Joe Rogan opens up about his favorite restaurant in Vegas, Bazaar Meat, and why he thinks it's the best steak place in the whole wide world. Joe also talks about why he doesn't like going to the strip.
00:06:55.000I was born in 69. And I realized, not only as a chef, but as a person, as a man, as a father, as a husband, all the different labels we all have.
00:07:09.000It's always that the more you know, the more you realize you know nothing.
00:09:04.000And when you're young, you think you know everything.
00:09:07.000And as you get older, there's a quote by, I think it's Dennis McKenna said this, that as the bonfire of enlightenment grows, the surface area of ignorance is exposed.
00:09:20.000So the more you learn, the more you realize there's so much you don't know.
00:09:26.000Whereas as you're young, you think, ah, fucking, I figured it all out.
00:09:30.000And then as you get older, you're like, there's so much I don't know.
00:09:34.000Not only that, there's no way I can know everything.
00:10:04.000I think that's one of the best things that's ever happened to me through this podcast is I get to talk to so many different people that have lived so many different lives and have so many different passions and so many different interests and so many different things that they've studied.
00:11:49.000The American school system, at least, was designed by the Rockefellers.
00:11:53.000And what they're essentially doing is preparing people to be cogs in a wheel.
00:11:57.000They're preparing people to just show up and do what you're told and live this life of quiet desperation and just sit there and absorb whatever they tell you to because you're going to have to go and work and do something you don't want to do all day long and show up and do it again until your body stops working and you die.
00:12:15.000I don't know if I will 100% agree with that statement in the sense of this was created by design.
00:12:22.000Well, the school system in America certainly was created by design.
00:12:25.000The idea of sitting people down, especially young kids, for eight hours a day is a ridiculous idea.
00:12:31.000But the schools and education go way beyond America and go back in time.
00:13:02.000This sitting people in classrooms all day as children.
00:13:05.000This is relatively new in human history.
00:13:08.000This is not something that people did hundreds and hundreds of years ago.
00:13:12.000When you think about all the great scholars of the past, yes, they certainly learned in school.
00:13:17.000They didn't do it the way they're doing it today.
00:13:19.000I'm not an expert on that front, but I can tell you when my daughters began going to school, my wife decided to take them to Montessori school.
00:13:30.000That's where everybody's in the same grade, right?
00:13:43.000I was so fascinated that I almost felt like as a dad, I had to go to school to learn the Montessori system myself because I thought it was great.
00:13:57.000I thought it was giving my daughters a great framework to understand how to...
00:14:04.000How to be themselves, how to grow, how to organize themselves, giving them the freedom to become the young woman they are becoming.
00:14:15.000So for me, just watching them going through when they were four or five, going to Montessori, I thought that was amazing because I saw little human beings that they were far away smarter, I think, than when I was at their same age.
00:14:29.000There was no system of education that was used.
00:14:34.000Guiding them like cows or like horses when they put...
00:16:19.000I just think that there's a lot of different roles in life.
00:16:22.000And the problem with traditional school is that they're preparing you for a job.
00:16:27.000And I think there's a lot of very creative people that would be served better if they had a more open-ended education and they were allowed to just pursue their interests and be excited about certain things and just get a rudimentary education in other things.
00:17:22.000And, you know, you have to have a lot of...
00:17:24.000I think the more interest you have, the more things you're fascinated by, the broader your understanding of human beings will be and the better your life will be.
00:21:45.000But also, to the contrary, when you take risks and then you get rewards from those risks, you then start getting very excited about taking risks.
00:23:04.000Actually, if I was any of the countries that controls the access to all those amazing mountains, all the top, the 8K, the Aconcagua, and the Everest, and all the big peaks, I would make it mandatory that you have to go on your own.
00:23:21.000You could argue that, okay, but then scuba diving, you are using air.
00:25:34.000The first guy, they think he made it up to the top, and his body's on the way down.
00:25:39.000So they don't know if he actually made it and died on the way down, or if he died on the way up, and then the second guy made it all the way up.
00:27:09.000I mean, that is one of the most underappreciated, grueling jobs is to be a cook in a kitchen with 15 other guys and women and everyone's running around.
00:27:22.000You've got a hundred people out there waiting to be served.
00:27:25.000You're running around making this and that, this and that, and orders are coming in, and this is medium rare, and this is that, and that is this.
00:27:33.000Well, I think this is the ultimate power.
00:27:37.000The ultimate power is that power of being able to feed somebody.
00:27:43.000That's why, for me, we are all cooks in a way, directly and directly.
00:27:50.000But the power of feeding somebody, that's all the power I have.
00:29:44.000Listen, I just had this documentary on the last season of Chef Table on Netflix where I am one of the four chefs that on this season they've done a documentary and they've done a documentary of my team's and myself culinary life.
