd he do that?

[1017] No one would do that.

[1018] It's a blessing, but at the same time, it's been a little bit.

[1019] like a course.

[1020] Because now I don't know if everybody coming to me, they're looking at me because I have $100 million to give away.

[1021] I'm going to pitch you my Ferrari for everyone, charity when we get off.

[1022] Obviously, I want to use it smart and thinking about long term, how I can invest in things that can keep giving in the years to come.

[1023] But at the same time, next time I'm going to see Jeff.

[1024] It's like, okay, Jeff, can you give me a billion?

[1025] I ran through the hundred pretty quick.

[1026] It's taking me the same effort to spend 100 at a billion.

[1027] What I love about Jeff Bishon, he has an amazing family.

[1028] They do a lot of charity work.

[1029] I think it's great that people like him are committed.

[1030] This is not the only thing he's doing.

[1031] He's doing a lot of things in a lot of fronts, fighting the environment and everything else.

[1032] I came to be friends of his, and for him he's looking for people that he calls friends.

[1033] Instead of him and his foundation or his family members, which they are also very engaged in philanthropy, he's going to other people so he can reach more places.

[1034] Yeah.

[1035] I love that.

[1036] No, I think it's a brilliant way for him to do it, is to find people that you trust, that have a different point of view that see different issues.

[1037] Yeah, I think it's really clever.

[1038] And that's why he told me, like, spend the money whatever you want.

[1039] Whatever you think is smart, spend it.

[1040] And quite frankly, you don't see things like this happen often.

[1041] I hope I'll put that money for good use.

[1042] We've already been investing in few things.

[1043] And obviously, we use that money to start the Ukrainian operation a little bit.

[1044] But we've been doing other things in Washington, D .C., in the States.

[1045] If I'm you and I have $100 million in the bank and I go to Ukraine and I'm emotional and I'm seeing suffering, it'd be tempting for me to go like, well, just let's back up that truck.

[1046] But you have to be prudent.

[1047] Well, but at the same time, the urgency of now is now.

[1048] You have Yemen right now.

[1049] You have Armenia.

[1050] You have so many places in the world.

[1051] But you don't need to go.

[1052] We can't stay in the States.

[1053] So many inner cities in America, in Washington, D .C., in Baltimore, in L .A. So the need is real.

[1054] That's why I'm trying to spend this money not so much in the short -term resilience or trying to fight hunger in one place that really is in chaos, but I'm trying to invest the money in certain things that can help bring smart policies.

[1055] For example, I want to create a Global Food Institute, right?

[1056] We don't have a place that gives the importance food deserves.

[1057] Food is a national security issue.

[1058] Every president in America and around the world should have a food expert next to.

[1059] to him.

[1060] We don't.

[1061] We don't have a true food policy in America.

[1062] We don't have a true food policy in the world.

[1063] I want to be investing in creating this think tank where the best and the writers of different fields will come to make sure that food ends being part of the problem, but where food becomes part of the solution.

[1064] Food should be healthy food for all.

[1065] Food should be immigration.

[1066] Food should be better farming systems where the people working on the farms are taking care of.

[1067] Food is science.

[1068] Food is health.

[1069] Food is poverty.

[1070] We can use food to end poverty.

[1071] Obviously, food is hunger.

[1072] We should use food to end hunger in a sustainable way.

[1073] Food is in the barman.

[1074] The way we produce food is creating chaos in the climate.

[1075] We should be doing that better.

[1076] At the end, food is who we are.

[1077] I was able to speak to all the presidents in the last narrow summit in Madrid.

[1078] Don't tell me why.

[1079] Here, a cook like me, was able to give a speech.

[1080] One of the biggest days when all the presidents of every NATO country unites, and the president of Spain gave me the chance to speak to them.

[1081] And my message was clear, food is a national security issue.

[1082] Let's take food seriously.

[1083] One day, this planet is going to have more problems, that problems we are going to be able to resolve.

[1084] Let's make sure that we start resolving them by taking food clearly.

[1085] That's some of the ways I'm using that money of the ambassadors, because I think I have a huge impact onending hunger and and end the poverty in the next 10, 20 years.

[1086] I love your story.

[1087] I want to write a children's book because really it starts with the croquette.

[1088] If you passionately follow the croquette, mom's weird hodgepodge leftover croquette, it could lead you to Bezos giving you $100 million to help.

[1089] If you care and love something and dedicate your life to it, it's insane where it could end up taking you.

[1090] And I very much appreciate you telling us that story.

[1091] Remember, big problems, they have very simple solutions, right?

[1092] In that case of the croquetta, the big problem on my mom was trying to feed us with an empty refrigerator.

[1093] You see, a big problem, she found a simple solution.

[1094] At the end, she was able to fit all of us with very little money, with leftovers.

[1095] We were all very well fed and happy.

[1096] Well, so good that you dedicated your life to it.

[1097] Yeah.

[1098] Very much.

[1099] That's the irony.

[1100] Starting with nothing resulted in a life.

[1101] direction, which is the greatest thing someone could get.

[1102] Jose, so wonderful meeting you and talking to you.

[1103] I hope everyone checks out Jose Andres and family in Spain on Discovery Plus and also listen to Longer Tables with Jose Andres.

[1104] You've had a bunch of great guests.

[1105] You've had Jane Goodall on, Ron Howard, Stacey Abrams.

[1106] These are all wonderful people to talk to.

[1107] And the premise, of course, is the longer the table and the lower the walls, the better we'll all get along.

[1108] It's a great message.

[1109] So listen to Longer Tables.

[1110] and I hope we get to talk to you again soon.

[1111] And even better yet.

[1112] Yeah, I want to eat with you at some point.

[1113] That's what I want.

[1114] Let's do the podcast, Eating on the Road.

[1115] Oh, yes.

[1116] I'm in, I'm in.

[1117] Even if it doesn't air, I'm in.

[1118] Yeah, who cares?

[1119] Who gives a fuck?

[1120] Wonderful meeting you.

[1121] Thank you so much.

[1122] Good luck with everything.

[1123] I'll see you.

[1124] And let's do the burger thing.

[1125] Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes.

[1126] Okay, be well.

[1127] Bye, guys.

[1128] Thank you.

[1129] Chair expert, if you dare.

[1130] And now my favorite part of the show, the fact check with my soulmate Monica Padman.

[1131] Hello.

[1132] Hi, my name is Dax.

[1133] Nice to meet you.

[1134] Thanks for seeing me on such short notice.

[1135] Yeah, I rearranged my schedule for you.

[1136] Thank you.

[1137] Because I've heard you come highly recommended.

[1138] Thank you.

[1139] And I would love to work here.

[1140] Okay.

[1141] Can you give me some of your past experience?

[1142] Yeah.

[1143] I'm mechanical.

[1144] I can, in a pinch, I can put a new engine in a car.

[1145] Okay.

[1146] We're not really a car service.

[1147] Oh, okay.

[1148] But it's good to know.

[1149] Yeah.

[1150] What else?

[1151] I make about six different dishes, all involving ground beef.

[1152] Okay.

[1153] Go on.

[1154] I kind of specialize in ground beef dishes.

[1155] Okay.

[1156] Meatballs, spaghetti.

[1157] I do this beautiful casserole with Bisquick.

[1158] Ooh.

[1159] In velvita cheese.

[1160] Oh, my.

[1161] cheese soup.

[1162] Okay.

[1163] You know, various other ground beef dishes.

[1164] Okay, you're hired.

[1165] Oh, wonderful, wonderful.

[1166] And should I bring a hot plate in here so that I can prepare?

[1167] That's right, because we don't have any.

[1168] You won't be supplying any.

[1169] No. That's fine.

[1170] I'd pay to work here.

[1171] In fact, that's what I'm here to offer.

[1172] You also buy all the groceries.

[1173] I'll buy them all.

[1174] The only thing you'll be aware of is the tasty ground beef dish when it's completed.

[1175] This is actually a ding, ding, ding.

[1176] I find that hard to believe.

[1177] No, it is.

[1178] This is a duck duck goose I can smell it.

[1179] No. It's a ding ding dingers because this is for Jose Andres.

[1180] Oh.

[1181] And you've been out of town.

[1182] Yeah.

[1183] But do you know what arrived since you've been out of town?

[1184] I do.

