Grant Achatz (award-winning chef)

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert. I'm Dak Shepard. Who are you? Lily Padman. That's me. Today we have a legendary chef on, Grant Ackett. He is the restaurateur who owns Alinea and has won numerous accolades and is one of Wobby Wob's biggest quashes. It's true. And Alinea, for people who don't know, is basically the United States' best restaurant. It had been many years in a row. So yeah, it's an incredible place. And he's an incredible chef with an incredible story. Oh man, yeah. Yeah, what could be the worst thing that could happen to a chef? And that's what happened. Please enjoy Grant Ackett's. We get support from Quince. You know what I think about a lot? The stuff in my closet, I actually wear. Like not the trendy pieces, the sweater that goes with everything or the pants that fit perfectly, the tee you kind of just throw on without even thinking. That's what Quince does. They make those. They make those pieces. That's right. 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You're not buying something just for right now. You're buying something that's going to be in your rotation for years. They've also got hotel quality bedding and bath, kitchen essentials, even furniture. So if you're doing any kind of refresh at home too, same quality, same prices across the board. Quince just gets it. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com slash DAX. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com. Slash DAX. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Honestly, if I could just flip a switch overnight and be better at one thing, I'd want to be better at handling stress in a healthier way. Like not letting the small stuff snowball into this whole thing where I'm tense for the rest of the day over something that didn't even matter. It came to mind immediately because I know I do it. Someone cuts me off in traffic and somehow I'm still thinking about it at dinner. Two seconds. That's all it was. So yeah, that's what I'm working on. And that's where BetterHelp. BetterHelp comes in. You know how I feel about therapy. It's just necessary. In fact, sometimes I know I'm not supposed to say this. I judge you if you've never tried it. Better is a feeling defined by you. And for BetterHelp, it's a BetterHelp therapist who really gets you. It's a focus on global, emotional well-being with thousands of therapists and millions of members in over 100 countries. It's progress. And it's getting better at letting the small stuff stay small. That's my better. Sign up and get 10% off. At BetterHelp.com slash DAX. That's BetterHelp.com slash DAX. I don't know if you know this. Are you so savvy that you know the gold in the Boston matches the trunks? Almost identical. Well, I mean, I thought. Did you clock that? Yeah, of course. God, you really know what you're doing. How much thought did you put into this? My outfit. Yeah. I put none. Yeah, okay. Well, it's great. You've surrendered that to someone else? I'm in my swimsuit. Rob, do you know where the sprays are in my house? If I don't have a nicotine spray, I can't continue. He can't function. I understand. Have you ever been a nicotine addict? Never. Oh, my God. That seems hard to imagine. We're both missionaries. Yeah. Almost the same age. Yeah. I think you're maybe eight months older than me. Is that right? Thank God, yeah. You were in Milford. Milford, Highland, Dearborn, Detroit. Okay. You're St. Clair. Yeah. Not St. Clair Shores. Not. Everybody is that wrong. Yes. Big difference. Huge difference. Yes. You would think, Monica, right? St. Clair, St. Clair Shores. What could be the difference? Yes. This is like Macon, Macon County that happened to you. Ding, ding, ding. Yeah. Yeah. So, why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Walk me through St. Clair. I'm pretty sure it's similar to Milford, conceptually. Smaller. 3,000? Yeah. Probably now, more than that. But back then, no fast food restaurant. That's how small we were. Every whole school town. How many stoplights? Two. And did you go to, like, did they have St. Clair High School? Yeah. Just one high school. How many kids were in there, do you know? In my graduating class, probably not more than 100. Oh, really? Wow. It was really. It was really small. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And you drove a fucking GTO in high school? Come on. A 70? A 70, yeah. Tell me about that car. When I was 14, my father said, what kind of car do you want when you turn 16? And I just said, a fast one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. As you would. Yeah. And I love muscle cars. In my head, I was like, oh, he's going to buy me a muscle car, right? Right, right. It didn't turn out like that, for the better. Uh-huh. So, he was like, I don't know. He went out and found a GTO that was in boxes. It was off the frame. I mean, it was a mess, right? Someone had started a restoration and bailed. $1,400 is what we paid for it. Oh, no. Wow. Yeah. And for two years, we took it all apart and built it all back up. How did your dad have that kind of mechanical prowess? I mean, I think a lot of it was just, again, that small town, Michigan, manliness, right? Yeah. A man had to know how to turn a wrench. Right. And then we bought the manual. Finally, I pushed out all of those little cars. They had manuals on literally how to put them together. Right, right, right. So, here we are, like, reading through that and buying the tools. And I can't believe it ran, to be honest with you. Honestly, me neither. And were you the king of your high school with that sweet ride? Because in Michigan, if you drove a rad car, it really meant something. That was a symbol. Yes. I had a Mustang GT that I bought, similarly, for $1,800. And, yeah, I think that elevated me a few notches. Yeah, I think so. I wasn't very cool. No, I saw a picture of you. You've got your tight-rolled jeans. Yeah. You've got a fucking gorgeous schlong, short, front, long, and back. So, I should have kept that because that's in. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It would be down to your ankles by now. It's called a schlong? That's one of the names for it. Short and front, long and back. That's the top. Pick your poison with that. Exactly. Right. What kind of dude were you in high school? Super shy. Did not apply myself unless it was with my hands or some sort of art. I thought I was going to be an architect. Never drank, never smoked. Tight, tight group of five guys. That was it. So, mom and dad owned more than one restaurant? Only one at a time. One at a time. Yeah. But it was a family diner. Breakfast only dinner. Seven days a week. And, like, how many tables are inside this place? It probably held 150 people. Because I was doing the math when I heard you say the town was 3,000 at that time. And I was like, man, even if 10% of the community ate at your restaurant. I'm not trying to do the finances of it. Right. It was the place that everybody gathered. Every morning, they would come in and sit at the same table. They didn't even have to order. Oh, that's the best. And that was a really. Primitive time. What is funny, though, when you're in a small town, like, assuredly your peers thought you guys were loaded. Oh, yeah. Because when you're a kid and someone's parent owns a business in town, you just think they're rich. 100%. You have no idea what the finances are. I was an only child. They spoiled me. Oh, wow. Well, yeah, the car. Right, right. Did you have dirt bikes? Four-wheelers. Four-wheelers, you son of a bitch. I grew up on dirt bikes. And I made the transition when I was, like, 12. I'm so grateful I had that childhood. Are you? Oh, yeah. I wouldn't be close to who I am today without that. Yeah, even thinking about what I've learned about how seasonal your preparation is and how you think about oak leaves burning in particular. Your obsession with figuring out how to get that smell into food, I wonder, is that us? Does everyone have that nostalgia for burning leaves? It was interesting. When we were working on those concepts, I would be like, hey, where did you grow up? And if they were in. Texas, there's no oak leaves, right? It wasn't prevalent. Some people live in California where it's mostly evergreen. So how do you find that touchstone that is able to really make people grow back in time? Yeah. That's a very powerful thing. Yeah, it really, really is. Almost the most. Yeah. Had you not gone away to, again, I love the acronyms, because CIA, Culinary Institute of America. But wasn't there ICE, too, international? - Yeah, yeah. - Yes. - Yeah, all bad. - It's all bad. they need a rebrand big time it's so funny it is funny had you not gone to cia did you have any other no it was i had no backup okay no backup no other interest academically i was terrible in high school so it wasn't like i was going to a university like all my friends right i was like this is it but i really loved it do you think you had any advantage having minimally cooked at the diner for sure what kind of advantages you arrive with like some mechanical ability yeah there was nice skills there was honestly a lot of the grit a lot of the stress a lot of that environment it's intense and you have to figure it out your domain is where i probably am the most ignorant so forgive me when i make a bunch of dumb observations but i'd also imagine you have a relationship with heat like i cook enough that i know over time i look at that flame i know what that flame is going to give me i know what kind of time i want something on there if i want to be golden i would imagine to you also have a pretty good relationship with heat yeah so a lot of the modernist technique is sous vide uh-huh and so for people who don't know sous vide you're putting food in a bag essentially and placing that in a water bath you're putting food in a bag essentially and placing that in a water bath but you have to have the water the right temperature so i'm pretty good at just putting my finger in there and knowing what temperature it is yeah uh-huh yeah you can do that yeah my wife always teaches me but i can take salt and know how many grams i have muscle memory yeah just doing something over and over again for 40 years or whatever what at cia was the most challenging what was the deficit you had that you were like oh boy i'm having a problem with this probably back then it was my false sense of ability a little arrogance maybe yeah yeah yeah you know because a lot of the people that start there have never flipped before oh wow i was young i was only 19 years old arrogant and i was like i'm better than all these people that held me back a little bit i learned that lesson fast so it kind of takes that personality a little bit though i agree there's a certain confidence confidence and you put yourself out there too the first thing i'm doing now yeah you know you're a bit vulnerable yeah yeah you're trying to get that perfect ratio of arrogance that can foolishly make you try something maybe you should try yeah yeah it's a real balancing act for me i was so young and most of the students were over 20 a month so they would go party on the weekends yeah and i was just read first books oh okay uh-huh and i think that was a very fortunate thing for me too i was like focused so that was the foundation i would have been like oh i'm in new york i have this now degree i would go down to new york city that seems like the natural trajectory why did you choose to go to chicago and not go to new york so originally i went back to a hotel in fram rapids the amway and the chef that was running the hotel he became a mentor and upon graduation he was like oh my god i'm going to go to new york and he was like come back for a couple months and we'll find a spot for you in europe and we'll apprentice over there and learn and blah blah so i went back to ram rapids and it never worked out so then i just went on a big search i wanted to work for the best chef and the best restaurant and that was it that's all that mattered which at the time was charlie trotter yeah okay so talk about the kind of legacy of charlie trotter in chicago yeah this would have been what 90 90 i have it written down i can five he had a 25 year run of kind of being the big dog the big dog yeah yeah so how'd you get that job i wrote him a letter with my hand several times until finally he called me oh no and i went down there for a tryout i was