The Joe Rogan Experience - August 26, 2021


Joe Rogan Experience #1702 - Laurie Woolever

Topics
Tony Bourdain documentary celebrity jiu-jitsu match news recipe editing and testing imposter syndrome fermented shark meat hunting kitchen life Kitchen Confidential
Hosted by
Joe Rogan
Guests
Laurie Woolever
Mentioned
Tony Bourdain Kitchen Confidential Mario Batali Sri Lanka Marco Pierre White Joe Rogan Podcast Anthony Bourdain Bonnie McFarlane Maynard Keenan Alex Trebek George Orwell Stephen King David Simon Tom Papa Lori An Irreverent Guide Apocalypse Now Amy Winehouse Lonely Planet Graham Greene and 24 more
Joe Rogan Experience #1701 - Rhonda Patrick Joe Rogan Experience #1703 - Tom Segura

Episode Stats


Length

1 hour and 38 minutes

Words per minute

174.96

Word count

17,155

Sentence count

1,590

Harmful content

Misogyny

8

sentences flagged

Toxicity

219

sentences flagged

Hate speech

14

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Tony Bourdain was a comedian, writer, podcaster, and podcaster. On this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, we talk about the Tony Bourdain Podcast, the Bourdain Documentary, and the tragic news of his death. We also talk about what it was like to be a fan of Bourdain's, and what it's like to work with him on his new book, "Tony's Last Words." And, of course, we get into the aftermath of the news that Bourdain died at the age of 61, and how it has changed the way we think about him and the impact it has had on the world. Thanks to everyone who reached out to us and everyone who shared their condolences. We really appreciate it, and we really do appreciate you. Thank you to all the people who sent in their condolences, and condolences to the family and friends of Tony and the many others who lost their lives this week. We'll see you next week! -Joe Rogan's Note: This episode was originally published in the New York Times on Nov. 22nd, 2019. It has since been updated to reflect the new information about the death of Anthony Bourdain, and is no longer available on most major news outlets. We apologize for the delay. We re working on transcribing the audio quality in this episode. We are working on fixing the audio in this version of the show. Joe's Note is much better in the future, we promise you that it will be much better, much better quality in future episodes. Thank you for all the love and support we ve gotten over the past week. -J.R.'s Note: We appreciate all the support and all the kind words you've been getting from the support we've gotten so far. We appreciate your support and we appreciate all of the love you've shown over the last few months. We're working on the support. -- Thank you, Joe's Back! -Jon Sorrentino - Thank you so much, Jon's Back to you, Jon Rogan, Thank you Jon's Note - The Joe's and Jon's back from the last episode of the podcast. and we'll get back to the rest of the world soon. "The Joe's back with the rest in the next episode. . -- Tom's Back with more soon! -- Jon's Next Episode: Back with a new version of this episode!

