Anthony Bourdain stopped by the Joe Rogan Experience to talk about his new book, Kitchen Confidential, and his new show on the Food Network, No Reservations. He talks about how he got started in the restaurant business, how he became a celebrity chef, and why he thinks reality TV is a lot like reality tv. He also talks about why he doesn t care about what other people think about his show, and how he thinks about the Kardashians. And, of course, he talks about the new Fleshlight, which is a sex toy for men. Thanks to our sponsor, The Fleshlight. Joe Rogans Experience is a production of Native Creative Podcasts. Produced in Los Angeles, CA and New York City. Logo by Courtney DeKorte. Theme by Mavus White. Music by PSOVOD and tyops. Art: Mackenzie Moore. Editor: Patrick Muldowney. Cover art by Ian Dorsch. The theme song is by Suneaters, courtesy of Lotuspool Records. This episode was mixed and produced by Haley Shaw. Additional music was mixed by Matthew Boll. If you like what you hear here, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and we'll be sure to give you a shoutout on the next episode of the podcast, "Good Mythology" and "Good Morning America" by The Good Mythology. Thank you for listening to this episode. Good Morning America. Subscribe to the podcast. Bad Mythology? Subscribe on Podchaserx Good Morning, Good Life, Good Morning and Good Life by Pizzarelli. and Good Morning Life by Pravin? Thanks for listening out there! Cheers, and Happy Holidays! -- The Good Morning Coffee? -- Good Life. -- Thank you, Cheers! by -- Cheers Thank You, John & Good Morning Cheers. by John -- -- Please Rate Me Out There's a Friend of the Morning Joe? and I'll See You, Good Night, Good Day, Good Luck, Goodbye, -- Blessings, Cheaters? Love, Bless You'll See Me, by Cheers & Good Life Truly, Bless You, Bye, Bless Me, Cheer, Sarah -- Ollie, Cheaters,
00:00:01.000The Joe Rogan Experience podcast is brought to you by The Fleshlight.
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00:00:42.000If somebody had told me that my favorite show, if you came up to me like 10 years ago and said in 10 years your favorite show is going to be about a dude who eats in different places, I would have told you to go fuck yourself.
00:00:52.000I would have said that's the most retarded show I've ever heard in my life.
00:00:54.000If you told me 10 years ago that I'd be on television, I would have said the same thing.
00:00:57.000Yeah, that's one of the cool things about you, man.
00:00:59.000I wouldn't say you're reluctant, but you're almost like an accidental celebrity.
00:01:04.000Like, you just got your book, Kitchen Confidential, just fucking took off, and then all of a sudden, you're this famous guy.
00:01:12.000Pretty much, yeah, it was like an overnight thing, for sure.
00:01:14.000One minute I'm standing next to the deep fryer, and the next, you know, I'm selling books and on TV. I mean, literally, I think I was 44 years old.
00:01:24.000When I was not looking at anything, I had no higher ambition than to keep cooking where I was cooking, really, and maybe hopefully have the, you know, I wanted some kind of minor, I wanted to earn my advance back on the book.
00:01:43.000It's very interesting because it's very rare that someone gets to live a full and intense anonymous life and then all of a sudden be thrust in the public consciousness, but actually it's interesting.
00:02:01.000You know, the level of bullshit that I can sort of live with in my life on a day-to-day basis is pretty minimal now.
00:02:09.000So I was just, you know, I came out to television and everything else always with the attitude that, hey, I could be back next to the deep fryer tomorrow.
00:02:17.000So I'm just not taking it that seriously.
00:03:35.000We've been a freakish anomaly, first on Food Network for two years and for going on eight years now on No Reservations on Travel.
00:03:45.000It's been an amazing run because at every point, both networks, for whatever period of time I've been with them, they've let me do whatever I want.
00:03:55.000They've let us make the show the way we want to make it, do really fucked up things all the time.
00:04:01.000Some episodes are completely self-indulgent and fun to make, and clearly we're having more fun making them than audiences might have watching them.
00:04:22.000The camera people and assistant producers, me hanging around in some terrible hotel lounge, probably in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, someplace like that.
00:04:30.000We're getting really fucked up on cocktails.
00:04:33.000You know, just talking shit the way people do.
00:04:35.000And I think one of the camera guys said, man, we are so fucking good.
00:04:39.000We are so good at what we do that I'll bet we could make food porn in black and white.
00:04:43.000And we all looked at each other and, you know, yeah, dude, well, let's just do it.
00:04:55.000Generally speaking, I don't know of many other people on television lucky enough to be able to go to their network and say, we're going to do an entire hour of food-related television in black and white, and it'll be an homage to Italian directors that none of our audience, or few of our audience have seen.
00:05:18.000And I think if anything makes the show special, it's that it's really first and foremost about me and the crew enjoying what we're doing both creatively and just having a good time.
00:05:28.000And that's really all we're looking to do.
00:06:43.000We try to shoot stuff naturally, you know?
00:06:45.000We don't like things to be set up for us, and so one of the first rules of the show is, wherever we go, we don't want to see native dancers in indigenous garb, you know, some dog and pony show.
00:08:11.000I mean, if only sure of anything, at age 44, standing in the kitchen.
00:08:16.000It was that I'd never see, you know, Saigon or Hong Kong, much less, you know, I probably had no expectation I'd ever see Rome.
00:08:26.000So I'm just, again, I'm just kind of living that out.