[1185] Did they arrive for you too?

[1186] But I haven't made them yet.

[1187] So Jose emailed us a few minutes after we recorded.

[1188] So kind.

[1189] Yes.

[1190] And said I had some kits coming to you guys to make the burgers from.

[1191] Goldbelly.

[1192] Aaron and I, Aaron started making them and I finished making them last night.

[1193] They're outrageous.

[1194] Okay.

[1195] But this is a perfect update because since we interviewed him, when I heard that he puts a ribeye in the grinder to make the hamburger, I thought about it every single day since.

[1196] Yeah.

[1197] And in fact, I brought it up to Aaron when we were in the sand dunes, like, I'm just obsessed with this idea.

[1198] And he said, oh, my buddies, he grinds everything.

[1199] He showed me a picture, and I realized the grinder was attached to a kitchen aid.

[1200] Yeah.

[1201] I had no idea.

[1202] I thought I'd have to get some big 1930s butcher situation if I wanted to make ground beef in my house.

[1203] Yeah.

[1204] No, no, no, no, no, no, Monica.

[1205] Very reasonably priced grinders on Amazon, many of them.

[1206] Yeah.

[1207] And I bought myself a stainless steel grinder that attaches to the kitchen egg, and I'm going to put some steaks through there.

[1208] I had a tummy issue this week, so I haven't made mine yet.

[1209] You got taken out.

[1210] A little bit.

[1211] I mean, I pushed through.

[1212] I went to the grove in the rain.

[1213] Yesterday?

[1214] No, two days ago.

[1215] But you pulled a no -show yesterday at a birthday party.

[1216] Yesterday, I made the executive decision that I had not been paying enough attention to my body.

[1217] Okay.

[1218] And I needed to really just chill.

[1219] The bottom rung of the pyramid.

[1220] Yeah.

[1221] I bottomed out.

[1222] Okay.

[1223] And I thought I should just be resting.

[1224] Uh -huh.

[1225] And did you rest all day yesterday?

[1226] Yeah.

[1227] Or did you go to the grove?

[1228] No. Oh, that was Saturday.

[1229] That was Saturday.

[1230] Saturday I went to the grove in the rain.

[1231] Okay.

[1232] To go to Creight and Barrel, which is no longer there.

[1233] Oh, oh, no. Yeah.

[1234] We lost Crate and Barrel?

[1235] Yeah.

[1236] I feel sad.

[1237] It is.

[1238] I don't like when businesses go under.

[1239] Well, no, Crate and Barrel is still a business.

[1240] They just don't have it at the Grove anymore.

[1241] But even if it's like a local location, I don't like to see.

[1242] I know.

[1243] I agree.

[1244] People somehow are excited, I think, when borders and Barnes and Nobles and those, some seem to rejoice in that night.

[1245] Why?

[1246] It made me so sad that those went under.

[1247] Well, no, Barnes and Noble, again, still exists.

[1248] Okay, I'm really going to get us into some legal issues.

[1249] So all these companies are thriving.

[1250] They just left the areas.

[1251] I see them.

[1252] That's right.

[1253] Although Barnes and Noble is still at the Grove.

[1254] Oh, wonderful.

[1255] And it's such a fun, rainy day activity to go to a bookstore.

[1256] Have a couple of Joe?

[1257] Oh, it's one of my favorite things.

[1258] Did you do that?

[1259] No, because my tummy was hurting.

[1260] Okay.

[1261] It was too tender for a cup of coffee.

[1262] Yeah.

[1263] And then by the time I realized the crate and barrel was gone and I was just getting poured on.

[1264] I mean, it's, it's been so fucking rainy in this city.

[1265] It's crazy.

[1266] I've lived over 27 years and this is like, it's, it's unrivaled by a factor of three.

[1267] Yes.

[1268] And I had my eye on some mixing bowls from crate and barrel.

[1269] Okay.

[1270] So I was pretty bummed.

[1271] And then I thought, I don't have time to go do this.

[1272] Barns of No, well, my tummy hair's, I got to go.

[1273] I feel that this is a test.

[1274] This rain has just been a massive personality test for me. Okay.

[1275] Like, how much can I actually stand?

[1276] Yes.

[1277] In life.

[1278] I read while I was in the dunes, I wish I could remember the exact number.

[1279] But I want to say it was something like 78 trillion gallons of water is what's fallen on California.

[1280] 78 trillion gallons of water.

[1281] That's insane.

[1282] And it makes me feel good because people think we're babies out here.

[1283] And they think we're just like, like, complaining.

[1284] And that's all true.

[1285] It's true and it's not.

[1286] And it's not.

[1287] What's your caveat?

[1288] I got a caveat.

[1289] Well, one is we're just not equipped for it.

[1290] So it is like more dangerous and more intense here.

[1291] And we don't actually have the type of ground that absorbs it, right?

[1292] That's what I mean.

[1293] Yes.

[1294] So it's like there's flooding everywhere.

[1295] Every single person who has a house, it's leaking.

[1296] Like in Michigan, I never saw water pooled anywhere.

[1297] Yeah.

[1298] And it would rain sometimes for a week straight, like buckets.

[1299] Exactly.

[1300] No problem, though.

[1301] Here, no drainage.

[1302] Also, it's, it's been substantial.

[1303] So it's, we're not just complaining, like we're babies.

[1304] Right.

[1305] It's been bad.

[1306] And it has been.

[1307] Really bad.

[1308] Yeah, it's like once in a however many decades.

[1309] Listen, you just heard it.

[1310] So Wabiwob's trying to exit the attic.

[1311] And it's almost impossible to get out of the door.

[1312] That's how saturated everything.

[1313] The fucking door's swollen with water.

[1314] Ugh.

[1315] It's disgusting.

[1316] Okay.

[1317] I loved Jose.

[1318] Me too.

[1319] I really, really loved them.

[1320] Me too.

[1321] Yeah.

[1322] And it just, I fucking love cooking.

[1323] You do.

[1324] I know.

[1325] It's really for you.

[1326] And I will find a cooking video.

[1327] I mean, I have watched the same cooking videos over and over and over again.

[1328] And I'm angry because Allison, Roman hasn't put a new one out in a bit, and then I found Molly Baws.

[1329] I love her, but she also has a limited amount of videos, so I've just watched the same ones over and over again.

[1330] But then I found, you know, I went on a hunt, and then I've just been piecing together, some cooking videos.

[1331] Yeah.

[1332] Hodgepodge.

[1333] I've hodgepaged it.

[1334] It's not ideal, but I will find one.

[1335] Okay.

[1336] But let me tell you the craziest sim thing.

[1337] Tell me. And it's food -related.

[1338] So it's a ding -d -d -d -a.

[1339] goose.

[1340] Okay.

[1341] I was walking to Broom Street General Stroke.

[1342] Side no. Okay.

[1343] I'm getting a little more anxious about shouting out my places.

[1344] Oh, because they get real popular.

[1345] Well, guess what's sold out?

[1346] What?

[1347] Everywhere.

[1348] What?

[1349] My soap.

[1350] Oh, oh.

[1351] Now, is that a supply chain issue or demand?

[1352] Listen, I don't know, but when I will, not to, not to pat myself on the back, because this sounds so gross.

[1353] Yeah.

[1354] But when you type in volcanic ash, there is a...

[1355] Autofil that says, well, that seems definitive to me. That's not your ego.

[1356] And there are questions like, what's that soap Monica?

[1357] Oh, my God.

[1358] And it's sold out everywhere.

[1359] Well, I think they should probably be sending you some reserves since you might have minimally played some role in it.

[1360] At least I sold, I think I sold at least three of the soaps.

[1361] Well, yeah, probably more.

[1362] Probably more.

[1363] I don't know, but I really did start to panic because I've been, now, I've been, that's your religion.

[1364] It is.

[1365] I know.

[1366] I know.

[1367] And I thought, again, this is a test.

[1368] I'm being so tested in 2023.

[1369] Yeah.

[1370] You're going to find out what you're made of.

[1371] There might be a whole other side that's going to emerge.

[1372] Well, one of my words, you know, when you looked at that big block of, block of letters and you had to throw up of alphabet.

[1373] And you had to pick the first.

[1374] First four words you saw that was going to be your mantra of 2023.

[1375] One of my words was breakthrough.

