Laurie Woolever

00:01Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan experience. TRAIN BY DAY, JOE ROGAN PODCAST BY NIGHT. All day. Hello. Hi. Hi. What's happening? Pleasure to meet you. Thank you. Same to you. Um I tried watching the Bourdain documentary, but I just I got too sad. I couldn't do it. And did it Did it feel weird? Did you watch it, Roadrunner? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Did it feel weird when you knew that the voice was AI, sort of a recreation of his words? It didn't feel weird to me because, honestly, it was less than 45 seconds in a 2-hour film. Oh, okay. So, no, it didn't feel weird. I I knew exactly where one of the places was that it was the AI, but the vast majority of that film is Tony's actual voice. And I think that really got lost in the discussion Oh, it certainly did. Yeah, I I was under the impression that the whole thing was Mhm. No. That's how people are. They're so gross.

01:00They always want to find the one thing that's negative about this. Yeah. Yeah. It really bummed me out because that was the that was the dominant conversation on opening weekend. And it really kind of took away, for me, from, you know, the It's a beautiful film. I was a uh consulting producer, so obviously I have a dog in the fight and I want people to love the film, but I think it's I think it's great. It is really sad. How far into it did you get? I just started it and I shut it off. Yeah. Yeah. I just got too sad. I just I I Maybe it was my mood that day. I just wasn't I just wasn't ready to watch something like that. I was just like, I can't do this. Yeah. I understand. You know, I've been steeped in all things Tony for, you know, over a decade, but since he died, I've been making these books and working on the film and talking about him. And so, I've kind of got, I think, a layer of

01:51numbness, in a way. But sometimes stuff gets through. One of the first time I saw the film, I cried like a baby when I was home by myself. I was really glad to be alone, you know. There's always this feeling when someone takes their own life like if I could have just talked to them. Mhm. Like if I was there, if I could have talked to him. Mhm. That's you know, I talked to David Choe and he had he had that same he had that same take on it, you know. It's just you just don't know. You know, you feel like you you something up. Like you feel like it's just it's there's no there's no there's no peace, you know? If you're always if I think about him, I I I just always think like what a shame. What a shame. You know? Mhm. Like a guy who was so interesting and so loved. You know, to I found out about it from uh Maynard Keenan from Tool. Do you know the story?

03:04I I listened to you uh talk to uh Tom Papa right after uh Tony died. So, yeah, I he made kind of a a joke, right? Maynard's a funny guy. And he was joking around. He had said that, you know, he knew that Tony was really into jiu-jitsu. And Maynard's really into jiu-jitsu, too. And he's like, "We should have a celebrity match." He goes, "That would be awesome." And he was talking about it and then he texts me and said, "I guess the celebrity match is off." Mhm. And I was like, "What does that mean?" Like I guess he had just assumed that I would have already known about it, but I was in Chicago and I had just woken up. Mhm. So, then I Googled it and I was just like, "Oh." Yeah, that's not a great way I mean, there's no good way to find out that news, but uh that's uh sounds like a particularly painful way to to hear it. Mhm. confusing, you know, it's it's painful but it's like

03:58it's almost like it's painful later. Mhm. In the beginning it's just like Shock. You're baffled. Mhm. Like how? What? Mhm. Not there anymore. Like this person is not there anymore. Like if I text them it's not there. Yeah. I have a phone that I won't get rid of because it has text messages from him. Mhm. It's like I can always go back and look at them. Yeah. Yeah, same. I have I'll never get rid of my last texts with him. I mean, it's And what you were saying about, you know, you just wish you could have done something. I mean, believe me, that is that is a conversation I have had with so many people and I think to myself like if I had just been a little more I don't know, something. If I had said if I had said something or if I had been more supportive or, you know, I just I knew he was in trouble that week but I didn't it never occurred to me that he would

04:52take that action that he did. And and and the fact is he had a lot of people around who were very close to him who loved him. And he had other people that were offering to come and and be with him because they knew he was having a hard time that week and he said, "No, don't come." So, it's Why was that week so particularly hard? He was There were some stuff in the media with with him and his girlfriend that was, you know, not great. You know, he was very very in love and I think there was some I mean, this is I'm not saying anything that isn't public record and I'm always hesitant to talk too much about about all of that, but it's, you know, it was it's out there. It was in the Italian press and maybe the French press that that his girlfriend had been maybe or maybe not with another guy. There were a lot of pictures that made it look not great. And I think that was really hard for him.

05:47And you know, you'll see they talk about it. He It's gets talked about in the film. It gets talked about in my book. Um you know, I think he was he was deeply in love and I think he was realizing that this relationship maybe wasn't what he thought it was or that it just I think he felt humiliated, honestly, you know? And I mean uh that's a hard that's a hard thing for a private person to metabolize. And then, you know, you're extremely public person who has been extremely public about this relationship. I think it was a lot for him to handle in that week. Mhm. Yeah, there's not much you can do when that happens in terms of like talking to a friend. Like words just don't work. Yeah. You know, like it they don't you don't you're not going to absorb them. Mhm. Mhm. Yeah, it's uh you know, it's I don't know that someone I don't know that a normal thing I don't know that a

06:46normal reaction to romantic trouble is to take your own life. I don't I you know, clearly there's you know, there are plenty of people who have trouble in their relationships who stay alive. Uh you know, he was a really complicated guy. He was a really uh I think as as public as he was and as much as he shared about the way that his mind and his heart worked, I think there was a lot that he didn't share and I think he was more troubled and more lonely and sad than I think any of us knew at the time. Uh you know, in the intervening 3 years, I've learned a lot more about him and I thought I knew him inside and out. I was his assistant for 10 years. You know, we wrote a book together. Uh I had done some traveling with him, not extensively, but I did a handful of trips over the years. You know, we were in contact every day and um you know, Just I started to talk to

07:41people after he died, there was just a lot a lot more to him, a lot more to his story. Yeah, whenever anybody um recovers from a serious drug problem, but yet still parties, Mhm. I was always like, "Hm, how's he pulling that off?" Mhm. Like the first time I hung out with him, I knew that he had gotten over the heroin thing, but I didn't quite realize how hard he drank. I was like, "Whoa." Yeah. Yeah. Was that in Montana when you guys met? No, that was later. That was after I'd known him for quite a while. I mean, I think the first time I hung out with him was in Vegas. Uh-huh. Pretty sure. Um it was when he was married to Ottavia. Mhm. And um they were uh there for the UFC. Mhm. And I met him backstage. Okay. like, "Wow." It was interesting. It was one of the few people that I've met that I was like a little starstruck. Mhm. And I I said said something really clunky, cuz uh

08:43like one is to do when they meet someone they really admire. Yeah. My wife always used to say that he's my boyfriend, cuz I was I would watch No Reservations all the time. She was like, "Oh, you're watching your boyfriend." And so I said, "Uh my wife says you're my boyfriend." He was like, "What the fuck?" He was so good at giving you that look. Like I I said a couple of real stupid things to him, too. And I I'll just never forget I we were standing in the telephone store, you know, trying to upgrade my phone, and uh I I was you know, kind of new to the job and nervous, and I was just like, "Oh, what the what are we going to talk about for 10 minutes?" You know, so I just said, "How do you decide like who to respond to on Twitter?" And he just gave me this look, like, "Are you the stupidest person I've ever met in my life." You know, and I know he respected me, and I know he liked me,

09:29but I was just like, "Oh god." Sorry. not a bad question. Yeah, I just I don't know. He just was like Yeah, I don't know. He just the look on his face was just like, oh man, I should have just kept my mouth shut. Actually, David Simon told me a similar story that you know you know David Simon who the creator of The Wire and Treme and you know, really smart, articulate, funny guy and he told me that he said something to Tony that just he just got that look that like you're a idiot look, you know, and it didn't ruin their friendship but he it made an impact. Yeah. I got really excited when Tony got into jiu-jitsu cuz I'm like, well, now we have something really in common that I'm really good at. So, now we could talk. You know, it's like I'm sure you were probably an influence. I mean, Ottavia obviously was the biggest influence but I'm sure you know,

10:18knowing that you did it too was another you know, another strong reason to to get involved with it. Well, that's very nice. I'm happy that that's the case if that's the case. It was really interesting to watch him it's very rare that a person is deep in their 50s and has lived you know, fairly sedentary lifestyle. Certainly not athletic, certainly not like jiu-jitsu is a difficult endeavor. It's not like taking up squash maybe squash is hard too. I don't know. I've never played squash. But it's not like it's it's very intimate where someone is literally practicing killing you and you're trying to resist that and so to watch him get really into it and then to watch him watch his personality sort of like shift into that there's a sort of a jiu-jitsu mindset that you get when you start doing it all the time you start training you start building confidence and you start like getting

11:17really into it. Like he was into it. Like when we did that trip in Montana he was asking me questions and we started doing I was demonstrating on him in the dirt. Like we were we were in the dirt and I'm like when you're in this position and we're like, going over stuff like on the ground Yeah. in Montana. I'm like, that's how into it he was. Like, he was really he wanted to ask questions, he wanted to go over moves. I was like, wow, you like, you're really all in. Yeah, it was I I think, you know, Mo Fallon I think said this to you, and he said it in the in the film and in the book as well, but you know, if you weren't like, I was not into jiu-jitsu, it did not matter. Like, he Tony would just talk to you about it anyway, you know, you just have to be like, uh-huh, you know, like, either feign interest or, you know, like, feign an emergency and get out of there, cuz it was just

12:04at a certain point, you know, then he's trying to get you recruiting everyone. He was successful, he got a lot of his crew into it. He's like, do you think you would ever do it? After he's telling me about like, you know, your nose is basically in somebody's and you've got like blood under your nails, you know, and it's disgusting. And I'm like, hmm, sounds great. Uh, I'm going to I'm going to stick to yoga and weight training. Thank you. But, I did make my kid do it. Oh, yeah? was totally because of Tony. I was like, well, I'm not going to do it, but I will, you know, get the 8-year-old involved. So. a good age. That's a good age to start. They're all limber and flexible. Mhm. Mhm. Yeah, my kids got into it early on, but then they got bored. And they they found girly things to do. But, they enjoyed it in the beginning, and they still know some stuff, like, what to do. My kid hated it.