00:08:28.000And as long as me and the crew, as long as we're having as much fun as we are, at least finding ways to make, like, more and more fucked up television.
00:08:54.000But there's a core group, and maybe the bass player will go away for a while, but he'll be back, and whoever fills in for him is somebody else that we've worked with for years around the world.
00:09:02.000So we all like each other, and everybody's really, really good at what they do, and that's fun.
00:09:09.000Traveling with camera guys who are really good at their job, that's a satisfying thing.
00:09:49.000You want to make a movie in Moscow, you need a fixer, somebody who knows what permits you need, how to arrange them, hires drivers, knows who to bribe, that sort of thing.
00:11:06.000You know, and like laying there, especially after a couple of glasses of whiskey or something, you hit turbulence and you see everybody else in the cabin freaking out.
00:11:13.000It's more entertaining than the in-flight movie, and it does break up the sort of soul-sucking monotony of too long in a plane.
00:12:02.000If you were not a person of interest to law enforcement, I would be.
00:12:08.000I always film on the plane because whenever I go on the road with Joe, I kind of do the same thing that kind of what you can do.
00:12:13.000You have a camera crew or a gang, but I pretty much do it for Joe.
00:12:16.000And like, so when we're on the road somewhere like Houston or something like that, I'm always having cameras.
00:12:19.000I'm always filming from even when he doesn't know I'm filming like in the back of a car or in the back of a plane or when we're at a comedy club.
00:12:26.000But it's weird collecting footage because now I've become addicted to collecting crazy footage.
00:12:32.000Like I feel like I can't just go out and have a good time.
00:14:10.000Woke up or went home one evening, looked out the window, and there's the airport bursting into flames and rockets and stuff coming in.
00:14:16.000And we realized we're not getting out anytime soon.
00:14:21.000So there was, of course, on the part of the security guys who got involved in trying to get us out of the country, yeah, we had to think about all of that sort of possible target sort of stuff.
00:14:34.000Again, it's silly, and I don't think any of us took it seriously ever.
00:14:40.000I mean, who would target a host of a dipshit little travel show, you know?
00:14:47.000I think some people in some parts of the world would be really desperate.
00:14:51.000So that was the worst situation that you were ever in?
00:16:45.000Yeah, long story short, Liberia was, I'm going to say founded, but the nation was created by freed slaves, part of a Back to Africa movement.
00:16:58.000And they arrive, people essentially who'd been taken from all over Africa, you know, were returned to Liberia, a country that none of them really had roots in.
00:17:12.000And they became sort of an aristocracy and based their country entirely on the American model.
00:18:57.000That's why monkeys, especially chimps, there was no love between me and the monkeys because that story, this giant crazed Valium, he just kicked Valium or something, the monkey, the chimp, and then gnawed somebody's face off, right?
00:19:39.000Speaking of pets, have you ever come across any crazy animals or any weird threats in any places?
00:19:46.000When you go to Brazil and you're in the jungle, jaguars are a real threat out there, right?
00:19:51.000The closest threat from the animal kingdom we've had, we were in Ghana, I think.
00:19:57.000And the idea was we were going to go all the way out in the middle of nowhere, this tiny little game park or camp, and the whole idea was we'd have to get up super early and drive like four hours in bouncing Land Rovers in the hope that maybe if we're lucky we're going to see a herd of elephants and get to shoot some.
00:20:15.000We wake up really early in the morning and the camp is infested with elephants.
00:20:20.000If you could be infested with elephants.
00:20:22.000They were just everywhere wandering around right outside.
00:20:25.000So of course we did what any shooter would do.
00:20:29.000You run outside and you start shooting the hell out of these fucking elephants.
00:21:47.000I mean, the camera people are really suicidal.
00:21:52.000I mean, one of our guys, both of them actually, when we were shooting in Kurdistan, they're hanging out the hatches of these Russian cargo helicopters.
00:22:04.000You know, you're getting these cross drafts and humps from, you know, updrafts where suddenly you're at zero grab, you know, so you're, you know, they do crazy shit for a good shot.
00:22:15.000They really don't have a lot of sense.
00:22:17.000Nothing freaks me out more than those planes with the holes in the back.
00:22:20.000Those cargo jets in every Schwarzenegger movie?
00:24:31.000No Reservations has always been about me having a good time or trying to have a good time, and this one's more...
00:24:36.000We're trying to actually be a little useful, like provide some information and experiences that you could do, whereas No Reservations, that's always been a secondary consideration.
00:24:48.000We do a lot of shit on No Reservations that you just can't do.
00:24:53.000You know, they're out of reach of anybody's expectations, I think, any reasonable ones.
00:24:58.000So this is more about if you're stuck in a place or you find yourself at a place for like 24 or 48 hours, it's just, you know, good shit to do.
00:25:08.000So are you filming it, piggybacking it on No Reservations?
00:25:11.000No, we took a break in No Reservations and went out and shot a whole hell of a lot of these all in a really short period of time.
00:28:26.000His face got sunken in, and him and his girlfriend would just hide in their attic apartment, do coke, and watch TV. And I was like, okay, whatever the fuck that is, I'll pass on that.
00:28:35.000The blacked out room, the foil over the windows.
00:30:15.000It's a weird thing that people have where they think that somehow or another if you don't kill the animal that you're not responsible for its death.
00:30:23.000You know, that you're not somehow or another.
00:30:25.000Just because you don't get your hands dirty in getting the meat at the supermarket, you're not responsible.