still in ram rapids i remember i wanted to eat at the restaurant before i tried out because i wanted to see what type of ingredients i had i wanted to lose the plateware and again i was playing on i had this giant hilariously over baggy like jc penny suits on i worked there for three days and it was a tryout and they offered me a job so i moved on okay so i wanted to talk about the culture of charlie trotter and then compare it to keller because i think this is kind of fascinating both work let's talk about the massive difference so what was the vibe at charlie trotter charters was intense in a way that wasn't in the service of what we were doing and i felt like it was getting in the way a bit charlie was a master manipulator oh he's put right inside of your head and just pull strings it was unbelievable what for like power maybe yeah if you're generous i think it's like look for whatever reason that was his technique and for whatever reason the results were the results so once you have the results you want you're not likely to go re-engineer your approach and probably he worked in kitchens where he picked up these little things along the way i mean we do what we see yeah yeah yeah and until you can break that cycle i never saw him cook which you know hey again he was successful yeah right so yeah the formula works um it was odd yeah yeah you said he was like a conductor not a musician right a conductor from afar but the food was amazing and the talent was amazing in a lot of ways it showed me what i didn't want to do how i didn't want to manage but at the same time i was so young and that restaurant was so good it was hard to not go this is the way to do it of course yeah the proof is in the pudding but that's how the cycle happens right exactly how had he designed that incredible menu or did he have help or if he wasn't really cooking how did he come up with that aspect of it he was super intelligent he went out and ate and then assimilated all you know brought all that in and then sort of moved the puzzle pieces around a bit so he like was a curator of yeah other great dishes you know techniques and then he would have us execute it explain how he'd yell at you i found this to be really fascinating he would not yell at the person he would yell at either the person directly next to you or the person that was supposed to be supervising you i remember the first time it happened it is a double hit because he's yelling he's making it very clear that you did something wrong so now you're at fault but he's dressing down the person next to you so now you feel bad for them oh my god it's like torturing a loved one psychological yeah oh that is why come on about the time you had some extra basil on your cutting board he was a very sharp person that knew how to draw a metaphor and analogy and just pin it right in you at one point i was shipping out in some basil and i had more than i needed not by a lot but i you know a little bit and i wiped it off my cutting board into the trash can and he happened to see it he walked over and it was very soft spoken very polite he was like chef do you happen to have your wallet with you and i'm like as a matter of fact i do which is very unusual to have it in the kitchen yeah so i get it out he goes have any money in there and i'm like yes he was pulling out for me so i pulled it i had a five one no and he picked it up he looked at it threw it in the trash yeah he knows you're stealing from me so i just stole from you yeah that's what you just did again all of this hard knocks at the time was like tough yeah yeah but lesson learned yeah yeah and by the way i always think in my experience the very first movie i did happened to be the hardest movie i ever did in my life it was like in another country we were in cold water half the time it was so much and i was like oh wow this is movies man it's on it's been way easier ever since and i'm like oh that's the way to do it yeah that's like having an abusive stepdad and then you have a nice stepdad and it's like yay i'm so happy yeah exactly it's like you shouldn't have had an abusive stepdad right the funny part of that is i didn't touch that money when he walked away it stayed right there because i'm like if i reach back in there what if he sees me yeah it feels like a test yeah like the second part of his psychological so you're there for a year not even not even a year yeah it was short and how did you get yourself over to french laundry and tell me because i wasn't aware of that at all in 95 how big was french laundry already not that big so chef heller took it over in 94 so it only opened a couple of years under him after i left Trotters. I went to Europe. And back then, France was where it was at. It moved down to Spain and other places, but then it was France. So I'm like, okay, we're going to the holy land of food. And very disappointed. Every meal I had was not good. So now I'm really lost. I'm like, if Trotters was the pinnacle, and that didn't work, I'm going to go try to find it elsewhere. And that didn't work. I came home and I was a bit lost. And I, once again, researched a bunch of restaurants and found the French Laundry. And was like, okay, it's in Napa. Worst case scenario, maybe I'll make wine. There's a lot of restaurants there. And wrote him a letter, similarly. He called me up and he was like, you're either batshit crazy, or you're going to be really good. And I landed there. By the way, you can be both. You can be both. I landed there and walked in the kitchen the first day. And there he was mopping the floor. Oh, wow. It felt so familiar because of my mother and father's restaurant. My dad would mop the floor. Yeah. Yeah. You see the trash is full, you take it out. Yeah. It doesn't matter who you are in the pecking order. Yeah. And it felt magical. Everything about it. We just blew by one point that I'm having a hard time grasping. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm going to go to the next question, which I think is a really good one. I'm going to go to the next question or relating to, which is at 20 years old, the fact that you went to France and you tried the food and you're like, it's not very good. I wouldn't fucking know. Like I liked White Castle and Lafayette, Coney Island. But you weren't tasting food all the time. Developing a palette. Yeah. What order is it? Do you think it's just because you are getting so good that in turn changes your own palette? It's just interesting at that age to be able to even discern the difference between great and good food, I think. Part of it is here, but a lot of it is here. Okay. In your heart. Yeah. And it's the way a meal makes you feel. Even at that age, you knew when something was special. And that was another thing, like that cliche stuffy French restaurant. I didn't want that. So all of that was filed away. And 20 years after that became my ethos. The structure of a kitchen lends itself to abuse in a lot of ways, right? My stereotypical notion of some of these kitchens that had gone to riots, like this main chef is like a god. Yeah. And all the formalities to reinforce how powerful they are and how subservient you are. I mean, that whole system was based on, the military hierarchy system. Oh, okay. That's where it comes from. Yeah. Historically that never works out well. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. There is that toxicity that ran rampant in the years past. Now the whole industry is going through a lot of reform, a lot of change. Well, internet came along and your behavior is no longer that anonymous. Can't get away with it. The sanctity of that little kitchen is permeable. That's the good part. You can't get away with this kind of thing. Oh, yeah. I certainly have acted out in my earlier days especially, it's hard to find that separation of pursuit of perfection and the standard and being a human sometimes. Yeah. It's hard. It sounds bizarre. No, no. No. I also think it's the pressure. Someone sat down, the thing has to be not just perfect, it has to be perfect in 13 minutes or whatever the window of time is. Right. Yeah. It's a very stressful job. When I opened the window, I was 30. That's pretty young. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's pretty young to be in charge of 100 people, even more so if you're the owner or a co-owner. So there's a lot of that entrepreneurial stuff that I never thought about. It was all about the food. And my business partner handled most of it, but it was still there. So sometimes the pressure sort of popped off. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That'll happen. But, you know, never physically. It's just a little bit of yelling here and there. Yeah. Sure. Well, the fact that you're here, that's a good thing. The fact that you named one of your boys Keller lets me know how you feel about him. But you arrived with one skill set and then you left with a completely different one. What did you pick up there and what were they doing that was novel? Just tell people, that's a very traditional French cuisine, yeah? The French laundry food, I would say, would be modern French. What does that mean? Threw away a lot of the rules of French cooking and utilizing a little bit of the American human. humor in food for the first time. I remember the very first time I ate there, they put the oysters and pearls out in front of me and I started laughing. When they gave the description and I was eating with my father, it was right before I was about to start. And he goes, why are you laughing? You know, we're in this fine dining restaurant, right? And I go, oysters and pearls, man. That's hilarious. Yeah. Yeah. And it's delicious. Yeah. And that was the first time that I was like, oh, this would be fun. This would be emotional. This is quite cool. And so that really resonated with me. But Thomas's integrity, his willingness to not compromise, it was unprecedented. The fact that he was there, the first one in the last one out, I was there at the right time to find that role model that really set the tone for my whole life. I give him a lot of credit for my ability to push through cancer. Sure. I learned so much to be a chef, but a lot of life lessons. Yeah. Like maybe the chef part wasn't the most important. Probably not. Yeah. But did he have an overarching theory about how he cooked that you began to understand? And what was that? Like, what was his? North Star. If you're really into food, if you study it, it's your passion, you can look at a chef's food and understand the architecture of it and the way that certain chefs season the food, they push with acid, they're liberal assault, they're cognizant of texture. So you're able to understand the architecture and their aesthetic. The ingredients that they always have in their back pocket. And a lot of that with him was this emotional aspect of seasoning the food. So the oysters and pearls, the cornette that looks like an ice cream cone, coffee and donuts. Like there's all of this sort of other stuff. And so if somebody read me a description of a dish, I would probably be able to tell you who created it. Wow. Oh, no kidding. And visually, for sure. They have an aesthetic and they have a way that they communicate. It's like writing. There is a lot of storytelling. Yeah. Was there anything about the service there that you also clocked? You were like, oh, this thing works really well. They were very approachable. They were the opposite of France. You know, it felt like you were in somebody's home, having a dinner party. It felt very comfortable and warm. This is the only one of these restaurants I've actually eaten at. Okay. Probably 50% of the time. Probably 15 years ago. My wife and I were about to become vegan on January 1st. We were going to try to be vegan. And it was like right before Christmas. And I'm like, maybe we should stop at that restaurant on our drive and let it rip before we go vegan. Another time. Yeah. The reservation we got was like 9:30 at night. Yeah, we went there and we ate till midnight. Yeah. And there were so many special things that happened. Our one experience there, there was this man eating next to us and he looked sweet. So we started chatting with him. And he told us that he and his wife had always come there and that she had died like 10 years before from cancer. And that every year on their anniversary, he comes and has this meal. That's sweet. Yeah. I was like, oh man, this is really so special. And there's just so many things that were, and I'm uncouth. So a lot of this was new to me. Like even I got the truffle option and the man comes out with this mahogany box in white gloves. And I said to Kristen, oh, I think he's going to murder someone for us. Like I'm waiting to see a pistol get pulled out of this box. Right? Then they educate you on truffles. And I'm like, how much is that one worth? Oh, that's like a $2,000. Wow. They're that much. Yeah. And I'm like, who, where do you buy? It's like a guy comes door to door. So it was a life event. Whatever the food was, it was phenomenal. I loved things I hate like oysters and pearls. I don't like any of those things. I was just eating things all the time. I'm like, no, I know I don't like this. This place immediately built this trust where I was trying things I don't like and everything was fantastic. It's on par with going to Disneyland. Like you should do it in your life. Yeah. It was like a real life experience. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert. If you dare. We are supported by Allstate. 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It knows the style, the workflows, and it backs people up without getting in the way. At your service, not after your job. That's the difference. Give it a try for yourself. Start streamlining your workflows with Superhuman. Try to do it. Today at superhuman.com. And the media took that a step further, as with most professions or arts. Any protege always wants to surpass the mentor. Yeah, of course. To impress them, you want to hear, like, you did it, man. Yeah, pat on the back. So when I was at the French Laundry, Thomas knew that I was not going to work. I was going to work there forever. And the style of food that I wanted to do was not of his. And so at some point, he was like, hey, there's this restaurant in Spain called El Bui. I feel like it's right near Wheelhouse. So he arranged a stage there. And after I saw what was happening there, I was like, I have to go do my own thing. You'd remember this place because Jose Andres also went there. That's like what woke up his mind as well. Oh, wow. It's kind of north of Barcelona, right, on the coast. It's not like in a populated area, right? It's just kind of in the middle of nowhere. Yeah. So, yeah, when you left French Laundry, you were the sous chef, which I didn't even know what this meant. You were the second in charge under Thomas. So when you go there, and I know you hate this word, but other people know it, and I need you to explain it to everyone. Molecular gastronomy. So I know you don't like it, but what is the theory behind it? So at some point in the late 90s, it became popular to. Utilize equipment from other disciplines. The medical industry was a big one. Centrifuges and rotary evaporators. Yeah, how does a rotary evaporator work? I hear you talk about this a lot. So you have a liquid or a puree that you pull under a vacuum. So now you're able to boil that liquid at a very low temperature. Okay. So you're not having all of the aromas blow off and stuff like that. That makes so much sense. So it boils, it condensates, and then what drips is the essence of whatever you had in there. So you've like extracted the essence without destroying it with heat. Right. Whoa. That's so fascinating, right? Because this is applying what we know about water boiling at different temperatures at different ATMs, right? Like at elevation, it boils at 209 or whatever the hell it is. Right, right. So if there's not one ATM, then it boils at low heat. That's genius. I remember my first. My first time being in Aspen trying to boil eggs. And I'm doing it in front of my business partner, whom I had only known like a month. Okay. His whole family was there. And he's like, Chef, why don't you make us some breakfast? I'm like, no problem. And it was a big problem. Oh, no. Oh, no. So embarrassing. He didn't even know how to boil an egg. That's funny. Yeah, so there was that. So at that restaurant, I guess the other thing I learned. Researching. you is that what it really also broke open for you is that oh the sky's the limit that we're not locked into french we're not locked in like this journey of what food could be we're not nearly at the end of it no in fact the opposite it was like if you didn't explore this you would be doing the industry a disservice because i felt like for the first time there was full permission to express yourself or push outside of the box invent stuff yeah and so then it was game on once i came home from there shortly after i left the french army to run a kitchen in evanston oh this was trio yeah no budget we were paying the chefs twenty thousand dollars a year this was 2001 do they get tipped out by the house is there any other that's it that was it fuck that i know it was bad oh there was five or six of us in there we were the rugrats yeah you know we had nothing but that really pushed creativity because you got credited rightly so for really elevating trio and putting it in a standing it wasn't in this was interesting to me of course i know the michelin star thing which is already ironic because it's a tire company but i didn't realize mobile stars were also a thing i don't know if they still are are they they're a thing for me i don't know if they're a thing for me i don't know if they're for hotels for hotels yeah so mobile gas station monica oh my god right same right yeah it is unbelievable yeah yeah so you got like five mobile stars some amount of mobile stars yeah lots of mobile stars couldn't get the chevron star or the shell star right no shells what's the highest amount of stars for that five okay so yeah we were moving and then 9-11 happened three months after i was there so we're doing all this actually food taking big swings and it was working but then the whole country just pulled way back and i remember i was just a chef i had no ownership in this at all and i went to the owner i'm like look i understand if you want meatloaf and mashed potatoes and that's what we'll do this is your business and i'll never forget he looked me in the eye and he goes no i believe in your vision this is why i hired you instead of comfort we're gonna put people's mind on another planet so they don't have to think about anything that's happening yeah escape it was a dream you opened a linea in 2005 yep it's pretty instantly a hit yeah so the new york times came in on night one oh boy and first of all at that time the new york times didn't leave manhattan or the boroughs so it was a massive deal And it was a night, man. which is not fair yeah but like they say i don't know any press is good press yeah so after that it was just straight up the momentum was unbelievable i was proven in the chicago market so that helped in my pedigree french laundry really helped but when we first opened steppenwolf theaters right across the street and me and my business partner were like well we have to have a pre-theater menu because what if we don't have any people and we eliminated that right away everybody came in we had three menu options everybody wanted the biggest one and so we were off to the races okay so some of the things that are maybe they were unique or not but they're defining characteristics so the building has no signage yep you walk in there's no lobby there's no bar what informed these decisions were they random or overarching theory on why that was no bar like there's no alcohol served there there's no spirits so wine and beer got it i wanted it to be a temple of food no distractions and none of the other stuff so it was all about purity of the experience with food in mind spirits were not something that went well with food at that time at least and i just wanted it to be a gastronomic palace so everything else was noise get it out of here and it works yeah so for people who haven't seen any of these dishes yeah you're using liquid nitrogen you're making mousse crispy like you're doing wild crazy stuff it's all prefix yeah people sit down that's it nobody chooses so you knew what you want to do with the menu obviously that would be very intuitive for you what were you thinking about what you wanted the other elements to be like the service aspect did you have a novel idea about that did you have environment what did you want for that stuff the entryway was very special it was a very long hallway with a false perspective and a hidden door that was triggered by a sensor so it was a little bit like a fun house yeah and the reason for that was there was no room then so like you had a yellow cab or you had to drive yourself from the suburbs or something and i wanted to eliminate all of that before you sat down like you've entered a magical place yeah yeah and you're disoriented and you forgot about your babysitter and your sick kid at home and you're ours now yeah and the overall aesthetic with the restaurant was very minimalist i would say that we were one of the first fine dining restaurants to not use a tablecloth we were trying to challenge everything at one point i asked the architect if there was a way for us to do it and he said no i said no i said no i said no not have tables oh my god that is how much we were like willing to every aspect of what a restaurant was yeah we identified it and challenged it we have tables you've just given me an idea of having a restaurant that's lazy boys and then dinner tray uh like tv dinner trays that's how i eat every night yeah yeah how do you handle service is that something you micromanage or do you bring in someone that you believe in their approach super hands-on okay even now if i'm in chicago i'm in one of my restaurants five days a week for sure a lot of that i probably shouldn't do anymore yeah i should be spending my time on other stuff but i love it and when the cat's away the mice play it's just a fact yeah and so i like to be there to make sure everything's moving had you accumulated grievances because i imagine if i opened a restaurant the first thing would be like i would x out all the things that annoy me about is that kind of what you were doing as well yes a bit for the table i hate it when you would put your hand on the edge of the table to stand up and the whole table wobbles so i'm like why do they have tablecloths well they're hiding a bad table let's have a nice table so there's a lot of that yeah very meticulous or nothing on your meal more than when it's just uneven i'll get under there with sugar packets i'm always manipulating it are you impossible to go to a restaurant with no the opposite i mean now i have a whole different set of challenges because of what i have going on up here but no i'm pretty sure my best friend works in service and has a whole business he has a whole business on service and it is nearly impossible to go to a restaurant with him and i've had to tell him like you gotta you gotta turn it off like i can't do this right anymore i kind of get it though like when i'm watching a movie and they take a shortcut or they fucking lied about the logic i'm like oh fuck you you know like it hurts me just because i know the math right i know you gotta keep it to yourself um so by oh seven you've gotten your own mobile five star there they're starting to rank in like the best restaurant in america the best restaurant in the world that's all taking off i do notice you have a marriage that ends in those six yeah is it possible to start a restaurant of that caliber and be spending the time nurturing all the other relationships no i mean let's be honest yeah when we opened i would get there at 9 a.m and leave at four in the morning yeah i mean it was insane yeah good luck jordan khan who has best routine here he was on the opening team and dave baron who has celine and santa monica was there too and that team pretty stuffy who you had yes we were burning hours yeah didn't matter you loved it you know it was like we had a mission yeah and then when you realize that you're accomplishing that mission then you were harder you know so now we're in there all the time at that point we were open five days a week but it didn't matter we were there on monday tuesday it was infectious yeah well the work becomes your identity nothing else is happening in your life it's your singular identity and you're crushing you're getting all the accolades people love it so it's like you finally have an identity which is the hottest shit in the world yeah it's