[1376] Oh, it was.

[1377] So I'm being tested.

[1378] Yeah.

[1379] And I thought, oh, my God, I guess maybe this is the year I have to find a new soap and get rid of my old identity.

[1380] That's a lot to take on.

[1381] I know.

[1382] Yeah.

[1383] But anyway, so all to say, I walked to Broome Street General Store, which is a great store in Los Angeles.

[1384] And they also have little coffees and teas.

[1385] They were sold out that day of coffees and teas.

[1386] So that was a bummer because that is why I walked there.

[1387] Right.

[1388] Just like the crate and barrel.

[1389] Tess after test.

[1390] My God.

[1391] Okay.

[1392] So I walk to Brub Street Journal.

[1393] It's about 20 minute walk.

[1394] Yeah.

[1395] I'm listening to a Bon Appetit podcast.

[1396] Okay.

[1397] That's a cooking one as well.

[1398] Yep.

[1399] Uh -huh.

[1400] And on that podcast, that episode, which is different than the the normal episode, he did like a one -off where people wrote in and asked some questions and they were responding.

[1401] And one of the questions was about stuff you should keep in your pantry.

[1402] Pantry staples.

[1403] And they started talking about this harissa.

[1404] I mean, they were talking about lots of stuff, canned tomatoes, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[1405] And then they started talking about this horisa.

[1406] And they got in a little conversation about the brand.

[1407] And the brand should be NY Shook.

[1408] And that's the brand.

[1409] And it's the brand.

[1410] And it's the brand.

[1411] It's the best brand and whatever.

[1412] Those whole conversation, move on, talk to another question.

[1413] Whatever.

[1414] This is not a joke.

[1415] I get to Broom Street General Store.

[1416] I'm looking around.

[1417] There's all kinds of little things, knickknacks there.

[1418] Okay.

[1419] Look at some saw.

[1420] I was making a little face roller.

[1421] I look over that exact Horissa, that brand is sitting there.

[1422] There at a knick -knack store.

[1423] Yes.

[1424] Oh, my God.

[1425] It wasn't, it's not like it's a grocery store.

[1426] Right.

[1427] Doesn't sound like it.

[1428] Very specialty.

[1429] Like you would not get, you wouldn't find it at a Gelson's not, maybe not even a McCall's.

[1430] Wow.

[1431] Yeah, very specialty.

[1432] And it was at this.

[1433] That brand.

[1434] So did you buy a lunch?

[1435] Of course.

[1436] Okay, I thought, well, most of these stories have been going to a place where they don't have what you want.

[1437] So then I was expecting.

[1438] Sure.

[1439] Because you've told people to go to broomsticks.

[1440] Broome Street, general.

[1441] Brum Street.

[1442] Okay.

[1443] And then, you know, maybe even recommended Bon Appetit Podcast.

[1444] Now it was gone.

[1445] There was only a display model.

[1446] It was empty.

[1447] That's kind of where I thought this was going.

[1448] Kind of like the tampon up the butt.

[1449] Oh, right.

[1450] Ding, ding, dang, Easter egg.

[1451] Still hasn't happened yet.

[1452] Okay.

[1453] But I'm just saying that was a sim level.

[1454] Yeah.

[1455] That I, it made me actually question reality.

[1456] I had one too.

[1457] Oh, my God.

[1458] What happened?

[1459] It's still completely unresolved.

[1460] I don't know what happened.

[1461] And so yesterday before Dahlia's birthday party, I work out in Black Mold Paradise and I'm like, I'll check in with playoff football.

[1462] Uh -huh.

[1463] I don't follow football, right?

[1464] I don't know any team's record.

[1465] And I watch a good chunk of the New York Giants playing the Minnesota Vikings.

[1466] And it's a wild card meaning the Giants didn't have a great record, but they get this wild card.

[1467] And then they play the number two team, which I guess was the Vikings.

[1468] I'm watching it long enough that I see, oh, The record for the Giants is like eight, six, and one or some.

[1469] It's not a good record.

[1470] And then I see that the Vikings were like 10 and 3 or 11 and 2, something, some great record.

[1471] And I had this thought like, oh, it's kind of unjust that this wildcard team could beat this team that's like had a great record.

[1472] I got scared.

[1473] There you go.

[1474] TCU.

[1475] So I arrive at the party.

[1476] I walk in, the very first thing I do is ask Ryan Hansen, how do these wildcard games go?

[1477] because I got really concerned that this, you know, eight and six team was going to beat this 11 and 2 team.

[1478] And he's like, I don't know.

[1479] Maybe the other second place team gets to play again.

[1480] I don't know.

[1481] When Charlie gets here, we'll figure it out.

[1482] Okay.

[1483] Then we watched the end of this one playoff game.

[1484] Okay.

[1485] It ends and the Giants Viking game starts.

[1486] And I go, is this delayed?

[1487] I already saw this game.

[1488] And they're like, no. this is live.

[1489] You didn't see that game.

[1490] What?

[1491] And I go, well, guys, why do I know the records of those two teams?

[1492] Those are the records, right?

[1493] And as the game starts, yes, I'm seeing their record.

[1494] Yes.

[1495] And I'm like, I watched this game this morning.

[1496] They're like, that's not possible.

[1497] And I go, clearly it's not possible.

[1498] But explain how I know their records.

[1499] I don't know any team's records.

[1500] I don't know if at that time that the Giants are number one in Vikings.

[1501] are in last place.

[1502] I don't know any of that.

[1503] But I knew it.

[1504] Okay.

[1505] So I, the conclusion was I was time traveling.

[1506] And listen to me. I also said this game is going to go into halftime at 17 to 14.

[1507] And it did?

[1508] Yes.

[1509] Wait.

[1510] There was, are you sure watching the dolphins and bills who had similar records?

[1511] I was also watching that.

[1512] That was on at the same time.

[1513] I was going back and forth.

[1514] Yeah, that was in the morning with my viewing of the Viking.

[1515] Vikings Giants game.

[1516] What?

[1517] Are you sure?

[1518] Rob, even if I saw that they had similar records, I wouldn't have known which team to give the good record to.

[1519] But I knew.

[1520] I said the Vikings are like 11 and 2.

[1521] Do you think they were - Vikings are 13 and 5.

[1522] Okay, stop.

[1523] Sorry, sorry.

[1524] The point is very identical.

[1525] The two, the records of both teams are similar in both those games.

[1526] Okay, even that, great.

[1527] But what team is which?

[1528] why am I saying the Vikings are the one that had the better record of the Dolphins game?

[1529] Do you think that, okay, could this have been happening?

[1530] Yeah.

[1531] Where you're watching the dolphins.

[1532] Yeah.

[1533] But the announcers are talking about the upcoming game and they're saying the records and stuff.

[1534] The problem with that is the whole reason I walked in worried about this wild card situation is that the Vikings were down three points going into the half when I turned off.

[1535] the game and left the gym.

[1536] I was worried this lesser team was going to win.

[1537] And it was my first question when I got to the house.

[1538] And the game definitely wasn't on when I was working out.

[1539] And definitely all the details I had were correct.

[1540] The other game was a three -point game at halftime time.

[1541] I, okay.

[1542] I know the other game because I was watching the other game as well.

[1543] And then we watched the conclusion of that game when I got to.

[1544] And I was very clear about that game.

[1545] Yeah, yeah.

[1546] They were both great games.

[1547] Rob's trying as hard as to help me. Well, he's trying, because he knows that the truth probably is that you watch that game.

[1548] But I was watching two games.

[1549] Was there another game on also?

[1550] No, because it's like 10, 1 .30, 530.

[1551] Exactly.

[1552] Now, I was watching two games.

[1553] I was flicking back and forth because it started with me watching Red Zone where they pop back and forth.

[1554] And then I'm like, I want to watch this.

[1555] Giants Vikings game more than I want to watch the Dolphins game.

[1556] I don't know what to tell.

[1557] I'm just telling you the order of events.

[1558] Clearly something's mixed up.

[1559] Right.

[1560] But what a ride.

[1561] I'm like, guys, I started watching this game three hours ago when I was working out.

[1562] And I'm telling you what the scores and I'm telling you what their records are.

[1563] You tell me what's going on.

[1564] I need to clarify something.

[1565] So I time traveled.

[1566] Yeah.