00:30:43.000But on the other hand, we've had a lot of animals slaughtered for our meal around the world because that's what they do in a lot of cultures.
00:30:51.000When you're a guest, it's kill the lamb.
00:30:54.000So eventually, every once in a while, I will actually have to kill an animal myself.
00:35:17.000It's all about the grappling, which, you know, it makes it tough, though, because we'll go out to dinner at, like, a really nice French restaurant, and she'll wear, like, a low-cut gown, and, of course, she's got, like, blue and yellow fingerprints all over her body, and these giant bruises that she's all very proud of, you know?
00:35:35.000Everyone in the restaurant's looking at me like, you son of a...
00:36:44.000Once you figure out who's good and who's interesting and you watch a few good fights and you understand the rivalries, man, then it's inescapable.
00:37:11.000What happens with Anderson is, Anderson, he's calculating you.
00:37:15.000He's figuring out, he's stepping inside the danger zone and outside and trying to figure out what your instincts are, what your reflexes are.
00:37:22.000And then he realizes that after 15, 20 seconds, you're going to slow down.
00:37:27.000You know, like 45 seconds in the first round, guys start to slow down.
00:37:30.000Two minutes, three minutes in, they really start to slow down.
00:37:32.000And that's when Anderson starts to pile it on.
00:37:36.000And then he can just get right in front of you and put his hands down and there's nothing you can do about it.
00:37:41.000It's got to be the most horrifying feeling in the world to be locked in a cage with a magician.
00:37:46.000You know, a dude who can hit you and you can't hit him and he's very confident and he's locking in on you and you know he's got you timed and figured out.
00:37:54.000And then he just starts popping off on you.
00:38:34.000It's very unfortunate what happened to him.
00:38:37.000You know, I mean, you want to talk about a guy who was this incredible speaker, who was so fast and so fluent, so sharp, and the way he could talk and the way he could break things down and the way he, I mean, his ethics, he stood up for this fucking Vietnam War and he said, you know what, man, no Vietnamese ever did nothing to me.
00:41:13.000And I had a layover, and nothing to do, just flipping through the pay-per-view movies, Gonzo, Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson, I think it's called.
00:41:22.000I watched the documentary, and I went, holy shit.
00:41:25.000You know, when they show how he fucking, when Ed Muskie was running for president, he started writing fake stories about the guy being on Ibogaine and bringing in exotic Brazilian doctors.
00:41:35.000And he made up names for new drugs that, you know, a dude was on something called Wallet.
00:41:57.000If you read some of the stuff, some of the lines in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, it was a very romantic, sentimental side.
00:42:07.000He wrote some beautiful sentences about how his hopes were smashed forever by what he saw happening politically in this country.
00:42:16.000Nixon just really fucked with Conor Thompson's head.
00:42:19.000What was great about his rantings and drug-induced vision of the world was that he had been through a utopia period in San Francisco in the late 60s.
00:42:31.000So he had this idea of this LSD culture where he knew this was possible.
00:43:13.000He was describing it that these, you know, basically these people are just locked into this crew of losers and they're dragging them around with them.
00:43:21.000And he stepped to the side and was watching the whole thing crash against the rocks.
00:43:25.000Such a fascinating writer that guy was.
00:43:28.000It was so fascinating that he had this idealistic period when he was younger, and it had the hopes dashed.
00:43:43.000He describes a bad-ass trip once, I think, in Las Vegas, where he describes a really bad-ass trip as being one where you look down your leg and see your dead grandmother crawling up your leg with a knife in her teeth.
00:45:40.000Poor lettuce is suffering every time you eat it.
00:45:42.000And then see what these self-righteous fucks think.
00:45:45.000That would suck walking into the Whole Foods and you're like wearing the scarlet letter.
00:45:49.000If you were just in the Whole Foods at the wrong time and there's just vegans everywhere eyeing you down when you're walking down the aisle.
00:49:40.000You know, it is basically when they feed the geese, who generally, if it's any sort of a quality operation, the geese or the ducks come over to the feeder, but basically you tilt the thing's head back, you put a long funnel down its throat, and put a couple of handfuls of ground corn in, which they readily eat.
00:49:59.000It just looks like they're having food jammed into them.
00:50:02.000And if you play footage of someplace in Eastern Europe that is mass producing this stuff very cruelly, there's some really terrifying footage that makes for a very lurid picture of the process.
00:50:15.000Add to that that it's got a French name and only a bunch of wealthy, high-end restaurants serve it.
00:50:26.000Their ultimate goal, but basically bolstered by their victory with foie gras here, they will then be able to raise money towards the next victory, which ultimately leads to their aim, which is to give chickens the vote.
00:50:41.000Isn't fogwag, can't you get it organically where you don't force feed them?
00:53:30.000Or actually, if you're in, like, the Czech Republic, anywhere in Eastern Europe, basically, for more than two weeks, you're really starting to think long.
00:53:38.000Or Argentina or Uruguay, you don't see a green vegetable for, like, weeks.
00:55:44.000The notion that people could ever be vegetarian in a place like that, where there's not a growing thing for a thousand miles, it's like 20 below zero.
00:55:53.000These people live because they shoot seals and eat their blubber, and you could see it in their bodies.
00:55:59.000They're able to withstand temperatures that would kill us in hours.
00:57:16.000I remember up there, we were all in our latest sort of, you know, Everest-ready, you know, down parkas, you know, they laughed their asses off at us when we got off the plane.