Transcript

Transcripts from "The Joe Rogan Experience" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:01.000 Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out!
00:00:04.000 The Joe Rogan Experience.
00:00:06.000 Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
00:00:12.000 Oh, hi, Lori.
00:00:13.000 Hi.
00:00:13.000 What's happening?
00:00:14.000 Pleasure to meet you.
00:00:15.000 Thank you.
00:00:16.000 Same to you.
00:00:17.000 I tried watching the Bourdain documentary, but I just got too sad.
00:00:22.000 I couldn't do it.
00:00:23.000 Did it feel weird?
00:00:24.000 Did you watch it, Roadrunner?
00:00:25.000 Oh, yeah.
00:00:26.000 Yeah, yeah.
00:00:26.000 Did it feel weird when you knew that the voice was AI, sort of a recreation of his words?
00:00:35.000 It didn't feel weird to me because, honestly, it was less than 45 seconds in a two-hour film.
00:00:40.000 Oh, okay.
00:00:40.000 So, no, it didn't feel weird.
00:00:42.000 I knew exactly where one of the places was, that it was the AI, but the vast majority of that film is Tony's actual voice, and I think that really got lost in the discussion around the film.
00:00:55.000 Oh, it certainly did.
00:00:55.000 Yeah, I was under the impression that the whole thing was, that's how people are.
00:00:59.000 They're so gross. 0.98
00:01:00.000 No. 0.97
00:01:00.000 I always want to find the one thing that's negative about this. 0.97
00:01:03.000 Yeah.
00:01:04.000 It really bummed me out because that was the dominant conversation on opening weekend.
00:01:10.000 And it really kind of took away, for me, from, you know, it's a beautiful film.
00:01:14.000 I was a consulting producer, so obviously I have a dog in the fight and I want people to love the film.
00:01:19.000 But I think it's great.
00:01:21.000 It is really sad.
00:01:22.000 How far into it did you get?
00:01:23.000 I just started it and I shut it off.
00:01:26.000 Yeah.
00:01:26.000 Yeah.
00:01:28.000 I just got too sad.
00:01:31.000 Maybe it was my mood that day.
00:01:33.000 I just wasn't ready to watch something like that.
00:01:36.000 I was just like, I can't do this.
00:01:37.000 Yeah, I understand.
00:01:39.000 I've been steeped in all things Tony for over a decade, but since he died I've been making these books.
00:01:46.000 Working on the film and talking about him.
00:01:49.000 And so I've kind of got, I think, a layer of numbness in a way.
00:01:53.000 But sometimes stuff gets through.
00:01:56.000 The first time I saw the film, I cried like a baby.
00:01:59.000 But I was home by myself.
00:02:00.000 I was really glad to be alone, you know?
00:02:04.000 There's always this feeling when someone takes their own life, like if I could have just talked to them.
00:02:11.000 Like if I was there, if I could have talked to them.
00:02:16.000 I talked to David Cho and he had that same take on it.
00:02:23.000 You just don't know. 0.94
00:02:25.000 You feel like you fucked something up. 0.93
00:02:31.000 There's no peace.
00:02:37.000 If I think about him...
00:02:45.000 I just always think, like, what a shame.
00:02:50.000 What a shame.
00:02:52.000 You know?
00:02:53.000 Like, a guy who is so interesting and so loved, you know, to...
00:03:00.000 I found out about it from Maynard Keenan from Tool.
00:03:03.000 Do you know the story?
00:03:04.000 I listened to you talk to Tom Papa right after Tony died.
00:03:10.000 He made kind of a joke, right?
00:03:13.000 Yeah, Maynard's a funny guy.
00:03:15.000 And he was joking around.
00:03:17.000 He said that he knew that Tony was really into jiu-jitsu.
00:03:20.000 And Maynard really into jiu-jitsu, too.
00:03:22.000 And he's like, we should have a celebrity match.
00:03:25.000 Yeah, that would be awesome.
00:03:26.000 He was talking about it, and then he texted me and said, I guess the celebrity match is off.
00:03:32.000 And I was like, what does that mean?
00:03:33.000 I guess he just assumed that I would have already known about it, but I was in Chicago, and I had just woken up.
00:03:40.000 So then I googled it, and I was just like, ugh.
00:03:44.000 Yeah, that's not a great way.
00:03:46.000 I mean, there's no good way to find out that news, but that sounds like a particularly painful way to hear it.
00:03:54.000 It was confusing, you know?
00:03:56.000 It's painful, but it's almost like it's painful later.
00:04:00.000 In the beginning, it's just like...
00:04:02.000 Shock.
00:04:03.000 You're baffled.
00:04:04.000 You're like, how?
00:04:05.000 What?
00:04:06.000 Not there anymore.
00:04:07.000 Like, this person's not there anymore.
00:04:09.000 Like, if I text him, it's not there.
00:04:11.000 I have a phone that I won't get rid of.
00:04:14.000 Because it has text messages from him.
00:04:16.000 And it's like...
00:04:17.000 I can always go back and look at them.
00:04:21.000 Yeah, same.
00:04:24.000 I'll never get rid of my last texts with him.
00:04:27.000 And what you were saying about, you know, you just wish you could have done something.
00:04:31.000 I mean, believe me, that is a conversation I have had with so many people.
00:04:35.000 And I think to myself, like, if I had just been a little more, I don't know, something.
00:04:41.000 If I had said something or if I had been more supportive or, you know, I just, I knew he was in trouble that week, but I didn't.
00:04:51.000 It never occurred to me that he would take that action that he did.
00:04:54.000 And the fact is, he had a lot of people around who were very close to him, who loved him.
00:05:00.000 And he had other people that were offering to come and be with him, because they knew he was having a hard time that week.
00:05:06.000 And he said, no, don't come.
00:05:09.000 Why was that week so particularly hard?
00:05:13.000 There was some stuff in the media with him and his girlfriend that was, you know, not great.
00:05:19.000 You know, he was very, very in love.
00:05:21.000 And I think there was some, I mean, I'm not saying anything that isn't public record.
00:05:25.000 And I'm always hesitant to talk too much about all of that.
00:05:30.000 But it's, you know, it's out there.
00:05:31.000 It was in the Italian press and maybe the French press that his girlfriend had been maybe or maybe not with another guy.
00:05:40.000 There were a lot of pictures that made it look not great.
00:05:44.000 And I think that was really hard for him.
00:05:47.000 And you'll see they talk about it.
00:05:49.000 It gets talked about in the film.
00:05:51.000 It gets talked about in my book.
00:05:53.000 I think he was...
00:05:55.000 He was deeply in love and I think he was realizing that this relationship maybe wasn't what he thought it was or that it just...
00:06:02.000 I think he felt humiliated, honestly, you know?
00:06:05.000 And I mean, that's a hard thing for a private person to metabolize.
00:06:12.000 And then, you know, your extremely public person who has been extremely public about this relationship, I think it was a lot for him to handle in that week.
00:06:22.000 Mm-hmm.
00:06:24.000 Yeah, there's not much you can do when that happens, in terms of, like, talking to a friend.
00:06:29.000 Like, words just don't work.
00:06:31.000 Yeah.
00:06:31.000 You know?
00:06:32.000 Like, they don't...
00:06:33.000 You don't...
00:06:34.000 You're not gonna absorb them.
00:06:35.000 Mm-hmm.
00:06:36.000 Mm-hmm.
00:06:37.000 Yeah.
00:06:41.000 I don't know that a normal reaction to romantic trouble is to take your own life.
00:06:50.000 Clearly, there are plenty of people who have trouble in their relationships who stay alive.
00:06:59.000 You know, he was a really complicated guy.
00:07:01.000 He was a really, I think as public as he was and as much as he shared about the way that his mind and his heart worked, I think there was a lot that he didn't share.
00:07:11.000 And I think he was more troubled and more lonely and sad than I think any of us knew at the time.
00:07:19.000 You know, in the intervening three years, I've learned a lot.
00:07:25.000 Yeah, I think.
00:07:48.000 Yeah, whenever anybody recovers from a serious drug problem, but yet still parties, I was always like, hmm, how's he pulling that off?
00:08:00.000 Like, the first time I hung out with him, I knew that he had gotten over the heroin thing, but I didn't quite realize how hard he drank.
00:08:09.000 I was like, Whoa!
00:08:11.000 Yeah, yeah.
00:08:13.000 Was that in Montana?
00:08:14.000 No, that was later.
00:08:16.000 That was after I'd known him for quite a while.
00:08:19.000 I mean, I think the first time I hung out with him was in Vegas.
00:08:22.000 Pretty sure.
00:08:24.000 It was when he was married to Octavia.
00:08:27.000 And they were there for the UFC. And I met him backstage.
00:08:33.000 I was like, wow.
00:08:35.000 It was interesting.
00:08:36.000 It was one of the few people that I've met that I was like a little starstruck.
00:08:39.000 I said something really clunky.
00:08:43.000 Like one is to do when they meet someone they really admire.
00:08:46.000 My wife always used to say that he's my boyfriend because I would watch No Reservations all the time.
00:08:51.000 She was like, oh, you're watching your boyfriend.
00:08:52.000 And so I said, oh, my wife says you're my boyfriend. 1.00
00:08:55.000 And he was like, who the fuck? 1.00
00:08:58.000 He was so good at giving you that look. 1.00
00:09:01.000 I've said a couple of real stupid things to him, too, and I'll just never forget. 0.98
00:09:06.000 We were standing in the telephone store trying to upgrade my phone, and I was kind of new to the job and nervous, and I was like, what are we going to talk about for 10 minutes? 0.97
00:09:17.000 So I just said, how do you decide who to respond to on Twitter? 1.00
00:09:22.000 And he just gave me this look like, you're the fucking stupidest person I've ever met in my life. 1.00
00:09:26.000 You know, and I know he respected me, and I know he liked me, but I was just like, oh, God. 1.00
00:09:32.000 Sorry.
00:09:32.000 It's actually not a bad question.
00:09:34.000 Yeah, I just, I don't know.
00:09:35.000 He just was like, I don't know.
00:09:37.000 The look on his face was just like, oh, man, I should have just kept my mouth shut.
00:09:41.000 Actually, David Simon told me a similar story.
00:09:43.000 You know, David Simon, the creator of The Wire, and Treme and, you know, really smart, articulate, funny guy.
00:09:51.000 And he told me that he said something to Tony that he just got that look. 1.00
00:09:55.000 That, like, you're a fucking idiot look, you know? 1.00
00:09:58.000 And it didn't ruin their friendship, but it made an impact. 1.00
00:10:01.000 Yeah.
00:10:02.000 I got really excited when Tony got into jiu-jitsu.
00:10:06.000 Because I'm like, well, now we have something really in common that I'm really good at.
00:10:10.000 So now we can talk.
00:10:12.000 You know?
00:10:13.000 It's like...
00:10:14.000 I'm sure you were probably an influence.
00:10:16.000 I mean, Tavia obviously was the biggest influence, but I'm sure knowing that you did it, too, was another strong reason to get involved with it.
00:10:24.000 Well, that's very nice.
00:10:25.000 I'm happy that that's the case, if that's the case.
00:10:28.000 It was really interesting to watch him.
00:10:30.000 It's very rare that a person is deep in their 50s.
00:10:34.000 And has lived, you know, fairly sedentary lifestyle.
00:10:37.000 Certainly not athletic.
00:10:39.000 Certainly not, like, jiu-jitsu is a difficult endeavor.
00:10:44.000 It's not like taking up squash.
00:10:47.000 Maybe squash is hard, too.
00:10:48.000 I don't know.
00:10:49.000 I've never played squash.
00:10:50.000 But it's not like, it's very intimate, where someone is literally practicing killing you, and you're trying to resist that.
00:10:58.000 And so to watch him get really into it, and then to watch him watch his personality sort of like shift, Into that, there's sort of a jujitsu mindset that you get when you start doing it all the time.
00:11:14.000 You start training, you start building confidence, and you start getting really into it. 0.98
00:11:18.000 He was fucking into it. 0.98
00:11:20.000 When we did that trip in Montana, he was asking me questions, and we started doing... 1.00
00:11:25.000 I was demonstrating shit on him in the dirt. 0.95
00:11:27.000 We were in the dirt, and I'm like, when you're in this position, and we're going over stuff on the ground... 0.99
00:11:34.000 Yeah.
00:11:35.000 In Montana.
00:11:36.000 I'm like, that's how into it he was.
00:11:37.000 Like, he was really...
00:11:38.000 He wanted to ask questions.
00:11:39.000 He wanted to go over moves.
00:11:41.000 I was like, wow, you're really all in.
00:11:44.000 Yeah, it was...
00:11:45.000 I think, you know, Mo Fallon, I think, said this to you, and he said it in the film and in the book as well.
00:11:50.000 But, you know, if you weren't...
00:11:51.000 Like, I was not into jiu-jitsu.
00:11:53.000 It did not matter.
00:11:54.000 Like, Tony would just talk to you about it anyway.
00:11:56.000 You know, you just have to be like, uh-huh.
00:11:57.000 Uh-huh.
00:11:58.000 You know, like, either feign interest or, you know, like, feign an emergency and get out of there.
00:12:02.000 Because it's just...
00:12:04.000 At a certain point, you know, then he's trying to get you recruiting everyone.
00:12:07.000 He was successful.
00:12:08.000 He got a lot of his crew into it.
00:12:09.000 He's like, do you think you would ever do it? 1.00
00:12:11.000 After he's telling me about, like, you know, your nose is basically in somebody's asshole and you've got, like, blood under your nails, you know, and it's disgusting. 1.00
00:12:19.000 And I'm like, hmm, sounds great. 0.99
00:12:21.000 I'm gonna...
00:12:22.000 I'm going to stick to yoga and weight training.
00:12:24.000 Thank you.
00:12:25.000 But I did make my kid do it.
00:12:27.000 And it was totally because of Tony.
00:12:29.000 I was like, well, I'm not going to do it, but I will get the eight-year-old involved.
00:12:32.000 Oh, that's a good age.
00:12:34.000 That's a good age to start.
00:12:35.000 They're all limber and flexible.
00:12:37.000 Yeah, my kids got into it early on, but then they got bored and they found girly things to do.
00:12:42.000 But they enjoyed it in the beginning and they still know some stuff like what to do.
00:12:47.000 My kid hated it.
00:12:48.000 Really?
00:12:49.000 Yeah.
00:12:50.000 And I was like, you're going to do this.
00:12:52.000 You know how expensive this is?
00:12:54.000 I made him do it for like, I don't know, six months.
00:12:56.000 And then it was clear that like, I mean, he didn't hate it to the point where he was like crying, but like he did have a couple of like anxiety stomach aches in the car and I'm like, suck it up.
00:13:04.000 And I'm like, what am I doing?
00:13:07.000 You know?
00:13:08.000 Yeah, I think it's very bad to force anything on kids.
00:13:12.000 I don't force anything on kids.
00:13:13.000 I try to make them finish what they start, just so that they have this thing, like, okay, I started this, I'm going to finish it, I committed to being at these practices, I'm going to show up, but then when it's over, it's over.
00:13:27.000 That's a good policy.
00:13:30.000 You just get a kid that's resentful, and then whatever this thing that you're trying to get them to do that might have some real benefit to them, they're never going to realize that benefit, or it's going to be harder for them to realize that benefit.
00:13:44.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.
00:13:46.000 I realize this is not the way to get a raise or get a promotion with Tony. 0.97
00:13:53.000 He actually doesn't give a shit if your kid does jiu-jitsu, so let him play baseball like he wants to do. 0.95
00:13:58.000 Yeah. 0.91
00:13:59.000 When did you, like, how did your relationship with him start?