intoxicating very much so so in 07 you get diagnosed with stage four tongue cancer and i want to know prior to the diagnosis were you experiencing anything that was cluing you in that this diagnosis was coming that you were ignoring i didn't know what it was i definitely knew something was wrong but i was so committed yeah that i didn't even mind if it was a doctor i was like no i have to work today but was it fatigue you were feeling no it almost felt like you bit your tongue oh uh-huh you know it would be like sore tender and yeah you know hot coffee i had that for probably three or four years years yeah and i was with the dentist and they'd be like uh you just had your second kid you open your business right stress yeah so they missed it seven or eight times oh boy and at the time you were diagnosed almost three quarters your tongue had the disease and you were like oh my god i'm gonna die i'm gonna die this tumor in it yeah it was bad i literally couldn't talk couldn't eat fuck and the first suggested treatment was what they wanted to remove the whole tongue and then both sides of my neck it had metastasized it was in your lymph nodes yeah so they wanted to do like major dissection i mean bad bad surgeries yeah you wouldn't have nothing the whole thing i couldn't even process of course there's stuff that i can't taste right exactly that's a sick joke but also the business owner that now i have to figure out how to communicate with everyone what am i gonna do your staff's gotta learn sign language people left because they thought i was gonna die you know and yeah that was a bizarre time so you did six months of radiation like every single day yeah how quickly did it start working we went to five major hospitals they all said the same thing and i'm like now what maybe i should just die and i had my sons and you know i was like no we're gonna fight this and it just so happened that university of chicago in my backyard was like hey we have this new thing it's a trial but we feel confident and i'm like where do i sign yeah so started chemo first that really didn't bother me i lost all my hair and got pimply and all that but it didn't affect my taste and it didn't affect my energy about three months in they started radiation and that was a different story that is intense they're microwaving your tongue yeah well from my collarbone to my nose and so at one point the skin on the inside of your throat and your tongue was shed oh my god like a snake yeah no swallowing no taste no nothing oh my god but it was worse that sounds torturous you had three months of that feeling yeah and then afterwards it hangs on yeah i thought this was interesting i didn't know how this works it makes total sense but you i heard you explain like your your job as the chef is to educate the people under you on basically your palate right so like the underlings are going chef tastes this and you're going great but add a little bit of this like they're learning how to do it and they're learning how to do it and they're learning how to do it and they're learning how to know your to be you so luckily you had enough people that that had fully understood, in L.A. we'd go like, they know how to write for you, right? They know your voice. And so you were able to rely on them to taste. But were you panicked at all? I mean, you have to be a control freak, so that's a lot to turn over. Yeah, I wasn't panicked. My experience with the whole thing was very bizarre. I never fully thought that I was going to die. And my comfort, my family was the restaurant. Yeah. So I was going to work every day. I thought that I should communicate with the top three chefs and be like, hey, I want this acidic, light pickle, and I want it sweet, light, X, like very clean ice cream. And we would build it that way. Yeah, this probably pushed your communication skills forward in a way that maybe otherwise you wouldn't have been forced to develop. Yeah. And let you relinquish some control. That's a hard thing. So that, yeah, I mean. You have to be forced sometimes. At that point, it was all about me. And after that, I was like, okay, yeah, I have to have other people. You know, I can't do it by myself. Yeah, almost forced your hand. Sometimes you look back on these trials and they're gifts in disguise. They all are. Yeah, yeah. For sure. You cannot think that at 32. I felt pretty invincible at that age. Yeah, yeah. And then when that diagnosis hit, I was like, what the hell is this? Yeah. Yeah. I just mean the notion when you're in it that you're going to go, oh, I better look back on this and be grateful for this is like almost an impossible perspective to have. In that moment. In the moment. But now, for sure, it made me a better chef. Yeah. Life would just be really easy, though, if you really could embrace that. I know, but that's part of it. All the shit's hitting the fan somehow. I can't wait till I'm grateful. I can't wait to reflect on this. That was this great moment where I had to learn and grow. So you guys got three Michelin stars between 2011 to 2024, so you have real longevity in this, which is impressive. When you decide to close and revamp the place in 16 and readdress the menu, kind of start all over. Yeah. What prompts that? Is that scary? That seems like a big decision. It was. You know, at that point, we were 10 years old. I said the ethos of the restaurant was evolution, and that meant not only the food, but the container. If we were renovating the restaurant, we had to keep everybody employed. There was 100 people. Yeah. Because we wanted them all back, obviously. Yeah, you didn't want to lose them. So we had to find a revenue stream, and we did a pop-up in Madrid. I was there while all of that renovation was happening. So before we left, I knew what we were about to do. I helped design it and signed off on everything. But I was away. And this was. This was my baby. This is terrifying, yeah. So it was that entryway and the staircase I designed, and it was really personal. Yeah. And when I walked back in, I went, huh, this isn't the one, yeah. Oh, no. Yeah. Oh. It was tough. Oh. Because we went the opposite of where we were, which was, like, really minimalist. Really, a lot of industrial materials, like, really. Really modern. To a Parisian row house in the 30s. Ornate ceilings and all that stuff. And it just didn't feel me. Oh, wow. Wow, so what did you do at that moment? Learned how to deal with it. Yeah. I'm sure we'll either pick it up and move it soon or renovate it. Okay. So you still feel that? Yeah. Wow. It never grew on you, and it never grew on you in the way. Oh, interesting. How do the diners feel about it? I mean, everybody likes a fresh look. Yeah. Rob, you were there post-renovation, yeah? Yeah. And what did you think of the decor? It wasn't my favorite. Oh, okay. Okay. Uh-oh. Right? I bet I would love it. It sounds like me. I think I would, too. Yeah. I wonder if she would be confident to say that if I would have said I didn't like it. Oh, he definitely would not have said it. Absolutely not. No, of course not. No, no. Of course not. I wish I could have gone in all, like, the first iteration. Like, that would have been cool. Did you have the impulse to go, like, no, we got to redo this? I mean, that would have been impossible. It would have been impossible. Yeah. Which is good, because maybe at some point in your life, you would have. Right. Maybe you learned some acceptance over that period. I buried it. Yeah. Okay, so I want to know, like, when we talk to musicians about how they come up with songs, there's, like, some pretty common patterns that people, you know, people are in the car, they're in the shower. There's these areas where, like, you're just distracted enough that comes. So I'm curious, like, how do dishes come to you? I would say primarily three ways. Education. I don't have a move, you know, on my bedside table, wake up in the middle of the night and write an idea down. That doesn't happen. Two pickles, three carrots. Yeah, right. Turmeric. So there's a lot of study, actually. What other chefs are doing now, what they did 100 years ago. Are there forgotten dishes? That we can resurrect or spin off? So there's that. Is some of that research, though, just traveling and eating a lot of food? Traveling, yeah. So that would appeal to me, yeah. Yeah. There is the unexplainable impulses that come in, whether it is music or a painting, where I recently, I started with a Caravaggio aesthetic in mind. Oh. Really baroque, really. And I was trying to replicate that on the plate. And it went very far from there to, like, a Mondrian aesthetic, all geometric. So, like, it's wildly unpredictable. When we first opened, I was into Reggie and the Machine. And there was a track that they had that, I mean, you know their music, it's intense. But there was an area in the track that broke really hard, really abrupt. Right. And in my head, in that second, I was like, how can I do that with the menu, the progression of food? So it's that sort of, everything goes through a food filter. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I ask myself, can I spin off of that shape or, you know, this, this, and that? The other thing is ingredients. Like, I pick up a tomato and I smell it, and my head goes somewhere. Wow. Yeah. Almost like synesthesia. Yeah. Going to, like, markets in Italy and stuff like that. Yeah. Doing it around the stuff, you have to touch it. It is so visceral. And then once you're in Japan or anywhere, anywhere else, Mexico, watching them, what they do, and their traditional food is wildly inspirational. And does some of it come from just you're preparing something, and you just get some weird inkling to incorporate another ingredient or something? Yeah. And that spins off into its own? Yeah. I mean, one example would be truffles and banana. Oh, sure. I don't know. Yeah, that's a weird pairing. And then when you look into it, there are aromatic components that they both have that connect them, but I didn't know that. Ooh, this wasn't even one of my questions, but now I'm thinking about it. Do you think that AI at some point will be able to analyze all these things that are patterns that emerge that we're not seeing, that everyone loves? Yeah. I use AI a lot. Oh, you do? Yeah. How will you use it? Mostly research. When I was interviewed in 2002, the writer asked me what my favorite kitchen tool was, and I said Google. Google? Because everything's right there, and that's what the inspiration, the information, I know how to cook. Right. So once I have that little nugget of something, then we can. What's like your weeknight dinner? 20 minutes. Eating for me is very complicated. Yeah, you probably have a really hard relationship with it. The irony of it all is that it's a lot. So I go through that period where, first of all, I'm diagnosed, and I'm like, this is insane. Is this a joke? Yeah, yeah. And then you go through treatment, and you're unable to taste, but then that comes back, and you're like, I'm good. Yeah. The issue then becomes the atrophy from the radiation. The long-term effects of it. Everything stiffens. I mean, you. See, everything is really tight. So there's a muscle, or there's a flap, that when you drink or eat, it folds over and covers your windpipe. Right. You know, that's right. Mine doesn't fold down. Oh. So it's very, very hard to swallow. Oh, man. And then about seven years ago, because of the radiation as well, my drums receded. And I got a really bad infection. My whole face. Oh, no. So they had to pull all of these bottom teeth. Oh, wow. So now here we are again. As a chef, I'm not able to eat. Yeah. Chew. Really. With that comes this social stigma, where I'm like, not only if I go out with friends, I have to really be careful and navigate that, which is a little bit odd. But also, I'm meh. So if I go to a restaurant that is of a certain level, they know who I am. Yes, definitely. And what the chefs want to do. When other chefs come in, they want to feed them the whole menu. Yeah, if I were you, I'd only eat at McDonald's. There'd be too much pressure. My relationship with it now is complex. Yeah. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. We've talked before about Rob building our website on Squarespace, and I bring it up again because it's a perfect example of what they do well. Rob had all the pieces, the content, the vision, the ideas, but he needed something to actually take all that and make it public-facing. And Squarespace was that bridge. Maybe you're in the same spot. You've been developing something, a business, a skill set, a body of work, and it's been private. It's been yours. But at some point, you're ready to put it out there, and that transition from private to public can feel like a huge leap. 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On ZipRecruiter, qualified candidates can add a personal note to tell you why they're interested in your job, so you see the most motivated people right away. And ZipRecruiter has a new feature that shows you the most interested qualified candidates first, so you meet the right people faster. And right now, you can try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash DAX. And with ZipRecruiter's powerful matching technology, qualified candidates find you fast. No wonder. The number one rated hiring site based on G2. ZipRecruiter makes it easy for amazing candidates to get your attention. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. Try it for free today at ZipRecruiter.com slash DAX. That's ZipRecruiter.com slash DAX. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter. This episode is supported by Helix. Okay, so summer's officially over. Sad. And I'm trying to get back into a real routine. 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After treatment, the restaurant won a lot of awards. Yeah, yeah. And in the back of my mind, it was always like, I'm getting sympathy votes. Oh. Oh, you thought that. That bothered me a lot. Yeah. For years. Interesting. I was like, oh, they feel bad. Yeah. I mean, that's definitely not what happened, but yeah. I hate being pitied. Yeah. It's like my most. Right. Yeah, I hate it. We're only a favor. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I do want to ask a really quick, a couple technical things, because I think it'd be fun to educate all of us a little bit on this. When I think of taste, like if you ask a civilian what is taste, you're just thinking like what the flavor is on your tongue, and then maybe you know, oh, a lot of that's coming from your nose. But tell me about aroma and texture, because I don't even think that's something people realize are impacting what they, quote, taste. Right. I mean, aromas, that is taste. So you have the five basic on your tongue, and those are like blunt instruments. There's no pinpoint there. No scalpel in there. Yeah. And everything else is right here. That's why when you smell a glass of wine, and you smell chocolate, there's no chocolate in there. Yeah. Right? Yeah. But you taste it, you perceive it. So that is wildly important. And it became really important when I couldn't taste. Yeah. I mean, I would build dishes solely on how they smelled together. So you could smell. Yeah. Okay. That never went away. That's good. That's good. That's a blessing. And texture, people don't realize how complex the body is. Like, certain textures will produce saliva, and then that saliva mixes with whatever you have in your mouth, and it hits different areas of your palate, and the body's a crazy thing. So fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So all of that ties in, and it really is not something that people pay attention to. Right. You get all of it at once, and it's hard for you to parse out which thing you're enjoying. Right. But it's biology. Is there another thing missing? I guess the environment, too. So that's what I think. We've always been pretty theatrical with our stuff. Some pageantry. And so I really look at color, and light, and sound, and all aspects of the environment. Smell. We really play with that. Is there any music? If it makes sense, and it's curated. We did a chorus at one point where everybody was sort of in the room at the same time. It was really. And it was ridiculously crunchy. So we passed out a card. And on the card it said, "Fly it." Okay. So the whole room just goes, "Fly it." Self-conscious. Yeah. And then everybody at the same time starts chewing on these Cheetos or whatever. And the whole room is like. Oh my gosh. Like a chorus? Yeah. Oh, wow. Was it your restaurant that did something, too? Like something outrageously hot, too? Everyone had to eat something really hot? No. No. We've played with that. Yeah. Yeah. No. No. No. We've played with temperature. Hot and cold in your mouth at the same time. Oh, I meant like. Spicy. Capsaicin. Capsaicin. Capsaicin. Yeah. We removed the spiciness from it. Oh. With a really great evaporator. Oh. Oh. So none of that capsium comes up in the distillate. Oh. So chilis smell amazing. Yeah. Yeah. I personally can't do hot. Yeah, too spicy. Can't fuck with them, yeah. But the smell is amazing. Yeah. Yeah. I wouldn't. Again, I don't really think of this. Yeah. I don't think of this. I think of this as like a. it so presently maybe it slows time down i don't know what it does i think it speeds it up and like you're saying if it's december or even february and you're like hey we have to have a morale dish so we have to start planning it what did we do last year how do we manipulate it it has to be different can't be the same dish and you don't have them right right yeah so you have to be yeah it's its own challenge so it's like a movie or a book you have a deadline and that self-imposed pressure or nature's pressure it templates your whole year yeah and as far as perception it's like i was always a big outdoors person in michigan we did a lot of hunting you know so the seasons really resonate with me yeah they're very important when you smell those oak leaves or that first snow the feeling of it quiet i always think of fall when it's fall you're going back to school there's new girls yeah new clothes you go to like a halloween party it's dark early to me like a lot of people think spring is romantic to me fall is like the most romantic my favorite i feel like that's probably a midwest thing yeah because of that that leaves change that whole thing yeah and then come like end of may you're like oh it's time to fucking party i don't think we have a very bipolar existence up in michigan right we're just like it was miserable miserable you see it it gets to 39 degrees and the sun's out in april and dudes are in convertibles with no shirts as i would just fucking dying to come out of this gray hell so i just think it's really heightened the just overall temperament i believe that now the restaurant culture i talk about all the time my girlfriend of nine years of my 20s she worked at a bunch of different restaurants they all party fucking hard their hours are crazy and they're like oh my god i'm gonna go to a restaurant they're crazy they sleep in stress yeah it's a culture yeah how did you navigate that culture pretty good that was another thing with thomas his professionalism was paramount is paramount i had a rule that i wasn't friends with my employees sometimes that didn't work out some people are just too attractive yeah but i was too busy working the party the priority wasn't that i said i had never drank heavily up until a little bit later so i was focused but yes it is rampant in the industry and i think it's getting a lot better but it's because of the generation the generation's not drinking yeah yeah yeah so there's always some substances in there but i think it's getting better i think the industry selects though for people who a their night owls right they like arousal they like high stress they function well in high stress and they're fast you're surrounded by it yeah all the time probably a lot of adhd in that world probably i think you're kind of self-selecting for a lot of qualities that lend themselves to also be an addict to you right also if you're dealing with such a high pressure situation at work you want to let go you want to release yeah it's very very there you know the thing i used to be really judgmental on that i've done a complete 180 on and it was with her it was with brie who worked at all these restaurants and the servers would all once a week generally on their day off they would go eat at a really nice restaurant yeah and we lived in a one-bedroom apartment santa monica i think our cumulative income was like 18 000 a year between the two of us she was making 10 i was making eight and i'd be like you just went on spent 180 dollars on there like i could not wrap my head right around spending that amount of money on something when we didn't have shit and i was more like let's save up for blank this tv and then i remember there was this whole movement i don't know about 10 years ago where people were getting really critical about millennials they made fun of them about the avocado toast yeah now after that i think now there's a lot of great social science that has studied this and they're like okay on your death bed what do you remember well people remember experiences on their deathbed they evaluate their life based on their experiences not how many inches their tv was it's not how it works yeah and so whatever that costs it's actually a bargain it's about it yeah and so i've come completely around and i guess i just want to end this on encouraging people do it man save up for a fucking amazing experience at a restaurant because it's so memorable that trip to french laundry yeah it was obnoxiously expensive and i remember it so well it's like a moment of my life we had a three top come in it was an 80 year old woman her daughter and her granddaughter and they came down to the kitchen after the meal and the 80 year old was like it's my 80th birthday i never thought i would have a meal like this it was the most magical thing she started to cry and she's like and i got to share it with my daughter and my granddaughter yeah so like to your point yeah what do you spend money on you should spend money on moments with people you love that you'll remember forever that compliment goes way beyond stars the mobile stars yeah right right yeah so you know in that way it is very very rewarding to have that platform to provide people to make those memories it's wrapped yeah that's awesome well it's an honor to meet you man yeah it's really cool coming to the restaurant i know it's really hard to get in but i feel like well people may famously remember we tried to shame you guys into giving rob a reservation over christmas and you guys did yeah we were so so grateful rob was it the most memorable night ever yeah it was incredible despite the decor yeah rob you really stuck your foot do you imagine if you just said yeah it was okay yeah oh my god oh my god no he came back really poorly oh that's great well grant thank you so much this has been a blast just a quick reminder that as part of our summer break here's a rerun of one of our favorite fact checks i'm in an incredibly beautiful new sweater that my friend got looks gorgeous i just put it on for the first time and i'm truly blown away the green is really nice and the fit is really kind of perfect i know they know how to do it and i think i like these customers you have to roll them up they're too long on their own they're clearly designed to be rolled see look that's a seven inch nine inch cuff it's nice though yeah but you wouldn't wear it like that right you're supposed to go i'm not allowed because i'm short and they have a rule that if you're short you have to show a little bit of skin if you're wearing oversized clothing you have to show a little bit of skin on your arm because you'll get lost in it i just rode my bicycle oh yeah um my first time in biker shorts how'd it go well i just can't believe i'm a person that owns biker shorts and wears them now i'm having a hard time well you're 50 so a lot of things have changed yeah but also i think that's something that's best done much younger almost the 50 compounds it first i never envisioned myself as being someone that would be in those biker shorts yeah sure um but it they have this built into them and the seat is very tiny on the road bike and it hurts your anus yeah i don't want to say it hurts here it does hurt yeah it hurts i was like oh it's a nice padding i put them on for the first time i felt like panay always talks about like eventize your run i was like well these are built for nothing other than riding a bicycle sure and let's do that and the padding was nice and i love that there's no fabric flowing anywhere else i think i went up the hill faster because of them probably aerodynamics i'm not gonna