00:57:27.000We said, you know, are we dressed well enough to go out in the canoes?
00:57:30.000And they just laughed their asses off.
00:57:32.000Had to slip a big, like, caribou smock over yourself on top of the down jackets to, you know, to operate.
00:57:41.000All our cameras locked up, like froze up and locked up within seconds of each other after, I don't know, maybe we shot for an hour, an hour and a half.
00:57:53.000Was that the most humbling feeling of nature that you've ever had while shooting the show?
00:57:58.000Seeing a whole family basically shoot a seal, drag it onto their kitchen floor on a tarpaulin, and then everybody in the family, mom, dad, grandma, junior, they all whip out knives and start tearing this thing apart.
00:58:10.000They start eating little pieces of it, too.
00:58:24.000They're incredibly happy when they're doing this.
00:58:28.000And juxtaposing those pictures in your mind of what are clearly a close and happy family having a good time with all of this blood, that kind of takes some getting used to.
00:58:41.000But I think when you travel a lot, you get used to the notion that people are different or live in very different circumstances.
00:58:50.000And people adapt to those circumstances and that's just the way it is for them.
00:58:56.000You know, because we're interested principally in food on the show, I think people everywhere have been particularly nice to us and let us see a particularly...
00:59:09.000I don't know, a side of their personalities, a side of their cultures that I think a lot of other hard journalists don't get to see.
01:00:42.000It was the scraps from the table of the wealthy Portuguese that their slaves would collect and try to make into something edible or even delicious.
01:00:52.000And over time they created this dish that...
01:00:55.000You know, it was the food of the very poor at one point.
01:01:00.000Everybody in Brazil at one point or another.
01:01:02.000Saturday, you invite the family over and you sit around eating this huge, huge amounts of feijoada and getting really, really, really fucked up on cachaça.
01:01:12.000The episode that you had in Brazil was really wild when you were at that fish market, and there's these fucking alien fish that they're all eating.
01:01:21.000You're in water the depth of a rice paddy, you know?
01:01:24.000I mean, three feet of water, and you're driving around, you're looking at basically rice paddy deep water to the left, and you see a 500-pound freshwater fish, you know, breaking the surface.
01:03:47.000Aside from the fighting, I don't know how anyone could, actually.
01:03:51.000I don't understand how anyone works or wants to work.
01:03:54.000When you get used to just hearing that music, being in a country that beautiful, food that good.
01:04:02.000Everybody in that country looks like, you know, attractive or not, everybody in Brazil seems to look like they either just got laid and they're coming from getting laid or they're on their way to getting laid.
01:05:51.000But you could do worse than, you know, to keel over after a really good meal, to die with a big hunk of pork in your mouth in Spain would not be a bad way to go out.
01:06:01.000Anybody that doesn't appreciate the idea of cooking as an art form should watch that show on El Bouye.
01:06:10.000That guy, wow, what a fucking wizard that guy is.
01:06:14.000He's a really intensely creative chef that had this small restaurant in Spain.
01:06:20.000Yeah, I mean, it was basically considered the best restaurant in the world for a long time, and certainly he was a guy way out in front of everybody else.
01:06:30.000Yeah, that was some good food porn we did, and I think that was a show I'm really...
01:06:35.000Every once in a while we get an opportunity to do a show that might actually mean something in a few years, and I think we shot some history with that show.
01:06:44.000The restaurant closed the same night, I think, that we aired the show, or closed to it.
01:10:09.000If you start talking about yourself like that, then you start talking about yourself in the third person, and after that, there's really nothing left to do but get arrested like having beaten a transsexual hooker to death, you know?
01:10:20.000It's beautiful that you think like that.
01:10:37.000As an artist, yeah, it's a tricky road.
01:10:41.000I don't see what I do, anything that I do, essentially that much different than standing on a line and one chef or cook among many making food.
01:10:53.000Presumably you're building something or making something as best you can.
01:10:57.000You're showing up at work on time, doing the best job you can.
01:11:05.000You know, so they aren't that different.
01:11:07.000I don't see telling stories on television or talking about yourself on television as being essentially any different or certainly no better than actually working for a living.
01:11:23.000Anyone could know you as that guy that you work with with a great personality, who's funny, likes to talk shit about things, kind of an interesting guy.
01:11:42.000My friend Johnny B, I used to, my best friend was a professional pool hustler, was halfway homeless, always sleeping on my couch, other people's couches, and he was a genius.
01:11:51.000He could throw math problems at him, he would recreate him.
01:11:53.000A guy like that would make a great reality show.
01:11:56.000I think if television has taught us anything, it's that complete mediocrity is enough to have your own reality show.
01:12:08.000It's all about your willingness to play ball.
01:12:11.000You look at those kids on Jersey Shore.
01:12:14.000Does this situation drive a Bentley to work, and then he's got to sleep on a cot with a bunch of other boneheads, who he hates?
01:13:12.000It's about people sitting on couches with a bag of chips saying, man, those people are even way more fucked up than me, and what have they done to their faces?
01:13:35.000It's all about, you know, showing off from work every day, knowing that your job is to, you know, I mean, everyone who watches will feel better about themselves, you know, and be snickering at me, you know, at my cartoonish behavior.
01:13:46.000It is fascinating that the trend of reality television took off, that this idea of just following housewives, or following guys driving on slippery roads.