00:14:03.000 How did your working relationship start?
00:14:05.000 So I had been Mario Batali's assistant for a number of years, like in the late 90s, early 2000s.
00:14:12.000 And Mario and Tony became friends sort of at the same level of rising celebrity in New York in the restaurant world and in media.
00:14:21.000 And I was leaving the job with Mario and Tony asked him if he knew anybody that could help him with a cookbook that he was starting to work on.
00:14:30.000 It was called Anthony Bourdain's Layal Cookbook.
00:14:32.000 It was his first cookbook.
00:14:34.000 And Mario recommended me.
00:14:36.000 And Tony kind of hired me sight unseen, I think, because, you know, if I worked for Mario, then that was like a seal of approval for him.
00:14:44.000 So that was our first time working together was I did recipe editing and testing on that cookbook.
00:14:50.000 I think we met in person probably twice.
00:14:52.000 Everything was on email because he was already starting to travel for television.
00:14:57.000 He still kind of had one foot in the kitchen at Leal.
00:15:00.000 But we had a great working relationship So when you say recipe editing and testing, what does that entail?
00:15:07.000 How does that work?
00:15:08.000 So it's different for every project.
00:15:10.000 But for this project, I would get the recipes from the kitchen at Layal.
00:15:15.000 So they were in huge quantities.
00:15:17.000 And they were written in like a very concise shorthand meant for the cooks to use.
00:15:23.000 They were not appropriate for a cookbook.
00:15:26.000 So I would take those.
00:15:27.000 And I had been to cooking school and I worked a little bit as a cook.
00:15:31.000 And so I knew how to deal with a recipe.
00:15:34.000 I knew how to cook and kind of what my way around the kitchen.
00:15:36.000 So I... Would take those recipes, scale them way down, kind of put them into a more accessible language for a home cook, and then test them at home.
00:15:46.000 Make sure that when I change the proportions and everything, the timing and the temperatures, and that it all still worked for a home cook.
00:15:54.000 So, were these, like, dishes meant for large groups of people?
00:15:58.000 Like, how did you have to scale it down?
00:16:00.000 Well, because when you're making it in a restaurant, you know, you're preparing enough for 60 portions in a night, you know?
00:16:07.000 Like, certain side dishes and things like that?
00:16:09.000 I mean, anything, really.
00:16:10.000 You know, if you're making a, you know...
00:16:13.000 I don't know, a soup.
00:16:14.000 You think you might sell 40 portions of soup that night, so you're making a huge batch of soup.
00:16:20.000 At home, you don't want that much soup.
00:16:22.000 You might want to make enough for eight people.
00:16:25.000 So that's kind of the scaling.
00:16:27.000 I mean, there's no reason to do anything in small quantities in a restaurant.
00:16:31.000 And when you say shorthand, do you mean shorthand like how some secretaries write shorthand?
00:16:36.000 No, no.
00:16:37.000 I've seen people do that.
00:16:39.000 I'm like, what is that?
00:16:40.000 Chicken scratch, right?
00:16:41.000 Yeah, that's like Latin.
00:16:42.000 I mean, I'm surprised anybody even does that anymore.
00:16:45.000 It's cool, but I don't know.
00:16:46.000 But they do still, right?
00:16:48.000 Is that a dying thing?
00:16:49.000 I think it must be, right?
00:16:50.000 Like, that's from the days of the- You ever seen a show, Tony? 0.99
00:16:53.000 I mean, Jamie, whatever the fucking name is. 0.97
00:16:55.000 Have you ever seen it? 0.99
00:16:56.000 Yeah, the court reporters still do something weird like that, but it's not the same.
00:16:59.000 They do it typing though, right?
00:17:00.000 They only have like five buttons to use.
00:17:02.000 Right.
00:17:02.000 So they have combinations of it that equal things.
00:17:06.000 What do they do?
00:17:07.000 I've never tried to read it.
00:17:08.000 I've looked into it once.
00:17:09.000 I have no idea.
00:17:10.000 With those five buttons. 1.00
00:17:10.000 This fucking kangaroo court system we have in this country. 1.00
00:17:14.000 Yeah, but I've seen people write in the shorthand, and I'm like, that is, like, how does one even learn that today? 0.99
00:17:19.000 Is that necessary?
00:17:20.000 Can't you just audio record?
00:17:21.000 Yeah.
00:17:22.000 Like, on your phone?
00:17:23.000 Like, you could just, like, if someone wants to, you know, dictate to you, it'd be so much easier.
00:17:27.000 There it is.
00:17:28.000 Like, what is that?
00:17:29.000 Oh, wow. 1.00
00:17:30.000 The fuck is that chicken scratch? 1.00
00:17:33.000 Pittman and Gray. 0.99
00:17:34.000 So there's different versions of shorthand?
00:17:37.000 That's so interesting.
00:17:38.000 Oh my god, that is nonsense.
00:17:40.000 Yeah.
00:17:41.000 Look at that.
00:17:42.000 Look what Indian is. 0.99
00:17:44.000 What is that?
00:17:45.000 How does that mean Indian?
00:17:47.000 That's wild.
00:17:48.000 Or it's empty, depending on how big the circle is.
00:17:50.000 Yeah.
00:17:51.000 That's strange.
00:17:52.000 I don't know.
00:17:52.000 Oh my god, that's so nuts.
00:17:54.000 How do you know the difference between a parent and plenty? 1.00
00:17:59.000 Get the fuck out of here. 1.00
00:18:00.000 That is nonsense. 1.00
00:18:02.000 That's so crazy when you really look at that.
00:18:05.000 Yeah.
00:18:06.000 And that's taught?
00:18:07.000 I mean, I seriously doubt it's taught much anymore, but I guess, right?
00:18:11.000 Somebody's still doing it.
00:18:12.000 It's got to be a dying thing.
00:18:14.000 With digital recording on your phone, it's got to be a dying thing.
00:18:17.000 Absolutely.
00:18:18.000 So you just would sort of test out.
00:18:21.000 So you went to cook school, so you know how to cook.
00:18:24.000 So you would just test out these things.
00:18:26.000 Yep.
00:18:26.000 When you were doing this, he was just a local celebrity in the New York restaurant scene, right?
00:18:33.000 No reservation started yet?
00:18:35.000 Or Kitchen Confidential?
00:18:37.000 Yeah, so Kitchen Confidential came out in 2000. So he was already on the rise.
00:18:43.000 I think he was a season or two into a Cook's Tour, which was the very first iteration of Tony on television.
00:18:49.000 Mm-hmm.
00:18:50.000 But there was no, you know, he always would say, like, I've got my 15 minutes.
00:18:55.000 I have no expectation that this is going to, you know, last forever.
00:18:59.000 I'm going to do as much as I can while I can.
00:19:01.000 But I think he was always waiting for someone to pull the rug out from under him, you know, as far as being a celebrity, whatever that is.
00:19:09.000 Yeah, he was.
00:19:10.000 It was really interesting.
00:19:11.000 It's like, it's hard for people to realize that other people appreciate them, I think.
00:19:16.000 Especially...
00:19:17.000 People that are genuinely humble.
00:19:20.000 He was a genuinely humble person. 0.99
00:19:22.000 He really didn't buy into his own bullshit at all. 0.99
00:19:25.000 So when you would talk to him about it, he was like, this could fucking end terribly at any moment. 1.00
00:19:31.000 Yeah, I remember being with him in the green room.
00:19:34.000 He did a book tour for the cookbook Appetites that we wrote together in 2016. And he did a series of lectures, basically like a one-hour stand-up routine in these theaters and then book signings.
00:19:47.000 So we were at the last one at BAM, Brooklyn, in the green room. 0.98
00:19:52.000 And he was just like, oh, God, I fucking hate this. 0.96
00:19:55.000 I feel like such a... 0.98
00:19:56.000 What was the word he used?
00:19:57.000 Such a fraud.
00:19:58.000 And I was like, what are you talking about?
00:20:00.000 You just had like 13 sold-out shows.
00:20:02.000 The book is doing amazing.
00:20:04.000 Like, you're literally Tony Bourdain. 1.00
00:20:06.000 He was like, yeah, it's all bullshit. 0.98
00:20:09.000 I'm embarrassed that people have paid money to come and see me talk. 0.99
00:20:12.000 You know, it was...
00:20:13.000 It's really illustrative to me to hear him talk like that, to realize he doesn't think he's as great as we know he is.
00:20:23.000 That's a common thing amongst, at least my people, amongst comedians.
00:20:30.000 In many successful people, it's called imposter syndrome.
00:20:34.000 And it exists because you have a certain...
00:20:37.000 Sort of a set perception of who you were just going through life sort of anonymously and then it radically changes and it doesn't feel real.
00:20:45.000 And so to other people who've just discovered you, they love your show, they love your writing, they love your take on the world as you travel and eat everywhere. 0.90
00:20:54.000 You know, you think, like, I'm the same fucking idiot that I was, you know, he's probably thinking he's the same guy he was in 95, and now here all these people love him. 0.95
00:21:04.000 It doesn't make any sense. 1.00
00:21:05.000 I just feel like this is going to fall apart.
00:21:07.000 This is fake.
00:21:08.000 Yeah.
00:21:09.000 But that's also why he was so interesting, is because, like, the people that are, like, legitimately fool themselves and really think everything they're doing is great are gross.
00:21:18.000 Yeah. 0.96
00:21:19.000 They're gross. 0.86
00:21:20.000 They come off gross. 1.00
00:21:21.000 When you see someone write like, I'm the shit, you're like, what? 1.00
00:21:25.000 That is so gross. 1.00
00:21:27.000 And it's such the opposite of what anybody ever wants to hear.
00:21:31.000 And maybe you could say it in jest and people think it's funny, but...
00:21:36.000 For the most part, the people that are really enamored with themselves and their work are just not nearly as interesting as the people that are tortured by it.
00:21:44.000 It's such a conundrum, right?
00:21:47.000 It's like a guy like Tony, who is such an interesting, fascinating person just to talk to, just to have a conversation with, because he had such a clear perspective on things, the way he looked at things.
00:21:57.000 He was very aesthetic.
00:22:01.000 He enjoyed a certain style of communication and of hanging out.
00:22:07.000 There was an art to just conversation with the guy.
00:22:11.000 So it makes sense that he hated himself. 0.99
00:22:15.000 In the most fucked up way possible, it makes sense. 0.99
00:22:19.000 Yeah. 0.96
00:22:20.000 I think, too, there was this disconnect between the guy that he was before he got famous and the guy after.
00:22:26.000 And I think he always thought about how the old guy probably would have made fun of the new guy.
00:22:31.000 Or he and all his buddies who were cooks stuck in the kitchen would sort of hate this guy with the expensive shoes and the nice apartment and flying first class.
00:22:42.000 Yeah, that's what happens.
00:22:44.000 You want to be punk rock and then all of a sudden you have a million dollars in the bank and you're like, hey.
00:22:51.000 I think I'm going to eat in a nice place tonight.
00:22:54.000 I think I want to buy a watch.
00:22:57.000 You really can feel like a fraud.
00:22:59.000 It's fascinating because so many people are really They're haunted in a lot of ways by the past.
00:23:07.000 And there's sort of like this rebellious, rigid attitude that you develop when you're struggling, when you're coming up.
00:23:17.000 You know it becomes like the structure of where your attitude comes from and then when that structure is sort of removed by success in Tony's case and then you're left with Okay, I'm not even like in his eyes He had done all these hours of being in the kitchen,
00:23:36.000 the real work, those long days and long nights, and there was something noble about that.
00:23:44.000 And then, all of a sudden, he's just going to visit these guys, and he's not in the game anymore.
00:23:50.000 And, you know, he's going to visit these incredible cooks and seeing these amazing dishes and these insane restaurants. 0.95
00:23:58.000 And I think part of that he felt like a little bit of a fraud because of that.
00:24:04.000 Yeah, yeah.
00:24:05.000 He was always very careful to say, I was not a great chef.
00:24:09.000 You know, I think it's very, people kind of just, in the same way that people thought that, you know, the whole, with the AI thing, that it was all of the movie versus 45 seconds.
00:24:19.000 There's just a glossing over kind of sloppiness of recollection.
00:24:24.000 And so...
00:24:25.000 Because he was a chef, everyone would say, oh, he was a great chef or a celebrity chef or a famous chef.
00:24:33.000 And he was always really careful to say, I wasn't.
00:24:36.000 I was good at leading a kitchen.
00:24:38.000 I was good at getting food out on time, but I was not in any way a world-famous creative chef.
00:24:44.000 I was a leader of men.
00:24:45.000 And there was, I think, a lot of...
00:24:49.000 I don't know, insecurity, but just a recognition that he wasn't the kind of chef like Eric Repair, his good friend, or any of these guys that he really admired, and he wanted everyone to know that he knew that, too.
00:25:02.000 Yeah, it's just the genuine humility about him.
00:25:05.000 But it's also like that, you know, there are so many layers to the way he looked at things and described things.
00:25:13.000 It's what made No Reservations and then ultimately the other show.
00:25:19.000 Parts Unknown.
00:25:20.000 Parts Unknown.
00:25:22.000 But it's what made it so interesting.
00:25:25.000 It's really his own view of himself inserted into these environments.
00:25:32.000 It wasn't just the environments.
00:25:34.000 It was like this genuine enthusiasm that he had for these people that create great works of art through food.
00:25:42.000 And he was the first guy that ever shifted my perception of what food is.
00:25:47.000 Because I thought of food was just delicious.
00:25:49.000 I was like, oh, this food was good.
00:25:50.000 And then I watched his show and I was like, oh, it's art. 1.00
00:25:53.000 Oh, you fucking idiot. 1.00
00:25:55.000 How'd you not see that? 1.00
00:25:56.000 It's just art that people eat. 0.99
00:25:58.000 I was like, why all these chefs have fucking hand tattoos and they look like weirdos? 1.00
00:26:03.000 And I was like, oh, they're fucking artists. 1.00
00:26:06.000 Duh. 1.00
00:26:07.000 It really took watching that show because...
00:26:11.000 I didn't have a lot of interaction with chefs.
00:26:13.000 I maybe knew a couple chefs my whole life.
00:26:16.000 I didn't know them well.
00:26:18.000 If I enjoyed their food, I thought it was great.
00:26:20.000 But I didn't ever think, oh, this is an art form.
00:26:25.000 You're literally getting an expression of this person's essence that's laid out in food form in front of you.
00:26:33.000 In the best case scenario.
00:26:34.000 I mean, I think there's plenty of food that is not that artful, you know, or might be considered more craft than art.
00:26:40.000 But yeah, these guys that he loved at the highest level were definitely, you know, artists making consumable product every day.
00:26:48.000 Yeah. 0.86
00:26:49.000 And it's just his take on all kinds of things, on music and culture, and it just made for, you know, if he maybe, I don't know how good of a chef he was, but man, he was a fucking amazing host of a television show.
00:27:04.000 Yeah.
00:27:05.000 I mean, it was really, it was like the perfect guy for a travel show.
00:27:08.000 Mm-hmm.
00:27:09.000 And writer.
00:27:10.000 I mean, that's really what broke him through out of the kitchen.
00:27:14.000 It was not his television presence, which was a little clunky at first.
00:27:18.000 You know, I mean, he didn't spring fully formed as the, you know, confident guy that we saw in later years.