00:30:07.000You're going to see Minibar, my top restaurant, Two Star Michelin, Bazaar, everything else.
00:30:12.000But you're going to see me telling stories about me cooking with my mom and my dad.
00:30:36.000But this goes almost to the beginning.
00:30:39.000A moment that was very important in my life, talking about cooks and chefs and restaurants and food people and living, is that the first time I became a dad, my daughter,
00:30:56.000who is 26 years old now, Carlota, an amazing young human being, In the moment she came out into the world as a father, that I began having tears, that's another moment you realize that there's always so much pressure on everybody.
00:31:16.000I feel as a young man, I always had a lot of pressure to be the man everybody was expecting you to be.
00:31:22.000And sometimes you felt like nothing ever came with instructions.
00:31:26.000You had to, you know, I have to be a boyfriend?
00:37:18.000And I think because it's not like music that you can listen to over and over again, or comedy, or a movie, or literature, we don't think of it as an art form.
00:37:31.000I didn't realize it was an art form until I started watching Anthony Bourdain's show, No Reservations, the original one on the Travel Channel.
00:37:39.000And then from being, like, really a big fan of that show, I realized, like, oh, this is art.
00:37:46.000And because of his narration, his narration was so brilliant.
00:37:50.000Because he wrote all the descriptions of the cultures that he would visit and the people and the descriptions of the show.
00:38:00.000You could tell it was all in his language.
00:39:45.000You're missing out on a giant chunk of life, which is delicious food and delicious food that you enjoy with others, which is also a part of food.
00:39:53.000Enjoying delicious food by yourself is not nearly as fun as enjoying delicious food with other people.
00:39:59.000There's something communal about it, which goes back to our tribal ancestors sitting around the campfire enjoying something that we cooked.
00:40:07.000And our mother feeding us for the first time.
00:45:59.000I found out he was gone because my friend Maynard, he's the lead singer of Tool, and Tony had really gotten into jiu-jitsu.
00:46:08.000And that's how, one of the ways, I was friends with him before that, but that's one of the ways that Tony and I got closer, is that he knew I was a black belt, and I've been doing jiu-jitsu for decades.
00:47:15.000It's a very complicated, intelligent...
00:47:19.000Creative martial art and he was obsessed with it and he didn't start doing it until he was 58 years old which is kind of crazy but he really got obsessed with it entered into tournaments age-appropriate tournaments and did really well and so it was training every day sometimes twice a day like we got just taking private lessons and like really good I can tell you that because when we were shooting in Asturias and few other places Cayman Islands one of the things he always did is finding out Where was the local
00:47:55.000In Oviedo, it was a place and he would go there.
00:47:57.000And for one, two hours, he would be fighting against local guys.
00:48:02.000So it was fascinating to see how, even on weeks that he was supposed to be concentrated on shooting, he always found time to do what he loved.
00:48:13.000So Maynard got his black belt recently, and Maynard was also very into jiu-jitsu, and he was joking around like maybe one day he and Tony would have a celebrity jiu-jitsu match.
00:48:47.000There's moments when people take their own life where the worst feeling is, I feel like if I was there, I could have stopped him from doing that.
00:51:38.000And obviously, I guess, like you now, Joe, that I'm learning about and gives me joy to see that here is another person that really loves Tony.
00:51:52.000And Eric and myself and so many others around the beautiful life of Tony that we wish we were there, right?
00:53:04.000You don't know what anybody may be going through.
00:53:06.000Another lesson that I've taken with me is that any conflict that I've ever had with a person, even if I was correct, even if I was right in being angry, even if I was right in the mean things that I said.
00:53:19.000But every good interaction that I've ever had where maybe me and a person disagreed but we came out of it smiling and hugging and we found common ground, then I feel great.
00:54:37.000What I like out of life is fun and joy and being around interesting people and challenges and doing difficult things and creative things and learning.
00:54:46.000Learning about myself, learning about other people, learning about life.
00:54:50.000Conflict is just a distraction from your own personal demons for the most part.
00:56:26.000Especially when you are in, obviously in cities you can see how beautiful life is, even.
00:56:32.000But when you're in a tour, and you're seeing the sunrise, or you're seeing the sunset, or you're seeing the moon, and you see how little you are, how insignificant you are, but at the same time, how God gave us this power to be part of this amazing universe we are part of.
00:56:52.000And then you are thankful there, because you are like, oh my God, I am part of something so beautiful.
00:57:01.000And we all occupy a space in that universe.
00:57:04.000And the space we occupy should be to don't make it worse.
00:57:22.000And if you can do a little bit more, even better.
00:57:25.000Me, when I am in those places, like I go to the south of Spain.
00:57:29.000And my wife is from there, Cadiz, is where I did my military service in the Spanish Navy.