12:48Really? Yeah. I just and I was like, you're going to do this. You know how expensive this is? Yeah, I just I made him do it for like, I don't know, 6 months, and then it was clear that like, I mean, he didn't hate it to the point where he was like, crying, but like, he did have a couple of like, anxiety stomach aches in the car, and I'm like, suck it up. You know, and at some point, I'm like, what am I doing, you know? Yeah, I think it's very bad to force anything on kids. I don't force anything on kids. I try to make them finish what they start, just so that they have like, this thing, like, okay, I started this, I'm going to finish it. I committed to being at these practices, I'm going to show up. But, then when it's over, it's over, you know, but That's a good point. you know, it's you just get a kid that's resentful. Yeah. And then they whatever this thing that

13:35you're trying to get them to do that might have some real benefit to them, they're never going to realize that benefit or it's going to be harder for them to realize that benefit. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, totally. I uh I realized like this is not the way to like get a raise or, you know, get a promotion with Tony. Like he actually doesn't give a if your kid does do jiu-jitsu, so let him play baseball like he wants to do. So. What when did you like how did your relationship with him start? How did your working relationship start? So, I had been Mario Batali's assistant for a number of years like in the late '90s, early 2000s and uh Mario and Tony became friends sort of at the same level of rising celebrity in New York in the restaurant world and in media and I was leaving Mari the job with Mario and Tony asked him if he knew anybody that could help him uh with a cookbook that he was

14:28starting to work on. The It's called Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook. It was his first cookbook and uh Mario recommended me and Tony kind of hired me sight unseen, I think, because, you know, if I worked for Mario, then I was that was like a seal of approval for him. Uh so he that that was our first time working together was I did recipe editing and testing on that cookbook. I think we met in person probably twice. Everything was on email cuz he was already starting to travel for television. He was still kind of had one foot in the kitchen at Les Halles. Uh but we had a great working relationship. So when you say like recipe editing and testing, what does that entail? Like how does that work? So, it's different for every project, but for this project uh I would get the recipes from the kitchen at Les Halles. So they were in huge quantities and they

15:18were written in like a very concise shorthand meant for the cooks to use. They were not appropriate for a cookbook. Uh so, I would take those and I'd been to cooking school and I'd worked a little bit as a cook and so, I knew I knew how to deal with a recipe. I knew how to cook and kind of what the my way around the kitchen. So, I would take those recipes, scale them way down, um kind of put them into a more uh accessible language for a home cook and then test them at home. Make sure that when I change the proportions and everything, the timing and the temperatures and that it all still worked for a for a home cook. So, was it Were these like dishes meant for large groups of people? Like what How'd you have to scale it down? Well, because when you're making it in a restaurant, you know, you're preparing enough for 60 portions in a night, you know. side dishes and things like that.

16:09Yeah, I mean, anything really, you know, if you're making a uh you know, if I don't know, a soup, you know, you you want to you think you might sell 40 portions of soup that night. So, you're making a huge batch of soup. At home, you don't want that much soup, you know. You might want to make enough for eight people. So, that was that's kind of the scaling. I mean, there's nobody There's no reason to do anything in small quantities in a restaurant. And when you say shorthand, do you mean shorthand like like how some secretaries write shorthand? No. No. I've seen people do that. I'm like, what is that? Chicken scratch, right? Yeah, that's like Latin. I mean, I'm surprised anybody even does that anymore. It's cool, but I don't know. But they do still, right? Is that a dying thing? I think it must be, right? Like that's from the days of like Tony? I mean, Jamie? Whatever the your name is.

16:55Uh You ever seen it? Yeah, the court reporters still do something weird like that, but it's not the same, right? it typing, though, right? have like five buttons to use. Right. So, they have combinations of it that equal things. I don't What do they do? I've never tried to read it. I've looked into it once. I have no idea. This kangaroo court system we have in this country. Yeah, but I've seen people write in the shorthand and I'm like, that is like, how does one even learn that today? And is that necessary? Can't you just audio record like on your phone? Like you could just like if someone wants to you know, dictate to you. It'd be so much easier. There it is. Like, what is that? Oh, wow. The is that chicken scratch? Pitman and gray So, there's different versions of shorthand? That's so interesting. Oh my god, that is nonsense. Yeah. Look at that. What Look at what Look what Indian is.

17:45What is that? How's that mean Indian? That's wild. Or it's empty depending on how big the circle is. Yeah. That's strange. I don't know. Oh my god, it's so nuts. Like, how does someone actually How do you know the difference between a parent and plenty? Get the out of here. That is nonsense. That's so crazy when you really look at that. Yeah. I think taught? I mean, I seriously doubt it's taught much anymore, but I guess, right? Somebody's still doing it. to be a dying thing with with digital recording. Yeah. your phone, it's got to be a dying thing. Absolutely. So, you just would sort of test out So, you you know, you went to cook school, so you know how to cook. So, you would just test out these things and Yep. When you were doing this, he was just a local celebrity in the New York restaurant scene, right? Had no reservations started yet or This was Kitchen Confidential?

18:37Yeah, so Kitchen Confidential came out in 2000. So, he was already on the rise. I think he was a season or two into a Cook's Tour, which was the very first iteration of Tony on television. Mhm. Uh but there was no, you know, he was always would say like, I've got my 15 minutes. I have no expectation that this is going to, you know, last forever. I'm going to do as much as I can while I can, but I think he was always waiting for it someone to pull the rug out from under him, you know, I I as far as being a celebrity, whatever that is. Yeah, he was. It was really interesting. It's like, it's it's hard for people to realize that other people appreciate them, I think. Especially people that are genuinely humble in a what like he's a he was a genuinely humble person. Like he really didn't buy into his own at all. Right. So when you would talk to him about it, he was like, this could end

19:29terribly at any moment, you know. Mhm. Yeah, I remember being with him in the green room. He did a book tour for the cookbook Appetites that we wrote together in 2016 and he did a series of lectures, basically like a one-hour stand-up routine in these theaters and then book signing. So we were at the last one at BAM in Brooklyn and in the green room and he was just like, God, I hate this. I feel like such a What was the word he used? Such a fraud. Yeah. and I was like, what are you talking about? You just had like 13 sold-out shows. The book is doing amazing. Like you're literally Tony Bourdain. He was like, yeah, it was it's I just it's all I'm I'm embarrassed that people have paid money to come and see me talk, you know. It was really illustrative to me to to hear him talk like that, you know, to realize like he doesn't he doesn't think he's as great as we know he is, you know.

20:23That's a common thing Mhm. amongst uh, at least my people, amongst comedians. It's it's It's in many um, successful people. It's called imposter syndrome. Mhm. And it exists because you have a certain sort of a set perception of who you were just going through life sort of anonymously and then it radically changes and it doesn't feel real. And so to other people who have just discovered you, they love your show, they love your writing, they love your your your take on the world as you travel and eat everywhere. You know, you think like, I'm the same idiot that I was, you know, he's he's probably thinking he's the same guy he was in '95 and now here all these people love him. It doesn't make any sense. It just feel like this is going to fall apart. This is fake. Yeah. But that's also why he was so interesting is because like the people that are like legitimately full

21:15themselves and really think everything they're doing is great are gross. Yeah. They're gross. They They come off gross. When you see someone write like I'm the you know, like what? Like that is so gross. Yeah. And it's such the opposite of what anybody ever wants to hear, you know? And maybe you could say it in jest and you know, people think it's funny, but for the most part the people that are really enamored with themselves and their work are just not nearly as interesting as the people that are tortured by it. Mhm. It's It's such a conundrum, right? Mhm. It's like a guy like Tony who is such an interesting fascinating person just to talk to, just have a conversation with because he had such a clear perspective on things, the way he looked at things. He was very aesthetic. He had like very into like he had a He enjoyed certain style of communication and of hanging out and

22:07like he had There was an art to just conversation with the guy. Mhm. So it's like it makes sense that he hated himself. Yeah. You know, in the most up way possible it makes sense. Yeah. I think too there was this disconnect between the guy that he was before he got famous and the guy after, you know? And I think he always thought about how the guy the old guy probably would have made fun of the new guy, you know? And or he would have He and all his his buddies who were cooks stuck in the kitchen would would sort of hate this, you know, guy with the expensive shoes and the nice apartment and flying first class, you know? Yeah, that's what happens, you know? You You want to be punk rock and then all of a sudden you have a million dollars in the bank, you know, like hey. Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. Who am I? going to eat at a nice place tonight, you know? I think I'm going to I think

22:55I'm going to buy a watch, you know? It's It It You really can feel like a fraud. It's fascinating because so many people are really they're haunted in a a lot of ways by their past. And you know, there's sort of like this rebellious rigid attitude that you develop when you're struggling when you're coming up and you know, it becomes like the structure of where your attitude comes from. And then when that structure is sort of removed by success in Tony's case and then you're left with okay, I'm not even like in his eyes he had done all these hours of being in the kitchen, right? The real work. Those long days and long nights and that's there was something noble about that, right? And then all of a sudden he's just going to visit these guys and he's not in the game anymore. And you know, he's going to visit these incredible cooks and seeing these amazing dishes

23:56and these insane restaurants and I think part of that he felt like a little bit of a fraud because of that. Yeah. Yeah, I he was always very careful to say I'm I was not a great chef, you know, I think it's very people kind of just in the same way that people thought that, you know, the whole with the AI thing that it was all of the the movie versus 45 seconds. There's just a a glossing over a kind of sloppiness of recollection and so because he was a chef, everyone, you know, would say, "Oh, he was the a great chef or a celebrity chef or a famous chef, you know." And he was always really careful to say, "I wasn't, you know, I was like I was good at leading a kitchen. I was good at getting food out on time, but I was not in any way a world-famous creative chef. I was a leader of men, you know." And and there was I think a lot of uh I don't know, insecurity, but just a