[1567] That's not what I would define as sim.

[1568] That is either time travel.

[1569] This is what we concluded.

[1570] There was a glitch in my simulation that somehow let me watch that game three hours before it was on.

[1571] That's a simulation glitch.

[1572] So that was, thank you.

[1573] I forgot the whole point of me bringing that up.

[1574] But it was, I realized, I got an enormous piece of proof I'm in the sim yesterday because the sim showed me a football game three hours early.

[1575] Wait now.

[1576] Yes.

[1577] Because the sim already knows when everything's going to happen and how it's all going to go.

[1578] Should I ask my bad?

[1579] It accidentally dropped me three hours ahead in time, but also allowed me to watch the Dolphins game at the same time, which was in regular time.

[1580] The Sim is so crazy.

[1581] The Sim knows that the Horissa is going to be there.

[1582] And plays it for you on the way, so you get super excited about this product you'll never find and boom, there it is.

[1583] Was your walk to the broomstick on yesterday?

[1584] Because maybe the whole system was fucked up yesterday.

[1585] It was Saturday.

[1586] Oh.

[1587] No, I'm sorry.

[1588] It was Friday.

[1589] Oh, God.

[1590] Yeah.

[1591] Okay, so three days before.

[1592] Three days before, like three points.

[1593] Three hours.

[1594] Like three points in the game.

[1595] Wow.

[1596] All right.

[1597] Well, listen, computers aren't perfect.

[1598] You have to reboot them all the time.

[1599] Yeah.

[1600] And the Sims being run in a computer and something happened that had me in two places at once.

[1601] I mean, the present time, me in three hours ahead, all in the same.

[1602] Holy shit.

[1603] Yeah.

[1604] That's pretty.

[1605] wild we were all kind of tripping out about it because everyone knows i don't know the records of those teams oh there's another part of my sim oh hit me with horissa okay um so then i walk back and then i put all my ingredients down and then i open up my instagram and the first post oh is for harissa yes no yes for from half baked harvest she did a sheet pan chicken with harissa oh my god i'm I know.

[1606] Okay, so if we didn't believe in the sim, would we suggest?

[1607] Bader Meinhoff, frequency illusion.

[1608] Yeah, that you've been hearing that word a lot, but you didn't, you weren't hip to it.

[1609] But I was.

[1610] And so you don't even hear it.

[1611] Like, if you don't know what it is or you have no interest in it, you, it's like, maybe you were hearing it more, but you didn't notice.

[1612] Maybe, but I do know about Horissa.

[1613] I have Harissa.

[1614] Oh, you already got, you're already well stuck.

[1615] I already have it, but I don't have this brand and this special one.

[1616] I got you.

[1617] I mean, I am shook, NY Shook.

[1618] Also, Sim with the Rain, a lot of glitches.

[1619] Yeah.

[1620] A lot of glitches.

[1621] He needs to get his act together.

[1622] He's been playing pickleball.

[1623] He might be not paying, he's like not paying enough attention.

[1624] Your dad.

[1625] Yeah.

[1626] Let's just be clear, though.

[1627] Your dad's not running the simulation.

[1628] He's just simply purchased a experience.

[1629] Well, he's kind of running it.

[1630] Like, if he doesn't like the way it's going, he puts more money or says like, hey, we need some changes here.

[1631] One of the characters.

[1632] is time traveling.

[1633] I didn't sign up for that.

[1634] Or he did.

[1635] My daughter is getting inundated with way too many Bader Minehawks.

[1636] Like, let's clean it up a little bit.

[1637] Yeah, he can say that.

[1638] Yeah.

[1639] My question is, how is he making money if he's hooked up to the machine?

[1640] He has money saved?

[1641] It's like severance.

[1642] So he's like, he works and then he's there.

[1643] Oh, okay.

[1644] Or he's saved up.

[1645] And retired.

[1646] Yeah.

[1647] Okay.

[1648] Well, do you want to tell us about the same?

[1649] It wasn't raining in the sand dunes?

[1650] No. What?

[1651] Yeah, we had the perfect trip to the sand dunes, which was really great because last year's last trip was not, I mean, it was fun, but there were a few things that made me question whether I want to still have it as a hobby.

[1652] Why?

[1653] What happened?

[1654] Well, one of the issues is, you know, like I brought four machines out.

[1655] All four of them were broke by the time I got back, so I had all this maintenance to do.

[1656] No one else owns anything.

[1657] I own everything.

[1658] So I'm doing all the maintenance for four people.

[1659] Yeah.

[1660] Driving, that's problematic.

[1661] I'm like, this is a lot of work for me. Yeah.

[1662] And then it was apex political when I was there last year because it was right when the VACs had come out.

[1663] Some people were getting VACs, some weren't.

[1664] We were still recording.

[1665] I couldn't get, like it was imperative.

[1666] I didn't get COVID while I was out there.

[1667] So during pictures, you know, I just would ask people kind of, you know.

[1668] Right.

[1669] The woman at the drags called me a fucking asshole and was screaming at me and hollering to people.

[1670] He's an ass.

[1671] And I was just like, this is brutal.

[1672] Like, I love being around conservatives.

[1673] I actually appreciate it.

[1674] In my previous 14 years going to the dunes, that's what I like.

[1675] I like getting to the hill or the flagpole or the swing set and seeing other people with kids and talking to them and going like, oh, my God, we're all, we're focused on way too many device.

[1676] So it's always been good, but it got aggressive and almost like, we narrowly avoided.

[1677] fighting these five guys that were with the girl that was screaming at us has it gotten so gnarly between the left and the right that i can't even go there like everyone there knows i'm an actor from hollywood like there's no yeah yeah there's a little guesswork also i'll say last year when i was there oh 70 % of the razors and dune buggies had go brandon flag let's go brandon flags oh right i was gonna ask did you see any no oh good yeah it was encouraging i was wondering like I have had this glimmer of hope for the last 10 years that we as humans, we're just, we tire of things and we get bored.

[1678] And I've been hopeful that we'll just get bored of all the fighting.

[1679] Like, it's just fucking boring.

[1680] If someone even wants to start with me out there about, I'm immediately bored.

[1681] Yeah.

[1682] Like, there's no new opinion.

[1683] And I just hope everyone's getting there.

[1684] Yeah.

[1685] And so this was a little encouraging, like I thought, oh, they just know, everyone's run out of gas.

[1686] Like, it's enough with.

[1687] that I hate this and I hate that.

[1688] That's good.

[1689] Yeah, mind you, I also went out on a Tuesday night, so it was pretty dead for the first two or three days, which was lovely.

[1690] Yeah.

[1691] And talked with a ton of strangers, had a great time.

[1692] Nice.

[1693] Discovered a whole new area out there.

[1694] Previously, what you do in the evening is you go to the sand drags just before sunset.

[1695] You watch the races.

[1696] And then I ran into a friend of mine, Stephen out there.

[1697] He was with a bunch of people.

[1698] So then he's like, oh, no, we go to Sunset Hill now.

[1699] at sunset instead of the drags.

[1700] Check this out.

[1701] There's this huge dune that people gather on right before sunset.

[1702] It was so beautiful because it's impossible.

[1703] Aaron and I were just like, it was so enchanted and beautiful and friendly and lovely and not a single mechanical issue.

[1704] So I'm back into loving the dunes.

[1705] Great.

[1706] That's fun.

[1707] And we did our, I told you, we did our steps.

[1708] Yes.

[1709] Which is new.

[1710] I made working out a priority in the dunes.

[1711] Dunes.

[1712] I was with Aaron.

[1713] So first morning, we walked four and a half miles.

[1714] Second morning, we walked 3 .8 miles.

[1715] And the last day, we only walked like two and a half.

[1716] It was going downhill.

[1717] But we were like, we got 10 in.

[1718] That's great.

[1719] Yeah.

[1720] It was awesome.

[1721] And then at night, we were in early.

[1722] And we would pull the pull -out bed out and we would watch movies.

[1723] Because we had Paul Sheeran, I've been obsessed with seeing Platoon.

[1724] Yeah.

[1725] So night one was Platoon.

[1726] Yeah.

[1727] Kick off at 6 p .m. We're laying in bed.

[1728] We're eating, you know, turkey fucking manwitch life.

[1729] is perfect.