00:57:37.000And it's one moment, not too far away from Gibraltar, the little possession that England has there in the south of Spain, that maybe one day England gives it back to Spain.
00:57:48.000There is a place that almost you can touch Africa.
00:57:55.000You feel like you can, with your finger, touch Africa in the Strait of Gibraltar.
00:58:02.000And it's just like, even a movie cannot recreate the amazing place you are with birds and the oceans, the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean, and two continents that want to love each other, but they are separate,
00:59:34.000There's no light pollution because the Big Island has diffused lighting.
00:59:38.000And they have specific lighting just because of the observatory that doesn't give light pollution so you can see all the stars from up there.
00:59:45.000And I remember that day like it is yesterday.
00:59:48.000Every day, I think, every time I see the stars, I'm like, we're so fucked by cities because we can't see what this really looks like.
01:00:06.000Like, you are in a convertible spaceship and you're hurling through the galaxy and the only thing that's protecting you from everything else is a layer of gas.
01:00:17.000A layer of gas that surrounds this beautiful planet.
01:00:20.000Of course it's life in one of those star systems.
01:00:41.000He's a physicist that's been working with the government with this stuff forever.
01:00:45.000He said they have 10 retrieved crafts that are of non-human intelligence.
01:00:50.00010 that the United States is in possession of.
01:00:53.000And he said during the Bush administration, during George Bush's administration, they were contemplating disclosure to the American people.
01:01:01.000And they wanted to get all these physicists and scientists and psychologists to
01:01:07.000a list of things that would be negatively impacted by disclosure and things that would be positively impacted by disclosure and give them a numerical value, like a zero to ten value.
01:01:28.000So during the Bush administration, during George Bush's administration, during 9 /11, during that time, that time period, they were contemplating, this is 2004, they were contemplating having disclosure and releasing to people the fact that we are in possession of non-human intelligent crafts.
01:01:47.000They have recovered biological entities, meaning beings from another planet that are preserved, that we have.
01:01:54.000And that non-human crafts are visiting this planet or might not even be visiting.
01:02:58.000And let's say that all the junk food and extra calories and the obesity pandemic is actually something like this alien civilization has orchestrated.
01:03:12.000And so as we become fatter, they're going to be able to recollect more protein to take back to their planets.
01:03:20.000Okay, that can be a great next big movie, and then we'll eat seeds, and they'll take it with us, and they'll put us in the planet, and at our stomachs, we'll have potatoes in their fields.
01:04:12.000But I will say that at this moment, our government will be already sharing with all of us something that will forever change the present and the future of humanity.
01:04:25.000You think they would already share it?
01:05:09.000And then there's also the fact that the way you work on these crafts, you have to use defense contractors because they're the ones who make jets.
01:06:49.000I mean, we can go to Peru with the Incas and we can go with the Mayas to Guatemala.
01:06:55.000And it's a lot of people that always have been trying to make connections of things they found that they say already we made contact in previous civilizations on planet Earth.
01:07:07.000But I have a hard time believing that this has already happened.
01:07:13.000And I respect the opinion of obviously who looks, seems he's an expert and has spent a lot of time.
01:07:21.000The sight of me that is the boy that will want to believe that there are other planets with people and we are not alone, I will be full of joy.
01:07:35.000I hope that if there are good people and that happens, that you and I and everybody else around the world, maybe that's the moment that the world becomes one.
01:07:43.000And all of a sudden, we are all fighting.
01:08:41.000But I would imagine that if they are so sophisticated that they're capable of traversing solar systems, traversing galaxies and reaching us, they're beyond that stuff.
01:08:54.000If they weren't and they have reached us...
01:08:57.000They could have destroyed us a thousand times over by now.
01:09:01.000We could destroy ourselves a thousand times over.
01:09:03.000We, with our inability to go to other galaxies, we could destroy ourselves.
01:09:21.000Primitive man and you look at primitive primates and you look at current human beings and our technological achievements and all of our medical achievements and our ability to feed enormous groups of people and our concern about the environment and all the things that make us so special as human beings.
01:09:39.000I would imagine that that would be even more advanced with these species.
01:09:44.000I think that's the only way they're visiting us.
01:10:17.000Me, what I know, the thing I'm interested in is I wish I will be alive when we put the first restaurant in the moon or the first restaurant in Mars.
01:10:29.000And I will be there just cooking for the first people arriving.
01:10:34.000Many chefs, many chefs, many, you know, they've done, thanks to NASA, their work, and they put their mark on food that has been sent to the space station.
01:10:56.000I was able to partner with a company called Axiom, A-X-I-O-M, which is one of the companies helping provide services to NASA to bring astronauts, and they will do it also with civilians to the space station,
01:12:22.000The rice we did, I thought, was very good, even we had a little issue.