24:50just a recognition that he wasn't the kind of chef like Eric Ripert, his good friend, or any of these guys that he really admired, you know, and he wanted everyone to be know that he knew that, too. No, yeah, it's the just the genuine humility about him. But, it's also like that you know, there's so many layers to the way he looked at things and described things and it's what made No Reservations and then ultimately um the other show. Parts Unknown. Parts Unknown. I forgot that. But, it was you know, it's what made it so interesting. It's really his his uh his own view of himself inserted into these environments. It wasn't just the environments. It was like this genuine enthusiasm that he had for these people that create great works of art through food. And he was the first guy that ever shifted my perception of what food is. Because I thought of food was just

25:48delicious. I was like, "Oh, this food is good." And then I watched his show and I was like, "Oh, it's art. Oh, you idiot. How'd you not see that?" It's just art that people eat. Yeah. Like, I was like, "Why all these chefs have hand tattoos and they look like weirdos?" And I was like, "Oh, they're artists. Yeah. Duh." Yeah. Like, it really took watching that show because I didn't have a lot of interaction with chefs, you know. I maybe knew a couple chefs my whole life. I didn't I didn't know them well. I didn't you know, if I enjoyed their food, I thought it was great. But, I didn't ever think, "Oh, this is this is an art form." Like, you're you're literally getting an an expression of this person's essence that's laid out in food form in front of you. Mhm. In the best case scenario. I mean, I think there's plenty of food that is not that artful, you know, or might be

26:38considered more craft than art. But, yeah, these guys that he loved at the highest level were definitely you know, artists making consumable product every day. Yeah. And it's just his take on all kinds of things on on music and culture and it it just made for you know, if he maybe I don't know what how good of a chef he was, but man, he was a amazing host of a television show. Yeah. I mean, it was really it was like the perfect guy for a travel show. Mhm. Mhm. And a and writer, I mean, that's and that's really what brought him through out of the kitchen. It was not his television presence, which was a little clunky at first. You know, I mean, he didn't he wasn't he didn't spring fully formed as the, you know, confident uh guy that we saw in later years. If If you go back and when you're ready to watch the film or or you'll see in the book, too, you know, he was he

27:32was a little awkward and and quite more than a little hesitant on television at first, but what he always was was a fantastic writer, you know, from very very young age. And uh and worked really hard at that to develop that craft. And that's I mean, that's what comes through on television, too, is all that voiceover. He wrote that, you know, and the way that he could speak off the cuff like it was something that was written and edited and perfected. That That was just in his head. I mean, he spoke like a writer. Yeah. Well, that clunkiness to me came off as authenticity. Mhm. That's the thing I don't like polished like top 40 DJ voices. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, "Hey, coming up next." It's like there's a there's a way that a person can behave or the the the host of a show or, you know, in what a radio host, whatever the they're doing. There's a way that we know what a

28:26professional sounds like. This is Tom with the weather, you know, like there's a way we know. And that way is boring cuz it's you've you've heard it too many times and you know that's not really who that person is. There's a really funny video, I don't know if you've ever seen it, but there's this uh this black guy who's uh working for a uh television station and he's doing the news somewhere on location, and a bug gets on him, and he switches and goes full ghetto in the middle So, he's in the middle of his talking like this like this and like this bug is on him, and it's it's hilarious. And I'm like, "Man, if someone could talk to that guy and say, 'Man, we got to figure out a way to let you be who you really are cuz that was hilarious once the bug was on you. But when the bug wasn't on you, then you're just like this normal cookie-cutter program robot. And you know, the thing about No

29:21Reservations was it was who he actually was. So, if he was clunky or if, you know, or if it if he was fascinated by something, it came across as being genuine. It was very obvious that he wrote everything, too. It was very obvious that he wrote the monologues. It was You're not going to get some TV hack to write that kind of especially for the Travel Channel. Right. Right. I noticed I watched the Montana episode of Parts Unknown that you guys were on together, and there was that enthusiasm. There's a scene where he goes down into the mines copper mines old copper mines and and they hook up all the wires, and he gets to be the one to to press the lever or whatever to make the the explode. And he's just got this He's like a 10-year-old boy. He's so psyched, and it's so genuine that he has had the most fun just like blowing up. You know, and that's like the best of Tony,

30:15you know, like he he as, you know, many experiences around the world as he had and as smart as he was, he still loved like the dumb you know, or the just the like basic hilarity of blowing up, you know? Yeah. Well, he stayed himself. It's hard to do, you know? It's hard to do, and obviously himself there was uh because of the the the drug abuse past, the the addiction past, and then the the the what the end of his life at the boozing in particular, it's like there's obviously a lot going on there that wasn't that healthy. You know, for whatever reason and whatever whatever it was a masking thing, if it was a genetic addiction issue thing. Yeah, it's you know, it's really hard to uh to say, you know, and I always very try to be very careful not to diagnose or to, you know, all we can do is speculate and think about what, you know, we knew when he was around. I

31:17mean, he was very upfront about his heroin addiction and his, you know, heavy use of cocaine and crack later. And then he kicked those things, you know, but I think that I you know, as somebody who who has been sober for a couple of years and is kind of myself kind of, you know, dived into the whole exploration of the of the 12-step thing, I can see now I can see what it is to be an addict, you know, and I don't think it's uh talking out of turn to say that Tony was an addict. He lived his life like an addict, you know, whether it was drugs or drinking or smoking cigarettes or jiu-jitsu or work or travel or, you know, romantic relationships. I mean, he just you know, just went after more and more and more stimulating experiences in a way that it didn't ever seem there was going to be enough of whatever it was to fill that uh that place, you know, that addicts are trying to fill.

32:10When we were get drinking in Montana, that was one of the things that shocking that he wanted to keep going. Like we were so drunk. We're sitting around this campfire and we were hammered. He's like, "Do Where's the Where's the whiskey? Is there any more whiskey?" And I'm like, "You can really drink more right now? Like how could you do this? Like we're blasted." Yeah, and he wasn't like a bit I mean, he was a tall guy, but he was really skinny. It was just sort of like, "Where are are putting this, dude? Like this is crazy. You've got no body fat, you know? Especially when he got into jujitsu, then he developed the six-pack. Yeah. But, what you saw on him, though, was his face. His face was aging. It was aging rapidly. Just in the time that I knew him, you know, the years that I knew him from the like I don't know how many years it was, seven? Mhm. Whatever it was, but during that time,

33:00he aged a lot. Yeah. Like, you could see it on the show in the the the last season or two. It's like the lines in his face. He just looked puffy and worn out. It just looked rough. Mhm. And that's where it went. Yeah. I think, you know, I mean, that kind of lifestyle or the the multiple lifestyles that he had, you know, working as a as a cook, doing a shitload of drugs, drinking, smoking, you know, couple packs of cigarettes a day, all of that, you know, plus he was There's some actually some funny stuff in the book about his addiction to tanning. He was like obsessed with tanning. Not like going to a tan I don't know if he ever went to like a tanning bed. He probably did, but he was like He would get in these tanning competitions with his cooks like in the '80s, you know, and he was like really competitive about wanting to be the most tan. And I think, you know, yeah. Which

33:52I had no idea until ridiculous. Oh, that's hilarious. that's a you know, that obviously catches up with you, you know. Yeah, sure, I guess. I don't know about that anymore. I used to think that the sun is really bad for you. Mhm. But, now I think uh it's like No, but how bad is sunscreen? Well, that shit's that can't be good for you, either. Probably not as bad as skin cancer. I'm get I mean, I'm not a doctor, but you know. No, I'm not a doctor, either. But, it's just, you know, obviously we need some sun for vitamin D. Yeah. So, what's going on with that? When I when I just I don't think that was what I was seeing in his face, though. I was think I was seeing it booze. Yeah, you know, he he wasn't drinking that much. Like when he was doing jujitsu, he was like very, you know, I don't say clean and sober, but he was he was rarely drinking. He never would

34:42have booze at home. I mean again, these are things that he said on the record, so I'm not Yeah, I know. We talked about it. Yeah. Um, and he was, you know, because and he was super into his cardio, so he wasn't smoking. There was a point where he was getting ready for a competition where he was like, you know, I'm sure you you know, you've done this too, right? It's like no like only basically like boiled chicken with no salt, you know, and maybe like some some vegetable, but really just like the no salt boiled chicken. You don't need Well, he got no carb. He went no carb, right? Or very low carb. Yeah. Which, you know, he I remember him telling me like, you know, it it just life loses all of its meaning when you can't have salt. You start like licking the sweat off your arm just to get feel something, you know? It's like, "Are you not in good enough shape?" I

35:24mean, I know you have to get extreme to to weigh in. don't you really shouldn't do that anyway. You should have probably consulted with a nutritionist. That's a terrible way to have There's you you run into these guys at the gym, these sort of like bro scientists, and some of them still have like 1990s knowledge, where you're supposed to eat like just plain chicken with no skin and broccoli, and they don't really do that anymore. Like most most people, even if they're trying to lose some weight, they eat a lot of healthy fat. Yeah, okay. And they eat sugar, and they eat salt. Like you have to have a certain amount of glucose. It's like it's even in like there's certain hydration supplements that are electrolyte supplements, and they have sugar in them because that's the best way your body absorbs all the different electrolytes. Okay. Yeah, he definitely didn't was

36:13subscribing to an old school system of Yeah. Well, we were talking about hormone replacement, too. And he's like, "I got to find a quack." That's what he said. Yeah. I don't know, man. You should find someone who's going to like do your blood work and comprehensively like, go over it with you, and like Too much effort. Yeah, it's like Yeah, you want the quack that's going to give you the solution Yeah. fast. just wanted to get juiced up, so he could compete. Well, he When he was telling me he was training every day, I go, "Every day?" He goes, "Twice a day." I go, "What?" And he goes, "Yeah, he goes, "I'm doing uh drills, so I'm taking a private lesson, and then I'm taking a class after that." I'm like, "Wow." Yeah. So, for someone to go from nothing to that is crazy. And I was like, "How are your joints? Like, how's your neck? How's your back? How are your elbows?"