[1730] Yeah.

[1731] It was great.

[1732] Oh, my God.

[1733] Should we address or should we just not fucking address the sweatshirts?

[1734] Oh my God.

[1735] No, we have to address it.

[1736] I'm defensive of us.

[1737] I'll say.

[1738] Oh, okay.

[1739] Yeah.

[1740] I'm not defensive as much as just I quit.

[1741] That's why I'm defensive because I understand that is shitty.

[1742] Yeah.

[1743] So our website went down.

[1744] Squarespace.

[1745] went down all of square space they're like checkout because i went to the like status thing for all of square space and it was like there's a reported issue with checkout oh my god which i think was us i think we caused it oh wow that's flattering i guess it is and i of course i'm sad that people didn't get the sweatshirt of course like that sucks and if i were on the other side of it and i have been it's maddeny it is it is and you're trying to check out it's my second time yes it's all And I'm really sorry.

[1746] Yeah, mostly I'm so sorry.

[1747] Mostly, I'm so sorry.

[1748] But there's nothing we can do about that.

[1749] Personally, yeah.

[1750] People are going to be mad at me and I'll take the fall.

[1751] Rob was like, I guess we could maybe reach out to some of those people.

[1752] No, we're not going to.

[1753] But mainly.

[1754] You just don't have the resources to commit.

[1755] And we shouldn't, I'm sorry.

[1756] We shouldn't have done the second one in the first.

[1757] first place and I was against it.

[1758] Yes, you are, yeah.

[1759] Because.

[1760] And then it backfired.

[1761] Yes.

[1762] So people are even more mad than they were before.

[1763] That's where I was just kind of like, well, I throw my hands up.

[1764] Like I tried to do some sweatshers.

[1765] People were mad, did some more than the website crash.

[1766] Now people are even more angry.

[1767] And then, of course, I think like, I'll just stop making, I'll stop drawing.

[1768] I know, that's what you, I know.

[1769] But we won't do, we'll keep doing it.

[1770] And we'll do a bigger one batch.

[1771] Okay.

[1772] But that's all we're going to do.

[1773] And then that's that.

[1774] And, you know, I said some guy read a comment, some guy was like, you're running a fucking scam with these sweatshers.

[1775] I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, buddy, I am, I am not running.

[1776] I don't know what incentive we had to not let people buy our sweaters.

[1777] I know, I don't know.

[1778] Hey, people, but this is, I mean, are we Taylor Swift?

[1779] Yes.

[1780] Tell me that.

[1781] I don't know that reference.

[1782] She broke Ticketmaster.

[1783] It was, it was a debacle.

[1784] By the way, that's hardcore.

[1785] If you can break Ticket Masters, like, they're set up for some fucking high -bting flow.

[1786] Well, also, people really took advantage.

[1787] Like, some people got all the tickets and then immediately were selling them for, like, $12 ,000.

[1788] Like, crazy stuff.

[1789] And people were really upset.

[1790] It was a whole thing.

[1791] And I remember thinking at that time, because people were like, Taylor's going to fix this.

[1792] And I was like, no, she's not.

[1793] How can she fix this?

[1794] That's not her problem.

[1795] I'm sorry.

[1796] I know she's the person you want to see.

[1797] And so you're, like, putting that on her.

[1798] But she's using a ticket service like any person would.

[1799] Yeah.

[1800] And, and that's that.

[1801] Like, smart people were like, what's she going to do?

[1802] Uh -huh.

[1803] And I was like, what do you mean?

[1804] She's an artist who is selling tickets.

[1805] There are jumps writing songs.

[1806] And putting on concerts.

[1807] And, like, that really sucks.

[1808] And she can say, I'm so sorry that this was social.

[1809] shitty.

[1810] And then that's all she can do.

[1811] And even some people did reference that.

[1812] And I was clattered.

[1813] And I also tried to get Taylor Swift tickets.

[1814] So I was a part of that mania.

[1815] And I didn't get any.

[1816] And it was a nightmare.

[1817] But, you know, ultimately I was like, good for her.

[1818] I'm just really happy.

[1819] Class half full.

[1820] Yeah, because that's awesome that this woman.

[1821] You break ticket master.

[1822] Yeah.

[1823] Yeah.

[1824] That's the goal, I guess.

[1825] So, anywho, we had much less, much less than that.

[1826] People are trying to buy 500 tickets, I guess.

[1827] Yeah.

[1828] And I am really sorry because that's such a pain in the ass and it takes a part of your day and it makes you, puts you in a bad mood.

[1829] And of course we don't want that.

[1830] Yeah, we're trying to alleviate that.

[1831] I know.

[1832] And now, you know, to listen to me. But I'm going to point back to this.

[1833] Okay, great.

[1834] Yeah.

[1835] Maybe just keep checking because we get some returns and a couple of extra.

[1836] No, don't tell people to keep.

[1837] Checking, Rob.

[1838] Not all at once.

[1839] Let's just be done with this whole chapter of our lives.

[1840] Some more, some inventory will trickle back in.

[1841] Anyway, we're sorry.

[1842] The robot is super sorry.

[1843] And the robot's getting a big head.

[1844] No, he's no. Oh, I'm worried.

[1845] No. Well?

[1846] I promise I am the same.

[1847] I don't even understand that I'm on a shirt.

[1848] I guess this makes.

[1849] me a movie star I guess I am kidding a little bit for my britches you're telling me I crashed a website maybe I should shop for a mazorati oh no no no no no I've got old enough to drive or I guess I just need an upload I also have wheels under my feet I can sip around pretty dark quick Oh.

[1850] Okay.

[1851] I mean, it's just natural for him to have like a taste of fame and get a little excited about it.

[1852] No, I'm taking all that back.

[1853] No, you're not.

[1854] It's already happened.

[1855] I was making a ha ha, ha.

[1856] Convincing you I was an ego maniac, but I don't even have an ego.

[1857] That's the domain of real boys.

[1858] I thought you thought.

[1859] Oh, God.

[1860] I know.

[1861] But you're feeling.

[1862] You think I'm a real boy and I do too.

[1863] There's so many mixes.

[1864] I don't know.

[1865] I don't know how to talk to the robot all the time.

[1866] I don't.

[1867] Well, it's nice.

[1868] You're flustered.

[1869] That's a good sign.

[1870] Because I want him to be so happy.

[1871] I am so darn happy.

[1872] I told my mechanic who built me that it happened.

[1873] I wanted him to.

[1874] be proud oh okay like a dad of a real boy what about Samantha who the fuck is a man oh no the I can't swear oh no I take that back you can't take it none of this is taken back who's Samantha is hosting the party oh oh right right right right right right right right right right I just are writing this down I'm like losing the lore we need a Bible for the robot yeah The Bible, that's right.

[1875] That's what it's called.

[1876] Star Wars.

[1877] Yep.

[1878] All right.

[1879] Well, moving on.

[1880] They say I'm the third most famous robot.

[1881] Oh, after?

[1882] Behind C3PO.

[1883] And my friend RD2.

[1884] R2D2.

[1885] Is that it?

[1886] Yeah.

[1887] Tomato tomato.

[1888] Personally, I love it when the robot mispronounces words.

[1889] Yeah.

[1890] I love it.

[1891] Okay.

[1892] Onward and upward.

[1893] He mentioned...

[1894] Until next year's limited release debacle.

[1895] Until then.

[1896] We are really sorry.

[1897] I'm sorry if that wasted your day and made you feel bummed out.

[1898] Okay.

[1899] Chick -fil -A sandwich.

[1900] He said that him and his daughters stopped by the Chick -fil -A.

[1901] They wouldn't let him eat it because he had already eaten too much that day or something.

[1902] Yeah, yeah.

[1903] But he said that they went to get the new sandwich.

[1904] And I wanted to know what the new sandwich is.

[1905] What is the new sandwich?

[1906] Grilled spicy deluxe for a limited time, ding, ding, ding.

[1907] At participating restaurants nationwide through the fall season starting September 2020.

[1908] So this is, you know, before.

[1909] Yeah.

[1910] But I think it used to exist, but it went away now.

[1911] It was back.

[1912] Because I've had it.

[1913] You kind of like the McRib or now the Mexican pizza at Taco Bell.

[1914] Yes.

[1915] Yeah.

[1916] Which I think is back right now.