01:12:26.000We tried to make the paella too by the book, and the paella at the end was a little bit too dry, as a traditional paella is, meaning the grains of rice are fairly loose and separated, one from each other, which on earth is a sign of a good paella.
01:12:45.000But in the space, if you open the pouch, all of a sudden, you start having all those little rice flooring in the station, and there is the moment you want chopsticks.
01:12:59.000I was on the edge of collapsing the space station, but what I've been working on with this guy I mentioned, Jim Sears, is that he came up with a kitchen that will be...
01:13:12.000The kitchen, and he won a competition, the kitchen that astronauts could use one day, hopefully soon enough, save it, and that Jim, amazing guy, Jim Sears, and it's two prototypes of this machine.
01:13:41.000And I want you to take a look, because this is how food will look in space.
01:13:46.000If one day we have a kitchen in the surface of the moon, or in Mars, that's a brownie, and if you are, Elon Musk, if you're listening to this conversation, Space food will look like this kind of circle,
01:14:03.000this circumference, because that machine, what it does is centrifuge, like G-forces can go up to G-14th.
01:14:14.000And the reason is that we will send ingredients, but the ingredients will float.
01:14:21.000If you don't achieve the centrifuge that will move the ingredients to the sides of this kind of kitchen where you don't cook in the bottom but you cook on the sides, you will not be able to cook.
01:16:42.000That's why the best way, people of America, the best way to fight against an alien invasion of planet Earth is that we all stay fit, we don't get overweight,
01:16:59.000and we are lean, a lot of muscle, not a lot of fat.
01:17:03.000Because that day, that alien civilization, we learn that we are not, we are not a harvest worth having.
01:17:11.000Because we're too lean, and they cannot feed their own planets.
01:17:14.000Well, I don't think that's a good strategy.
01:17:17.000Because I think some of the most delicious food is wild game, and wild game is very lean.
01:17:37.000Look, I'm not saying communism is good because it's terrible.
01:17:40.000Communism doesn't work with human beings because we're not prepared for communism.
01:17:44.000But I do think that if we evolve past these primate instincts that we have and we genuinely develop some sort of a sense of real intimacy and community with everybody on earth, we would share resources.
01:19:11.000We're going to have to develop a way as we advance as a society, as a species.
01:19:17.000To share resources, to share resources in a genuinely equitable way.
01:19:22.000It's beyond our comprehension now as territorial apes, but I think that's the future of the human species, is that one day we reach this peak where we realize that our true competition is within ourselves, within our own minds, and to do the best that we can for the overall greater good of the species,
01:19:39.000and then hopefully the greater good of the universe itself.
01:21:21.000And my suspicion is that somehow technology plays a part in that.
01:21:27.000And the interconnectivity that we're achieving through technology is going to advance our ability to understand each other, and it's going to advance our ability to communicate, and it's going to force us to come up with some sort of a new way.
01:22:27.000I think civilizations have been around a long, long time and I think there's been catastrophes and there's a lot of physical evidence that point to those catastrophes.
01:22:35.000But the idea is that at one point in time...
01:22:39.000So our technology has evolved in a very specific path.
01:22:43.000Our technology has been the industrial revolution, the invention of the internal combustion engine, electronics, and all these things have led us to this incredible level of sophistication that we enjoy now that's so much different than people that lived just 200, 300 years ago.
01:22:58.000My suspicion is that the people of Egypt, the people of Turkey, there's a lot of other places in the world, they achieved very similar levels of sophistication with completely different methods that are lost, that are lost in history.
01:23:11.000And we know for a fact that there was an immense...
01:24:28.000That right now we live in a moment that, yes, we have wars, we have conflicts.
01:24:32.000But still I believe we live in a great moment of humanity that is full of opportunities.
01:24:37.000If we have the right leaders that want to bring the best angels within all of us and not just to rely on cheap politics of bringing the worst demons.
01:24:47.000Not making each other fight each other but making each other respect and love each other even when we disagree.
01:24:56.000And that's why for me food is the ultimate uniter.
01:25:09.000Because as we mentioned at the beginning, the lovely mother-feeding moment that unites you, food is the best way to tell somebody, I love you, I'm here with you.
01:25:24.000I'm going to respect you and I'm not going to let you alone.
01:25:28.000And this is why, for me, going to emergencies through my lifetime, in the last 15 years especially, is the moment I've been seeing this moment of light, of hope, of saying, in these worst moments of humanity, it's so much love.
01:25:44.000Where there is no religion, no color, no political party, it's only people helping people.
01:25:50.000That tells me that food is this thing that...
01:25:55.000People in a table can have a conversation about more meaningful things.
01:26:49.000I would like to know the number because I think that's very important for national security.