37:02Cuz like, those things are like it takes years to build up the sort of tendon strength and endurance to be able to do jiu-jitsu. Especially, he's doing gi jiu-jitsu, so you're grabbing things all the time, so your hands are always sore. Mhm. Like, god. Yeah, I mean, he did he did land himself briefly in the in the hospital with some injury that seemed like it was going to take him out of competition, and then I don't know. Then he was back in the gym. the groin tear? Um there was one day where he he his ear got all up, and uh and he got, you know, the the cauliflower Yeah, and then they put on this ridiculous like big yellow looked like a piece of Swiss cheese from a Tom and Jerry cartoon, and it was just kind of stitched or or placed around his ear. And the next day he had some photo shoot, you know, with he had some endorse he had an endorsement with the

37:54whiskey company, and they they did a lot of shoots and stuff with him, appearances, you know, and he's like, "Oh, you better tell the whiskey guys that maybe we need to cancel, cuz I got this on my ear." And they they didn't want to cancel, and and so there's a pictures out there of him looking absolutely ridiculous with this like giant, you know, Swiss cheese ear, you know, because that's that is he would rather, you know, look like that than miss a day of training, you know. That's hilarious. Did he get it drained? I think so, probably. I mean, he was pretty good I mean, there was definitely in my job as his assistant, which I did for about 10 years, there was definitely a lot of I got very familiar with all the doctors. So, there was, you know, there was the occasional draining or the chiropractor or the, you know, this the skin doctor because there would be a weird staph

38:40infection from, you know, filthy mats or you know, he really he yeah, he went really, really hard on the jiu-jitsu. But, he was, you know, he was mentally, I mean, he was he was really happy, you know, he was I mean, he was it was insufferable sometimes to listen to, like I said, but he was like he had so much energy and he just was like, you know, it it the guys that would shoot on the show with him said it made such a difference. If he would train in the morning, he would be a different guy shooting in the afternoon, you know. Yeah. I think human beings men in particular need a certain amount of physical conflict. Mhm. And I think most people don't get it. And I think it's something that's built into the just the human body. And I think we have these reward systems that are built into and designed so that your body can perform in adverse conditions. Your body can

39:34deal with conflict, like physical conflict. You got your body can deal with physical struggle. So, because of that, there's actually sort of an unmet requirement that most people have. So, they walk through life with this anxiety that they can't they don't know where it's coming from. And I think a lot of that anxiety stems from the fact that you're not meeting the human requirements. Like the body has especially the male body and the mind has certain requirements for conflict. Mhm. Jiu-jitsu meets all those. So, does trail running, so does like CrossFit. Like the reason why people get addicted to that stuff is because it's so difficult that it makes regular life easy. Wow. My who do CrossFit that what what they love about it is it's so hard, which seems like, why do you love something that's so hard? Because in doing something hard, it makes regular life easy. Because when you are like

40:27doing these box jumps, and you know, you have 25 to go and your legs are rubber and you're like, I can't do this. But you can. And when you do do it, you get out of there, you're like, everything else is easy. The guy cut you off, like, who gives a Like, guy cut you off, who cares? Who cares if you missed the light? Who cares? It's like, it's not It doesn't have the same level of significance that it does if you don't have this physical conflict in your life. Mhm. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, so for a guy like him that was kind of tortured, I was so pumped. Like I said, I was excited because finally there's something that he was really into that I could like, I'm a black belt, like, I could say, Ah, now I could tell you some stuff. Like, before I I just relied on you to tell me Yeah. Yeah. And he really respected, I mean, anybody that had an expertise in anything, you

41:15know, he was really like, uh just very teachable, very willing to listen, you know, he was really always about, uh you know, the more I know, the let the more I realize I don't know, you know. You know, he had a um he had a a great respect for people that were really doing whatever the it was that they were doing. People that were like really committed to anything. Like really passionate about it, or they're Like, he wanted to talk to me and Joey Diaz. We did a show in uh Vegas. And he came to the show uh with his then wife at the time, and then um afterwards we're talking because he was doing these book shows. And he was like, like, how often do you turn over material? Like, what how how like, if I come to a town, like, when do you think I should like, how long I should take? And I was like, we generally do it like this, and I was explaining like, you You want to come to

42:10a town with the same material that you were at like 6 months ago. Like you have to write new stuff. Like you otherwise don't come back. Well, unless you have such an audience that like more people going to come to see you that haven't seen you before and you You know, so we we we talked about like the whole idea of of stand-up cuz he was kind of doing stand-up. Yeah. Yeah. He um in fact he got uh Bonnie McFarlane got him a spot at the Comedy Store. Oh, really? Maybe like a year before he died or maybe 2 years. He was working on or the seller? I'm sorry, the seller in New York. Um yeah, he was he was working out material for uh you know, for his the book tour. Oh. And he and he actually had Bonnie helping him uh do some writing, too. Uh but he he wanted to really feel what it was like to be, you know, to do that. And so she got him like a I don't know, 5 minutes Oh, that's cool.

43:00Yeah, and I didn't go I mean, he didn't tell anybody, you know, which is smart. Um it sounds like he did okay. I think he really enjoyed it, you know, but it's like he he really respected the craft of comedy, you know, and he understood that it was something you had to work at and develop just as much as anything else. He certainly could have done it. He he would have got addicted to that, too. Mhm. Mhm. He would have got sucked into that and then he'd just be talking about stand-up all the time. Right. Right. It's funny, you know, that is a thing that happens with people that get really, really, really good at things. Like there's a guy named B.J. Penn. He's like one of the greatest UFC fighters of all time and he won the Mundials, which is the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu world championships uh 3 months or 3 years into training, which is unheard of. Like nobody's ever

43:44done that before. Not only to get a black belt in 3 years is crazy, but to win the Mundials in 3 years is even crazier. And he and I were talking about this on the phone and he was saying that uh he met this guy and this guy was uh getting really good at Jiu-Jitsu and uh he's like, "Man, that's incredible, you know, is you training hard?" And the guy said and he goes, "Man," he goes, "I'm addicted, just like you. I'm an addict." He goes, "And then I realized, yeah, that's what it is. I'm addicted. But it's just a good thing. It's It's being addicted to something that's actually beneficial. As opposed to heroin. Right. Right. Or booze or Or anything. Or women or anything. Anything. I mean, you can get locked up in a relationship that's basically an addiction, too. You There's a lot of things that people do that they're just massive distractions, and it's hard to parse that out in real

44:36time. It's hard to figure out, like, what is this good for me? Like, am I just lost in this? Like, what What's good and what's bad? Yeah. I think he knew to some extent that that's who and how That's who he was and that's how he operated. I think he had no interest in trying to moderate. I think that was not at all interesting to him, you know. I I remember telling him that I was I was I said, I'll always have my phone on, except, you know, I've started going to AA meetings, and so in that hour I turn my phone off. He's like, "What the do you want to go to AA for?" Like, he just It's like, "That's a cult." You know, he just I was like, "Okay. Well, that being said, I'm going to turn my phone off for an hour, so." Did you enjoy AA? Yeah. I'm still I mean, I know it's sort of like you're not supposed to talk about it, but I'm still very much I was in a meeting this morning. It's for me

45:22How come you're not supposed to talk about it? Cuz it's anonymous? Yeah, I I I guess. Yeah, I mean, What is the idea about not talking about it? Well, I think the idea is like not, you know, not sharing anything that you hear your fellows say. But I think I I'm no, you know, historian or scholar of it, but I think that originally it was it was much more stigmatized to be an alcoholic, you know. So, it was like, let's keep it on the down low while we get our together. That makes sense. So, yeah, I I find it to be very, very helpful. I wasn't a, you know, bad rock bottom alcoholic, but I was somebody who was on a bad path, and it's I have found it yeah, helpful for me. Was it exacerbated by working with him? Probably to an extent. I mean, you know, everyone's kind of responsible for their own but No, you can blame him. He's not here anymore. I mean, I will say that I found a lot of

46:13of the way that he lived to be very romantic and very inspiring and you know, I was kind of a mess and I thought, "Well, you know, this is Tony would approve." Or you know, I talked to him about whatever kind of messy was going on in my life and you know, cuz I knew he would think it was funny or he could relate or um you know, I so again, I don't want to blame him cuz it was on me, but I but for sure it was like very much uh okay, you know, to be a little bit of a mess and to work for him. As long as you got your done, you showed up on time, you know, and you were you were good at your job, I don't think it was a problem. I mean, certainly, you know, you saw there was a lot of lot of drinking on those shoots. Um yeah, so definitely I the way that he lived seemed very, very appealing to me. Um less so now, you know, obviously, but um yeah, I think and I think it was hard for me as as

47:09someone who identifies as an addict of a kind, it was hard for me to see him as an addict until I really sort of saw myself and what my own behaviors were. Like, "Oh, that's why, you know, he did this or that or you know." In those moments, those moments of of camaraderie and the moments of looseness and of booze and smoking and the there's a funness to that. There's a there's a a freedom to that and it also there's there's a bonding that goes along with that. It's very hard to capture with sobriety. You know, and I'm not saying you need booze to have a fulfilled life, but I am saying that there's some something that comes out of that, those moments. There's like a certain wild rebelliousness that's so attractive. And for a person like me who's a comedian, you know, once a year we do Sober October. Me and my buddies and we we don't do anything. We're allowed to

48:11smoke cigars for some reason, which we we decided is kind of cheating cuz it does get you high a little bit. But you realize how much you kind of lean on that, how much it's fun to just just like guys want to do a shot? Let's do a shot. You clink glasses and it's like woo and the next thing you know, you're hugging and bonding and it's like there's a wildness to that. And there's there's a celebration of this rebellious unknown aspect of life that comes from you know, the romantic consumption of alcohol. It's very attractive. Yeah, absolutely. It's And if you can sort of keep it in check, people who can drink and use drugs responsibly, like excellent, you know? For me, it was like I'd start my engine and then not stop until I ran it into the wall, you know? And like that's not it's not cute, you know? And I have a I have a kid, you know? It's like Yeah, I hear you. It gets messy.