00:27:26.000 If you go back and when you're ready to watch the film or you'll see in the book, too, you know, he was...
00:27:32.000 He was a little awkward and quite more than a little hesitant on television at first.
00:27:36.000 But what he always was was a fucking fantastic writer, you know, from very, very young age and worked really hard at that to develop that craft.
00:27:45.000 And that's – I mean that's what comes through on television too is all that voiceover. 0.94
00:27:49.000 He wrote that, you know, and the way that he could speak off the cuff like it was something that was written and edited and perfective.
00:27:56.000 That was just in his head.
00:27:58.000 I mean he spoke like a writer.
00:27:59.000 Yeah.
00:28:00.000 Well, that clunkiness, to me, came off as authenticity.
00:28:07.000 That's the thing.
00:28:08.000 I don't like polished, like, top 40 DJ voices.
00:28:13.000 You know what I mean?
00:28:14.000 Like, hey, coming up next.
00:28:15.000 It's like, there's a way that a person can behave. 0.68
00:28:19.000 Whether they're the host of a show or a radio host, whatever the fuck they're doing, there's a way that we know what a professional sounds like. 0.97
00:28:28.000 This is Tom with the weather. 0.98
00:28:29.000 There's a way we know, and that way is boring.
00:28:34.000 Because you've heard it too many times and you know that's not really who that person is.
00:28:37.000 This is a really funny video, I don't know if you've ever seen it, but there's this black guy who's working for a television station.
00:28:46.000 And he's doing the news somewhere on location and a bug gets on him and he switches and goes full ghetto in the middle. 0.98
00:28:54.000 So he's in the middle of his talking like this, like this motherfucker and like this bug is on him and it's hilarious. 0.77
00:29:00.000 And I'm like, man, if someone could talk to that guy and say, man, we got to figure out a way to let you be who you really are because that was hilarious once the bug was on you. 0.99
00:29:10.000 But when the bug wasn't on you, then you're just like this normal, bullshit, cookie-cutter, programmed robot. 0.98
00:29:18.000 And, you know, the thing about No Reservations was it was who he actually was. 0.99
00:29:25.000 So if he was clunky or if, you know...
00:29:28.000 Or if he was fascinated by something, it came across as being genuine.
00:29:33.000 It was very obvious that he wrote everything, too.
00:29:35.000 It was very obvious that he wrote the monologues. 1.00
00:29:37.000 You're not going to get some TV hack to write that kind of shit, especially for the fucking Travel Channel. 1.00
00:29:44.000 Right, right. 0.99
00:29:45.000 I noticed, I watched the Montana episode of Parts Unknown that you guys were on together and there was that enthusiasm. 0.97
00:29:52.000 There's a scene where he goes down into the mines, copper mines, old copper mines, and they hook up all the wires and he gets to be the one to press the lever or whatever to make the shit explode. 0.85
00:30:04.000 And he's just got this... 0.98
00:30:05.000 He's like a 10-year-old boy. 0.99
00:30:07.000 He's so psyched and it's so genuine that he has had the most fun just like blowing shit up. 0.96
00:30:13.000 And that's like the best of Tony. 1.00
00:30:17.000 As many experiences around the world as he had and as smart as he was, he still loved the dumb shit. 1.00
00:30:25.000 Or just the basic hilarity of blowing shit up. 1.00
00:30:30.000 Yeah. 0.99
00:30:31.000 Well, he stayed himself.
00:30:33.000 Yeah.
00:30:33.000 It's hard to do, you know?
00:30:35.000 It's hard to do.
00:30:36.000 And obviously, himself, there was...
00:30:39.000 Because of the drug abuse past, the addiction past, and then the end of his life, the boozing in particular, it's like there's obviously a lot going on there that wasn't that healthy.
00:30:54.000 Yeah.
00:30:55.000 You know for whatever reason and whatever whatever it was a masking thing if it was a genetic addiction issue thing Yeah.
00:31:04.000 It's, you know, it's really hard to say, you know, and I always try to be very careful not to diagnose or to, you know, all we can do is speculate and think about what, you know, we knew when he was around.
00:31:17.000 I mean, he was very upfront about his heroin addiction and his, you know, heavy use of cocaine and crack later.
00:31:23.000 And then he kicked those things, you know.
00:31:25.000 But I think that As somebody who has been sober for a couple of years and has kind of myself dived into the whole exploration of the 12-step thing, I can see what it is to be an addict.
00:31:39.000 And I don't think it's talking out of turn to say that Tony was an addict.
00:31:44.000 He lived his life like an addict.
00:31:46.000 Whether it was drugs or drinking or smoking cigarettes or jujitsu or work or travel or romantic relationships.
00:31:55.000 I mean, he just...
00:31:57.000 You know, just went after more and more and more stimulating experiences in a way that it didn't ever seem there was going to be enough of whatever it was to fill that place, you know, that addicts are trying to fill.
00:32:10.000 When we were drinking in Montana, that was one of the things that was shocking that he wanted to keep going.
00:32:16.000 Like, we were so drunk. 0.99
00:32:18.000 We were sitting around this campfire and we were fucking hammered. 0.99
00:32:21.000 And he's like, where's the fucking, where's the whiskey? 0.99
00:32:23.000 Is there any more whiskey? 0.99
00:32:24.000 And I'm like, you could really drink more right now?
00:32:26.000 Like, how could you do this?
00:32:28.000 Like, we're blasted.
00:32:29.000 Yeah.
00:32:30.000 I mean, he was a tall guy, but he was really skinny.
00:32:34.000 It was just sort of like, where are you putting this, dude?
00:32:36.000 This is crazy.
00:32:37.000 You've got no body fat.
00:32:38.000 Especially when he got into jiu-jitsu and developed a six-pack.
00:32:42.000 But what you saw on him, though, was his face.
00:32:46.000 His face was aging.
00:32:47.000 It was aging rapidly.
00:32:50.000 Just in the time that I knew him, you know, the years that I knew him from the, like, I don't know how many years it was, seven, whatever it was.
00:32:59.000 But during that time, he aged a lot.
00:33:02.000 Like, you could see it on the show in the last season or two.
00:33:07.000 It's like the lines in his face, he just looked puffy and worn out.
00:33:12.000 It just looked rough.
00:33:14.000 And that's where it went.
00:33:16.000 Yeah, I think, you know, I mean, that kind of lifestyle, or the multiple lifestyles that he had, you know, working as a cook, doing a shitload of drugs, drinking, smoking, you know, a couple packs of cigarettes a day, all of that, you know, plus he was, there's some actually some funny stuff in the book about his addiction to tanning.
00:33:34.000 He was like, obsessed with tanning.
00:33:37.000 Not like going to a tan.
00:33:38.000 I don't know if he ever went to a tanning bed.
00:33:39.000 He probably did.
00:33:40.000 But he would get in these tanning competitions with his cooks in the 80s.
00:33:45.000 And he was really competitive about wanting to be the most tan.
00:33:49.000 What?
00:33:50.000 Yeah.
00:33:51.000 Which I had no idea. 0.95
00:33:53.000 That's so ridiculous. 0.93
00:33:55.000 Oh, that's hilarious. 0.99
00:33:56.000 So I think that obviously catches up with you.
00:33:59.000 Yeah, sure.
00:34:00.000 I guess.
00:34:01.000 I don't know about that anymore.
00:34:02.000 I used to think that the sun is really bad for you.
00:34:06.000 But now I think it's like, how bad is sunscreen? 0.99
00:34:11.000 You know, that shit can't be good for you either. 0.99
00:34:14.000 It's probably not as bad as skin cancer. 1.00
00:34:16.000 I mean, I'm not a doctor, but, you know.
00:34:18.000 No, I'm not a doctor either.
00:34:20.000 But it's just, you know, obviously we need some sun for vitamin D. Yeah.
00:34:24.000 So what's going on with that?
00:34:27.000 I don't think that was what I was seeing in his face, though.
00:34:29.000 I was seeing it in booze.
00:34:31.000 Yeah, you know, he wasn't drinking that much.
00:34:34.000 Like when he was doing jujitsu, he was like very, you know, I don't say clean and sober, but he was rarely drinking.
00:34:41.000 He never would have booze at home.
00:34:43.000 I mean, again, these are things that he said on the record.
00:34:45.000 Yeah, no, we talked about it.
00:34:47.000 Yeah.
00:34:47.000 Yeah.
00:34:48.000 And he was, you know, because he was super into his cardio, so he wasn't smoking.
00:34:52.000 There was a point where he was getting ready for a competition where he was like, you know, I'm sure you've done this too, right?
00:34:58.000 It's like no, like only basically like boiled chicken with no salt, you know, and maybe like some vegetable, but really just like the no salt boiled chicken.
00:35:07.000 Well, he got no carb, but he went no carb, right?
00:35:10.000 Yeah.
00:35:10.000 Or very low carb.
00:35:11.000 Yeah.
00:35:11.000 Yeah.
00:35:12.000 Which, you know, I remember him telling me, like, you know, just life loses all of its meaning when you can't have salt.
00:35:18.000 You start, like, licking the sweat off your arm just to feel something, you know?
00:35:22.000 It's like, are you not in good enough shape?
00:35:24.000 I mean, I know you have to get extreme to weigh in.
00:35:27.000 But you really shouldn't do that anyway.
00:35:29.000 You should have probably consulted with a nutritionist.
00:35:31.000 That's a terrible way to handle it.
00:35:32.000 You run into these guys at the gym, these sort of, like, bro scientists.
00:35:38.000 And some of them still have like 1990s knowledge where you're supposed to eat like just plain chicken with no skin and broccoli and they don't really do that anymore.
00:35:48.000 Like most people, even if they're trying to lose some weight, they eat a lot of healthy fat.
00:35:54.000 Yeah, okay.
00:35:55.000 And they eat sugar and they eat salt.
00:35:57.000 Like you have to have a certain amount of glucose.
00:35:59.000 It's like it's even in like there's certain hydration supplements that are electrolyte supplements and they have sugar in them because that's the best way your body absorbs all the different electrolytes.
00:36:11.000 Okay.
00:36:12.000 Yeah, he definitely didn't.
00:36:13.000 Yeah.
00:36:13.000 Was subscribing to an old school system.
00:36:16.000 Yeah.
00:36:16.000 Well, we were talking about hormone replacement too and he's like, I got to find a quack.
00:36:20.000 That's what he said.
00:36:21.000 Yeah.
00:36:22.000 I go, no man, you should find someone who's gonna like do your blood work and comprehensively like go over it with you and like Too much effort.
00:36:31.000 Yeah, you want the quack that's going to give you the solution fast.
00:36:36.000 He just wanted to get juiced up so he could compete.
00:36:39.000 Well, when he was telling me he was training every day, I go, every day?
00:36:42.000 He goes, twice a day.
00:36:43.000 I go, what?
00:36:44.000 And he goes, yeah.
00:36:44.000 He goes, I'm doing drills, so I'm taking a private lesson, and then I'm taking a class after that.
00:36:49.000 I'm like, wow.
00:36:51.000 So for someone to go from nothing to that is crazy.
00:36:57.000 And I was like, how are your joints?
00:36:59.000 Like, how's your neck?
00:37:00.000 How's your back?
00:37:01.000 How are your elbows?
00:37:02.000 Because, like, those things are, like, it takes years to build up the sort of tendon strength and endurance to be able to do jiu-jitsu.
00:37:12.000 Especially, he's doing gay jiu-jitsu, so you're grabbing things all the time, so your hands are always sore. 1.00
00:37:18.000 Like, God.
00:37:20.000 Yeah, I mean, he did land himself briefly in the hospital with some injury.
00:37:24.000 It seemed like it was going to take him out of competition, and then, I don't know.
00:37:28.000 That was the groin one?
00:37:29.000 The groin tear?
00:37:30.000 I think, yeah. 0.96
00:37:32.000 There was one day where his ear got all fucked up, and he got, you know, the... 0.97
00:37:39.000 Cauliflower. 0.96
00:37:40.000 Yeah, and then they put on this ridiculous, like, big yellow, looked like a piece of Swiss cheese from a Tom and Jerry cartoon, and it was just kind of...
00:37:47.000 Yeah.
00:38:18.000 That's hilarious.
00:38:20.000 Did he get it drained?
00:38:22.000 I think so, probably.
00:38:23.000 I mean, he was pretty good.
00:38:23.000 I mean, there was definitely, in my job as his assistant, which I did for about 10 years, there was definitely a lot of, I got very familiar with all the doctors.
00:38:32.000 So there was, you know, there was the occasional draining or the chiropractor or the, you know, the skin doctor because there would be a weird staph infection from, you know, filthy mats or, you know, he really, yeah, he went really, really hard on the jujitsu.
00:38:46.000 But he was, you know, he was mentally, I mean, he was He was really happy.
00:38:51.000 You know, he was, I mean, he was, it was insufferable sometimes to listen to, like I said, but he was like, he had so much energy.
00:38:58.000 And he just was like, you know, the guys that would shoot on the show with him said it made such a difference.
00:39:03.000 If he would train in the morning, he would be Yeah.
00:39:08.000 I think human beings, men in particular, need a certain amount of physical conflict.
00:39:14.000 And I think most people don't get it.
00:39:16.000 And I think it's something that's built into just the human body.
00:39:21.000 And I think we have these reward systems that are...
00:39:25.000 Built into and designed so that your body can perform in adverse conditions.
00:39:32.000 Your body can deal with conflict, like physical conflict.
00:39:36.000 Your body can deal with physical struggle.
00:39:39.000 So because of that, there's actually...
00:39:41.000 Sort of an unmet requirement that most people have.
00:39:45.000 So they walk through life with this anxiety that they don't know where it's coming from.
00:39:50.000 And I think a lot of that anxiety stems from the fact that you're not meeting the human requirements.
00:39:56.000 Like the body has, especially the male body, and the mind has certain requirements for conflict.
00:40:02.000 Jiu-Jitsu meets all those.
00:40:04.000 So does trail running.
00:40:06.000 So does like CrossFit.
00:40:08.000 Like the reason why people get addicted to that stuff is because it's so difficult that it makes regular life easy.
00:40:14.000 Wow. 0.62
00:40:14.000 Like my friends who do CrossFit, what they love about it is it's so fucking hard, which seems like, why do you love something that's so hard? 0.62
00:40:22.000 Because in doing something hard, it makes regular life easy.
00:40:26.000 Because when you are doing these box jumps and you have 25 to go and your legs are rubber and you're like, I can't do this.
00:40:32.000 But you can.
00:40:33.000 And when you do do it, you get out of there.
00:40:36.000 Everything else is easy.
00:40:37.000 The guy cut you off. 1.00
00:40:38.000 Who gives a fuck? 1.00
00:40:39.000 The guy cut you off. 1.00
00:40:40.000 Who cares?
00:40:41.000 Who cares if you miss the light?
00:40:42.000 Who cares?
00:40:43.000 It doesn't have the same level of significance that it does if you don't have this physical conflict in your life.
00:40:52.000 That makes a lot of sense.
00:40:54.000 Yeah, so for a guy like him that was kind of tortured, I was so pumped.
00:40:57.000 Like I said, I was excited because finally there was something that he was really into that I could, like, I'm a black belt.
00:41:03.000 Like, I could say, ah, now I could tell you some stuff. 0.99
00:41:07.000 Like, before I just relied on you to tell me shit. 1.00
00:41:10.000 Yeah, yeah. 0.98
00:41:11.000 And he really respected, I mean, anybody that had an expertise in anything, you know, he was really, like, just very teachable, very willing to listen.