01:26:54.000But I've seen in the first year, in the same year I've seen back-to-back Category 5 hurricanes hitting Central America, big food producers, parts of the United States with big food production,
01:27:12.000I've seen typhoons in Asia at the same time hitting very big food.
01:27:18.000At the same time, droughts in South America, the same time that we had hurricanes with a lot of water in Central America, droughts in Asia, wiping out rice production.
01:28:22.000Obviously, I want to think about the happy moments, about my restaurants and all the restaurants of the world full, the supermarkets full, and everybody eating, and every mother and father being able to bring a plate of food to their children in America and in every country overseas.
01:28:38.000When everybody has food on the table, the place is a most...
01:29:50.000Somebody would bring it from overseas.
01:29:52.000But poor families, they were having a hard time finding that baby formula.
01:29:55.000That only tells me that we take food for granted.
01:29:58.000And that's why I've been always asking that we need to have a national food security advisor near the ear of the president of the United States, near the president of every country, to make sure that food is not an afterthought.
01:30:12.000Well, I think we have a real hard time imagining things going badly when things aren't going badly.
01:30:22.000When things aren't going badly, like right now, we concentrate on getting more.
01:30:46.000Yellowstone blows every six to eight hundred thousand years and it's a continent killer if it goes the whole the whole world's fucked we have nuclear winter for decades like who knows how long it lasts with the dust in the sky there's gonna be no crops and people are just gonna starve to death there's no if ands or buts about it if it blows most of us here are dead most of us and most of us like there's a there was a super volcano the Toba volcano in I believe it was 70,000
01:31:13.000years ago they think Brought humanity down to a few thousand people.
01:31:19.000But it's very difficult for us to think that way.
01:31:22.000It's very difficult for us to imagine how things could be bad.
01:31:28.000That mean, people, that if you have a good bottle of wine that is very expensive and you are waiting for it to that moment in your life, remember what your Rogan said here, drink it tonight.
01:34:08.000We need to make sure that 7% of the farm land, but they have to feed 15% of the world population.
01:34:14.000When you see that China is very interested in buying land in Africa, in America, that they help ports in many countries in Africa.
01:34:24.000Well, if you are the leader of China and you want to feed your people, what will you do to make sure that...
01:34:32.000You don't only produce at home, but if you cannot produce enough at home, even every country should do more to be a better food producer on the land we have.
01:38:17.000The gas station now is, I'm telling you, those gas stations are owned by those aliens that are to make sure we are really, really overweight so one day they harvest us and they take us to their planets.
01:38:29.000I do believe the gas stations of the world are, they belong to the alien species.
01:39:17.000I'm going to the train, walking, and then from the train to the subway, I had to take a train and a subway, and then from the subway I had to walk.
01:40:12.000Because we can have the same conversation and use the conversation from two different points of view.
01:40:18.000It's been, obviously, the very easy attack to the fast food industry, to the junk food industry, to call it whatever, on the pandemic and the obesity, to the soda industry.
01:40:34.000And again, I'm not going to be the one here now becoming the Robin Hood defending them.
01:40:39.000But at the same time, they are not the only ones part of the problem either.
01:42:00.000Because the food they are able to buy is very cheap because it's all this junk food, you say, and that's part of the problem.
01:42:06.000And they are not only overweight but unhealthy because they're bad calorie, bad quality food because they cannot afford anything else and sometimes it's not only about affording, it's because they don't have access to anything else.
01:42:20.000And there goes again about one of the big conversations.
01:42:40.000When I tell every American, when I speak in every state, red or blue, urban areas or rural areas, every time I say every American children deserves to be fed and no American family...
01:43:02.000This is the truth that brings everybody together.
01:43:05.000And you could argue why we have people who are poor or hungry, and then we talk, okay, and what is the role of government making sure that we don't have poor and hungry?
01:43:14.000If we have a government, I would say, in part, is to make sure that we take care of the less privileged, and the poor, and the hungry, and the ones that lose their jobs, and the veterans that come back home, and they are...
01:43:27.000I think we need to have government for that.
01:43:30.000And government should do a better job in making sure that every children in America is fed.
01:43:34.000And making sure that it's not throwing money at the problem, but invested in solutions.
01:44:45.000People couldn't find a job because they were in jail.
01:44:49.000Those convicts, those homeless, all of a sudden, they were receiving dignity.
01:44:54.000The dignity that society, for some reason, was not giving them.
01:44:58.000American-born citizens that were not receiving the same opportunity to belong as this young immigrant called Jose Andres that came from overseas.
01:45:08.000And very often, I got many doors open.
01:45:11.000People that, for whatever reason in life, fall behind.
01:45:15.000The kitchen gave them a place to belong.
01:45:19.000And in the process, they began learning how to cook.