01:15:13.000Like, they orchestrate fake drama and fake things that they have to do.
01:15:16.000Well, I'm waiting for the day that I get the phone call from my agent saying, you know, we really think celebrity rehab is a good career move for you right now.
01:17:11.000I think you got some low-level shit, and sometimes they do that.
01:17:14.000I've always heard that from the ayahuascaros, that they water down the stuff they give to the gringos.
01:17:19.000They don't want anybody going crazy, running through the woods, seeing dragons and flying fucking serpents and UFOs and shit, but...
01:17:26.000Everybody that I know that's taken it, that's taken legit doses has had crazy psychedelic visual experiences.
01:17:32.000Yeah, I mean, I went into the experience, you know, it's this cottage, not a cottage, it's a shack up on stilts, as I recall, out in the middle of the jungle in the Amazon.
01:17:39.000We're like four hours, six hours by boat from any place, like, resembling a place with a hospital.
01:17:49.000So I went into the experience with the expectation that it would be like the book where I'd be crawling around naked in the jungle, you know, shitting and puking for six hours before I discover my spirit animal.
01:18:01.000So this is what I thought I was going into.
01:18:04.000But honestly, I mean, you know, I got off, seriously, but it wasn't like acid.
01:18:38.000Back in the day, we did marinate the mushrooms in honey, I think.
01:18:42.000We marinated them in honey overnight or longer, and then would mix it in a big pot of hot tea, and the whole kitchen would be drinking this tea all that long.
01:19:01.000Yeah, they used to preserve them in honey.
01:19:03.000They would dry them up and preserve them in honey, and they believed that that's one of the ways that people started getting into alcohol, because honey can ferment and become mead, and that eventually, this is one of Terrence McKenna's theories, that people went from being intoxicant-oriented, like with psychedelic mushrooms, to alcohol-oriented, and that somehow another fucked society up.
01:19:25.000And at one time, we got along way better.
01:19:56.000It was basically crude beer, homemade beer.
01:19:59.000So up until this point in history when people started drinking coffee in these coffee houses, everybody in Europe could be counted on to be fucked up all day long.
01:22:05.000But I've had some people that I know that have gotten to pot late in life, and it's completely changed the way they look at things, for the better.
01:24:00.000It seems like the smarter you are and the higher you are in the public eye, the more powerful you are, the more likely you are to behave like the stupidest person to ever be on Law and Order.
01:26:38.000I think the In-N-Out Burger guys, there was a religious component to the company at some point, an underlying philosophy.
01:26:45.000But the point is they've apparently created this really pretty cool business model for fast food.
01:26:49.000And it's an issue that I think about a lot because, I don't know which economist, somebody said, somebody smarter than me, Another 15 years, we're going to be a country...
01:27:00.000Everybody in the country will all be selling cheeseburgers to each other.
01:28:41.000But no, I think everywhere I've been, again, it's kind of about the people have been incredibly hospitable in places that I didn't expect up front they would have any particular love for Americans.
01:28:52.000Vietnamese were incredible from the first time I went there.
01:30:08.000If you want to shoot in this area, you're going to need somebody, a local godfather or the...
01:30:15.000The head of the crew or whoever controls that area in the real world, we have to contact them and say, listen, we're going to make a point of coming at you, showing you respect, offering you a few dollars, because it's never about the money.
01:30:30.000And we'll get to wander around and shoot your whole area of your city without fear of being shot or stabbed or robbed.
01:31:03.000If somebody expresses interest in telling their story or showing the world what they do, particularly if there's food involved and local beverage...
01:31:13.000Chances are you're going to have a good time.
01:31:14.000You're going to be treated well in this world.
01:31:17.000One of the most heartwarming, really cool, homey moments was when you were in Naples and that guy took you into his house for Sunday dinner and it was sort of a last minute thing.
01:32:44.000I cook something and then I'll sit in front of your show and eat way more than I should.
01:32:47.000What I do generally is if I know I'm shooting in Rome or anywhere in Italy or Eastern Europe, you know, in dumpling land, you know, I'll make sure that the next show is in, you know, someplace really impoverished.
01:35:00.000They get in, they work for a little bit, then they eat a spectacular lunch, where they have chefs come in and make them the most incredible pasta, and then they sleep for a couple hours.
01:35:36.000My wife's Italian, as you know, and I spend a lot of time there, and I look around at guys in their 20s and 30s, and I'm constantly asking myself, how do you live this way?
01:35:51.000People do work hard in Italy, but you just tend to not see it.
01:35:56.000And you're having this big motherfucking lunch every day, and maybe a little gelato at 4 o'clock in the afternoon.
01:36:01.000You're getting your weeks of vacation a year.
01:36:05.000In France and in Italy, too, you get sick in the middle of the night.
01:36:08.000You pick up a phone and call a doctor, and 15 minutes later, some young intern arrives on a motor scooter and shoots you up with whatever drugs you need to feel better.
01:36:31.000That's what happens when you have a small culture.
01:36:34.000When you have a culture of too many millions of people, you have the diffusion of responsibility thing, the numbers are too big, and there's no way you can rock that.
01:37:42.000These cars should be smacking up against each other, particularly the way the taxis drive when they're bombing up an avenue looking to hit the lights, changing lanes without even touching the directionals.
01:37:54.000There's something really mystically cooperative about the way it all works.
01:37:58.000There's an ebb and float in New York City traffic that when you get up into that wave, it's...