00:41:21.000 You know, he was really always about, you know, the more I know, the more I realize I don't know. 0.95
00:41:27.000 He had a great respect for people that were really doing whatever the fuck it was that they were doing. 0.80
00:41:38.000 People that were really committed to anything. 0.90
00:41:40.000 Really passionate about it.
00:41:44.000 He wanted to talk to me and Joey Diaz.
00:41:47.000 We did a show in Vegas.
00:41:49.000 And he came to the show with his then wife at the time.
00:41:53.000 And then afterwards we were talking because he was doing these book shows.
00:41:58.000 And he was like, how often do you turn over material?
00:42:01.000 If I come to a town, when do you think I should...
00:42:05.000 How long I should take...
00:42:07.000 And I was like, we generally do it like this.
00:42:09.000 And I was explaining, you don't want to come to a town with the same material that you were at six months ago.
00:42:14.000 You have to write new stuff.
00:42:16.000 Otherwise, don't come back.
00:42:17.000 Unless you have such an audience that more people are going to come to see you that haven't seen you before.
00:42:23.000 So we talked about the whole idea of stand-up, because he was kind of doing stand-up.
00:42:30.000 Yeah.
00:42:31.000 Yeah.
00:42:32.000 In fact, Bonnie McFarlane got him a spot at the Comedy Store.
00:42:37.000 Oh, really?
00:42:38.000 Maybe like a year before he died or maybe two years.
00:42:41.000 The store or the cellar?
00:42:42.000 I'm sorry, the cellar in New York.
00:42:44.000 Yeah, he was working out material for the book tour.
00:42:49.000 Wow.
00:42:50.000 And he actually had Bonnie helping him do some writing, too.
00:42:53.000 But he wanted to really feel what it was like to be, you know, to do that.
00:42:57.000 And so she got him like a, I don't know, five minutes.
00:42:59.000 Oh, that's cool.
00:43:00.000 Yeah.
00:43:00.000 And I didn't go, I mean, he didn't tell anybody, you know, which is smart.
00:43:04.000 It sounds like he did okay.
00:43:05.000 I think he really enjoyed it, you know, but it's like he really respected the craft of comedy, you know, and he understood that it was something you had to work at and develop just as much as anything else.
00:43:16.000 He certainly could have done it.
00:43:17.000 He would have got addicted to that, too.
00:43:19.000 He would have got sucked into that, and then he'd just be talking about stand-up all the time.
00:43:22.000 Right, right.
00:43:25.000 It's funny.
00:43:26.000 That is a thing that happens with people that get really, really, really good at things.
00:43:30.000 There's a guy named BJ Penn, and he's one of the greatest UFC fighters of all time.
00:43:35.000 He won the Mundiales, which is the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu World Championships, three years into training, which is unheard of.
00:43:43.000 Nobody's ever done that before.
00:43:45.000 Not only to get a black belt in three years is crazy, but to win the Mundialis in three years is even crazier.
00:43:49.000 And he and I were talking about this on the phone, and he was saying that he met this guy, and this guy was getting really good at jiu-jitsu, and he's like, man, that's incredible, you know, you're training hard.
00:44:01.000 And the guy suddenly goes, man, he goes, I'm addicted, just like you! 0.99
00:44:06.000 He goes, and then I realized, yeah, fuck, that's what it is. 1.00
00:44:09.000 I'm addicted. 1.00
00:44:11.000 But it's just a good thing.
00:44:13.000 It's being addicted to something that's actually beneficial as opposed to heroin.
00:44:18.000 Right, right.
00:44:19.000 Or booze. 0.61
00:44:20.000 Or anything.
00:44:21.000 Or women or anything. 0.98
00:44:22.000 I mean, you can get locked up in a relationship that's basically an addiction, too.
00:44:28.000 There's a lot of things that people do that...
00:44:31.000 They're just massive distractions and it's hard to parse that out in real time.
00:44:36.000 It's hard to figure out, is this good for me?
00:44:39.000 Am I just lost in this?
00:44:41.000 What's good and what's bad?
00:44:42.000 Yeah.
00:44:43.000 I think he knew to some extent that that's who he was and that's how he operated.
00:44:49.000 I think he had no interest in trying to moderate.
00:44:51.000 I think that was not at all interesting to him, you know?
00:44:54.000 Yeah.
00:44:55.000 I remember telling him that I was...
00:44:57.000 I said, I'll always have my phone on except, you know, I've started going to AA meetings.
00:45:01.000 And so in that hour, I turned my phone off. 0.99
00:45:03.000 And he's like, what the fuck do you want to go to AA for? 0.98
00:45:05.000 Like, he just... 1.00
00:45:06.000 It's like, that's a cult.
00:45:08.000 You know, he just...
00:45:09.000 I was like, okay, we'll...
00:45:11.000 That being said, I'm going to turn my phone off for an hour.
00:45:14.000 Did you enjoy AA? Yeah.
00:45:16.000 I'm still...
00:45:17.000 I mean, I know it's sort of like you're not supposed to talk about it, but I'm still very much...
00:45:20.000 I was in a meeting this morning.
00:45:21.000 For me, it's great.
00:45:22.000 How come you're not supposed to talk about it?
00:45:23.000 Because it's anonymous?
00:45:24.000 Yeah, I guess.
00:45:25.000 Yeah.
00:45:25.000 What is the idea about not talking about it?
00:45:27.000 Well, I think the idea is not sharing anything that you hear your fellows say.
00:45:32.000 Of course.
00:45:32.000 Yeah.
00:45:33.000 And I'm no historian or scholar of it, but I think that originally it was much more stigmatized to be an alcoholic. 0.98
00:45:40.000 So it was like, let's keep it on the down low while we get our shit together. 0.99
00:45:45.000 That makes sense. 0.97
00:45:45.000 So, yeah, I find it to be very, very helpful. 0.97
00:45:49.000 I wasn't a bad, rock-bottom alcoholic, but I was somebody who was on a bad path, and I have found it helpful for me.
00:45:59.000 Was it exacerbated by working with him?
00:46:02.000 Probably, to an extent. 1.00
00:46:03.000 I mean, you know, everyone's kind of responsible for their own shit, but... 0.99
00:46:07.000 No, you can blame him. 0.98
00:46:08.000 He's not here anymore.
00:46:09.000 I mean, I will say that I found a lot of the way that he lived to be very romantic and very inspiring, and, you know, I was kind of a mess, and I thought, well, you know, this is...
00:46:21.000 Tony would approve or I'd talk to him about whatever kind of messy shit was going on in my life because I knew he would think it was funny or he could relate.
00:46:31.000 So again, I don't want to blame him because it was on me, but for sure it was very much okay to be a little bit of a mess and to work for him. 0.98
00:46:41.000 As long as you got your shit done and you showed up on time and you were good at your job. 0.98
00:46:46.000 I don't think it was a problem. 0.99
00:46:47.000 I mean, certainly, you know, you saw there's a lot of drinking on those shoots.
00:46:53.000 Yeah.
00:46:53.000 So definitely, the way that he lived seemed very, very appealing to me.
00:47:01.000 Less so now, you know, obviously.
00:47:03.000 But yeah, I think it was hard for me as someone who identifies as an addict of a kind, it was hard for me to see him as an addict until I really sort of saw myself and what my own behaviors were.
00:47:17.000 Like, oh, that's why, you know, he did this or that or, you know.
00:47:20.000 In those moments, those moments of camaraderie and the moments of looseness and of booze and smoking, there's a funness to that.
00:47:33.000 There's a freedom to that.
00:47:36.000 And also, there's a bonding that goes along with that.
00:47:40.000 It's very hard to capture with sobriety.
00:47:43.000 And I'm not saying you need booze to have a fulfilled life, but I am saying that there's something that comes out of that, those moments.
00:47:53.000 There's like a certain wild rebelliousness that's so attractive.
00:48:00.000 And for a person like me, who's a comedian, you know, once a year we do Sober October.
00:48:07.000 Me and my buddies.
00:48:08.000 And we don't do anything.
00:48:10.000 We're allowed to smoke cigars for some reason, which we decide is kind of cheating because it does get you high a little bit.
00:48:15.000 But you realize how much you kind of lean on that.
00:48:21.000 How much it's fun to just, like, guys want to do a shot? 1.00
00:48:25.000 Let's do a fucking shot. 0.99
00:48:27.000 You clink glasses and it's like, woo! 1.00
00:48:30.000 And the next thing, you're hugging and bonding and it's like, there's a wildness to that.
00:48:35.000 Mm-hmm.
00:48:36.000 And there's a celebration of this rebellious, unknown aspect of life that comes from the romantic consumption of alcohol.
00:48:48.000 It's very attractive.
00:48:50.000 Yeah, absolutely.
00:48:51.000 And if you can sort of keep it in check, people who can drink and use drugs responsibly, like...
00:48:57.000 Excellent.
00:48:58.000 For me, it was like I'd start my engine and then not stop until I ran it into the wall.
00:49:05.000 It's not cute.
00:49:06.000 I have a kid.
00:49:09.000 It's not cute.
00:49:09.000 Yeah, I hear you.
00:49:11.000 It gets messy.
00:49:12.000 Yeah, it gets messy.
00:49:14.000 It's not necessary.
00:49:17.000 It's fun.
00:49:17.000 I had a real good time.
00:49:19.000 Yeah, that's the thing, right?
00:49:20.000 No one wants to say that. 0.99
00:49:21.000 And also, it makes some great fucking art. 0.99
00:49:24.000 God damn it. 1.00
00:49:25.000 So many musicians are just hammered. 0.99
00:49:27.000 You know, so many great poets.
00:49:29.000 Bukowski.
00:49:31.000 My buddy Lex read a Bukowski poem on the podcast the other day to end the podcast.
00:49:38.000 I was like, do you even write like that if you're not drunk?
00:49:41.000 I don't know.
00:49:44.000 I think it's possible.
00:49:46.000 I'm a giant Stephen King fan. 0.97
00:49:48.000 I fucking love Stephen King. 0.99
00:49:49.000 But I really love the stuff that he did when he was fucked up. 0.99
00:49:53.000 That's my favorite stuff. 0.77
00:49:55.000 My favorite stuff is the Carrie days.
00:49:59.000 The days where he was doing The Shining.
00:50:02.000 He was tortured.
00:50:05.000 And he was doing Blow and stuff.
00:50:07.000 Toilet paper up his nose.
00:50:09.000 His book on writing is amazing.
00:50:11.000 Have you ever read it?
00:50:11.000 Yes.
00:50:25.000 His best stuff was when he was fucked up. 0.99
00:50:27.000 Yeah. 0.99
00:50:28.000 Well, there's like an anxiety and a self-loathing and, you know, the euphoric highs that all kind of fuel that.
00:50:35.000 But, you know, it's not good if you're, you know, if you end up dead at the end of that.
00:50:39.000 You can't do any more writing.
00:50:40.000 Yeah, that's true, too.
00:50:41.000 Yeah.
00:50:42.000 I mean, that's true, too. 0.97
00:50:44.000 I mean, if he died at 50 and left behind all those great books that he wrote when he was fucked up, he would probably be even more romantic, unfortunately. 0.96
00:50:52.000 Yeah. 0.92
00:50:52.000 Yeah, look at Morrison and Hendrix and Joplin, they all died at 27, and Kurt Cobain, same thing, right? 0.92
00:50:59.000 Yeah, Amy Winehouse. 0.93
00:51:00.000 Right, we look at them like, oh, something about that.
00:51:03.000 Yeah, yeah.
00:51:04.000 Because there's a, you know, finite nature to life anyway.
00:51:08.000 True.
00:51:08.000 I mean, that's something I used to say a lot when I was drinking, like, life is short, you know?
00:51:12.000 Yeah.
00:51:12.000 And it is, but it's long too, you know?
00:51:16.000 Yeah.
00:51:17.000 Like, we're probably all going to linger around a lot longer than is optimal, unfortunately.
00:51:21.000 Yeah.
00:51:22.000 Maybe.
00:51:23.000 Who knows?
00:51:24.000 Science is pretty amazing. 0.99
00:51:25.000 They're coming up with some great shit. 0.99
00:51:27.000 You can do some pretty amazing things in your body as you age in 2021. When you're writing these books, did you take notes while you were working with him? 0.99
00:51:42.000 Did you have to go back and re-envision these moments in your mind?
00:51:48.000 How did you structure this?
00:51:50.000 Well, so the biography, the full title is Bourdain the Definitive Oral Biography.
00:51:55.000 So what that means is that this is not the strict, the biography that, you know, where the writer interviews a bunch of people and then writes their own thing.
00:52:05.000 This is, I did about 100 interviews with people who knew Tony from all aspects of his life.
00:52:13.000 And by and large, I let them tell their own story.
00:52:17.000 So this narrative, it starts at the beginning of his life and goes all the way to the end.
00:52:21.000 So it's pieces of those interviews sort of stitched together in a narrative.
00:52:26.000 So it starts with his mom and his brother talking about early life.
00:52:30.000 And I've got his...
00:52:43.000 You know, Tony told a lot of his story already in Kitchen Confidential.
00:52:58.000 He started from Early childhood memories to about age 40. So a lot of that story is already out there.
00:53:05.000 But it's, you know, Tony was a storyteller, and he was not averse to kind of sanding down the edges of a story or embellishing something or...
00:53:16.000 As you do to make it like a really good story that you can tell and that has good beats and lands well.
00:53:23.000 So even the stuff that we know about from Kitchen Confidential, there's a lot more nuance there.
00:53:28.000 People that were there with him in the bad old days of the 80s in kitchens and in Provincetown as a teenager.
00:53:35.000 So all of that is in the book.
00:53:37.000 So it was...
00:53:38.000 It was about asking the right questions and listening to people, letting them really tell their stories and helping them to really remember as much as they could about him.
00:53:48.000 How long did it take you to write it?
00:53:51.000 It was about two years.
00:53:53.000 I started shortly after he died, as much as I could.
00:53:57.000 I mean, you know, the few months after he died were pretty rough.
00:54:00.000 There was not much getting done.
00:54:02.000 But at least to have the book started, to have something to work on was really valuable to me, just to kind of keep moving forward in life.
00:54:11.000 So it was...
00:54:12.000 This one took about two years.
00:54:14.000 And then the one that came out in the spring called World Travel, I was working on it simultaneously, but a little quicker because it was due, the manuscript was due before the biography.
00:54:25.000 And World Travel is a book that we actually started working on together, Tony and I, before he died.
00:54:30.000 We didn't get too far into it, but we did start and it was intended to be co-authored with a living author.
00:54:37.000 And of course, that changed quite a bit after he died.
00:54:40.000 But I did want to Make something of it.
00:54:43.000 So it's a version of the book that we had intended to write together.
00:54:47.000 And what's the premise of that book?
00:54:49.000 So world travel is basically an atlas of the world according to Tony Bourdain.
00:54:54.000 So it's not every place that he went in the world because there are just too many of them, but it was all the places that he truly loved that he wanted to recommend that you go to.
00:55:04.000 So it's a It's like a little travel guide, but it's got tons of his writing in it.
00:55:10.000 So I ended up taking a lot of stuff from his television voiceover or stuff that he had written in books or stuff that he had said in interviews and kind of wove it into this travel book format.
00:55:21.000 I mean, it's not like your typical voters or, you know, whatever the travel books Lonely Planet, but it has aspects of that.