01:45:22.000The organization, this is Sandra Kitchen, was teaching them how to cook.
01:45:26.000In the process, they were making the meals with that leftover unused food that they will produce, and then the organization will feed the local homeless.
01:45:35.000In the process, CEOs and volunteers from around America will come to join forces, volunteering next to those ex-combits and those homeless, that they were no convicts or homeless anymore.
01:45:51.000And in the process, food was becoming a place of building longer tables.
01:45:56.000So the $1 to feed one homeless was also the $1 to give hope, was the $1 to give training, was the $1 to rescue food, was the $1 that those men and women, when they graduated,
01:47:57.000That's the way Democrats won, that's the way Republicans won.
01:48:02.000But everybody forgets really about the right talk, which is, what is the right policy?
01:48:08.000How do we, if somebody complains, oh, food stamps has not fulfilled its promise.
01:48:14.000It's like, okay, but let's not fight about cutting it down.
01:48:17.000Let's fight about how to make it better.
01:48:20.000And let's make sure how those dollars, in the process of feeding American families, in blue and red estates equally, that helps those families that fall behind to be able to put food in the table, are able to do it with the dignity they deserve.
01:48:37.000That because I said before, the government doesn't see food as a whole, and usually everything is handled through the Department of Agriculture, which it's okay, but it's not the right way.
01:48:51.000That when a family in a poor suburban area in any city in America receives the food stamps money, in the place they live is so poor that they don't even have a market.
01:49:07.000Their neighborhood is so poor that nobody wants to open the market.
01:49:11.000So even those poor families, they have to go to another neighborhood to spend those dollars, even when they have no transportation sometimes because they don't own a car or they don't have public transportation.
01:49:24.000So they don't have easy access even to that food.
01:49:27.000So imagine if all of a sudden the government, yes, they help the people through the food stamps, but also in the process.
01:49:35.000Urban housing development is able to help building a market that is run by the city, is run by the state, where the local farmers can come.
01:49:47.000In a way, you are subsidizing that business because no other private business wants to do it.
01:49:52.000But somebody has to be taking care of that shortfall.
01:49:56.000And all of a sudden, we build there a market.
01:49:58.000All of a sudden, that family has the dignity to be able to shop in their neighborhood, where that shop actually hired local people, that all of a sudden they are employed in the neighborhood, and that neighborhood stops being poor no longer.
01:50:13.000And all of a sudden, that one dollar, as the example I gave you of DC Central Kitchen, is not only the dollar that the government...
01:50:20.000It throws money at the problem, I'm going to feed you today.
01:50:23.000But that dollar of the government, if the government is smart and works as a whole, creates local employment in the same poor neighborhood, gives dignity to that neighborhood because all of a sudden it's a little bodega, a little market.
01:50:37.000All of a sudden that place comes back to life.
01:51:20.000But in Spain, I grew up in public markets.
01:51:23.000Public markets that were available everywhere.
01:51:27.000Public markets that were public markets.
01:51:30.000With the smallest stalls that local business owners could have their little chicken place or the local farmer could have a place he could afford and be not only a farmer but a local businessman by selling his product.
01:52:17.000Investing money in infrastructure to build those kitchens.
01:52:19.000Buying from the local farmers who run in those rural schools.
01:52:23.000In the process, one dollar to feed the children, but one dollar to invest in infrastructure.
01:52:28.000One dollar to buy food from the local farmers.
01:52:30.000One dollar to pay for the local cooks that work in that little rural community.
01:52:37.000all of a sudden, in the process of feeding better quality food to our children, food that is fresh and made from scratch, and that when you can is local, that one dollar
01:53:32.000I think one thing that this administration is doing well under Bobby Kedney is that he's trying to educate people on what is healthy food and what are the problems.
01:53:45.000And one of the ways you start is by eliminating harmful ingredients that are banned in other countries and that we use everywhere in this country.
01:53:54.000And to slowly but surely make people aware of these problems.
01:53:58.000And make people aware of what these foods are doing to the overall metabolic health of these people and why we have these crises.
01:54:07.000Why we have these crises of obesity and diabetes, type 2 diabetes, which is food caused and environmental issues that people have because of pesticides and herbicides and to slowly clean that up.
01:54:21.000So it's a good step in the right direction.
01:54:22.000I think one of the things that you do that's really beautiful is when there's crises in the world, you go there and you cook.
01:54:30.000I know that you were doing that during the Ukraine war, and I know you did a lot of that in Gaza.
01:56:21.000And that's where policy that is bipartisan in these issues is what I believe food can be bringing both parties together.
01:56:30.000Because I'm going to say everybody in America needs to be supporting whatever initiative Secretary Kennedy has in the next four years to feed America better.
01:57:30.000And let's agree once and for all in the things that actually...