49:12Yeah, it gets messy. Yeah. You know, it's not necessary, but it's it's It is I had a real good time. Yeah, that's the thing, right? No one wants to say that and also it makes some great art. God damn So many musicians are just hammered and so many you know, so many great po- Bukowski, you know? My buddy Lex read a Bukowski excuse me, Bukowski poem on the podcast the other day like to end the podcast and I was like, do you even write like that if you're not drunk? Like I don't I don't know, you know? I mean, I think it's possible. Like I'm a giant Stephen King fan. I love Stephen King. I think but I really love the stuff that he did when he was up. That's my favorite stuff. You know, my favorite stuff is like the the Carrie days. Like the the days where he was doing The Shining. Like he was tortured. It was and he was doing blow and stuff and toilet paper up his

50:08nose. Like his book on writing is amazing. Have you ever read it? It's amazing, right? Because like he kind of goes into the depths of his addiction and his the the love he has for his family and pulls him out of that and how he got back on the horse and figured it out again, but his best stuff was when he was up. Yeah. Well, there's like an anxiety and a self-loathing and you know, the euphoric highs that all kind of Yeah. fuel that, but you know, it's not good if you're, you know, if you end up dead at the end of that. You can't do any more writing. Yeah, that's true, too. Yeah. I mean, that's true, too. I mean, if he died at 50 and left behind all those great books that he wrote when he was up, he'd be even more romantic, unfortunately. You know, like look at Morrison and Hendrix and Joplin, they all died at 27 and Kurt Cobain, same thing, right? It's like Yeah, Amy Winehouse.

51:00Right, we look at them like, "Oh, something about that." Yeah. Yeah. Cuz there's a, you know, finite nature to life anyway. True. I mean, that's something I used to say a lot when I was drinking, "Life is short." You know, but and it is, but it's long, too. You Like Yeah. We're probably all going to linger around a lot longer than is optimal, unfortunately. Maybe. Who knows? Science is pretty amazing. They're coming up with some great Yeah. Do It's pretty amazing things your body as you age in 2021. Yeah. Um when you're writing these books, um like what did you take notes while you were working with him? Did you Do you have to go back and sort of like re-envision these moments in your mind? How did you structure this? Well, so the biography that the full title is Bourdain the definitive oral biography. So, what that means is that this is not the strict uh the biography that you

52:00know, where the the writer interviews a bunch of people and then writes their own thing. This is I did um about a hundred interviews with people who who knew Tony uh from all aspects of his life. And by and large, I let them tell their own story. So, that So, this narrative it starts at the beginning of his life and goes all the way to the end. So, it's pieces of those interviews sort of stitched together in a narrative. So, it starts with his mom and his brother talking about early life and I've got his uh high school buddies. So, the research that I did was to, you know, figure out who the people were that were important in his life that I needed to speak to and then, you know, learn as much about them as I could before we talked. And then talk to them and then, you know, figure out what was what's juicy, what's usable of those interviews. And uh and then fit it into fit it into a

52:53narrative. Uh you know, Tony told a lot of his story already in Kitchen Confidential. You know, he started from early childhood memories to about age 40. So, a lot of that story is already out there, but it's you know, Tony was a storyteller and he was a he was not averse to kind of sanding down the edges of a story or embellishing something or, you know, as you do to make it like a really good story that you can tell and that's has good beats and and lands well. So, even the stuff that we know about from Kitchen Confidential, there's a lot more nuance there. You know, people that were there with him in the bad old days of the '80s in kitchens and in Provincetown as a teenager and So, all of that is in the book. So, it was it was about, you know, asking the right questions and listening to people, letting them really tell their stories and helping them to really

53:45you know, remember as much as they could about him. How long did it take you to write it? Uh it was about 2 years. I started shortly after he died as much as I could. I mean, you know, the last the few months after he died were pretty rough and there was not much getting done, but at least to have the book started to have something to work on was really valuable to me just to kind of keep moving forward in life. So, it was this one took about 2 years and then the one that came out in the spring called World Travel, I was working on it simultaneously but a little quicker because it was due the manuscript was due before the biography and World Travel is a book that we actually started working on together, Tony and I, before he died. We didn't get too far into it, but we did start and it was intended to be co-authored with a living author. And of course that

54:38that changed quite a bit after he died, but I did want to make something of it. So, it's a it's a version of the book that we had intended to write together. And what's the premise of that book? So, World Travel is basically a an atlas of the world according to Tony Bourdain. So, it's every it's not every place that he went in the world cuz there were just too many of them, but it was all the places that he truly loved that he wanted to recommend that you go to. So, it's a it's like a little travel guide, but it's got tons of of his writing in it. You know, so I I ended up taking a lot of stuff from his television voice over or stuff that he had written in books or stuff that he had said in interviews and kind of wove it into this travel book format. I mean, it's not like your typical Fodor's or you know, whatever the travel books Lonely Planet, but it

55:27but it has aspects of that. It has a lot of practical information, but it has Tony, you know, talking about getting the shits in Brazil after eating the dendê oil or you know, stuff that's very specific to him and his voice. Well, he literally traveled to almost every place you could go to. Yeah. I mean, he did shows in Libya, right? Yeah. Libya uh And Libya after Gaddafi's death, which was essentially a failed state, right? It was a very dangerous place to be. Yeah, that sounded I wasn't there, but it sounded like it was among the most dangerous shoots that they did and there was a lot of there were a lot of dicey moments I think behind the scenes, but it's a beautiful episode, you know, and he really talks about how yeah, this is what you see on the news and CNN and and uh you know, but this is here's some people. Here's here's some kids playing with a balloon, you know.

56:23Um yeah, he went to 93 countries and a lot of them more than once and you know, he traveled extensively around the United States. Um And not until he was 40, which is really wild, right? Yeah. Yeah, he really had traveled very little. When he wrote Kitchen Confidential, he had been to the Caribbean a bunch and he had been to Tokyo once and that was kind of it. Crazy. Yeah. Yeah, and he became like the most traveled man in the world. Whenever I would travel somewhere um if for comedy or the UFC, I would text him, "What do I eat?" Mhm. And he would he would help you out? just tell you, but tell you in great detail. Like what's the history of the place and why and Yeah. you got to go here and you got to do this, you got to do that. It was just the coolest thing. Yeah, he was a good friend to have that way. He was like very, you know, if he was your friend, he was your friend like

57:13a thousand percent, you know. He was really into Vietnam, which I thought was really interesting. It's like it made me want to go to Vietnam. I still have No, I still have not. But I was like, "Really?" He's like, "My favorite place to go." I'm like, "Vietnam?" Yeah. Yeah, it's Uh well, I you know, he was super interested in Graham Greene, The Quiet American, and um, Heart of Darkness, and Apocalypse Now. I mean, Apocalypse Now was sort of a seminal film, you know. Yeah. So, uh, and you know, being of the age that he was, I mean, kind of growing up with the Vietnam War going on when he was in his adolescence, I think it made a big impact. But yeah, then he got there, and it was, you know, and it is an extraordinary place. I mean, it really I I was lucky I I went with him once to Hue, right in the center of the country. And I got it. I understood, you know,

58:02it's like it's just so the pace of life is different, the smells, all the scooters on the street. I mean, it truly you feel like you are I mean, there's a lot of places in the world you can go now, and it's like, am I in Austin? Am I in Beijing? Am I in, you know, Right. wherever. Like, it's all everything looks somewhat similar. Every place has got a, you know, a Phnom Penh and a Starbucks, you know? But Vietnam, by and large, has has not succumbed to that level of kind of homogenization yet. I'm sure it's coming, you know? But it's uh it's very much a way, and I think he really loved that, you know? And the food, I mean, you know, it's really good. I've never had, you know, I'm I don't think I've ever had Vietnamese food ever. Oh. If I think about it, like, maybe I have somewhere. I don't, you know. Yeah. Houston apparently has a lot of really good Vietnamese food. So, I think

58:54it's, you know, wherever there were communities of displaced Vietnamese in the US, Louisiana. What is pho? That's the uh beef noodle soup. Right, but is that Who makes that? That's Vietnamese. Okay, I've had that. Yeah. It's and it's really That's pretty damn good. Yeah. Uh, but although, like, I don't even think I said it right. It's not pho, but it's not I don't think it's fa. It's like fa, right? I think it's fa. I never quite know how to say it. Yeah. But when people do say it correctly, I get annoyed. I'm like, oh, really? You know? And let's go have some fa. Yeah. Mm. I I feel like, you know, they've it's almost like a little trap. You know, you spell it p h o. Mhm. You playing that on fa fa It's like a question. Yeah. Um but it's like it's a trap. It's cuz you know it's spelled differently than it's pronounced. And if you say it correct, you know, it's like it's

59:46certain annoying thing when someone says Argentina. You know, like you know what I mean? Like they say things Yeah, we used to call it Trebeking. I don't know if we still do. I think Alex Trebek would say that. Yeah. Yeah. He was really interested in the different styles of humans. Tell me. Yeah, like um like he loved that like the people in Vietnam had such a distinctly different way of being than like say people in England. You know, there was there was a way that they they just there's a an easygoing way that they existed. They for whatever reason apparently have no resentment to Americans, which he found fascinating. Yeah. Like how the are you not mad at Americans? Yeah. Well, I think I mean my understanding is that first of all, there have been so many wars, you know, before that. They're just like, all right, come and get us, you know, you. Like the Chinese, the you know, the