01:38:53.000Clearly it appeared to be a stolen car because the guy got out of there awful quick on rims.
01:38:59.000New York City is just such a fascinating experiment to stack people on top of each other all in this one place and have pretty much anything you need right there.
01:40:33.000Even the great artists, the great chefs...
01:40:36.000They're great chefs because they're able to choose people, make personal and professional relationships with those people such that they can execute their vision, their artistic vision, again and again and again, exactly the same every single day, rain or shine.
01:40:55.000And working in high tension, close quarters, everybody moving fast.
01:42:00.000So by the time the chef becomes the chef that you know, by the time you know their name, chances are they're not working the line anymore, but that they spent most of their adult lives standing there doing something that is very similar in many ways to work in a production line in an auto factory.
01:42:18.000You're putting the nuts and the balls in the same places, presumably every time and just as well.
01:42:23.000And then one guy pops out like a Wolfgang Puck or the Emerald dude at his own fucking sitcom.
01:42:31.000Well, you know, guys like Emerald didn't pop out, actually.
01:42:33.000I mean, that's a guy who worked his ass off for a really long time in restaurants, became well-known, was offered a show, wasn't particularly good at.
01:42:42.000He had one show after another fail, and the network stuck with him, and more importantly, he stuck with it.
01:43:35.000Well, because they're both guys who've been around a long time and done really important things, both off TV and on TV. But it's interesting that they love him for his personality.
01:43:46.000Your personality is so good, we're going to ask you to fake it now.
01:43:50.000We're going to ask you to be in a sitcom.
01:43:52.000For a long time, a lot of chefs got into the business because they were awkward.
01:43:58.000They were shit at words or generally didn't feel comfortable in a straight business environment.
01:44:05.000Chats are they're kind of running away from something.
01:44:07.000They sense something about themselves that said, all of the things that tell you subconsciously, bad communicator, you know, shouldn't be out there talking to regular people on a regular basis, trying to do normal business.
01:44:20.000Those are things that drove people to cook.
01:44:22.000And yet suddenly they find themselves, you know, with media coaches and people trying to train them to be themselves on camera.
01:44:29.000And it's a huge industry and a strange, strange one.
01:44:35.000Yeah, I read a quote once where you said that the guys that got into becoming chefs were the second smartest sons.
01:44:44.000Well, traditionally in European culture, if the family could only afford to send one kid to college, they'd pick the smartest son and they'd invest what little money they had in that enterprise.
01:44:53.000The other one would join the family business or go to hotel school to learn.
01:44:59.000You'd learn to be an apprentice to some craft, some trade.
01:45:03.000And for a lot of people, that was hotel school.
01:45:04.000So a lot of the great chefs that came out of that kind of situation, certainly when I started cooking, it was the misfits who ended up in the restaurant business.
01:45:13.000Life hadn't exactly turned out the way they'd expected, or maybe there's a quick, a temporary, there's always a job for you if you're presentable, reasonably intelligent.
01:45:26.000There's always a job for you on the floor of a restaurant as a waiter.
01:46:09.000There's so many things to love about it that are special about it.
01:46:11.000You see people, again and again, I used to see these guys, they've come out of the mountains of Afghanistan or the tribal areas of Pakistan.
01:46:53.000You learn way more about human nature than you really want to learn.
01:46:58.000You didn't sign up to be a psychiatrist or an enabler or a doctor.
01:47:02.000But in the end, that's kind of what you become if you're a bartender with regulars.
01:47:06.000So I think people in the restaurant business get this really unique view of the world, perspective on the rest of the world.
01:47:13.000Yeah, that is a unique position to be a bartender, to be the sober person serving everyone drinks while they're all just falling apart and talking to you.
01:48:35.000You know, once a month, if you stay healthy, and you're feeling good, your immune system's up, you've been eating vitamins and eating well, you just get fucked up.
01:50:35.000I had a buddy who did his residency in Miami and he said on Friday and Saturday nights people would come in with light bulbs up their asses.
01:51:42.000It's probably pretty easy to violate state law, too.
01:51:44.000Yeah, I mean, I think we should, if we're going to do it, if we're going to allow people to smoke weed, then we shouldn't be making money off it as a nation.
01:51:52.000We should be selling serious weight to, like, Europe.
01:53:44.000They were not currently, at the time of the show, other than, you know, there were some low-level guys, for sure, who clearly were drug dealers.
01:54:14.000And in Mexico, the level of violence is so spectacular, and they see presumably the major dealers out there are killing large numbers of people on a regular and ongoing basis.
01:54:43.000Well, there are various militias, for sure.
01:54:47.000Yeah, you've got to ask yourself that all the time.
01:54:49.000But in the same way, when people are trying to be really nice to you in countries where you're not free to speak your mind, Cuba would be an example.
01:55:04.000You have to understand, when you're talking to people on camera who've let you into their homes and they've fed you and they've been maybe a little more frank with you on a personal level than they are probably supposed to as government functionaries, When they're good to you and everything they said was going to happen happened the way it was supposed to and they weren't too clumsy and they didn't try to ham fist you.
01:55:30.000Basically, if we get to go back to New York, they have to stay there.
01:55:34.000So if I go back and start criticizing as severely as I might, It's something I always have to weigh.
01:55:42.000All the people who are good to me in these countries, they're going to be in a very bad place if I go back to New York and make this show all about China and Tibet.
01:55:50.000I may have my opinions on it, but for the sake of the people I leave behind, I'm not shooting my mouth off.