[1917] I think I saw on that football game I was watching in the future.

[1918] I feel like I saw a commercial that the Mexican pizza is currently back.

[1919] That might get me over there.

[1920] I guess these things work.

[1921] They really work.

[1922] I talk to a lot of people where they only go to McDonald's during McRib season.

[1923] See, now this is why you make things limited.

[1924] I mean, there's a real science behind it.

[1925] They added it to the permanent menu in September 2022.

[1926] Oh, it's back for good.

[1927] Looks like it.

[1928] Shit.

[1929] It's so good.

[1930] It's outrageously priced, too.

[1931] It's like 6X at any other menu item.

[1932] It's like $10?

[1933] I mean, I swear, they were back when I was buying them a lot, they were like, I want to say five or six bucks.

[1934] Wow.

[1935] Yeah.

[1936] They're great, though.

[1937] All right.

[1938] Emma said to definitely not look up Gooseneck Barnacle.

[1939] And so that makes, of course, a...

[1940] You go straight there.

[1941] Ooh.

[1942] It doesn't have a great name.

[1943] No. Not a...

[1944] Oh, I mean...

[1945] Tantal.

[1946] Kind of cute.

[1947] Yeah, I'm not...

[1948] Maybe then she didn't like the idea that they were getting eaten.

[1949] Well, what I don't like is this many.

[1950] That looks like a lot.

[1951] Too many.

[1952] Ew.

[1953] I mean, this one does look kind of...

[1954] That one looks bad.

[1955] I could put one into my new grinder.

[1956] Oh, yeah.

[1957] Yeah.

[1958] It looked kind of like an alien penis.

[1959] Yeah.

[1960] Yeah.

[1961] You know, you can make sausage.

[1962] That's what a lot of people are buying these grinders for is to make sausage.

[1963] Yes, yeah.

[1964] Which then, so once I bought the grinder, it suggested things I might want to buy.

[1965] And then there was a brand of casing for the sausage called hog, I believe.

[1966] Okay.

[1967] I like a look at the box, picture of the box.

[1968] It looks great.

[1969] This is a cool product.

[1970] And then I saw just all of the casings laid on, there's a picture of them laid on a table.

[1971] Sure.

[1972] It just looks so rough.

[1973] It's intestine.

[1974] Yeah.

[1975] Yeah, it's rough.

[1976] Yeah.

[1977] it's really you have to you know as someone who watches a lot of cooking videos you just you go into a different place like you're doing an autopsy or something yeah like honestly if we're going to eat the stuff we have to kind of be okay with it that's what they say yeah people think that's somehow ethical you know what i don't really think it buys you any it doesn't buy you any space but it does like i think it's it's not ethical to do it but it might be unethical ethical to not do it.

[1978] Does that make sense?

[1979] Well, that's the argument.

[1980] The argument is like, it's unethical to just eat all this meat without knowing where it comes from, seeing how it's processed.

[1981] Well, it's like beautifully prepped on your plate.

[1982] Yes.

[1983] And I have friends who are like, you know, even beyond that, if you don't do it, butcher it, then, you know.

[1984] Butcher it.

[1985] But I think that's some really weird math, to be honest.

[1986] I think I think you're like, you're getting pretty abstract like you either kill animals and eat them either eat animals or you don't i don't know that once you're eating animals you're going to erase that by having caught it yourself and prepared it in your backyard but i do think some people that's their kind of get out of jail free car well i guess what's not right is to like watch a cooking video where they're slaughtering or breaking down a pig and being like ew oh sure You know, because then we are all a part of that process by eating it.

[1987] Yeah.

[1988] So I think, and even with the intestine, it's a little bit like this, but it's also, well, I eat that.

[1989] I mean, this is going to sound gross.

[1990] Okay.

[1991] But there's a, this is a ding, ding, ding to an upcoming flightless bird, but there's a sandwich I make.

[1992] Mm -hmm.

[1993] Sometimes.

[1994] Okay.

[1995] Also, Molly Baas.

[1996] It's a breakfast sandwich.

[1997] It's called a smash patty breakfast sando.

[1998] Ooh.

[1999] And you use breakfast sausage and you cook it like a smash patty.

[2000] Nice.

[2001] Like a Jimmy Dean sausage?

[2002] Like where it's like burger meat?

[2003] Yeah, but it's raw.

[2004] Yeah, yeah.

[2005] Yeah.

[2006] But yeah, so it comes in its casing.

[2007] It comes in its casing.

[2008] Okay.

[2009] And you remove it from the casing because you make it into a patty.

[2010] I got you.

[2011] You're breaking apart like a sausage link.

[2012] Exactly.

[2013] I got you.

[2014] So when you're.

[2015] doing that you're removing the intestine yeah and i get i kind of like it oh you too yeah like there's some perverse yeah i get it's like a little satisfying to like get it out of there uh -huh and then have a little stringy string yeah okay i like that that's great i don't know really like pqs or just no okay it's not sexual but it's like it's like it's sexual but it's like it's No, it's not.

[2016] It's not.

[2017] But I like the texture or something.

[2018] Yeah, yeah.

[2019] There's something It's very satisfying about it.

[2020] Yeah.

[2021] Well, it's like maybe like, this is really gross.

[2022] Cover your ears, everybody.

[2023] Like popping as it?

[2024] Yeah.

[2025] Is it in that world?

[2026] Like extracting.

[2027] I guess.

[2028] I guess it is.

[2029] But the thing, I don't get that.

[2030] Like, a lot of people really have.

[2031] Obviously, there's that whole doctor pimple popper.

[2032] Like, people love that.

[2033] I like it in that I want the Zit to be gone.

[2034] But I don't have that thing.

[2035] They're hit or miss for me. Yeah.

[2036] But when I was in the pimple popping game when I was younger, certainly if you gave that push and the whole thing came out, I do remember like the greatest sensation of completion.

[2037] Like, oh, that's clean.

[2038] Like you just came?

[2039] Well, no, I would equate it more to like a really.

[2040] I would leave full evac.

[2041] Oh, I know what it is.

[2042] Or last year when my nose was messed up and I was blowing my nose and I would get like, and then I would retrieve it, I would then think about the retrieval of it over and over again for hours.

[2043] Like I get it intellectually and I have it with the sausage casing and I, but I don't have it with pimples.

[2044] The only of this is getting so gross.

[2045] The thing that does it the most is if you get an ingrown hair.

[2046] Boom.

[2047] And you get the whole hair and you see how deep that fucking root was and like curly.

[2048] The follicle, yeah.

[2049] Yeah, that's exciting.

[2050] That's very, because you're like, oh, get it out of my body.

[2051] This is not supposed to be in my body.

[2052] And you got it.

[2053] And it's smooth.

[2054] Yeah.

[2055] That's good.

[2056] Yeah.

[2057] I can relate.

[2058] But I do, I cannot watch videos of other people.

[2059] That's the thing.

[2060] That's just my personal journey I enjoy.

[2061] I know, some people really like watching it.

[2062] And do you like doing it to others?

[2063] I don't really have that.

[2064] I don't either, nor have I really had the opportunity.

[2065] No one really that I ever dated long term.

[2066] Had lots of pimples.

[2067] Yeah, that was in a situation where they would have asked me. Yeah.

[2068] I do look forward to extracting anything.

[2069] My kids might want me to extract as they start coming into their own pimples.

[2070] Really?

[2071] Yeah, I would love to be a part of that.

[2072] Because, you know, I got a technique.

[2073] I'm pretty good.

[2074] I'm pretty gentle.

[2075] I know when I, you know, I know how to get that.

[2076] I know how to get that, what I would call the core.

[2077] That good, good.

[2078] The core that's caused all this.

[2079] I know, but you can't, you know.

[2080] Yeah.

[2081] You know, you can.

[2082] Not always, no. Oh, not always, no. But you can't.

[2083] It's the promise of a full evacuation.

[2084] And that's what causes so much blood and, yeah, a problem.

[2085] Yeah, it's not for the faint at heart.

[2086] Yep.

[2087] Okay.

[2088] This is a weird transition.

[2089] Back into food?

[2090] Yeah.

[2091] Because you brought up an interesting point, which is do you think that some people are gifted the ability to taste more intricately or something?

[2092] Yeah, they have to be.