60:44French, like everyone has with us. But also I think I mean sort of gruesomely I think a lot of the people are dead. You know, it's a very very young country. Um I forget what the percentage is, but it's like a huge percentage of the people are were born at that that are living now in the country were born after the war. So they don't have a memory of it, you know? But yeah, I I mean again, I I don't claim to be a scholar or historian, but that's that was my understanding of how it could be possible, right? Cuz like yeah, we really visited some pretty bad on that country, you Yeah. But but you know, in talking to him and one of the things that he was really interested in is just the authentic way people existed in the wherever you went. Like in in that it was there was they varied so much. And to really understand people, like to really get an appreciation of all the amazing things

61:33this world has to offer, you kind of have to go to all these different places to see. And every time you go, it's like it removes a little layer of the onion where you you just get a little bit better understanding of what it means to be a human being on Earth. And that there isn't just this one set sort of culture that we're so accustomed to, particularly in America, where we're kind of arrogant about our culture. And like this is the we're America, you. And you know, then you go to other places and you go, "Oh, okay. Why are they so happy in Thailand?" You know, like you're like like what's going on? Like why why are they so uh why do they celebrate so much in Brazil? You know, and you as you do visit all these different places, I think he had this almost bottomless appetite for that sort of exposure to new cultures and meeting new people. Mhm. And was really good at

62:30uh listening and and being able to hear and engage with an argument or a point of view that didn't match his, which I think God, you know, I mean there's a million reasons why I wish he were still here, but that is one of the, you know, right at the top is this capacity that he had to have a conversation with people who disagreed with him, you know, without just trying to shut them down. I mean, he had very strong opinions about things, but it didn't stop him from just communicating with people, which is this, you know, it's not easy. I'm sure you know this, you know, people get real riled up and then don't even want to just have a discussion about whatever it is that's that's you know, that they disagree about. Yeah, it's um it's very it's a very valuable thing if you can do it. Mhm. To be able to just talk to people even if you disagree with them. And it's it's

63:24really rewarding to have a conversation with someone where you completely disagree with them but you're very friendly. And at the end you really enjoy that person's company and you actually like them. Even though you don't like There's quite a few people I have on this podcast where I agree with very little of what they have to say. Mhm. But I like to talk to them. Yeah. And especially if they're kind, if they're nice people. Yeah. And then we we sort of have this interesting relationship over the years of these kind of conversations. Where they know that I'm very different than them and I think I I see things different but but we're nice to each other. And so we can talk about stuff and so I I can find out you know what it's like to be this person who thinks about things politically, socially, you know, religiously, sexually. They think so different than me. Mhm.

64:08And it's it's it's real valuable. It's but people are so dogmatic in their perspectives. And they almost like they're they're defending their position like they're defending themselves. Yeah. Like it's not these ideas are themselves. It's not just an idea. Mhm. And it's very unfortunate that we you know there's nothing wrong with shutting down morons, right? There's nothing wrong with it. It's fun. I love watching it on YouTube, right? There's nothing wrong with um arguing your position on stuff but there's also a great benefit in listening to how other people see things. Yeah. And he he definitely was really good at that. And not just really good at that like there was a genuine enthusiasm about these kind of conversations with people. Mhm. Definitely. I mean that was his that was like the only word in his Twitter bio was enthusiast. Yes. It's beautiful.

65:02Yeah. And that's that's really what it is. Mhm. Mhm. You know from from everything like I one of the most enthusiastic things he ever told me was how disgusting um fermented shark meat was in Iceland. He was like animated with his hands. He's like, "It's disgusting. It's the most disgusting thing." And I was like, "Wow, like how cuz it that was the single thing." Like I said, like what is the grossest you've ever had to experience when you're trying out these different cultures? Cuz I've got a pretty wide palette. I love all kinds of different kinds of foods, very spicy foods, and but he's like, "That's the one." Mhm. Did you ever have that? No. No. I mean I want to try it. Yeah, I mean he kind of makes makes it seem so unappealing. I I might try Yeah, I don't know. It seems awful. If I go to Iceland, that's the first thing I'm eating, 100%. I want to I want

65:55to experience that pickled shark or that fermented shark meat. It just sounds like full survival food, right? Like you just like basically trying not to die. Yeah. And then all the people that are alive all these years later just kind of celebrating the fact that their ancestors survived off this dog Right. Right. That's like probably the most fermented food you could have, right? Like real good for your gut flora if it doesn't, you know, kill you. May be good. Might not eat Well, they're animals over there. You know, like they have some huge human beings. Yeah. Like Iceland produces an extraordinary amount of the strongest men in the world. Oh. Yeah. Like when they have those world's strongest man competition, they're Vikings. All right. These are leftover marauders. So they know. They're huge people. Like have you ever seen like the strong men from Viking?

66:40There There was a Vice piece on it many years ago trying to like decipher. They were trying to figure out like why do so many men who win strongest man in the world come from Iceland? Mhm. And I think it really is just Viking DNA. Like this idea that there was these giant marauders that showed up a lot of them on mushrooms, by the way. That was the thing. They would They would take Yeah, they They take psilocybin and and then go on these marauding raids. Wow. Huge giant mesh mushroomed up men and now they're throwing, you know, barrels. Yeah, here it is. Here's the Vice piece. The giants of Iceland. So this dude goes over to Iceland and sees all these men who are competing in this strongest man competition and there's not that many people in Iceland, too, which is kind of crazy. Like it's not like the biggest place in the world. Wow. Wild. Now you guys went hunting

67:38together, right? You and Tony went pheasant hunting. Yeah, he I had gotten into hunting while I knew him. Um I had gotten into hunting because I had come to this sort of um ideological impasse in my life where I was like, okay, like you you you you claim to be a person who thinks things through and you care about life and the world around you, but you're eating Jack in the Box, right? Like what is what's in there? And I would watch too many of those goddamn PETA videos and I was like, okay, I'm either going to do one of two things, I decided. I'm either going to become a hunter or I'm going to become a vegetarian. Those are my two options. And I'd done vegetarianism when I was competing back in my martial arts competing days and I just cuz I was trying to make a weight class that I was too big for and I I'd starved myself and I was really up. And then I did it the wrong way, clearly.

68:32But then when I went back to eating meat, I felt so much better. And then it was like the best of my competition years were all I ate so much meat. And then I was like, you know, an older person trying to like think about what my place in the world is and seeing these videos that I'm sure they don't represent most farming, but it was enough to know that that was out there and that perhaps I had participated in that. So I got into hunting. And uh and that's actually how I met Mo Fallon. I met Mo because um Steve Rinella was uh the star of the show MeatEater and Mo was the director of the show and that's how Oh, okay. That's how we met. And um when you know, he and I had talked about hunting like he had done some hunting with um What's that gentleman's name in England? Marco Oh, Marco Pierre White. Yeah, Marco Pierre White. I um So, I know that he had done some

69:33hunting with him and then remember he shot a deer and they smeared blood on his face. Mhm. Mhm. And so, we talked about like doing stuff for the show and he said you know, have you ever been pheasant hunting? I said, "No, let's go. Sounds like fun." It looked like fun. It was just for me an excuse to do something with him. Yeah. Yeah. I think a lot of people that was his form of friendship with a lot of people was we got to have a reason to be working together so that we can have a reason to hang out. Yeah. So, um yeah, I love the I always love those hunting scenes. I grew up in a in a my dad is a big hunter, still is a big hunter. So, I I uh you know, I always knew my parents were going to like that episode and not complain about it and uh it just is always was always interesting to see him kind of Tony was almost like travel host Ken in a way, you know, you

70:20put him in the hunting gear and he and he hunts and then you put him in some other thing and he I mean, he was so adaptable in that way and it just for somebody who didn't handle a gun very much in his life, he he did all right, you know, I mean Yeah, he shot a bird that day, I didn't. Yeah. Yeah. There was duck hunting in uh in France that he did pretty well in and you know, I'm sure there was some magic of editing at times, too, but uh Well, he was enthusiastic about stuff and when you know, when you're enthusiastic about stuff, you can you can figure it out. You do it. You know, he had a lot of horsepower. He knew how to dig into things. And um it was just uh it was a fun experience just did I'd never been pheasant hunting before and it's it's a fun experience too because you're just kind of like walking through these field hoping these birds freak out and

71:08fly away and then you got to be ready at any moment. And the dogs, I mean that's a cool aspect of it too. You know, there's a lot of moving parts. And then there was the cooking at the end. It was really cool cuz he cooked for everybody, you know, so it was we were eating this fresh cooked you know, freshly killed bird and some steaks and some other stuff and doing it by the firelight and it was just it was fun. Yeah. It was wild. But I remember going home going, "Man, that drinks." Cuz I had such a headache the next day and I was like, "How does he do this all the time?" Yeah, he had certain things. I mean, he also could get by on very little sleep, you know, just like how did what like I mean, when he was writing Kitchen Confidential, he would talk about how he would work until 11:00, go out, drink until 1:00, go home and sleep for a few hours and get up and write, you know.