adopt the lycra shirt though i decided i swore a wife beater so you're back home i'm back home i'm very very very happy to be back home i got you a present for your birthday do you want to open it i would love to open it let me really take my time here we i'm looking at um a beautiful tissue paper yeah um with oh can i say one thing this will sound derogatory but let me preface it by saying i could be in the tourism board for mexico city i love it it's an enchanted i want to go romantic city food's dynamite if you ever go go to havre 77 french restaurant we went twice the french onion soups are the best i've ever had in my life on the second trip on my birthday night i got two bowls of it oh wow like when you got two steaks yes and i would i would tear out a fingernail right now to have it again and share it with you it was the most incredible but anyways the facial tissue and i had a cold it wasn't ideal okay and where it really hit me was one ply maybe less i was on at a nice hotel mind you yeah we got on the flight i went into the bathroom and i pulled the tissue out of the mirror that's in the lavatory of the airplane and the second i touched i was like oh that's soft and then i thought how bad was the tissue where the airplane tissue felt like puffs plus with lotion oh my just to make it relative yeah because that's one ply yeah i think it was like 0.6 ply oh okay anyways beautiful tissue paper yeah with um purple flowers really nice the tissue is from nikki kiho the present is not oh this is a multi-stage gift yeah okay beautiful tissue paper and then a burlap sack yeah also from nikki kiho that's how they wrap wonderful oh buddy the stories of raymond carver will you please be quiet please is this an origin i it i bought it as a first edition and it is signed it's signed yeah did you pay the face value of eight dollars and 95 cents no it was on sale actually half off what year was this published because we can i think it's fascinating that a hardcover beautifully bound book was 8.95 i know that's true i know i'm all over the place in a little um manic but i just gotta add back to little women uh-huh which i love yeah as you know greta gerwig's number one super fan now at the end of that movie they show them pressing and making her first book the book little women yeah i don't know if you remember that sequence i don't know if i remember it but the amount of time and effort it took to make a book in the 1890s where they're pressing it all they were cutting it with a saw they were sewing the binding by hand and then they were cutting leather out and in a pattern and then gluing and putting that in a press i'm like it took like a week to make a single volume they should have been six hundred dollars exactly well that's why they're so rare and it explains why i think it was carnegie who invented the library there were no libraries books were just too expensive they were like probably in today's dollars they probably were hundreds of dollars yeah that amount of manpower okay so this was first published about we think about wealth disparity now but then in order to even read a book you had to be a millionaire yeah i'll get the number wrong but to put it into perspective like so i guess elon is now worth 400 billion dollars recently although that stock just fell whatever let's just say he hit 400 billion 400 billion of our total gdp and national amount of money isn't even 0.01 percent yeah when rockefeller hit a billion he they say he actually had like 15 cents of every dollar that existed in america so it's like as bad as it feels now it was it was bad worse but then just on an order of magnitude crazier with the first rich people yeah that's true okay so this was 1963 so this book cost 8.95 in 1963 how much do we think that is now rob can you put it in well that's a great we we have that technology yeah we sure do i added a new i actually wrote up my resolutions last night oh great which i don't know if i've ever written them down yeah i wrote some down too you did did you journal this morning i did congratulations every day i'm proud of you i had therapy too and we talked about it and she said i if i could burn them yeah or shred them or whatever um but can i have her number no she's like if that's gonna allow you to really be able to be honest and truthful with yourself in a way you won't be able to otherwise and let it out of your body you know sometimes her and i talk about like there are things that i talk about with her that i that only she only she gets to hear and she said you know it's not just me you you also have you yeah and you have a dialogue with you can have a dialogue with yourself yeah especially via the journal yeah but but yes of course i have to be very honest yeah with myself there and so if i if i'm out of fear not doing that then it's not worth it so i do i'm still deciding we may have talked about it but i don't think it's worth it i don't think it's worth it i don't think it's worth talking about this um but and i had mentioned there was a period i stopped journaling over the last 20 years and then i had a relapse obviously and i didn't even put all this together but through therapy with mark i think what occurred to me was i there were things i i couldn't write down just like you were saying are you afraid someone's gonna find it and i'm like no but in truth there was a moment yes i'd be afraid someone would find it and i had this weird dedication to never lie to that journal right right so i just couldn't i didn't it didn't feel like i was making a decision to stop journaling it just was like this is really weird i've been journaling for 17 years or whatever and i haven't in a while but i'm not overthinking it but of course in reflection was like i couldn't really yeah be dishonest to this thing yeah i love this this is such a thoughtful wonderful present it would have cost 89.18 wow 99 for a book that's a lot it's not enough though i wish it was 5 000 okay this is a fantastic present very thoughtful thank you so much you're welcome okay how was therapy it was good it's my first therapy of the new year um you know for a second i was debating i was like maybe i only need to start going like as check-ins now like maybe i don't really need to be on this consistent of a but then today i was i was like no i need to keep up my my once every two well look i've stopped so i really am in no position to say this yeah but it definitely falls under the umbrella of like well it couldn't hurt to go it does not hurt and it potentially could hurt to not go yeah yeah it's kind of the vitamin debate it's like the scientific community is kind of split down the middle whether vitamins work or not yes but it's like i don't know at the on the chance that they work yeah they're not gonna harm you all right someone's gonna comment there are some yes i hear you there are some bad ones oh i know and you can have too much of certain things but just in general if you're taking the you know not above the daily dose of any one thing it's not gonna harm you speaking of okay you know how i'm always paranoid about drowning my cells and too much water yeah or people in general like drinking too much water and then drowning their cells and you you know gundry's new movement is less water not shockingly so him and i are alive soulmates why he's got those fresh hands he doesn't drink any water no hydration oh my gosh i'm gonna put my hair up real time if you want to see it looks so good down but go ahead okay let's see what happens there okay if you want to see it go to youtube do you ever do an up and then a braid and back i yeah well i did it for when's this out uh the eighth i did it for uh a commercial we were just in together oh yeah yeah that comes out yesterday it came out yesterday oh my god our little commercial yes our second commercial of i hope many yes exactly it was so fun and it's out it was out yesterday it's on our instagrams yeah and in it i do have a ponytail with a braid yeah that i love it's just really hard for me to do by myself on my own i i had a hairstylist that day oh right right but i do like it maybe your therapist can style your hair on the days you don't want to share oh hair play i would go every day yeah yeah i'd pay for that anyway um okay so drowning cells everyone everyone laughs at me they guffaw uh-huh and i met someone who drowned his cells oh tell me and it was really bad tell me more okay who did you meet where'd you meet him in front of 7-eleven he's a real person i know i'm not gonna say i'm not gonna out him or hers name right he's a friend of a friend this is a sad story i'm transitioning into a sad story when i was if you were having fun and laughing sorry yeah stop a big group of friends was meeting and one robbie yeah sweet robbie from our chain yes from the connections chain wasn't there i was like where's robbie and his wife said oh he's at the hospital with a mutual yes with um the unmentionable that no because he's not underwear because that's his name no his name is unmentionable we can't call him untouchable because he's indian oh he is yeah so now i'm giving a lot of info away yeah it's pretty easy to narrow this down at some point if you know an indian in atlanta who's friends with robbie that's true there is one there is one anyway this is sad this is sad and he had a seizure and i guess he had already had a seizure a year before and was on seizure medication and stuff but when you're the perfect person to tell this story because you have the same condition right exactly and i'm indian when he went the first time after his seizure they checked his salinity levels and they were so low and he did drink in like really excessive amount of water do we know why he drowned his cells yeah he got rid of too much salt but he drowned his cells that was the medical yeah oh okay okay um you have a good deal of salt i think from your diet don't take offense are you referring to like the potatoes i made or something no but you like you'll have a nice seasoned chicken and i think you have a good amount of yeah i feel fine about my salinity yes um so and i don't drink any water so i'm good there do we know why he was drinking so much water was he on like an exercise routine he was ex he was on an exercise routine and i'm not sure why anyway so turns out per usual i'm right you can drown your cells per usual and um unsurprisingly please look out for that okay yeah you and country should collab on this i'm happy to join forces also just if you are having a lot of water maybe use some electrolytes that's right keep an eye on your electrolytes yeah the case the only cases i've ever heard of is like no one's ever died from ecstasy but people have drank too much water water exactly they drown their cells yeah okay okay I wonder if they drown their cells or if when they drink way too much water it backs up like congenital heart failure basically like ends up filling up their body because you know my father who had congenital heart I don't know if it's congenital he had heart disease and what would regularly happen is his heart was too big on one side and normal on one side and so it would pump in a lot but it couldn't pump out a lot and then it just ends up backing your whole body up with water and you you get really bloated you put on all this waterway and then it starts really affecting your breathing and your lungs and everything else and so my dad would go into the hospital for like four days and all he'd be on diuretics and he'd just be getting rid of gallons of water right oh my god yeah okay it says yes cells can drown in a condition called water intoxication or hyponatremia which occurs when there's too much water in the body. When there's too much water in the body sodium levels drop causing water to move into cells and causing them to swell. This can be especially dangerous for brain cells as it can lead to pressure in the brain confusion drowsiness. Wait no epilepsy pressure in the brain might have been completely all related. Exactly. Oh man well I'm sending love and well wishes to this anonymous person. Untouchable. Why does Robbie have two very close Indian epileptic friends? That's he's very over-indexed. He is extremely over-indexed. I consider myself kind of unique in America low percentage where I have a best friend who's Indian and epileptic and he's got now two. I know. He has a fetish. I know you don't like that word but. You think it's a king? Ask