01:57:35.000Both parties always should be supporting each other.
01:57:38.000I just wish that Secretary Kennedy back then would be one voice next to Michelle Obama in trying to do fresh fruits and vegetables in the schools and children and American families.
01:57:49.000And so the same people that supported Michelle Obama initiatives back in the day, I want them to be supporting now Secretary.
01:58:00.000But also, Secretary Kennedy needs to promise me that if one day he's not in power and another party come, another president come, that should be always the same.
01:58:19.000Should be producing the best qualities of food because we are the richest country in the history of mankind.
01:58:24.000America exports more food than any country in the world.
01:58:27.000America should be feeding every children, every family with the best possible food we have on planet Earth.
01:58:34.000Therefore, everybody should be joining that movement.
01:58:37.000But again, let's put the politics on the side.
01:58:41.000And let's make sure that we come up with smarter policies that will allow not only Secretary Kennedy and this administration, but every administration in the years to come with bipartisan support in the right way to feed America with the right food that makes us healthier and that makes us stronger and where food is part of the solution.
01:59:16.000But I think because of podcasts and because of documentaries and because of a lot of discussions and articles that have been written on the issues that people have with food and the additives in food and preservatives and the real problems that people have and not exercising,
01:59:35.000I think one of the good things about the internet is that it has exposed people to a lot more voices of people that are living lives that are more interesting to follow in terms of their health
01:59:51.000choices and whether or not they're – what do you got there?
02:01:22.000So, I know now we're talking about feeding the poor and feeding the hungry, and now we're going to be having caviar, but that only shows you the complexities of life itself.
02:04:39.000You know, I think everybody has to write their stories.
02:04:41.000I have so many stories of my dad and my mom, photos, moments, that now I have questions of what happened, but nobody's there to answer them anymore.
02:04:50.000So this book was a little bit that, a few little stories.
02:11:22.000Do we have a grill wall there somewhere?
02:11:29.000But me cooking with fire, with vines, orange tree, making the fire.
02:11:36.000In the countryside, with the terracotta that you put the water and you put the meats and you put the pork and you put the vegetables and you put the chickpeas and you boil it and you are doing what you do when you are in the forest or in the countryside.
02:11:51.000Do you like the big pots because you know you're going to serve a big party of people with it?
02:11:56.000So it's like the communal aspect of it?
02:14:44.000You get a fork and you're getting no information.
02:14:49.000You're seeing the color, the usiness, maybe the smell in the distance.
02:14:54.000But when you start using your fingers, the moment your fingers get in touch...
02:15:01.000With that piece of meat, already the meat is talking to you directly.
02:15:06.000Like if it's an alien form telling you, hey baby, here I am.
02:15:10.000And you know the temperature and you know the juiciness and you know the fattiness.
02:15:14.000And as you are grabbing it with your two fingers already, it's so many things happening in the process of you bringing your two fingers with a piece of barbecue into your mouth.
02:15:32.000Already your stomach is flowing with juices.
02:15:35.000Already your brain, your eyes, everything is just pure joy.
02:15:40.000Use the very simple thing of using your two fingers to grab the piece of barbecue.
02:15:46.000That moment itself, even if you don't eat it, you can make a movie out of that simple, humble moment of grabbing the piece of barbecue with your two fingers.
02:16:58.000I was watching a documentary today on this restaurant in Spain that's known for suckling pigs and they were cooking it all over open flames.
02:17:07.000That takes two hours and that being only water, only salt, and the little animal.
02:18:31.000Technically, Magellan was the guy that began the circumnavigation on the world, but he died, and the guy that finished the circumnavigation was Juan Sebastián del Cano.
02:21:59.000But anyway, I wanted to share that story with you because when we dock around 30th Street on Manhattan, 30 years later, so I finished the military service,
02:22:16.000I came back to America, I moved to New York, then I came to Washington.
02:22:19.000But 30 years later, I opened Mercado Little Spain, which was bringing a little...
02:22:26.000A bigger piece of Spain to New York, to Manhattan, 200 meters away from the same place I arrived in New York for the first time 30 years before.
02:22:37.000And when they tell me about the American dream, I want to share the message that if anything, the American dream is more alive than ever before.
02:22:47.000That doesn't mean that we live in a perfect place in a cocoon where everything is perfect.
02:22:55.000It's realizing that actually we need to work harder for the things we want.
02:23:00.000For ourselves and from everybody else around us.
02:23:06.000That the American Dream is recognized that we are a beautiful place created through centuries by so many different people that contributed so much.
02:23:16.000That people like me, I'm right now so proud and so happy and so thankful overall.
02:23:24.000I've been given the opportunity to come to this country to belong as an immigrant, first with an E2 visa, then with a green card, and then becoming an American citizen with three beautiful American daughters.