00:55:28.000 It has a lot of practical information, but it has Tony, you know, talking about getting the shits in Brazil after eating the Dende oil or, you know, stuff that's very specific to him and his voice.
00:55:40.000 Well, he literally traveled to almost every place you could go to.
00:55:46.000 Yeah.
00:55:46.000 I mean, he did shows in Libya, right?
00:55:50.000 Yeah.
00:55:51.000 Libya.
00:55:52.000 And Libya after Gaddafi's death, which was essentially a failed state, right?
00:55:58.000 It was a very dangerous place to be.
00:56:01.000 Yeah.
00:56:01.000 That sounded...
00:56:02.000 I wasn't there, but it sounded like it was among the most dangerous shoots that they did.
00:56:06.000 And there was a lot of...
00:56:07.000 There were a lot of dicey moments, I think, behind the scenes, but it's a beautiful episode.
00:56:11.000 And he really talks about how, yeah, this is what you see on the news and CNN, but here's some people.
00:56:19.000 Here's some kids playing with a balloon.
00:56:22.000 Yeah, he went to 93 countries, and a lot of them more than once.
00:56:28.000 And he traveled extensively around the United States.
00:56:31.000 And not until he was 40, which is really wild, right?
00:56:34.000 Yeah, yeah.
00:56:35.000 He really had traveled very little.
00:56:37.000 When he wrote Kitchen Confidential, he had been to the Caribbean a bunch, and he had been to Tokyo once, and that was kind of it.
00:56:43.000 Crazy.
00:56:44.000 Yeah, yeah.
00:56:44.000 And he became like the most traveled man in the world.
00:56:47.000 Whenever I would travel somewhere for comedy or the UFC, I would text him, where do I eat?
00:56:54.000 And he would help you out?
00:56:56.000 Not just tell you, but tell you in great detail.
00:56:59.000 Like, what's the history of the place and why and, you know, you gotta go here and you gotta do this and you gotta do that.
00:57:07.000 It was just the coolest thing.
00:57:08.000 Yeah, he was a good friend to have that way.
00:57:10.000 He was like very, you know, if he was your friend, he was your friend like a thousand percent, you know?
00:57:16.000 He was really into Vietnam, which I thought was really interesting.
00:57:20.000 It made me want to go to Vietnam. 0.99
00:57:23.000 Have you gone?
00:57:24.000 I still have not.
00:57:25.000 But I was like, really?
00:57:26.000 He's like, my favorite place to go.
00:57:28.000 I'm like, Vietnam! 0.63
00:57:31.000 Yeah.
00:57:31.000 Well, you know, he was super interested in Graham Greene, The Quiet American, and Heart of Darkness, and Apocalypse Now.
00:57:39.000 I mean, Apocalypse Now was sort of a seminal film, you know?
00:57:42.000 And, you know, being of the age that he was, I mean, kind of growing up with the Vietnam War going on when he was in his adolescence, I think it made a big difference.
00:57:52.000 But yeah, then he got there and it was, you know, and it is an extraordinary place.
00:57:56.000 I mean, it really, I was lucky.
00:57:57.000 I went with him once to Hue, right in the center of the country.
00:58:01.000 And I got it.
00:58:02.000 I understood, you know, it's like, it's just so the pace of life is different.
00:58:05.000 The smells, all the scooters on the street.
00:58:08.000 I mean, it truly, you feel like you are.
00:58:10.000 I mean, there's a lot of places in the world you can go now and it's like, Am I in Austin?
00:58:14.000 Am I in Beijing?
00:58:15.000 Am I in, you know, wherever?
00:58:18.000 Like, it's all, everything looks somewhat similar.
00:58:21.000 Every place has got a, you know, au bon pan and a Starbucks, you know?
00:58:24.000 But Vietnam, by and large, has not succumbed to that level of kind of homogenization yet.
00:58:31.000 I'm sure it's coming, you know?
00:58:33.000 But it's very much a way.
00:58:36.000 And I think he really loved that, you know?
00:58:38.000 And the food.
00:58:38.000 I mean, you know, it's really good.
00:58:41.000 Yeah.
00:58:41.000 I've never had, you know, I don't think I've ever had Vietnamese food ever.
00:58:45.000 If I think about it, like maybe I have somewhere.
00:58:49.000 I don't, you know.
00:58:50.000 Yeah.
00:58:50.000 Houston apparently has a lot of really good Vietnamese food.
00:58:53.000 So I think, you know, wherever there were communities of displaced Vietnamese in the U.S., Louisiana.
00:58:59.000 What is pho?
00:59:00.000 That's the beef noodle soup.
00:59:03.000 Right, but who makes that?
00:59:04.000 That's Vietnamese.
00:59:05.000 Okay, I've had that.
00:59:06.000 Yeah.
00:59:07.000 Right.
00:59:07.000 I've had that.
00:59:08.000 That's pretty damn good.
00:59:09.000 Yeah.
00:59:10.000 Although, I don't think I said it right.
00:59:12.000 It's not pho, but I don't think it's pho.
00:59:14.000 It's like pho, right?
00:59:16.000 Pho, yeah.
00:59:16.000 I think it's pho.
00:59:17.000 I never quite know how to say it.
00:59:18.000 Yeah, but when people do say it correctly, I get annoyed.
00:59:21.000 I'm like, oh really?
00:59:22.000 Let's go have some pho.
00:59:24.000 Yeah.
00:59:26.000 I feel like, you know, it's almost like a little trap.
00:59:29.000 You know, spell it P-H-O. Are you playing that?
00:59:33.000 Fuh. 0.60
00:59:33.000 Fuh? 0.60
00:59:34.000 Fuh? 0.98
00:59:35.000 It's like a question.
00:59:36.000 Yeah.
00:59:37.000 But it's like, it's a trap.
00:59:38.000 It's because you know it's spelled differently than it's pronounced.
00:59:43.000 And if you say it correct, you know, this is like a certain annoying thing when someone says Argentina.
00:59:49.000 You know, like, you know what I mean?
00:59:50.000 Like, they say things the right way.
00:59:53.000 Yeah, we used to call it Trebeking.
00:59:54.000 I don't know if we still do.
00:59:55.000 Alex Trebeking?
00:59:56.000 Yeah.
00:59:58.000 Yeah.
00:59:59.000 He was really interested in the different styles of humans.
01:00:06.000 Tell me.
01:00:07.000 Yeah.
01:00:07.000 He loved that the people in Vietnam had such a distinctly different way of being than, say, people in England.
01:00:16.000 There was a way that they just...
01:00:20.000 There's an easygoing way that they existed.
01:00:23.000 They, for whatever reason, apparently have no resentment to Americans, which he found fascinating. 0.99
01:00:30.000 Like, how the fuck are you not mad at Americans? 1.00
01:00:34.000 Yeah. 0.99
01:00:34.000 Well, I think, I mean, my understanding is that, first of all, there have been so many wars, you know, before that. 0.99
01:00:40.000 They're just like, all right, come and get us, you know, fuck you. 1.00
01:00:42.000 Like the Chinese, the, you know, the French, like everyone has fucked with us. 1.00
01:00:50.000 A lot of the people are dead. 1.00
01:00:51.000 You know, it's a very, very young country.
01:00:54.000 I forget what the percentage is, but it's like a huge percentage of the people that are living now in the country were born after the war.
01:01:01.000 So they don't have a memory of it, you know?
01:01:03.000 But yeah, I mean, again, I don't claim to be a scholar or historian, but that was my understanding of how it could be possible, right? 0.98
01:01:10.000 Because like, yeah, we really visited some pretty bad shit on that country. 0.99
01:01:14.000 Yeah. 0.99
01:01:15.000 Yeah.
01:01:15.000 But, you know, in talking to him, one of the things that he was really interested in is just the authentic way people existed wherever you went.
01:01:26.000 They varied so much.
01:01:28.000 And to really understand people, to really get an appreciation of all the amazing things this world has to offer, you kind of have to go to all these different places.
01:01:37.000 To see.
01:01:38.000 And every time you go, it's like it removes a little layer of the onion.
01:01:41.000 You just get a little bit better understanding of what it means to be a human being on Earth.
01:01:46.000 And that there isn't just this one set sort of culture that we're so accustomed to, particularly in America, where we're kind of arrogant about our culture. 0.99
01:01:56.000 Like, this is the shit. 0.99
01:01:58.000 We're America. 1.00
01:01:59.000 Fuck you. 1.00
01:01:59.000 And, you know, then you go to other places and you go, oh, okay. 1.00
01:02:03.000 Why are they so happy in Thailand?
01:02:05.000 You know, like...
01:02:06.000 Like, what's going on?
01:02:07.000 Like, why are they so, why are they celebrate so much in Brazil?
01:02:12.000 You know, as you do visit all these different places, I think he had this almost bottomless appetite for that sort of exposure to new cultures and meeting new people.
01:02:27.000 And was really good at listening and being able to hear and engage with an argument or a point of view that didn't match his, which I think, you know, I mean, there's a million reasons why I wish he were still here.
01:02:42.000 But that is one of the, you know, right at the top is this capacity that he had to have a conversation with people who disagreed with him, you know, without just trying to shut them down.
01:02:52.000 I mean, he had very strong opinions.
01:03:06.000 Yeah, it's...
01:03:15.000 It's a very valuable thing if you can do it, to be able to just talk to people, even if you disagree with them.
01:03:23.000 And it's really rewarding to have a conversation with someone where you completely disagree with them, but you're very friendly.
01:03:30.000 And at the end, you really enjoy that person's company and you actually like them.
01:03:35.000 There's quite a few people I have on this podcast where I agree with very little of what they have to say.
01:03:40.000 But I like to talk to them, especially if they're kind, if they're nice people.
01:03:44.000 And then we sort of have this interesting relationship over the years of these kind of conversations, where they know that I'm very different than them, and I see things different, but we're nice to each other, and so we can talk about stuff.
01:03:57.000 And so I can find out what it's like to be this person who thinks about things politically, socially, religiously, sexually.
01:04:06.000 They think so different than me.
01:04:09.000 It's real valuable.
01:04:11.000 But people are so dogmatic in their perspectives.
01:04:14.000 And they're defending their position like they're defending themselves.
01:04:21.000 These ideas are themselves.
01:04:24.000 It's not just an idea.
01:04:26.000 And it's very unfortunate that we... 1.00
01:04:28.000 There's nothing wrong with shutting down morons. 1.00
01:04:31.000 There's nothing wrong with it. 1.00
01:04:32.000 It's fun.
01:04:32.000 I love watching it on YouTube.
01:04:34.000 There's nothing wrong with arguing your position.
01:04:38.000 But there's also a great benefit in listening to how other people see things.
01:04:44.000 And he definitely was really good at that.
01:04:46.000 And not just really good at that.
01:04:48.000 There was a genuine enthusiasm about these kind of conversations with people.
01:04:53.000 Definitely.
01:04:54.000 I mean, that was like the only word in his Twitter bio was enthusiast.
01:04:59.000 Yes.
01:05:00.000 It's beautiful.
01:05:02.000 Yeah, and that's really what it is.
01:05:04.000 You know, from everything, like, one of the most enthusiastic things he ever told me was how disgusting fermented shark meat was in Iceland. 0.97
01:05:15.000 He was, like, fucking animated with his hands. 0.99
01:05:18.000 He's like, it's fucking... 1.00
01:05:20.000 Fucking disgusting! 1.00
01:05:21.000 It's the most disgusting thing! 1.00
01:05:23.000 And I was like, wow!
01:05:26.000 Because that was the single thing. 0.99
01:05:27.000 Like I said, what is the grossest shit you've ever had to experience when you're trying out these different cultures? 1.00
01:05:33.000 Because I've got a pretty wide palate. 0.99
01:05:35.000 I love all kinds of different kinds of foods.
01:05:37.000 Very spicy foods.
01:05:39.000 But he's like, that's the one.
01:05:41.000 Did you ever have that?
01:05:42.000 No, no.
01:05:44.000 I mean...
01:05:44.000 I want to try it.
01:05:45.000 Yeah, I mean, it kind of makes it seem so unappealing.
01:05:48.000 I might try.
01:05:49.000 Yeah, I don't know.
01:05:50.000 I'm all in.
01:05:51.000 It seems awful.
01:05:51.000 If I go to Iceland, it's the first thing I'm eating, 100%.
01:05:54.000 I want to experience that pickled shark or that fermented shark meat.
01:05:58.000 It just sounds like full survival food, right?
01:06:00.000 Yeah.
01:06:00.000 You're just basically trying not to die.
01:06:03.000 Yeah. 1.00
01:06:03.000 And then all the people that are alive all these years later just kind of celebrating the fact that their ancestors survived off this dog shit. 1.00
01:06:10.000 Right, right. 0.99
01:06:11.000 That's like probably the most fermented food you could have, right?
01:06:15.000 Like real good for your gut flora if it doesn't, you know, kill you.
01:06:18.000 Maybe good.
01:06:19.000 Might not eat. 1.00
01:06:20.000 Well, they're fucking animals over there. 1.00
01:06:22.000 You know, like they have some huge human beings. 1.00
01:06:24.000 Yeah.
01:06:24.000 Like Iceland produces an extraordinary amount of the strongest men in the world.
01:06:28.000 Oh. 0.99
01:06:29.000 Yeah, like when they have those world strongman competition, they're fucking Vikings. 0.99
01:06:33.000 All right. 0.99
01:06:33.000 These are leftover marauders. 0.99
01:06:35.000 So they know.
01:06:36.000 They're huge people.
01:06:37.000 Like, have you ever seen, like, the strongmen from Vikings?
01:06:40.000 No.
01:06:41.000 There was a vice piece on it many years ago trying to, like, decipher.
01:06:47.000 They were trying to figure out, like, why do so many men who win strongest men in the world come from Iceland?
01:06:53.000 Mm.
01:06:53.000 And I think it really is just Viking DNA, like this idea that there was these giant marauders that showed up, a lot of them on mushrooms, by the way.
01:07:02.000 That was the thing.
01:07:04.000 They would take psilocybin and then go on these marauding raids.
01:07:10.000 Wow.
01:07:11.000 Huge, giant, mushroomed up men.
01:07:13.000 And now they're throwing, you know, barrels.
01:07:16.000 Yeah, here it is.
01:07:17.000 Here's the Vaisvies, the giants of Iceland.
01:07:19.000 So this dude goes over to Iceland and sees all these men who are competing in this Strongest Man competition.
01:07:26.000 And there's not that many people in Iceland, too, which is kind of crazy.
01:07:31.000 Like, it's not, like, the biggest place in the world.
01:07:35.000 Wow.
01:07:36.000 Wow.
01:07:36.000 Wild.
01:07:37.000 Now, you guys went hunting together, right?
01:07:39.000 You and Tony went pheasant hunting.
01:07:41.000 Yeah, I had gotten into hunting while I knew him.
01:07:44.000 I had gotten into hunting because I had come to this sort of ideological impasse in my life where I was like, okay, like, you're... 0.99
01:07:56.000 You claim to be a person who thinks things through and you care about life and the world around you, but you're eating fucking Jack in the Box, right? 0.98
01:08:05.000 What's in there? 1.00
01:08:07.000 And I would watch too many of those goddamn PETA videos and I was like, okay. 0.99
01:08:11.000 I'm either going to do one of two things, I decided. 0.99
01:08:13.000 I'm either going to become a hunter or I'm going to become a vegetarian.
01:08:16.000 Those are my two options.
01:08:17.000 And I had done vegetarianism when I was competing. 0.98
01:08:20.000 Back in my martial arts competing days, because I was trying to make a weight class that I was too big for, and I'd starve myself, and I was really fucked up. 0.94
01:08:30.000 I did it the wrong way, clearly. 0.89
01:08:32.000 But then when I went back to eating meat, I felt so much better.
01:08:35.000 And then it was like the best of my competition years were all I ate so much meat.
01:08:41.000 And then I was like, you know, an older person trying to think about what my place in the world is, And seeing these videos, I'm sure they don't represent most farming, but it was enough to know that that was out there and that perhaps I had participated in that.