72:00And like whether that whether or not that was sort of a little bit of self-mythologizing, maybe he didn't do that every day, but he did it enough to very quickly write, you know, best-selling books, so there was something there. Well, he was um very appreciative of hard work. Like hard work meant a lot to punctuality meant a lot to him. You know, he was um he was uh you know, he in a lot of like he had a he had like a certain ethic that he lived his life by that it was it carried over into all the other aspects of his life. Yeah, definitely. His writings, everything. Yeah, man, that I think you have to credit the the kitchen for that, you know, I mean, you just whatever kind of up you are in the rest of your life, when you show up in the kitchen, there's it doesn't matter. You got to, you know, you got to do your prep list. You got to be ready for service. You've got to, you know, make

72:56the plates when the stuff gets ordered. Like, there's just no There's no two ways about it, you know? It's just it's a military style precision and and you know, well, in best case scenario. I mean, it's also much sloppier than the military, I would think, in most cases. But, pirate ship maybe is a better Pirate ship. better metaphor, but I always love how he gave so much credit to the cooks that were working underneath him, too. And he was like, "The backbone of this city is these immigrant cooks that come in and some of them can barely even speak English, and they're the people that are serving people and and and making these amazing meals in these incredible restaurants." Mhm. Mhm. Yeah, guys from Ecuador and Mexico just like that is 90% of the cooks in in Manhattan. And he would shine light on that. He wanted them to get the shine. That that meant a lot to him.

73:48Yeah, called them out by name, you know, and really acknowledge that they're incredibly skilled, incredibly hard workers, cheerfully, you know, sweating 12 hours a day making, you know, beef bourguignon and french fries. Yeah. It's a wild life, that kitchen life, you know? The the people that do it, they they almost universally tend to party. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It is a It is a drunk drunk profession, like, no question. But, it's also it's like it's a profession that is celebrating this sort of extravagance of dining, right? It's of of of consumption. You're consuming these incredible meals, and you want to have great wine and a great whiskey, and you know, there's some there's something to all that that the it kind of fits in together. Mhm. Yeah, it's hedonism Mhm. as a as a product and hedonism as a as a lifestyle. But, you know, also as a way to sort of dull the pain of of, you

74:46know, your aching body and your tiny paycheck and your busted-up relationships. I mean, it is, you know, it's really Island of the Misfit Toys. It really is in a lot of ways. It's a lot like comedians in the the misfit toy aspect of it, not in the hard work aspect, because the comedy world is so much easier. But, there's something about that that's like, "Oh, you guys are like kindred spirits in a lot of ways. You're just more tempered by your profession Yeah. because your profession is so uh it requires so much of you. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's it's easy to forget that he was in the trenches, Tony, for, you know, close to 30 years. Just just pretty much non-stop cooking. The crazy thing is that that life, I mean, I don't think anybody should work for too little pay, right? But, the ones who do are really amazing. Mhm. So, like, why is that? Like, why why is

75:36it that these people that do struggle and do have, you know, all these obstacles and all these problems and yet keep showing up every day. They're so exceptional. Like, so many of those people that I meet are so interesting. Yeah. They're the ones I want to talk to at the bar. They're the ones I want to sit next to. Mhm. I mean, it's it's a certain maybe it's another form of addiction or it's just I mean, yeah, all the sh- cooks and chefs that I know, it's just it is who they are fundamentally, you know? I mean, you could leave the business and go sell used cars or whatever, but fundamentally, you're always going to be a cook and a chef and have that thing. Yeah. Maybe it is a thing like an addiction thing in a lot of ways, cuz there's a fun there's a a funny aspect to it where the it's hard work, but you have to keep up. Mhm. It's not hard work like you're digging a

76:30hole and, you know, you're forcing you have a certain pace that you can go at and you could dig that hole all day. No, you the the plates are coming in. Like, let's go. Like, you have to and so I think there's probably an addiction to the rhythm of it. An addiction to the requirements of it. Absolutely. When you get into that flow state and I mean at the highest level or even just a chef of a of a you know mid-level steakhouse, I mean they're taking the tickets, they're firing the plates, they're watching this guy that guy, you know, they see the garbage needs to go out. They've got a manager and a waiter on their shoulder. I mean there's like it's air traffic control, you know, it's really it's very unsung, I think, the the level of skill and concentration that goes into it. So of course you want to drink 1,800 beers at the end of the night, you know, it's so stressful.

77:18Was Kitchen Confidential really the only time where anybody had ever really kind of nailed that in book form? I think so. I mean I think it definitely was a completely fresh perspective at that time. I think the the the precursor is Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell, which I think was published 1920 or something. So it had been a while since that came out. kitchen work? Yeah, yeah, that's about him. Was George Orwell a a writer and slash Yeah, as as a young man he he worked in some some you know big very punishing kitchens and you know labor conditions not great in those in those eras you know in those cities. So but after that it was really not much and and then Tony kind of broke down the the door, you know, everything I had just started working as a food writer a little bit on the side when Kitchen Confidential came out and everything was about you know,

78:10just smooth luxury everything you were writing about was golf courses and big steaks and you know, beautiful wines and nothing ever about the real dirty business of of what you know, what actually goes on in restaurants. So I think he pissed off and scared a lot of people with that book, you know, I think people there's a lot of reasons to not want that kind of information out there, you know. Yeah. So I think and after Kitchen Confidential I think there were any number of other people that tried to do it, but there's only one, you know. I mean any There's no There's almost no point in trying to write a kitchen memoir, you know. It's just like that's the one. Yeah. Yeah. You're always going to know that you read that book. Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. That's part of the problem, right? Yeah. And same with travel TV. I mean I you know, and again I talk about it a

79:01little bit in the biography that number of people said you know, people who work in television, uh they get all these pitches like this is going to be the next Bourdain or the Bourdain of this or the Bourdain of that. And they're like, you know, you. There's done. There is no Bourdain of, you know, you can have a travel show or whatever, but like don't try and replicate that. It's They're just There isn't going to be another one. Yeah, that is the disgusting language of the producer. Yeah. I mean The producer pitching the show. You got to You got to have your, you know, it's whatever. It's Yeah. This meets that, but Always. Yeah, there's no way you can just Yeah. Unless you have something that's already successful in some independent way like on YouTube or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Um when you say you were a food writer, like what does that entail? Would you

79:48like review restaurants or No, I was never a reviewer. It was uh you know, writing about maybe talking to a chef who has something interesting going on, using a new or interesting ingredient or uh you know, I did a lot of like very just basic kind of service stuff like this, you know, new restaurant opened up in this place and here's 25 words about what their menu is and what the dining room looks like. Uh I did a lot of recipe writing. Um I went to Sri Lanka. Actually with Tony, I went to Sri Lanka and spent a lot of time on my own uh learning about Sri Lankan home cooking and got recipes from these different women who would teach me what they were doing and then wrote a feature about Sri Lanka. What is the style of cooking in Sri Lanka? It's similar very similar to Indian. Obviously, you know, they're very close geographically, but they're uh it's a lot punchier. This There's a lot of

80:41roasted whole spices. Very little dairy is used. I mean, of course, you know, Indian cuisine is a huge, you know, there's it's varied, you know, cuz it's such a big place, but Sri Lankan tends to be a lot of coconut meat and coconut milk, super intense spices, a lot of warm spices, um not a ton of meat, you know, a lot of seafood. Um they're cuz they're a little island nation. So, it's um you know, it's obviously related to Indian, but it's really its own thing, too. Really interesting, delicious cuisine, super super spicy. Now, how complicated is it to recreate dishes like that? Like if you're if you you're a person who goes to Sri Lanka and you sort of learn from someone who's cooking specific dishes over there and then you write down the ingredients. Like, can you even get most of the ingredients in America and like putting it together in the way they cook? Like, how how

81:33specific is their implementation? Like, what Yeah, it's not I mean, it's a challenge. I'd say now with the internet, I mean, you can really There were very few ingredients that I couldn't get uh back in the States. There were a few things that I picked up in Sri Lanka cuz I knew I wouldn't be able to get that specific spice blend or certain um you know, preserved fruits and stuff. But for the most part, anything you want, you can get it now, you know, as long as you're willing to pay, you know, sometimes exorbitant shipping. Uh and then you just do your best. I mean, every you know, I'm not going to cook something exactly the way that this, you know, auntie taught me to do it, but I'm going to I took a lot of notes, I took a lot of pictures, I took video in some cases, voice recording to try and get as close to it as possible. So, it's And then when you do that and you try to

82:20recreate it, how difficult is it to recreate it on your own? Depends. I mean, sometimes if it's a straightforward uh stew or something, he's like, "Well, you just follow the steps and you know, if you know what you're doing and you've taken careful notes, then you can get pretty close. Maybe not it's not always going to be as good or as exactly right, but you can get pretty close." There were some things though, like there's a dish called hoppers, which is a like fermented rice flour pancake. And it was just I mean, it was a disaster trying to recreate that, you know? It's just I just couldn't do it. It was gross, you know? And I just at some point I just gave up and was like, "That's not something that I know, if I can't replicate it myself at home, I'm not going to write this recipe and tell somebody that's reading the magazine to try it, you know?"

83:01Right, of course. What was it like you tried that over there though? I tried it over there, but I had, you know, like somebody standing over my shoulder who had already made the dough and they had the pan that was, you know, very well seasoned. I mean, I bought a pan on the street and it and and you know, I think you probably have to cook with it 150 times to get that patina so the dough doesn't stick and I just realized like this is not an endeavor that's that's worth it for my, you know, dollar a word article for this very small circulation magazine. I'm going to I'm going to let the hoppers go and just focus on stuff that's easier for the home cook to do. Now that um you're done with these books, obviously your main focus will now be promoting them and getting them out there, but what do you do with your life now? I mean, you had a a decade of working with him.