02:23:39.000Much of what I am, I live 70% and 90% of my adult life in this country.
02:23:52.000And everybody knows how much I love this country.
02:23:55.000And now go back into my first arrival as a sailor, my comeback as an immigrant.
02:24:02.000And the last 30-plus years, I want to remember that moment with the American flag and the beautiful night sky full of stars.
02:24:11.000Because it's still the American dream, I want to repeat myself, is here.
02:24:16.000But we all need to do better to work towards that dream where we do it.
02:24:22.000Sharing longer tables, where we do it with dignity to others, especially to the voiceless, especially to the poor, and that together we solve the problems that we face.
02:24:34.000The problems are opportunities for us to work together.
02:24:39.000And that's what our politicians need to do more of.
02:24:43.000Well, I think America is oftentimes truly appreciated by people who come here.
02:24:48.000The people that are here, it's almost like you're just too accustomed to it.
02:25:49.000I think I talk about it too much, so people are moving here too much.
02:25:52.000I try to hedge my enthusiasm a little bit, but I think cities can get too big, and when cities get too big, people become a burden rather than your neighbors and your community.
02:26:06.000People become, you know, you have this diffusion of responsibility.
02:27:48.000You want to give people economical prices, but you have overhead, you have staff, you have this, you have that.
02:27:54.000And then everybody complains that you overcharge, but then we need to take care of the people and the employees need to make a living.
02:28:06.000But we forget that the vast majority of the restaurants in America are owned by small business owners, who many of them are working as hard as they can to make the restaurant successful.
02:29:06.000But these are the complexities we live.
02:29:08.000Listen, sometimes it feels, and we saw it during the pandemic, that the people that feed America, the people that feed the world, sometimes it seems, and it's real very often, that they cannot feed themselves.
02:31:26.000I can become one more voice to push smart policy on behalf of all Americans.
02:31:32.000I just try to be a voice that brings politicians of both parties closer together to move forward, something like I believe makes every single American better.
02:31:44.000And that's how I try to divide my time, like all of us, right?
02:31:49.000For me, coming here was, like, the highlight, because, number one, you know, it's like, shit, will he buy me if I ask?
02:31:56.000At the same time, it looks pretentious that you ask.
02:32:00.000But again, for me, just coming here and getting to be with you one-on-one, yeah, it was kind of in my bucket list of, I don't know, listening to you, I don't know if it's your voice, your looks, the easy conversation with no...
02:33:43.000I, you know, in the last 15 years, especially in the last seven, eight after Maria, you know, I've been very much in every single hurricane and every single big earthquake, big tornado.
02:35:09.000The same dollar that is going to help feed the refugees or the displaced people is the same dollar that can help maintain the local economy.
02:35:37.000Was no Wilson Dragichem helping feed, even most other organizations feed the people of Asheville and the different parts in North Carolina and the couple of other states that were hit by the post-effects of the hurricane?
02:35:56.000Was the people of Asheville that helped feed the people of Asheville?
02:36:00.000And we then got a helicopter because we wanted to be cool.
02:37:09.000In an emergency, you have to adapt because they're not going to let you go to the firefighters sometimes because it's one guy on the road that is trying to protect you from...
02:37:22.000But we have to go to them because those firefighters probably, they're going to be fighting for 48 hours.
02:38:06.000So we got a lot of restaurants, but we got a lot of food trucks too.
02:38:09.000And the food trucks was great because the same way an ambulance is there on a call to bring somebody very quickly after a heart attack and the hospital have an option to save their lives.
02:38:38.000Because every truck is full of 1,000 or 2,000 meals.
02:38:42.000That means at any moment, today, tomorrow, at 3 a.m. in the morning, if something happens, we can activate those food trucks within a minute.
02:38:52.000In less than one hour, they can be feeding anybody, anywhere.
02:42:36.000Even in the worst moments, like war songs.
02:42:40.000I remember in Ukraine, this older woman in the north, in Kharkiv and in Chernihiv, a woman that didn't speak Ukrainian, speak Russian, and she was like, they are our brothers.
02:43:21.000Ukraine is a beautiful country, beautiful people.
02:43:25.000They've been under attack and necessary, and this war is lasting too long.
02:43:29.000I wish that peace will be reached in the right terms for Ukraine.
02:43:39.000And that hopefully also it will be a ceasefire in Gaza.
02:43:43.000The hostages will be released immediately.
02:43:46.000And hopefully there can be a certain beginning the rebuild of Gaza and giving the people of Palestine the future they deserve in peace and prosperity, equally as what the people of Israel deserve, living in peace and prosperity without being afraid of a terrorist attack every other day of their lives.
02:44:07.000What is good for Israel must be good for Palestine too, and vice versa.
02:44:12.000And that's something like I believe everybody agrees on.