01:09:00.000 So I got into hunting.
01:09:02.000 And that's actually how I met Mo Fallon.
01:09:04.000 I met Mo because Steve Rinella was the star of the show Meat Eater, and Mo was the director of the show, and that's how we met.
01:09:20.000 When, you know, he and I had talked about hunting, like, he had done some hunting with, um, what's that gentleman's name in England?
01:09:26.000 Marco?
01:09:28.000 Oh, Marco Pierre White.
01:09:29.000 Yeah, Marco Pierre White.
01:09:30.000 I, um, so I know he had done some hunting with him, and remember he shot a deer and they smeared blood on his face.
01:09:37.000 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
01:09:38.000 And so we talked about, like, doing stuff for the show, and he said, you know, have you ever been pheasant hunting?
01:09:43.000 I said, no, let's go.
01:09:45.000 Sounds like fun.
01:09:46.000 It looks like fun.
01:09:47.000 It was just for me an excuse to do something with him.
01:09:50.000 Yeah, yeah.
01:09:51.000 I think a lot of people, that was his form of friendship with a lot of people, was we gotta have a reason to be working together so that we can have a reason to hang out.
01:10:00.000 Yeah.
01:10:00.000 So, yeah, I always love those hunting scenes.
01:10:04.000 I grew up in a, my dad's a big hunter, still is a big hunter, so I, I always knew my parents were going to like that episode and not complain about it.
01:10:13.000 It was always interesting to see him, Tony.
01:10:17.000 He was almost like travel host Ken in a way.
01:10:20.000 You put him in the hunting gear and he hunts and then you put him in some other thing.
01:10:24.000 He was so adaptable in that way.
01:10:26.000 For somebody who didn't handle a gun very much in his life, he did all right.
01:10:32.000 Yeah.
01:10:32.000 He shot a bird that day.
01:10:33.000 I didn't.
01:10:34.000 Yeah.
01:10:34.000 There was duck hunting in France that he did pretty well in.
01:10:38.000 I'm sure there was some magic of editing at times, too.
01:10:43.000 Well, he was enthusiastic about stuff.
01:10:45.000 And when you're enthusiastic about stuff, you can figure it out.
01:10:50.000 You do it.
01:10:51.000 He had a lot of horsepower.
01:10:53.000 He knew how to dig into things.
01:10:57.000 It was a fun experience.
01:11:01.000 I'd never been pheasant hunting before, and it's a fun experience, too, because you're just kind of walking through these fields hoping these birds freak out and fly away.
01:11:09.000 And you've got to be ready at any moment.
01:11:11.000 And the dogs.
01:11:12.000 I mean, that's a cool aspect of it, too.
01:11:14.000 There's a lot of moving parts.
01:11:16.000 And then there was the cooking at the end.
01:11:17.000 It was really cool because he cooked for everybody.
01:11:19.000 So we were eating this freshly killed bird and some steaks and some other stuff and doing it by the firelight.
01:11:29.000 It was fun.
01:11:31.000 It was wild. 1.00
01:11:33.000 But I remember going home going, man, that motherfucker drinks. 1.00
01:11:38.000 Because I had such a headache the next day. 1.00
01:11:41.000 And I was like, how does he do this all the time?
01:11:44.000 He had certain things.
01:11:46.000 I mean, he also could get by on very little sleep.
01:11:48.000 I mean, when he was writing Kitchen Confidential, he would talk about how he would work until 11, go out, drink until 1, go home and sleep for a few hours and get up and write.
01:12:00.000 And whether or not that was sort of a little bit of self-mythologizing, maybe he didn't do that every day, but he did it enough to very quickly write a best-selling book.
01:12:11.000 So there was something there.
01:12:13.000 Well, he was very appreciative of hard work.
01:12:18.000 Like hard work meant a lot to him.
01:12:20.000 Punctuality meant a lot to him.
01:12:23.000 He had a certain ethic that he lived his life by that it carried over into all the other aspects of his life.
01:12:37.000 Yeah, definitely.
01:12:39.000 There's writings, everything.
01:12:41.000 Yeah.
01:12:41.000 I mean, I think you have to credit the kitchen for that.
01:12:46.000 Whatever kind of fuck-up you are in the rest of your life, when you show up in the kitchen, it doesn't matter. 0.97
01:12:51.000 You've got to do your prep list. 0.99
01:12:53.000 You've got to be ready for service.
01:12:54.000 You've got to make the plates when the stuff gets ordered.
01:12:58.000 There's just no two ways about it.
01:13:01.000 It's a military-style precision and...
01:13:06.000 Well, in best case scenario.
01:13:07.000 I mean, it's also much sloppier than the military, I would think, in most cases.
01:13:11.000 But pirate ship maybe is a better metaphor.
01:13:15.000 I always love how he gave so much credit to the cooks that were working underneath him, too.
01:13:20.000 And he was like, the backbone of this city is these immigrant cooks that come in, and some of them can barely even speak English, and they're the people that are serving people and making these amazing meals in these incredible restaurants.
01:13:35.000 Mm-hmm.
01:13:35.000 Yeah, guys from Ecuador and Mexico, that is 90% of the cooks in Manhattan.
01:13:43.000 And he would shine light on that.
01:13:44.000 He wanted them to get the shine.
01:13:47.000 That meant a lot to him.
01:13:48.000 Yeah, call them out by name and really acknowledge that they're incredibly skilled, incredibly hard workers, cheerfully sweating 12 hours a day making beef bourguignon and french fries.
01:14:01.000 Yeah.
01:14:03.000 It's a wild life, that kitchen life.
01:14:06.000 The people that do it, they almost universally tend to party.
01:14:10.000 Oh, yeah.
01:14:11.000 Oh, yeah.
01:14:12.000 It is a drunk, drunk profession.
01:14:15.000 Like, no question.
01:14:17.000 But it's also, it's like, it's a profession that is celebrating this sort of extravagance of dining, right?
01:14:25.000 Of consumption.
01:14:27.000 You're consuming these incredible meals and you want to have great wine and a great whiskey and, you know, there's something to all that that it kind of fits in together.
01:14:37.000 Mm-hmm.
01:14:37.000 Yeah, it's hedonism as a product and hedonism as a lifestyle, but, you know, also as a way to sort of dull the pain of, you know, your aching body and your tiny paycheck and your busted up relationships.
01:14:52.000 I mean, it is, you know, it's really Island of the Misfit Toys.
01:14:56.000 It really is.
01:14:57.000 In a lot of ways, it's a lot like comedians in the misfit toy aspect of it.
01:15:01.000 Not in the hard work aspect.
01:15:03.000 The comedy world is so much easier.
01:15:05.000 But there's something about that.
01:15:06.000 It's like, oh, you guys are like kindred spirits in a lot of ways.
01:15:09.000 You're just more tempered by your profession because your profession requires so much of you.
01:15:16.000 Yeah.
01:15:16.000 Yeah.
01:15:17.000 I mean, it's easy to forget that he was in the trenches, Tony, for close to 30 years, just pretty much nonstop cooking.
01:15:26.000 The crazy thing is that that life...
01:15:28.000 I mean, I don't think anybody should work for too little pay, right?
01:15:32.000 But the ones who do are really amazing.
01:15:34.000 It's like, why is that?
01:15:36.000 Why is it that these people that do struggle and do have all these obstacles and all these problems and yet keep showing up every day, they're so exceptional.
01:15:48.000 So many of those people that I meet are so interesting.
01:15:52.000 They're the ones I want to talk to at the bar.
01:15:54.000 They're the ones I want to sit next to.
01:15:55.000 I mean, it's a certain, maybe it's another form of addiction, or it's just, I mean, yeah, all the cooks and chefs that I know, it's just, it is who they are fundamentally.
01:16:05.000 I mean, you could leave the business and go sell used cars or whatever, but fundamentally, you're always going to be a cook and a chef and have that thing.
01:16:13.000 Yeah.
01:16:14.000 Maybe it is a thing, like an addiction thing in a lot of ways.
01:16:17.000 Because there's a funny aspect to it where it's hard work, but you have to keep up.
01:16:27.000 It's not hard work like you're digging a hole and you have a certain pace that you can go at and you can dig that hole all day.
01:16:36.000 No, the plates are coming in.
01:16:38.000 Like, let's go.
01:16:39.000 Like, you have to.
01:16:40.000 And so I think there's probably an addiction to the rhythm of it, an addiction to the requirements of it.
01:16:46.000 Absolutely.
01:16:47.000 When you get into that flow state and, I mean, at the highest level or even just a chef of a, you know, mid-level steakhouse, I mean, they're Taking the tickets.
01:16:56.000 They're firing the plates.
01:16:57.000 They're watching this guy, that guy. 0.99
01:16:59.000 They see the garbage needs to go out. 0.93
01:17:00.000 They've got a manager and a waiter on their shoulder.
01:17:03.000 It's air traffic control.
01:17:07.000 It's very undersung, I think, the level of skill and concentration that goes into it.
01:17:12.000 So of course you want to drink 1,800 beers at the end of the night.
01:17:16.000 It's so stressful.
01:17:18.000 Was Kitchen Confidential really the only time where anybody had ever really kind of nailed that in book form?
01:17:25.000 I think so.
01:17:26.000 I mean, I think it definitely was a completely fresh perspective at that time.
01:17:30.000 I think the precursor is Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell, which I think was published 1920 or something.
01:17:38.000 So it had been a while since there was...
01:17:40.000 And that's about Kitchen Wife? 1.00
01:17:41.000 Yeah.
01:17:42.000 Really?
01:17:42.000 Was George Orwell a writer and slash...
01:17:45.000 As a young man, he worked in some big, very punishing kitchens.
01:17:51.000 And labor conditions, not great in those eras, in those cities.
01:17:57.000 But after that, it was really not much.
01:17:59.000 And then Tony kind of broke down the door.
01:18:02.000 I had just started working as a food writer a little bit on the side when Kitchen Confidential came out.
01:18:08.000 And everything was about just smooth luxury.
01:18:12.000 Everything you were writing about was...
01:18:14.000 Golf courses and big steaks and beautiful wines and nothing ever about the real dirty business of what actually goes on in restaurants.
01:18:23.000 So I think he pissed off and scared a lot of people with that book.
01:18:27.000 I think there's a lot of reasons to not want That kind of information out there.
01:18:33.000 And after Kitchen Confidential, I think there were any number of other people that tried to do it, but there's only one.
01:18:40.000 There's almost no point in trying to write a kitchen memoir.
01:18:44.000 It's just like, that's the one.
01:18:47.000 Yeah, yeah.
01:18:49.000 You're always going to know that you've read that book.
01:18:52.000 Yeah, yeah.
01:18:55.000 That's part of the problem, right?
01:18:57.000 Yeah.
01:18:57.000 And same with travel TV. I mean, you know, and again, I talk about it a little bit in the biography that a number of people said, you know, people who work in television, they get all these pitches like, this is going to be the next Bourdain or the Bourdain of this or the Bourdain of that.
01:19:11.000 And they're like, you know, fuck you. 0.99
01:19:13.000 It's done. 1.00
01:19:14.000 There is no Bourdain of, you know, you can have a travel show or whatever, but like, don't try and replicate that.
01:19:20.000 There isn't going to be another one.
01:19:23.000 Yeah, that is the disgusting language of the producer.
01:19:26.000 Yeah.
01:19:26.000 The producer pitching the show.
01:19:28.000 You gotta have your, you know, it's whatever, it's this meets that.
01:19:33.000 Yep, always.
01:19:35.000 Yeah, there's no way you can just, yeah.
01:19:37.000 Unless you have something that's already successful in some independent way, like on YouTube or something like that.
01:19:43.000 Yeah, yeah.
01:19:44.000 When you say you were a food writer, what does that entail?
01:19:48.000 Would you review restaurants or...?
01:19:50.000 No, I was never a reviewer.
01:19:52.000 It was, you know, writing about maybe talking to a chef who has something interesting going on using a new or interesting ingredient or, you know, I did a lot of like very just basic kind of service stuff like this, you know, new restaurant opened up in this place and here's 25 words about what their menu is and what the dining room looks like.
01:20:12.000 I did a lot of recipe writing.
01:20:15.000 I went to Sri Lanka, actually with Tony.
01:20:17.000 I went to Sri Lanka and spent a lot of time on my own learning about Sri Lankan home cooking and got recipes from these different women who would teach me what they were doing and then wrote a feature about Sri Lanka.
01:20:30.000 What is the style of cooking in Sri Lanka?
01:20:33.000 It's very similar to Indian.
01:20:35.000 Obviously, you know, they're very close geographically, but it's a lot punchier.
01:20:40.000 There's a lot of roasted whole spices.
01:20:43.000 Very little dairy is used.
01:20:45.000 I mean, of course, you know, Indian cuisine is a huge, you know, it's varied, you know, it's such a big place.
01:20:50.000 Sri Lankan tends to be a lot of coconut meat and coconut milk, super intense spices, a lot of warm spices, not a ton of meat, you know, a lot of seafood, because they're a little island nation.
01:21:03.000 So it's, you know, it's obviously related to Indian, but it's really its own thing, too.
01:21:09.000 Really interesting, delicious cuisine.
01:21:11.000 Super, super spicy.
01:21:13.000 Now, how complicated is it to recreate dishes like that?
01:21:15.000 If you're a person who goes to Sri Lanka and you sort of learn from someone who's cooking specific dishes over there and then you write down the ingredients, can you even get most of the ingredients in America?
01:21:29.000 And putting it together in the way they cook, how specific is their implementation?
01:21:37.000 Yeah, it's not.
01:21:38.000 I mean, it's a challenge.
01:21:38.000 I'd say now with the internet, there were very few ingredients that I couldn't get back in the States.
01:21:46.000 There were a few things that I picked up in Sri Lanka because I knew I wouldn't be able to get that specific spice blend or certain preserved fruits and stuff.
01:21:55.000 But for the most part, anything you want, you can get it now, as long as you're willing to pay sometimes exorbitant shipping.
01:22:01.000 And you just do your best.
01:22:03.000 I mean, I'm not going to cook something exactly the way that this auntie taught me to do it, but I took a lot of notes, I took a lot of pictures, I took video in some cases, voice recording, to try and get as close to it as possible.
01:22:18.000 And then when you do that and you try to recreate it, how difficult is it to recreate it on your own?
01:22:24.000 Depends.
01:22:24.000 I mean, sometimes if it's a straightforward stew or something, it's like, well, you just follow the steps.
01:22:29.000 And, you know, if you know what you're doing and you've taken careful notes, then you can get pretty close.
01:22:34.000 Maybe not.
01:22:35.000 It's not always going to be as good or as exactly right, but you can get pretty close.
01:22:39.000 There were some things, though, like there's a dish called hoppers, which is a fermented rice flour pancake.
01:22:44.000 And it was just, I mean, it was a disaster trying to recreate that, you know?
01:22:48.000 It's just, I just couldn't do it.
01:22:49.000 It was gross, you know?
01:22:50.000 And I just, at some point I just gave up and was like, that's not something that, you know, if I can't replicate it myself at home, I'm not going to write this recipe and tell somebody that's reading the magazine to try it, you know?