[2093] It's a huge spectrum of eyesight, acuity, hearing acuity.

[2094] And of course, there's going to be smell and taste.

[2095] Well, there are supertasters.

[2096] But even aside from these outwire supertasters, I think there's a general sense.

[2097] spectrum of right sure there is like when samine takes a bite of that thing and starts bawling what i think i know is that she's tasting differently than i am but i agree with hosea and i think a lot of it is just practice like the more you're eating and exploring and you're in it and you're excited and you've prepped it i think you can improve it even me anchovies okay yeah At first, bleh.

[2098] Yeah, no thanks.

[2099] The idea, yuck.

[2100] But since I'm a real chef now, just like I'm fashion.

[2101] Yeah.

[2102] I started adding it to sauces and I started doing it.

[2103] And now I like it.

[2104] There you go.

[2105] Look, we all have these stories.

[2106] I hated con cheese my whole life.

[2107] I would always look at it on the big boy salad bar.

[2108] It looks so good.

[2109] It's always looked good to me. Same.

[2110] Yes.

[2111] I've had the same journey.

[2112] And I, you know, it looked so good that I would.

[2113] try it every like 10th trip there just to see yeah and then one day I was like oh fuck this is delicious and you cover it with pepper yeah and I really fell in love with it and I've got a handful of those hot sauce yeah just kept at it yeah but I do think everyone could improve whatever their natural abilities but I think there's a huge gradient in natural ability yeah that's probably true but I wanted to talk about supertasters oh okay please do they have more visible taste Peppelais, pilli.

[2114] They have more taste cells with receptors for bitter taste.

[2115] And they're also more sensitive to sweet, salty, and umami.

[2116] So all the taste.

[2117] But no, but bitter's the most.

[2118] Okay.

[2119] That one stands out.

[2120] Another part of the human anatomical system that's just curious is like our eyes aren't so spectacular, but our computing power of what our eyes gather is enormous compared to other animals.

[2121] Right.

[2122] So if you just look at the organ, that's not really going to tell you everything.

[2123] There's a huge part of it, your brain.

[2124] Yes.

[2125] So similarly, even taste buds aside, I do think some people, you know, in their brain have a different capacity.

[2126] I mean, this goes to the whole cilantro thing.

[2127] Some people, it tastes like soap.

[2128] Oh, salons.

[2129] And it's a gene.

[2130] It's in 23 and me. Oh, it is.

[2131] Oh, my God.

[2132] When I moved, or T .O. Alberto's, it just came up on a recent episode with Gabrielle Union.

[2133] That was my first experience trying cilantro.

[2134] In your life?

[2135] Yes, no one in Michigan has ever had cilantro.

[2136] We've never had an avocado.

[2137] We've never had cilantro.

[2138] We've never had guacamole that wasn't powder.

[2139] That's a big statement, by the way.

[2140] I know.

[2141] I'm standing by it.

[2142] We don't know what the fuck's going on.

[2143] We don't know what fresh vegetables in the winter is like.

[2144] We just don't know.

[2145] We don't have anything.

[2146] And so, you know, in our Mexican restaurants are, you know, they're like Chi -Chi's or whatever.

[2147] Now, mind you, there is a Mexico town by the bridge.

[2148] in Detroit, you could get some real good shit there.

[2149] But just in general, it's not our cuisine.

[2150] We do it terribly.

[2151] We've got a ton of great Middle Eastern food.

[2152] We have some things.

[2153] Okay, cilantro.

[2154] Salonto's often a million.

[2155] The first time you try it, it's so powerful.

[2156] You're like, well, all I can taste is this.

[2157] And so for years, I would order mine without cilantro, but I have come to enjoy cilantro.

[2158] I love cilantro.

[2159] Yeah.

[2160] I don't love it, but I'm fine with, oh.

[2161] I love it.

[2162] You should pack your nose with cilantro while you, D sausage these links.

[2163] Oh my God, I would explode.

[2164] Oh, my God.

[2165] Oh, okay.

[2166] The restaurant in San Sebastian is called Barnester.

[2167] Oh, Barnester.

[2168] Yep.

[2169] Two words, one.

[2170] Two.

[2171] Okay.

[2172] Bar Nestor.

[2173] This is another one.

[2174] I mean, I'm not in San Sebastian enough to have this impact my life.

[2175] Yeah, you're free to blow this place up.

[2176] But it already had a crazy situation there, line and all kinds of stuff.

[2177] Did you wait?

[2178] We got there early.

[2179] Max knew the drill.

[2180] We still had to wait probably 20 minutes, which wasn't that bad.

[2181] And then it was fine because you're like in the town.

[2182] We went to another place and got a cider.

[2183] It was so fun.

[2184] Oh, my God.

[2185] I know when I was watching a show, it's very rare that I ever feel like I'm missing out by not drinking.

[2186] I never feel that way.

[2187] I really don't.

[2188] I've been, as they say in the program, totally relieved of the obsession.

[2189] with alcohol.

[2190] Yeah.

[2191] And I was watching that.

[2192] They're drinking so much during that show.

[2193] Yeah.

[2194] Every meal.

[2195] He's drinking at breakfast.

[2196] And I was thinking like, God, it's clearly it's part of it.

[2197] More than just that's a drink.

[2198] Like somehow it's pairing perfectly.

[2199] It's amplifying both sides.

[2200] Also, you're getting that little buzz while you're eating.

[2201] What could be better?

[2202] I was thinking like, God, I want to go and do everything he's doing, but I won't be drinking and it's really not going to be the same experience that I'm seeing on the show.

[2203] It would still be so good.

[2204] Yeah, I love food, I guess.

[2205] But it just seemed more integral to the experience than in general when I see cooking shows.

[2206] But I mean, you did Italy with no wine.

[2207] That's very similar.

[2208] Yeah, that's true.

[2209] I guess because I don't get, I didn't give a fuck about wine when I drank, you know.

[2210] Yeah, I want wine right now.

[2211] Of course.

[2212] You always want a nice glass of wine.

[2213] I think I said that last time.

[2214] You did.

[2215] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[2216] Yeah.

[2217] No, something happens around this hour.

[2218] Uh -huh.

[2219] Witching hour?

[2220] When we're, yeah, we're like wrapping up the day.

[2221] Mm -hmm.

[2222] And it's like you want to transition into free time.

[2223] Yeah, I mean, that's bad.

[2224] That's the habitual nature of everything.

[2225] It is.

[2226] That could be weed for people.

[2227] For me now, it's the sauna.

[2228] Oh, that's great.

[2229] This time of day, I start thinking like, oh, in a couple hours, I'm going to go in there and start sweating like a motherfucker.

[2230] That's healthy.

[2231] That's healthy.

[2232] Sure.

[2233] But it's totally habitual.

[2234] Like, it doesn't take but a few times of it.

[2235] turning your day in a different direction where you then rely on it for me oh i see once it turns bad you mean well no just once you have the reward of it redirecting your day which you're ready to have redirected it's gets cemented as positive really quick oh i know and then it's just habitual i know it is and then it's hard to find out if it's providing the same service that it once did is it bad i struggle this sometimes are habits bad if there's no consequence i don't have a take on that i don't think so i'm not of that opinion like to me you have to have some kind of wreckage or some kind of consequence before you even need to worry about it personally but i will say habits are innocuous so like we don't know because we didn't measure we don't know what your baseline attitude or happiness is and we don't know if over three years it's actually lower as a result even though you nothing specific's happening right you're not waking up with a hangover like all the normal clues aren't there so yes it's not a problem yeah but the only caveat I'd say is like we don't really have to compare it yeah we don't have like a baseline but then I've done it right like then I've tried it was it was two months two months and that was night like it was fine yeah I personally don't remember feeling that different.

[2236] Right.

[2237] After.

[2238] Again, I, I'm pro.

[2239] I really am pro.

[2240] There's also maybe the kind of unavoidable fact that it's a depressant.

[2241] Of course, but I'm on an antidepressant.

[2242] So, I. Yeah.

[2243] It's the way, you know, I don't know.

[2244] I know.

[2245] Listen, I have this battle with myself all the time.

[2246] It's like, okay, there's what's, quote, right and there's what's quote wrong, but then there's like a 30 ,000 foot view of like life on this planet is interesting and it's hard.