83:50Yeah, I mean, that that is something I started asking myself from the from the very first time I heard that Tony had died. Uh and you know, I was very lucky to have a couple of years to do these projects. Uh you know, I I'm going to keep writing books. I have got a I'm working on a a bakery book now, a bread book with uh a British baker called Richard Hart who has a bakery in Denmark. So, we're writing a book about sourdough bread, um which, you know, everybody loves it. Everybody loves to make it. It's it's easy to do, but it's not easy to do well. So, we're going to try and teach people to to master that. Shout out to Tom Papa. Yeah. Oh, oh, he's a big baker, right? at it. He makes incredible sourdough bread. I'll have to start looking at his Does he share on on social media? Oh, yeah. Yeah. He shares in real life, too. He always brings loaf of bread

84:39whenever he visits us. We have a deal. I give him elk meat and he gives me uh he gives me bread. That is a good good trade. Uh yeah, you know, I'd like to keep writing. I've gotten into trying to start being a producer a little bit, you know, just you know I What are you producing? Uh like a couple of different TV shows. I mean, there it's very very I mean, when I say TV, I mean probably like YouTube or you know, whatever the streaming. Uh one is about um uh one is with a salsa singer named Tito Nieves. We're in the very early stages of it, but he's he's starting to do a little cooking show with his wife Janet. And uh the other one is uh very early stages of a of a show about food and and musicians. So, I think there's also some kindred spirits between, you know, chefs and musicians. Maybe not so much as comedians, but I you know, there's that that kind of road warrior, you know,

85:35mentality and that perfecting your craft. So, we'll see. It's you know, I I feel like uh having worked for Tony for so long was such a gift and and you know, having these books has raised my platform a little bit. So, we'll see. I would love to be able to keep writing and working creatively and not have to get a real job. So, what Yeah, that. I think you could do it. I have faith in you. Thank you. The desperation of not you know, just don't get a real job. Yeah. I mean, the last real job I had was working for Tony, you know, and I just don't see myself working as an assistant for somebody for anybody else, you know. I would had already kind of aged out of the assistant gig, but when Tony came along it like, well, obviously, yes, I'll work for you. But, uh yeah, I don't I don't want to be a glorified secretary. Do you feel tied down to the food genre?

86:27Uh I mean, it's it's a lot of what I've done, you know, but I not necessarily. I I realized that um you know, there's a lot more out there for me, you know, I mean, I I've tried to develop myself as a writer over the, you know, since I've always, you know, so uh no, I guess the short answer is no. I I'm I'm interested in writing about learning about other things. Being connected to him though, it's sort of like there's high expectations on whatever you do put out. Mhm. Mhm. Well, you know, and he himself kind of drifted away from food uh a little bit in the later years. I mean, obviously, there's was always still food involved in whatever he was doing for television, but the focus really had started to shift to people, you know, and maybe food as a as an initial way to kind of break the ice with people, but it it he really got away from food porn, you know, except in special

87:20cases, but it really was how what is the food tell me about how you live, you know, or what you do or don't have, or what your government is or isn't you know, providing for you. Uh so, you know, I see Tony kind of forging a path there of of of going beyond just like what's delicious on the table, you know. Well, that seemed the shift of Parts Unknown. Parts Unknown seemed to shift more into uh a sort of an exp- exploration of these different cultures as much as their food. And almost their food was like sort of okay, we got to do this, too. Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, some places, you know, he went to Lyon, France, and that was like all about the food, you know, because it's so intrinsic to the culture. And other places, it was like, what's the, you know, what's the specialty? All right, we're going to shoot that, and then we're going to talk to, you know, this guy that was a

88:09political prisoner for 10 years, or, you know, something that There were plenty of scenes toward the end that had nothing to do with food. Yeah, there were so many wild moments like What was it Wasn't there an episode where they sat around and ate a camel? That probably was early on, maybe. I'm not I can't I can't say with certainty that he ate a camel. It's very possible. sure he ate a camel. I think they were all sitting around eating a camel cuz I remember like they you had to eat it with your hands and there was like there was very specific rules to where they did it. I forget where he did it. But you know, there's parts of the world where you wash your hand your ass with your left hand and you eat your food with your right hand and they were all 90% sure that they ate a camel. I'd have to go back to the archive, but it seems totally in the realm of

89:00possibility. I mean, he did, you know, he went to Egypt, he went to Oman and uh I mean, just everywhere, you know. Is it when, you know, you're looking back on this uh this time that you shared with him and and then you put all this down in in these books, do you feel like you've sort of in some way closed the chapter? Does this give you closure in any way? I'm not sure. I mean I there will I think there will be a time when, you know, both of these books this one will be out in the world about biography, the travel book is already out and the promotional period will end and that will be it and I think it will be a very sad time for me because I think I have kept some sense of Tony's memory alive by working on these books. Um I don't I don't know. I feel like the more time that goes by the less closure I have in some ways, you know. I I I learned this morning watching the the

90:06Montana episode. It was like just every time I see something that I haven't seen from him in a while, it kind of breaks my heart open again, you know, and just makes me realize how incredible he was, you know, and I I think working for him I kind of you kind of lose perspective when you're talking to somebody every day and you're working with them and you sort of forget that they're how great they are until they're gone. So, yeah, you know, I mean, I think very early on after Tony died, I had to and a lot of us that were close with him had to sort of tell ourselves right out of the gate, this is not our fault, you know, this is not something that we could have prevented. As much as I still to this day think about like we said at the top of this conversation, what if I had said this or that? What if I had, you know, alerted somebody? What if, you know, all the what ifs, you

90:55know, and I I you have to believe that this is a decision that he made uh that didn't involve anyone else. Um but yeah, I think that with the with the nature of the way that he died, I think there's always going to be an open wound of of regret and of just, you know, playing out the million scenarios that, you know, had things gone differently. You know, I think about God, if he were around right now, what he would you know, A, he would be so I would have this fantasy that he comes back and I'm like, "Dude, there's a pandemic." You know, and just how like he you know, like he would be in his sort of like nerdy enthusiast way, he would be like, "That's crazy." You know, he would I mean, as as horrible as a pandemic is, he would be really excited. He would be really engaged with it. He would have so much to say, you know, he might he might Who knows, you know, and then that's sort of

91:48like the daily heartbreak is like all of these things that that are happening that have the world has gone on and he stopped, you know, in June of 2018 and and he's not getting to see the way that the people that he lifted up are continuing to grow professionally, you know, to see his daughter, you know, all of these things. There's That's I don't I don't think there's ever any closure to that, you know, there's just peace trying to make peace with it personally and and and try and somehow try to understand it. And unfortunately, and I say this with all hesitation because I know it's a up thing to say, there's a certain romantic aspect to even the way he died. It just one day when people review the life of Anthony Bourdain, that that will be a part of the legend. It'll be a part of the the chaos of who he was and the pain and suffering and then ultimately what he felt like was

92:43betrayal and humiliation and he takes his own life and he's missed so dearly by everyone. It's just it's part of the romantic legend that is that person and this wild unforeseen ride from, you know, writing that one book Mhm. to becoming this person that affected so many people that you know, became in a lot of ways like a cultural icon for for travel and for the exploration of of different regions of the world and different people and different different cultures. Yeah. Yeah, it's you know, it's it's sure is, you know, more romantic and dramatic than like getting ass cancer or something. I mean, he would have That sounds like something he would say. Right. Uh you know, and he I mean, you know, there's it is not a surprise to say that, you know, he had he made a million throwaway suicide references as a joke, you know, always all There's a million of them, you know, in the TV show, in in

93:46conversation. I mean, this is just like breathing for him, you know, but I I don't I don't know. I just have to feel I just have to think that it was a spontaneous shitty decision and uh Oftentimes that's the case apparently. I've talked to people who are air quotes suicide experts and that's one of the things they say is that you'd be surprised at how many people commit suicide with like a literally like an off-the-cuff random thought and they just follow through with it. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, we'll we'll never know really, but um you know, I I wish I wish that he had made a different decision. I hope that you know, people who who think that it's a romantic way to go out will will listen to the voices of the people that he left behind and see that you know, the tremendous amount of uh pain that that caused. I don't mean to laugh. It's just it's it is what it is, you

94:42know? That it's that it's I mean, he tapped out. He's good, you know? But the rest of us are here kind of kind of picking up the pieces. Well, we're we're we're left wondering what his take on the world at large today would like I mean, in so many ways a lot of the facade of what we uh imagined was a rigid structure of government and and society has eroded so rapidly before our eyes over the last year and a half plus that it would have been fascinating to see his take on that because it really has revealed um the the true character of all these human beings grasping at straws trying to find relevance in this weird weird time that we find ourselves in because it's it is unprecedented. So, for a a voice like his which would have been so sorely needed in in a in a time like now to not have him around is a for it's every shame for every reason, but that's just another one.

95:52Mhm. Mhm. He He would I you know, who's to say? I could never predict where he would come down on one issue or another and I was you know, I was if I would guess I'd be wrong 50% of the time, you know, but I he would certainly have a lot to say about the way that we are or are not taking care of each other, you know, the way we are or not following rules and and what the you know, just who knows? Who knows what he would have he would have said, but he was so well read, you know, he had such a deep deep knowledge of history, especially US history in the you know, in the 20th century. I feel like it was always comforting for him, you know, he could always pull up a reference like well, this is like you know, this time and like there there was this sense of of he knew, you know, he knew what was going on, he knew what had and and all of the factors that had led up

96:37to whatever was happening in that moment, you know, he had he was like a really incredible scholar. For a guy who like basically flunked out of college, like he was an incredible scholar, you know, and that kind of and and he was very humble about that, you know, he would never tell you that he was a super well read guy, but he absolutely was. Well, he was interested in things, right? You know, it didn't really matter what his actual formal education was. He was interested in things and the pursuit of those things and and trying to understand stuff, which also contributed greatly to uh his enthusiasm as a traveler. Yeah. Yeah. Anything else, Laurie? Should we wrap this up? I guess so, before we both start crying. I'm glad I didn't cry. I thought I In the beginning I thought it was over right away. I'm like god damn it, you You got to cry in the first 15 seconds.

97:30It's good to get it out of the way. Uh Bourdain the definitive oral biography. hold them up so people can see it. There you go. So this is uh this is And that's out soon. Yep, September 28th published by Ecco. Okay, so that's it out in about a month and then the other one is out right now. Yes, this is uh uh world travel and irreverent guide and this is available now. Lori, thank you very much for being here. I really appreciate it. And I really appreciate you writing these books, too. Thank you. It was great to talk to you. Great to talk to you, too. All right. Bye, everybody.