01:23:01.000 Right, of course.
01:23:02.000 What was it like you tried that over there, though?
01:23:04.000 Yeah.
01:23:21.000 I just realized this is not an endeavor that's worth it for my dollar a word article for this very small circulation magazine.
01:23:29.000 I'm gonna let the hoppers go and just focus on stuff that's easier for the home cook to do. 1.00
01:23:35.000 Now that you're done with these books, obviously your main focus will now be promoting them and getting them out there, but what do you do with your life now?
01:23:46.000 I mean, you had a decade of working with him.
01:23:50.000 Yeah.
01:23:51.000 I mean, that is something I started asking myself from the very first time I heard that Tony had died.
01:23:58.000 And, you know, I was very lucky to have a couple of years to do these projects.
01:24:02.000 You know, I'm going to keep writing books.
01:24:05.000 I'm working on a bakery book now, a bread book, with a British baker called Richard Hart, who has a bakery in Denmark.
01:24:12.000 So we're writing a book about sourdough bread, which, you know...
01:24:17.000 Everybody loves it.
01:24:18.000 Everybody loves to make it.
01:24:19.000 It's easy to do, but it's not easy to do well.
01:24:21.000 So we're going to try and teach people to master that.
01:24:25.000 Shout out to Tom Papa.
01:24:26.000 Oh, he's a big baker, right?
01:24:28.000 He's awesome at it.
01:24:29.000 He makes incredible sourdough bread.
01:24:32.000 I'll have to start looking at his...
01:24:33.000 Does he share on social media?
01:24:35.000 Oh, yeah, yeah.
01:24:36.000 He shares in real life, too.
01:24:38.000 He always brings a loaf of bread whenever he visits us.
01:24:40.000 We have a deal.
01:24:41.000 I give him elk meat and he gives me bread.
01:24:45.000 That is a good trade.
01:24:47.000 Yeah, I'd like to keep writing.
01:24:49.000 I've gotten into trying to start being a producer a little bit.
01:24:55.000 What are you producing?
01:24:57.000 Like a couple of different TV shows.
01:25:00.000 I mean, it's very, very...
01:25:01.000 I mean, when I say TV, I mean probably like YouTube or, you know, whatever that's streaming.
01:25:06.000 One is about...
01:25:08.000 One is with a salsa singer named Tito Nieves.
01:25:12.000 We're in the very early stages of it, but he's starting to do a little cooking show with his wife, Janet.
01:25:17.000 And the other one is very early stages of a show about food and musicians.
01:25:25.000 So I think there's also some kindred spirits between chefs and musicians.
01:25:29.000 Maybe not so much as comedians, but there's that kind of road warrior mentality and that perfecting your craft.
01:25:38.000 Yeah.
01:25:38.000 We'll see.
01:25:39.000 It's, you know, I feel like having worked for Tony for so long was such a gift and, you know, having these books has raised my platform a little bit.
01:25:50.000 So we'll see.
01:25:50.000 I would love to be able to keep writing and working creatively and not have to get a real job.
01:25:56.000 Yeah, fuck that. 0.99
01:25:57.000 I think you could do it. 1.00
01:25:58.000 I have faith in you.
01:26:00.000 Thank you. 0.97
01:26:01.000 The desperation of, you know, just fucking don't get a real job. 0.91
01:26:04.000 Yeah. 0.88
01:26:05.000 I mean, the last real job I had was working for Tony, and I just don't see myself working as an assistant for anybody else.
01:26:13.000 I had already kind of aged out of the assistant gig, but when Tony came along, I was like, well, obviously, yes, I'll work for you, but I don't want to be a glorified secretary.
01:26:23.000 Do you feel tied down to the food genre?
01:26:27.000 I mean, it's a lot of what I've done, you know, but not necessarily.
01:26:31.000 I realize that, you know, there's a lot more out there for me.
01:26:36.000 You know, I mean, I've tried to develop myself as a writer over the, you know, since I've always, you know, so no, I guess the short answer is no.
01:26:47.000 I'm interested in writing about and learning about other things.
01:26:50.000 Being connected to him, though, it's sort of like there's high expectations on whatever you do put out.
01:26:56.000 Well, you know, and he himself kind of drifted away from food a little bit in the later years.
01:27:02.000 I mean, obviously, there was always still food involved in whatever he was doing for television.
01:27:06.000 But the focus really had started to shift to people, you know, and maybe food as an initial way to kind of break the ice with people.
01:27:15.000 But he really got away from food porn, you know, except in special cases.
01:27:20.000 But it really was...
01:27:22.000 What does the food tell me about how you live, you know, or what you do or don't have or what your government is or isn't, you know, providing for you?
01:27:31.000 So, you know, I see Tony kind of forging a path there of going beyond just like what's delicious on the table, you know?
01:27:40.000 Well, that seemed the shift of Parts Unknown.
01:27:42.000 Parts Unknown seemed to shift more into a sort of an exploration of these different cultures as much as their food.
01:27:51.000 And almost the food was like sort of, okay, we got to do this too.
01:27:54.000 Right, right.
01:27:55.000 Yeah.
01:27:56.000 I mean, some places, you know, he went to Lyon, France, and that was, like, all about the food, you know, because it's so intrinsic to the culture.
01:28:03.000 In other places, it was like, well, what's the, you know, what's the specialty?
01:28:06.000 All right, we're going to shoot that, and then we're going to talk to, you know, this guy that was a political prisoner for 10 years, or, you know, something that, there were plenty of scenes toward the end that had nothing to do with food.
01:28:15.000 Yeah, there were so many wild moments.
01:28:17.000 Like, what was, wasn't there an episode where they sat around and ate a camel?
01:28:23.000 That probably was early on, maybe.
01:28:25.000 I can't say with certainty that he ate a camel.
01:28:29.000 It's very possible.
01:28:30.000 I'm pretty sure he ate a camel.
01:28:32.000 I think they were all sitting around eating a camel because I remember you had to eat it with your hands and there was very specific rules to where they did it.
01:28:42.000 I forget where he did it. 0.99
01:28:43.000 There's parts of the world where you wash your ass with your left hand and you eat your food with your right hand. 0.99
01:28:53.000 I'm 90% sure that they ate a camel. 0.99
01:28:57.000 I'd have to go back to the archive, but it seems totally in the realm of possibility.
01:29:01.000 I mean, he went to Egypt, he went to Oman, and I mean, just everywhere, you know?
01:29:09.000 Is it when you're looking back on this time that you shared with him and then you put all this down in these books, do you feel like you've in some way closed the chapter?
01:29:26.000 Does this give you closure in any way?
01:29:30.000 I'm not sure.
01:29:32.000 I mean, I think there will be a time when both of these books, this one will be out in the world, the biography, the travel book is already out and the promotional period will end and that will be it.
01:29:45.000 And I think it will be a very sad time for me because I think I have kept some sense of Tony's memory alive by working on these books.
01:29:58.000 I don't know.
01:29:59.000 I feel like the more time that goes by, the less closure I have in some ways.
01:30:03.000 This morning watching the Montana episode, it was like just every time I see something that I haven't seen from him in a while, it kind of breaks my heart open again and just makes me realize how fucking incredible he was.
01:30:18.000 I think working for him, you kind of lose perspective when you're talking to somebody every day and you're working with them and you sort of forget that they're How great they are until they're gone.
01:30:29.000 So, yeah, you know, I mean, I think very early on after Tony died, I had to, and a lot of us that were close with him had to sort of tell ourselves right out of the gate, this is not our fault.
01:30:41.000 You know, this is not something that we could have prevented.
01:30:44.000 As much as I still to this day think about, like we said at the top of this conversation, what if I had said this or that?
01:30:52.000 What if I had, you know, alerted somebody?
01:30:54.000 What if, you know, all the what ifs.
01:30:55.000 And you have to believe that this is a decision that he made that didn't involve anyone else.
01:31:04.000 But yeah, I think that with the nature of the way that he died, I think there's always going to be an open wound of regret and of just, you know...
01:31:15.000 Playing out the million scenarios that, you know, had things gone differently.
01:31:19.000 You know, I think about, God, if he were around right now, what he would, you know, A, he would be so...
01:31:24.000 I have this fantasy that he comes back and I'm like, dude, there's a pandemic, you know, and just how like, you know, like he would be in his sort of like nerdy, enthusiast way.
01:31:34.000 He would be like, that's crazy!
01:31:36.000 You know, he would...
01:31:36.000 I mean, as horrible as a pandemic is, he would be...
01:31:39.000 Really excited.
01:31:40.000 He would be really engaged with it.
01:31:42.000 He would have so much to say.
01:31:44.000 Who knows?
01:31:47.000 That's sort of like the daily heartbreak, is like all of these things that are happening, that the world has gone on, and he stopped in June of 2018, and he's not getting to see the way that the people that he lifted up are continuing to grow professionally,
01:32:03.000 to see his daughter, all of these things.
01:32:08.000 I don't think there's ever any closure to that.
01:32:10.000 There's just peace, trying to make peace with it personally and somehow try to understand it. 0.51
01:32:18.000 And unfortunately, and I say this with all hesitation because I know it's a fucked up thing to say, there's a certain romantic aspect to even the way he died.
01:32:28.000 One day when people review the life of Anthony Bourdain, that will be a part of the legend.
01:32:36.000 Be a part of the chaos of who he was and the pain and suffering and then ultimately what he felt like was betrayal and humiliation and he takes his own life and he's missed so dearly by everyone.
01:32:49.000 It's just it's part of the romantic legend that is that person and this wild Unforeseen ride from writing that one book to becoming this person that affected so many people that became in a lot of ways a cultural icon for travel and for the exploration of different regions of the world and different people and different cultures.
01:33:21.000 Yeah.
01:33:21.000 Yeah.
01:33:22.000 It's, you know, it sure is, you know, more romantic and dramatic than, like, getting ass cancer or something, right?
01:33:30.000 I mean, he would have...
01:33:31.000 That sounds like something he would say.
01:33:33.000 Right.
01:33:35.000 You know, and he, I mean, you know, it's just not a surprise to say that, you know, he made a million throwaway suicide references as a joke, you know, always, there's a million of them, you know, in the TV show, in conversation.
01:33:47.000 I mean, this was just like...
01:33:49.000 Breathing for him.
01:33:50.000 But I don't know. 0.99
01:33:52.000 I just have to think that it was a spontaneous, shitty decision. 0.93
01:33:59.000 Oftentimes that's the case, apparently. 0.95
01:34:01.000 I've talked to people who are, air quotes, suicide experts.
01:34:05.000 And that's one of the things I say is that you'd be surprised at how many people commit suicide with literally an off-the-cuff, random thought, and they just fall through with it.
01:34:16.000 Yeah.
01:34:16.000 Yeah.
01:34:17.000 And, you know, we'll never know, really.
01:34:20.000 But, you know, I wish that he had made a different decision.
01:34:24.000 I hope that, you know, people who think that it's a romantic way to go out will listen to the voices of the people that he left behind and see that, you know, the tremendous amount of pain that that caused.
01:34:40.000 I don't mean to laugh.
01:34:41.000 It's just...
01:34:41.000 It is what it is.
01:34:42.000 You know, that it's...
01:34:45.000 I mean, he tapped out.
01:34:46.000 He's good.
01:34:47.000 But the rest of us are here kind of picking up the pieces.
01:34:52.000 We're left wondering what his take on the world at large today.
01:34:59.000 I mean, in so many ways, a lot of the facade of what we imagined was a rigid structure of government and And society has eroded so rapidly before our eyes over the last year and a half plus that it would have been fascinating to see his take on that because it really has revealed the true character of all these human beings grasping at straws,
01:35:28.000 trying to find relevance in this weird time that we find ourselves in because it is unprecedented.
01:35:35.000 So for a voice like his, which had been so sorely needed in a time like now, to not have him around... 0.94
01:35:48.000 It's a fucking shame for every reason, but that's just another one. 0.96
01:35:55.000 Who's to say? 0.99
01:35:56.000 I could never predict where he would come down on one issue or another.
01:35:59.000 If I would guess, I'd be wrong 50% of the time.
01:36:03.000 But he would certainly have a lot to say about The way that we are or are not taking care of each other.
01:36:09.000 The way we are or are not following rules.
01:36:12.000 Who knows?
01:36:14.000 Who knows what he would have said.
01:36:16.000 But he was so well read.
01:36:17.000 He had such a deep, deep knowledge of history, especially U.S. history in the 20th century.
01:36:23.000 I feel like it was always comforting for him.
01:36:25.000 He could always pull up a reference like, well, this is like this time.
01:36:29.000 There was this sense of...
01:36:32.000 He knew.
01:36:33.000 He knew what was going on.
01:36:35.000 And all of the factors that had led up to whatever was happening in that moment.
01:36:40.000 He was a really incredible scholar.
01:36:42.000 For a guy who basically flunged out of college, he was an incredible scholar.
01:36:47.000 And he was very humble about that.
01:36:50.000 He would never tell you that he was a super well-read guy, but he absolutely was.
01:36:55.000 Well, he was interested in things, right?
01:36:57.000 It didn't really matter what his actual formal education was.
01:37:00.000 He was interested in things and the pursuit of those things and trying to understand stuff, which also contributed greatly to his enthusiasm as a traveler.
01:37:13.000 Yeah, yeah.
01:37:16.000 Anything else, Lori?
01:37:18.000 Should we wrap this up?
01:37:19.000 I guess so.
01:37:20.000 Before we both start crying.
01:37:21.000 I'm glad I didn't cry.
01:37:23.000 In the beginning, I thought it was over right away. 1.00
01:37:26.000 I'm like, God damn it, you pussy. 1.00
01:37:27.000 You're going to cry in the first 15 seconds. 1.00
01:37:30.000 It's good.
01:37:31.000 Get it out of the way.
01:37:33.000 Bourdain, the definitive oral biography.
01:37:35.000 Hold them up so people can see it.
01:37:37.000 There you go.
01:37:38.000 So this is...
01:37:39.000 And that's out soon.
01:37:41.000 Yep.
01:37:42.000 September 28th, published by Echo.
01:37:44.000 Okay.
01:37:44.000 So that's out in about a month.
01:37:46.000 And then the other one is out right now.
01:37:48.000 Yes.
01:37:49.000 This is World Travel, An Irreverent Guide.
01:37:52.000 And this is available now.
01:37:54.000 Laurie, thank you very much for being here.
01:37:56.000 I really appreciate it.
01:37:57.000 And I really appreciate you writing these books, too.
01:37:59.000 Thank you.
01:37:59.000 It was great to talk to you.
01:38:00.000 Great to talk to you too.
01:38:01.000 Alright.
01:38:02.000 Bye everybody.