01:55:55.000I can say what I want about China any time I want.
01:56:18.000There are people who are nice and with senses of humor, trying to do the best they can, whether you agree with their system or despise it.
01:56:24.000At the end of the day, you've got to ask yourself, do I really want to put, you know, it might make more entertaining or truthful television, but they're going to be in a fucking cell for the crime of being nice to me or being honest with me.
01:56:36.000That's something we get to ask ourselves all the time.
01:56:38.000Well, I know you couldn't put that in the show, like the show on Cuba, but is there anything you could talk about?
01:56:44.000Well, I could have gone on and on and on about the history of the regime and what they've done.
01:57:44.000They saw us show other parts of the world in a relatively nonjudgmental way, and they, foolishly or not, shrewdly or foolishly, there will be differences of opinion, I'm sure, for whatever reason, they trusted us to come and they pretty much let us wander around shooting.
01:58:30.000You don't go wandering around Cuba with a television crew without the government becoming involved, whether you know it or not.
01:58:35.000But did you get involved in any of the questions that they asked about the...
01:58:39.000Because you obviously have a major creative influence on the show.
01:58:43.000We're not making any show ever where the nation or the local police or any other person has final cut or approval over what we're showing.
01:58:55.000No, you obviously have approval over what we're allowed to shoot, but how we edit that back in New York and what we say, you're on your own, it's done.
01:59:03.000You've signed a release, that ain't ever, ever, ever going to happen.
01:59:07.000Did they express any concern about any of that?
01:59:09.000It seems like, I mean, Q is pretty touchy.
01:59:57.000You're going to lose certain things, though.
01:59:58.000You're going to lose those guys arguing.
02:00:00.000You know, it's easy for me to say I really don't want to see a brand new Holiday Inn on the waterfront of the Malecon in Havana because it's one of the most beautiful stretches of anywhere, anywhere.
02:01:30.000It's got to be so strange to just hop from one culture to the next, one unique insight into this totally different environment, and then another one just as extremely different.
02:01:42.000We're really hoping to shoot in Libya in January.
02:02:32.000It's like all these young people from all over the world, of Libya and back, they're all coming here and welding machine guns on their pickup trucks.
02:02:38.000And there's this really magical thing.
02:03:17.000It's a feel-good for everybody, and they're doing it basically.
02:03:21.000I mean, there's NATO support, but they're basically doing it themselves.
02:03:24.000Remember that guy, General Wesley Clark?
02:03:26.000Remember that guy who ran for president a while back?
02:03:28.000He predicted all of this in 2007 on...
02:03:32.000It was one of those CNN or one of those fucking shows where he got on and he talked about the United States' agenda as far as acquiring natural resources all over the world.
02:04:19.000Like, I don't really care what kind of psychos take over Egypt.
02:04:22.000Just the fact that, you know, even if bad guys end up running Egypt again, The fact that it was possible that they could topple those particular bad bastards who'd been around forever.
02:04:33.000It was unthinkable a year ago to your average Egyptian that things would ever change, ever, in their lifetime or their children's lifetime.
02:04:40.000And it wasn't unthinkable that these dynasties would ever fall.
02:04:43.000So it's really kind of awesome, just the fact that it sends a message that it could happen.
02:04:59.000I think it depends on who you're paying attention to or who you want to believe when it comes to that world.
02:05:05.000But there's a lot of people that believe that we've hit some sort of a peak oil stage.
02:05:09.000And what they're trying to do is just control all the areas which will be absolutely necessary when oil gets to the point where we're going to have to start rationing things.
02:05:18.000We're doing a really bad job then because the Chinese are basically snapping it all up.
02:05:23.000I mean, everywhere you go in Africa now, it's like, oh, look at the nice new bridge we have.
02:05:34.000The development that you see in places like Liberia, other African countries you've been to, it's like, oh, those really thoughtful Chinese were here.
02:08:36.000In Shanghai or Beijing, a Western chain hotel, the level of excellence and technical superiority required or expected there is so higher than in New York.
02:08:46.000At that level, the sort of people who would stay at one of these hotels in Shanghai are a lot richer and more demanding than their equivalent in New York.
02:08:54.000So the level of luxury and development that you see in places like China, where, you know, Jesus, this is a dysfunctional government, you would think.
02:10:23.000Whatever it is they see, they kind of want, in one form or another, they kind of want some form of that.
02:10:30.000So, in your experience in all these other countries, when you see all these different regimes getting toppled, you don't think there's any American influence in these things happening?
02:11:12.000If history has taught us anything, and if you read all of the documents from all of the controversial periods of CIA operations, we just don't seem to be very good at these things.
02:11:50.000So you think the speculation about the CIA being involved, like they're probably just very, very peripherally involved and there's just shit happening no matter what.
02:11:58.000I'm sure there are major CIA operations going on right now, without a doubt.
02:12:03.000But I think this notion that there's an office somewhere where the whole fate of the world is sort of decided, what countries are going to evade over the next 10 years.
02:12:11.000We're just not that good, and we're definitely not that secure.
02:12:14.000There's always, you know, three people know about something.
02:12:16.000There's the greatest argument about the 9-11 conspiracy theory, idiots, the Kennedy assassination, Looney Tunes.
02:12:26.000Basically, in this country, if more than three people know about a thing, one of them is going to be on the stand crying about it, the other guy's going to be writing a book about it, and maybe two guys will keep their mouths shut.