if there's a third. If there's a third he has a condition. Yeah it is weird then I wondered is what ethnicity is Robbie's wife? White. White? Yeah she doesn't have it. Actually. No no no no no no no no no. Is he giving everyone this? He's poisoning everyone. Oh my god he's so sweet that would make sense. He's one of the sweetest people I've ever met. Yeah but he is a dark side. Hi Robbie. Nasty. So his wife is my oldest best friend and when we were in high school she had seizures and they were dating at that time. Okay. And she got in this car accident because she had one. Hers were different though she had like she didn't have grand mal seizures. Were you about to say petite seizures? Petite mal. That's what they're called. That's so cute. And then she had. So you picture like a mal you'd walk in but there's only three stores and then there's the food court is like four food carts. They should call it boutique seizures. That's way better. Yeah that's cute. You and Gundry can work on that. anyway yes he has three there's a fourth i mean i only know of three people in his life and all three of them have seizures so certainly there's more should we get robbie on the phone do you want to yeah we gotta grill him about this probably i mean he's definitely at work on saturday oh i during the nfl playoff game i'm so sorry georgia lush by the way oh no the sugar bowl you didn't know that they lost they lost to who don't say texas they didn't lose to texas but texas won theirs texas is still in it yeah notre dame but they're still in it because oh no that game we saw was one of our only two losses they ended up being really i know but they played welcome to the sec bitch is that what you said yeah i did hold on i gotta call robbie he's the one also that knows about he's not at work he's at the hospital one of his many epilepsy don't say it we wanted to call you about some one thing but now we have two things to talk to you about that are very important and we did not name any names but i'm just learning of the fact that you have a second indian friend with epilepsy which i find to be almost statistically impossible and then monty said it doesn't stop there his wife has epilepsy well she doesn't have okay not specific epilepsy but you do have three people in your life that have had seizures and it's now we're starting to worry and think you're at the yeah i see where you're going now i honestly hadn't ever thought of this that's what that's what he would say so my i have to go monica my sister too oh i knew it i fucking knew it i said i robbie i said there's a fourth for sure robbie what are you doing to everyone i don't know i really don't know oh my gosh i'm looking at things in my life i don't know this is wild you think it's because you're so calm and sweet it may all of a sudden the other person's brain feels erratic and and unhinged is it like relative to your calmness people short circuit it could be i mean yeah that's the best i think that's the best um my guess is gino would say otherwise but this is wild for okay robbie four is a lot now i'm being sincere it is there something environmental in duluth where half the population wait no because mine happened once i left but you you grew up with that water oh you think it's the water yeah you have late onset duluth because i drank i didn't drink enough water and then it caught up i'm not i'm not about the logic of that but what i'm saying is there's something in the soil where you grew up where 70 of all people have seizures there's gotta be monica's house was super close to mine the other friend also lived like right down the road too and gina yeah and so honestly if you're all if you don't know what you're talking about you're not gonna know what you're draw like a polygon of the four points it's like a very small area and so likely shared whatever water source yeah it's pretty pretty narrow there yeah you're right guys did we just break an enormous case do we need to call the new york times immediately you're gonna have to do a new podcast you're gonna start a new podcast where you investigate this issue wow it's gonna be called poison paradise under the veil of suburban beauty and tranquility oh my god lies a burbling poison that results in the shutters that's a lot of words that's a lot that's too many words you need it to be small sure no no first was the title and then i was then i was then i was entering into the first episode oh you got going already i mean you're halfway there it sounds like this thing writes itself okay now we have moving on to point number two that's well no i have one follow-up on that robbie okay in your free time i know you don't have much of just can you sniff around see if any more folks have had seizures like yeah okay i will yeah i'll report back yeah i'll just i'll start kind of casually throwing that into each conversation i have like so by the way you know this is kind of weird but do you have a history of epilepsy and just kind of move on from there yeah that sounds like a good plan that's gonna work um okay now point number two is football and you are my main source of information for football um i was texting you during the texas georgia game and we were we were secretly gloating while i was amongst a bunch of texans and then dax just told me that then texas went on to like win all the rest of the game they're still in it yeah they're still in it yeah so they they have a tough matchup um against ohio state because ohio state looks really good right now um but uh yeah they're still in it um but does that be like a fluke shut up well it can't be a fluke because the only team to beat texas this year is georgia georgia's beat texas twice this year oh twice yeah so but it's then it's kind of a fluke that we aren't like it doesn't make sense that we beat them twice and we're now out yeah you know how it's like how can you how confederate be the best ever if you can't ever beat it all you know it's very similar we all have our albatrosses yeah exactly yeah all right well that clears that up i guess and i just want to end on this robbie your voice was built for radio you must be involved in poison paradise i'd love to help you let me know i'm a hard worker too so yeah just let me know what you need all right thanks robbie all right thanks guys take it easy bye stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare we get support from instagram teen accounts so we talk a lot on this show about how the world is different now than when we were growing up and one of the biggest differences is obviously social media and i think a lot of people wonder okay what's actually being done to make it safer for teenagers which is a fair question yeah so instagram has got something called teen accounts and they come with automatic protections built in by default so anyone between 13 and 17 is automatically placed into this experience they get age appropriate content settings contact limits so that by default only people they're already connected to can message them and time management tools daily time limit reminders and also sleep mode that mutes notifications from 10 p.m to 7 a.m sleep mode is genius Right? And here's the thing. For anyone under 16, a parent has to give permission to change any of those settings to be less strict. The guardrails are on, and Instagram keeps building new safety features to create age-appropriate experiences for teens. I am really glad Instagram's helping to give parents peace of mind with teen accounts. Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at instagram.com slash teen accounts. That was a great use of time. Yeah. I wasn't expecting his voice to be that velvety. He's a very handsome man. You know, I only have handsome and beautiful friends. Right. This has started from day one. Good for you. I know. Anywho. Okay. Good luck to, will you plug your ears? Good luck to UT. Hook them. I'm cutting that. This is the same as that story I told about the people flying to LA to watch the Red Sox. Play LA, hoping the Red Sox would lose because they had just beat New York. But the other guy was like, no, they must win. That way, New York's number two. Wouldn't you want your team to have twice beat the champions? I guess you're right. I think it's time for you to like transition into rooting for them for your own. For my own gain. Yeah. Okay. I see that logic. Speaking of which, and I know we're all over the map and have taken up too much time, but I just, I want to, I want to go on to say that I finished the Churchill documentary on the flight home yesterday. And I got very swept up in it. This has happened a few times and I'm sure you've watched shows on this. When you are forced to watch what the Brits went through 57 nights in a row of carpet bombing of London, everyone's sleeping in the subway, no bathrooms, getting up, going straight to work and carrying the fuck on. And they were so outgunned and outmanned and out everything. And they alone took on Nazi Germany. At that point, everyone was already defeated. Yeah. The amount of will and resolve is so historic. I found myself like, this is so cheesy. I found myself being like really proud that I know Jethro. Oh, that's nice. Yeah. I was like, by God, that little Island, you motherfuckers, you motherfuckers refused. Yeah. And Churchill, he is a very flawed person. He was horrendous to India. I'll acknowledge that. But truly one man got those people to that state of mind. If you watch this doc, you're like, who knows if that person doesn't exist, what happens? Cause he had two burdens. One is to be fighting off these Nazis who are just momming every single night, trying to keep morale high. And he has got to get America into the war. Or they're going to die. Everyone's going to die because they're not going to surrender. And so his skill at wooing FDR and developing this relationship and slowly getting us more and more involved is so impressive. And his own story is so unique in that he was a soldier during, um, in his youth and he was an incredible soldier. Then he went into politics and he was a boy wonder. Cause he was right. The whole time he was in the war, he was like, I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going to die. So he was reporting firsthand from all these wars and he's one of the best writers to ever live. So he was in this crazy unique situation where he leaves the service as a hugely popular figure in Britain, goes into politics, has this meteoric rise and then plateaus and then plummets. And he's completely on the outs and he can't get anything done. And then world war one comes along and he decides in his forties or fifties to rejoin the war. And he's like, I'm going to die. I'm going to the army. He becomes a commander. He wins all this glory returns. And for four years is begging Britain to understand Hitler cannot be trusted and don't believe a thing he's saying. And we can't be signing these deals and no one's listening. No one's listening. He never relents. And finally the Brits realize he has been right the whole time. And overnight he becomes prime minister. Like the story of the up and the down and the out and the, the miscast and the, it's, it's what a story. Yeah. Horrible to the Indians. Let's be clear. A colonist grew up in Elizabethan England. Definitely wanted the empire to stay alive. Also miraculous feet of will and resolve in the poetry with how he motivated people. He gave this speech to our Congress to help us embrace the fact that we were entering the war. And it's like the most incredible speech. It's an, I cannot recommend the doc enough. I don't know why I went on that tangent, but it's been burning a hole in my brain. I know I'm making you nervous. My energy level is a 15. It's not making me nervous. It's, it's like, go ahead. No, it's just like, where's it going? Oh, I'm just sharing all the things that I missed out on sharing in the last three weeks. God, you're, you're, you're so much like my father. I am. He just loves to explain stuff. Yeah. It's kind of a male trait, but does that story, like, is there a male female thing going on? Is this the Roman empire? Like does that whole chapter just like not interest you? Parts do, but not that part. Of an individual story where someone's like completely discarded and publicly reviled, then finds their way back. Then becomes so valued and important. Then gets discarded again. And then it doesn't quit. Like has a calling that can't