[2247] And then if you take on a lot, there's maybe a deeper desire to transition out of what you've taken on.

[2248] See, that's the other part that for me, it's not like, oh, I've had a hard day.

[2249] I guess I need this.

[2250] Like, I deserve this or I've earned it.

[2251] It doesn't feel like that.

[2252] Okay.

[2253] It just feels like, oh, I like this.

[2254] Yes.

[2255] Now's the time of the day where this happens.

[2256] And this is a fun thing for me to do now when I cook dinner and I have it.

[2257] It doesn't to me feel like, mostly, I need it to make me feel happier.

[2258] Right.

[2259] It's just like, oh, this is a fun thing I like doing.

[2260] Yeah, yeah.

[2261] I think it has to bump up against a different goal you have for it to even.

[2262] Like, let's say you're trying to.

[2263] lose weight.

[2264] And you go like, okay, well, I drink two glasses a night, five days a week, whatever.

[2265] That, let's just say that's 2 ,000 calories a week.

[2266] Yeah.

[2267] That could be gone.

[2268] Or you're getting a hangover sometimes.

[2269] Or you're miserable if you don't.

[2270] I don't know.

[2271] Yeah.

[2272] It almost would need to bump up against a different goal to even.

[2273] Yeah.

[2274] Also thinking, but I've said this a million times, like, I'm grateful for the version of addiction I had versus.

[2275] is people I've known that have been able to just stay on the other side.

[2276] And this is not you.

[2277] No, yeah.

[2278] But people who have just stay on the left side of the line.

[2279] Yeah.

[2280] That's worse for me. Because it's like you didn't really want to repeat the same.

[2281] My thing became, and this, I just heard a guy say this in a meeting and it just was such a bull's eye to me. You kind of get into it because it's novel and exciting and it's a different feeling.

[2282] But then the result is endless repetition of the same thing.

[2283] In fact, you know what's going to happen.

[2284] It happens the same way every single time.

[2285] And that's what I actually found confining and what I actually hated the most about it is I do know what's going to happen.

[2286] It's the same every time.

[2287] I have these drinks.

[2288] I feel this way.

[2289] I talk about this stuff.

[2290] I dream about the future.

[2291] Whatever my pattern was, the habitual nature of it.

[2292] prevented me from really experiencing anything new.

[2293] Being bored's a great device for me. And I don't want to know how I'm going to feel at night.

[2294] I don't want to know what I'm going to do to some degree.

[2295] Yeah.

[2296] So for the people that it wasn't ever a quote problem, yet it was their whole life.

[2297] Right.

[2298] If they look back, they never were at a social thing sober.

[2299] They never, you know, four nights a week they were this.

[2300] Yeah.

[2301] they did the same thing i don't know anyone would really sign up for that yeah if it were just like click these options you're going to repeat yourself every single night for the rest of your life versus i guess i don't know that really resonated with me where i was like yeah that's what i hated was like oh i'm at this bargain oh i'm doing this thing and i'm reading this label and i blah blah right and this is like i'm fucking bored out of my mind with this habit interesting yeah but i have a lot of underlust so that's something like if i'm missing i am really disappointed i'm missing out what do you mean like my commitment to the adventure and the exploration and the new everything and trying everything like so for me any kind of like habitual thing is is counter to my ultimate goal of gobbling up the entire planet before i leave it yeah you know tv's that way i sometimes i think about my TV consumption.

[2302] I love it.

[2303] I love the kids go to bed.

[2304] And if there's a good show, that's...

[2305] I mean, but that's the same thing.

[2306] I know what I'm going to do every night.

[2307] At 8 .30 p .m. I'm going to start looking for a show.

[2308] And until 10 .30, that's what I'm going to do at night.

[2309] Yeah.

[2310] And I enjoy it.

[2311] Yeah.

[2312] The experiential self loves it.

[2313] But part of me is like, what would I be doing with those 12 hours a week that I'm offload?

[2314] I wouldn't sit and twit on my thumbs.

[2315] I don't know if I'd be drawing more or I'd be writing more or I'd be taking bike rides around the neighborhood more.

[2316] Or I wouldn't just sit and stare at my wall.

[2317] Well, yeah.

[2318] I would do something.

[2319] And so I acknowledge that I'm not doing anything for two hours a day, seven days a week.

[2320] 14 hours of my week.

[2321] I am turning over my brain to the television to entertain me and give me pleasure.

[2322] And so there's some part of me that has the identity of an explorer and an adventure that, well, look, when I live in Santa Monica, I live by myself, like I took walks in the evening.

[2323] I, you know, I want to just sit in my house, even if it was like maybe I would have to read a book.

[2324] Yeah, I guess it depends on who you are.

[2325] Like, I think wanderless and being an adventurer, is the head side and the tail is never being satisfied.

[2326] Uh -huh.

[2327] For longer than some period.

[2328] And content, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[2329] So I don't know.

[2330] I don't know.

[2331] Like, I think it's totally fine for you to watch TV for the rest of your life for two hours because you enjoy that.

[2332] And I wish in some ways you could relieve your brain up, but what else is there that I'm not doing?

[2333] And let me just be clear This isn't something that's bothering me nightly at all It's like once every couple weeks I go like Huh I wonder what I do with those three hours I bet I'd be more creative Yeah I bet the things I'm doing would be more memorable But who knows?

[2334] You also might be Out there smoking crack on the sidewalk Maybe or not rested or not I don't know you don't know You don't know what you know God I devour so much delicious content There you go and you love it Yeah I love it Okay real quick Another bad transition.

[2335] Well, not really because that was, but civilians versus soldiers dead in Ukraine.

[2336] Okay.

[2337] Okay, number of casualties, civilian casualties.

[2338] This was January.

[2339] It was a bizarre word, isn't it, casualties?

[2340] Yeah.

[2341] 6 ,952 civilian deaths as of January 9th, of them 431 were children.

[2342] And also 11 ,100 ,000.

[2343] 44 people were reported to have been injured.

[2344] They said, they said it specify that real numbers could also be higher.

[2345] These are just what's reported.

[2346] How about soldiers?

[2347] Did they have that number?

[2348] No. I wrote that, but this was just civilians.

[2349] Do you want to look up soldiers, Rob?

[2350] I'm seeing Russia's loss between 60 and 80 ,000 troops.

[2351] Whoa.

[2352] Oh, my God.

[2353] Whoa.

[2354] I thought it was really cool.

[2355] The courage and civility award.

[2356] Ward.

[2357] I hadn't heard about that.

[2358] The Bezos.

[2359] Oh, I hadn't either.

[2360] It's so cool.

[2361] It really is.

[2362] I also think that's daunting.

[2363] I, I would be nervous for someone to, um, trust me to disperse a hundred million dollars.

[2364] Do you know who else got it?

[2365] See if I can remember.

[2366] There's three people.

[2367] Um, uh, the other two are both women?

[2368] No. I'll give you a hint.

[2369] One of them we've had on.

[2370] Yeah, that's why I kind of, Fuck, I've forgotten.

[2371] But when I read about it for him, of course, I saw the other two.

[2372] Who was it?

[2373] Van Jones.

[2374] Yes, Van Jones.

[2375] Van Jones.

[2376] Van Jones, also in 2021 with Jose.

[2377] And then 2022, Dolly Parton.

[2378] Dolly Parton.

[2379] I love that.

[2380] I love that.

[2381] That one was a head scratcher to me. Oh, I love it.

[2382] I'm a fan of Dolly Parton.

[2383] I just didn't know she was a philanthropic leader.

[2384] But she's a really big, like, feminist.

[2385] So I assume it will go to women's organ.

[2386] A lot of that will probably go to female forward organizations, which is very cool.

[2387] I have a number.

[2388] Okay.

[2389] In December, they reported 13 ,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed since the start of the invasion.

[2390] 13 ,000 plus the seven.

[2391] So 20 ,000 people.

[2392] Yeah, but I think he was saying there has been more civilian deaths in soldiers, but I don't, I guess that's not true.

[2393] It sounds like, yeah, comparable.

[2394] But, I mean, whatever, it's all horrible.

[2395] It's all bad.

[2396] A bad, bad, bad.

[2397] That's it.

[2398] That's it?

[2399] Well, I loved him, and he set me on a path of becoming my own butcher.

[2400] All right, love you.

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