02:12:36.000I think today, I don't think during the time of the Kenny assassination, it would have been that difficult to hide things.
02:12:43.000I think things were much less transparent back then than were today.
02:12:48.000Yeah, but that's what's great about history.
02:12:50.000Eventually, if you're willing to wait around, to my view, if you're willing to wait around, every boring, grim detail will eventually come out and...
02:13:22.000I read best evidence, and that's one of the reasons why I first started believing there was some sort of a conspiracy.
02:13:27.000That was one of the first things that I saw that made me really reconsider.
02:13:32.000But later in life, the thing that really got me was the Northwoods document.
02:13:35.000If you've never heard of that, it's something that they drafted in the 1960s, or 1960, 61 or 62, where Kennedy actually vetoed it, and all the Joint Chiefs of Staff signed it.
02:13:48.000And then we're going to have fake American terror attacks.
02:14:17.000There was so much wacky shit going on around that time, so much of it embarrassing, criminal, scary, funny, really silly going on at that time, that in fact the least interesting thing about the entire...
02:14:34.000You know, big picture of the Kennedy assassination is the actual assassination itself because what everybody else was up to at the time and covering up was just, like, right out of a movie.
02:14:43.000The CIA is meeting with, you know, Johnny Rosselli and all these, like, mafia guys to whack out Castro.
02:14:51.000There was just so much other embarrassing shit going on that in many ways those stories and where they lead are a lot more entertaining and complex and fun than a story of a guy shooting a president.
02:15:03.000So if you believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, what do you think about when you see the Oliver Stone movie?
02:15:11.000I would have liked the film a lot better if they just stuck with a historical record and he invented scenes and characters, which I thought was...
02:15:51.000I mean, he put a lot of very interesting stuff together.
02:15:54.000And there was, and all of it was, like, fascinating.
02:15:57.000And in a lot of ways, a lot of it was almost more interesting than the, there wasn't, I don't believe in the octopus theory.
02:16:04.000I think you had a lot of really interesting, very spooky characters who'd been doing a lot of really sinister and interesting shit for a long time.
02:16:11.000Whether or not they were actually involved in the Kennedy assassination is almost moot, because they were up to some really other wacky stuff.
02:16:17.000Did the magic bullet theory bother you at all?
02:16:19.000I think if you talk, and I have talked to people who served in combat for a long time, the story of the buddy who gets around through the front of his helmet, it travels around subcutaneously around the skull and enters out the back without hurting the guy.
02:17:23.000Bigfoot, Loch Ness Monster, UFOs, Kennedy, the whole deal.
02:17:27.000It's way more fun to think that Lee Harvey Oswald was a patsy.
02:17:31.000But remember, he was a really interesting guy.
02:17:33.000I think the book that got it close, got it most right, was a work of fiction, The Libra by Don DeLillo, where it really gets inside Oswald's head.
02:22:31.000I'm talking about a lot of issues in a lot of things, but as you know, because we've worked a lot of the same theaters, and I do about 40 of them a year, if you don't get a laugh every 60 seconds, you've got a problem.
02:22:50.000You want to laugh every 60 seconds, and if they don't...
02:22:54.000If not in 60 seconds, the one that comes in two minutes is going to be really fucking funny because they had to wait for it, and I've really learned a lot of things.
02:23:02.000I mean, I've done so many gigs now, and I didn't understand.
02:23:39.000You know, you go in feeling really bad one night, and you kill, and then another night you go in, you're all pumped up, you think you're 100%, and it's just like, you're out there like...
02:23:46.000But it's just weird, just like the bartender I was talking about before, you start to learn...
02:24:12.000And when you're interviewed a lot or when you're doing the same routine a lot, You know, you start to, someone will ask you off-camera or off-stage a question to, you know, something that you just, and you're doing bit.
02:24:33.000You're very humble in the way you approach things.
02:24:36.000And that's one of the reasons why you're such an interesting guy and one of the reasons why your opinion is so respected.
02:24:42.000But when you're talking about this, all you're doing is getting the thought to them as efficiently as possible in a method that you're already successful at.
02:24:59.000It's just even though you've already answered it exactly this way before, you tend to think there's something wrong with that because it's not honest.
02:25:39.000I was doing a lot of book tours, and the bookstore crowds were getting bigger and bigger, and so then they'd start booking me in halls, the bookstore.
02:25:45.000So basically, I'm just looking to sell books.
02:25:47.000I stand up there, and then I talk for a while about my book, or I read from my book, and then I sign the book.
02:25:54.000I started doing talks while on book tour, and then there are people who do this, speakers, bureaus.
02:26:01.000You want some macroeconomics guy to talk about that, or you need some dick jokes, whatever.
02:26:09.000The Speakers Bureau will have someone for you, presumably.
02:26:44.000This is why I was enjoying your Carlos Mencia shit so much, because you come up to this point after two years, you realize, well, I've done all the major cities now with this routine.
02:26:55.000And it's been quoted and repeated in the local press.
02:27:00.000And chances are, if I said it in the first place, live at some point earlier in my career, I may have written it or put it in the show.
02:27:06.000So you reach this point, it's like, oh shit, I need another completely new hour.
02:29:14.000When you have the perfect word to say and the heckler gets shut down and everybody starts laughing, tell me that doesn't feel like the most awesome shit ever.
02:29:44.000Thank you to The Fleshlight for sponsoring the podcast.
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