be ignored. And then match with this like Shakespearean ability to write speeches. Yeah. No, no, I, I'm, I'm more into like the Anne Frank story of that era. Like I, I don't, I guess I'm, I'm really not drawn deeply to, to people in power. Like I'm not, that's not a thing. You're drawn to the disenfranchised. Yeah. This makes total sense. Well, I just find that way more as a, as a human story, way more compelling. I find that kind of overcoming, like a true overcoming, much more compelling. Yeah. Than someone who's like, just feeding off power. I think, I think the thing that interests me about it is as big as this world is and as complex and dynamic as it is, single individuals radically change the face of the world. Oh, I agree. Yes. I find that fascinating. Those figures, they don't do it for me. Yeah. They don't, they don't get you going. I'm kind of like towards them, you know? For the listener, she just kind of, it was an interesting one. It wasn't an eye roll. It was a back and forth side to side. Speaking of. Go ahead. Eye roll. You found the origin of your. I figured it out. I figured out where my eye roll comes from. We thought it was an Indian thing. Or just maybe a genetic innate thing. Thought it was maybe just a full resentment I have of everything and everyone. We didn't know, but I knew that's not right. That's not it. It's a habit, but why? And now I know. Right. Well, you sent it to me, so I saw it. Well, I'm going to show the world. Show the world. And I'm going to have to describe for the listener, because let's just be, let's be clear, 98% of our audience is still just listening, not watching. Yeah, but check us out on YouTube and you can see this. Yes, please do. All right. So for the listener, it is a two or three-year-old Mary-Kate and or Ashley Olsen from the Full House program. It says duh across the screen. She's shaking her head and she gives the most expressive eye roll you've ever seen. Yes. And she has, or they have. Yes. Enormous Disney eyeballs where it's very expressive and clear. Yes. Yes. We got it? We got it. All right. Now, Full House was my original friends. Yeah. I was obsessed with it. The only time I was ever punished for my parents, the punishment was I couldn't watch Full House that night. That's in my cells. Yeah. That's where I got it. I got it from original Mary-Kate and Ashley Full House. You started probably reenacting it. Always. Yeah. Ape-ing it. Yeah. Mimicking. They were my models then and now. Yeah. It might be all the way to the end. I think it is. They might be your Aaron Weakley. I mean, you already have your Aaron Weakley. I think it would be sad if they were my Aaron Weakley because they don't know me, but they are my ride or die. What I'll say is they're radically different people, which is so fascinating. Yeah. I guess that makes sense, but also doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. Well, they're not identical twins. You know that, right? They have to be. Baloney. They're fraternal twins. No. Well, sisters have never looked that much alike. I know. It's crazy. Do we know this for positive? God, don't make me. I don't think I do. AI Google says that. Thank you. I know. I know. They're not? That's like me saying I know something about Valentino Rossi. Ooh, tell me. What do you know? I know nothing. Yellow 46? Exactly. - Exactly, it's the whole point. - I'm impressed you remembered his name thank you so yeah one's left one's left-handed one's right-handed but that's super common in twins and one's one inch taller than the other even when they're identical well they're fraternal but that could be a posture thing okay whatever all right let's stop they're fraternal twins i believe you and um you'd never know it by looking at them don't judge a book by its cover you would not i mean i agree with you it's shocking yeah i've met a lot of boy girl twins and they have all told they have all had the experience where someone asked if their twin was identical even though they knew one was a boy was a girl what yes i'm telling you okay well some people don't understand twins they don't understand what identical means versus fraternal yeah it must not or it must be way lower percentage that you get a boy and a girl then then same gendered twins for fraternal for fraternal i think the opposite i feel like if most fraternal twins i know are boy and girl oh really that's why that's why they are very confusing we should have a twins expert on because what that means is that there were two ova in the uterus and that one male sperm and one female sperm hit the two and generally you would think well either the males were making it because they swim slower and they're more robust or vice versa and one swim fast so it's weird that one would swim fast but you know what i'm saying i don't know the body is a wonderland it is john mayer yeah all right let's do a little bit of facts this is for ken goldberg he was wonderful i really really liked yeah what a unicorn a lot okay now this episode starts with your underwear on the floor which was interesting that was shocking that's an experience to look down in your underwears outside your pants because your first thought is my underwear yeah it came up on my yeah yes and it doesn't seem to be torn in half yeah that's a real like where am i at in time and space that my underwear has made itself off of my body and onto the floor yeah i mean it's so obvious later when you think it was clearly in my pant leg i know but in the moment you're like oh my god my underwear is falling off it's like and i think you should leave when robinson they put a whoopee cushion on his chair and he doesn't understand it he goes what happened like he really is shook because he didn't feel himself fart but he heard a fart what happened oh my god that's so funny um okay but also so that happened the underwear but then i realized when i was editing it my the inside out of my pant pocket was exposed was exposed the whole time that's a weird yeah coincidence it is weird and but no one caught that so the whole episode the inside of my pant pocket is which people could have thought might be her underwear like you know it's the lining of your pocket but other people could be like why are there why are both of their underwears falling off now the vaccination mark the smallpox vaccine scar is a small mark you might have on your upper arm if you receive the dry vax or acam 2000 smallpox vaccines it's a sign that the vaccine successfully spurred an immune response in your body to protect you against smallpox not many people receive a small pack not many people receive a smallpox vaccine today so the scar is far less common than it used to be the smallpox vaccine leaves a scar because it causes a minor infection in your skin your body fights off the infection but this process leaves behind a small mark on your skin where the infection and related inflammation took place that makes a lot of sense i assumed wrongly now that it had something to do with the um mechanism of injecting it like they use some weird thing because again my dad's was i have such a good memory of my dad's i don't know that my mom has one weirdly yeah but my dad's is like seared in my brain and i was like it looked like i think i said a cigar like they administered it you can look at pictures online they have them and they do look like that okay the book the scientific management book that was influential on stalin is called the principles of scientific management by frederick taylor see this all paid off my my um diatribe on churchill because stalin was the trickiest figure in that triumvirate okay now so kim kardashian posted some pictures with the optimist robot and then and it said that elon gave it to her and she denies that she was paid for those pictures okay other than the free robot right that she may or may not have right okay this is what it says the robot can do the tesla optimist robot okay it says it can do physical labor it says it can move materials assemble parts and load items onto machinery okay yeah i'm skeptical i'm skeptical that's how we do it without getting sued i'm highly skeptical this is also on the ai overview so they like they're buddies okay so he's they're all in cahoots yeah inventory management optimist can use barcode or rfid scanning to track inventory in real time home chores optimist can carry groceries help the elderly and perform other tasks elderly i mean that would be good data collection and research optimist can be used in labs or remote monitoring environments to collect data i mean that's just like that's a computer brain yeah smart home integration optimist can link up with tesla cars and energy systems to become part of a smart home optimist can walk among people and serve drinks at a bar i doubt it but i'm sorry i'm skeptical heard about that okay apparently there's a place in like a culver city or something that is run by it's like a burger place that is run by robots and the robots drop off your food okay i think i've heard that but also my assumption of what that was was like very simple mechanized arms not bipedal robots walking it out like it can make it in the kitchen then it goes on a conveyor belt and then it's exactly lands in front of your thing doesn't necessarily mean that a bipedal robot carried it as much as there might be automation that gets it all the way to your i think it's saying it delivers it to your table but it might not be bipedal we should go we should go i'd love to go to a robot restaurant what is it cali express in pasadena oh it's in pasadena that's much closer yeah that just upped the odds of us actually doing that by a lot i do think there's a little a little guy that rides around and brings here food a little family express by flippy the world's first fully autonomous restaurant i think that's pretty cool i think that's pretty cool i think that's pretty cool i think that's pretty cool it looks like a little thing with serving trays and american flags that goes to your table we'll have to go but okay it says optimist can perform precise movements and heavy lifting optimist can adapt its behavior over time to reach the desired results optimist can play games like rock paper scissors okay so anyway that's what ai claims its buddy optimist can do okay they're best friends okay and our robot feels a little left out no he's more boy like remember i know big time glass he's wondering what's going on because like there's a lot of other robots now there are a lot of other robots but he's like becoming charming and flawed wabu sabi yeah wabi sabi robby sabi robby rob sabi um there was a prada has these bag chains that i really want that are robots um bag trash is that what it's called no it's a bag chain i'm learning this from nicole this is the movement now it's like you have these very fancy handbags and then you put all these little trinkets that yeah and i think she calls it like bag trash or something she might but they're called bag charms and look prada has this one this one's in like um this one's in like snow gear yeah that's really cute isn't it yeah it's about to be critical i just think it's funny fashion is very funny sure so you get this perfect outrageously expensive bag and then you're supposed to like drape some trash obviously like downplay it it's like what's happening i agree i but it's not trash this is 1100 well i don't i didn't say it was inexpensive oh yeah well okay but i agree i would not put people love that and i think that's great and it's a way to like show your identity but they're not for me on my bag but i want this little robot to just like sit in my house yeah yeah that's great yeah he's pretty big look at him compared to the bag oh that's preposterous he's larger than the bag yeah you said 39 of u.s jobs are still manual labor according to the bureau of labor statistics reported that 39.1 of civilian workforce in the u.s performs physically demanding jobs that require lifting carrying pushing pulling kneeling stooping crawling and climbing activities in varied environmental conditions sucking fucking don't leave out sex workers that's manual labor you know we like don't we honor sex workers yeah but i'm just wondering is it really manually yeah it's definitely manual it's laborious um all right well that's it for ken i'm glad we ended on that note for ken i think he would appreciate that all right bye ken love you love you you you © transcript Emily Beynon