Boonta Vista - EPISODE 418: Bad Sausages At The Clermont Hotel (with Justin Roczniak)

Episode Date: October 19, 2025

Lucy, Theo, and Ben are joined by Well There's Your Problem's Justin Roczniak to talk about: The growing problem at the intersection of decreasing regulation and increasing grocerantisation, and the universal experiences of the road trip. *** Check out WTYP here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPxHg4192hLDpTI2w7F9rPg Find him on Bluesky here: https://bsky.app/profile/donoteat.bsky.social Watch his video on the Hyperloop here: https://youtu.be/4dn6ZVpJLxs?si=FLCWNaIGYT7sbrB4 Watch Ryan Delahanty's video on the Vegas Loop here: https://youtu.be/VPjODKUxV5g?si=ToxLaJ6ZPMG9kh3X Listen to the podcast episode I wildly misremembered about lettuce bags here: https://radiolab.org/podcast/forever-fresh  *** Outro: Truckers Delight - Flairs *** Support our show and get exclusive bonus episodes by subscribing on Patreon: www.patreon.com/BoontaVista *** Email the show at [e-mail]! Call in and leave us a question or a message on 1800-317-515 to be answered on the show! *** Twitter: twitter.com/boontavista Website: boontavista.com Twitch: twitch.tv/boontavista

We can spend a lot of time, like during the week of time doing podcast retention. So we want to be podcasting. Oh, no, no, we don't know. There's no need for that. It doesn't happen naturally. You don't ever force it to be a cum thing. It'll happen by itself within five to ten minutes. Yeah, fine.

Hello, welcome to Bonta Vista. episode 418, I'm Theo and I'm a train. You know that. We know that. It's all getting a bit boring. Frankly, I'm sick of hearing about it. I don't mind it. We had that fun time, you know, a while back. We did the episode. Did numbers. People like it. That's fine. I'm also here as usual with my good friend, Ben. And Ben has also been anthropomorphized, and he is, of course, a VW van in the style of the fucking one from cars, I think. You know, the one where they're like, oh, man, it's the weed character. Man, why would I have watched cars?

Man, you can imagine that you just, you know what it is, though, right? It's kind of a stoner van. Like, whoa, man, yeah. Yeah, because they're all cars that have been given the sort of animus of life. Yes. The windshields their eyes. The windshields their eyes, that's, yeah, that's important. The hood or the bonnet is sort of where the man.

mouth is, kind of? It is, yeah. They talk with the, they talk with the air intake at the front, right? Yeah, which I guess makes sense. That checks out. Why are there seats in the car? Who are they driving? Well, you can't see. They fix that problem. They solve the problem. I know it's very controversial to put

the eyes in the windshield instead of in the accepted kind of shorthand of the headlights. That's right. But having the eyes being completely opaque and white solves the problem of the seats and that you never see them. Do you ever see inside? No, the doors do not open, but... I believe the doctor cars do see inside the cars.

Oh. Well, you see underneath one in a kind of medical procedure in the first one. You don't want to see inside a human being. You don't want to see inside a car. You don't want to see inside a car. That's true. In the cars universe, that is. Also with me is the got got got got a got got a goth version of an A380 and she's a...

Jesus Christ. Scene version. scene. I've got to use the right nomenclature. Yeah, thank you. And she's at a freaking pop punk show, but she's an A380, walking around, like nailing it. Yeah, like

pencil art kind of style. Thank God no one sexualizes planes, or this could become problematic. All right, and where do you want me to go with this, Theo? You got like a direction you were taking this in, or that's just it? That's just it.

I mean, look, I kind of Apparently, I can lead a horse to water, but it doesn't even matter anymore. This is where we're at with the intro. Hi. Yeah, hello. And finally, you may have already heard his voice. You may know him from, well, there's your problem. And previously, his podcasts on, I don't know, civil planning, doing, talking about how shit the Hyperloop is.

It's just a Rosniak from, well, there's your problem. And do not eat. Good, hey, buddy. And, oh, sorry, and you are a finicular with truck nuts. Oh, God. If I'm a finicular, am I, is it like, you know, one eyeballs on one car and the other eyeballs on the other car? You're slowly gaining stereo vision as you get distance from one another?

Very, very limited. I hope I'm facing downhill. and not uphill, because otherwise I'm not seeing much. Yeah, although, tilted towards the heavens, you're basically seeing, like, the universe, I guess. Wouldn't they like, they'd make them twins in the car's universe. If you had a pair of finicular, one on the up, one on the down. Absolutely, they're twins. And they'd be annoying twins.

Oh, it's like a cable car. They'd definitely be annoying, yeah. It's like a train on a steep angle, basically. But the whole carriage is tilted to match the angle of the slope that it's on. And there's usually two of them. One goes up while the other goes down and they counterweight each other so that there's less energy used. There's a cool one in downtown L.A. Brisbane used to have one, Theo.

Did you know that? A funicular. A funicular that used to go up to the original Cloudland Ballroom, which I only just learned about it recently. Oh shit, that is super Brisbane facts. They used to be everywhere and then we got rid of them because nice things are bad. Nice things are bad, but like there's something, I don't know, to me, and I think, I don't have anything that will kind of point me towards this sort of feeling or result

but like there's something so comforting about like a special made vehicle placed on like the only spot that it can be because like a finicular has got to be the right angle it's got to have the right run well you wouldn't make the right angle that would be too steep yeah fuck off

that would be an elevator yeah I don't know like I went to um this is this is very long time ago when I used to go places because I had two incomes and zero kids when we went to Austria and there is a town next to like the Alps there and to get to the top of the hill you've got to take like two different funiculars and then a cable car up there

just to get to the like top of the mountain and then you step out and you're and you're literally like at the top of a proper mountain not like the things that we call in Brisbane where it's like a hill with some tropical trees on it kind of thing sort of grand budapest hotel situation yeah yeah and you get out and it's like you know it's it's transported you to another world and that's what the world of of transport could sometimes they transport you to like largely the same world yeah they transport you from mount gravat to Brisbane CBD yeah but sometimes it's to the the the Oberstersenplatz yeah or whatever the fuck um So I got the idea to ask Justin on the show, and thank you for saying yes.

Justin, it's always nice when people say yes instead of just not ever reply. That's my move. Yep, which is wonderful, because you retweeted something, you re-flopped something on on Blue Sky and obviously flattery just sets off my neurons. So that's nice. I've always enjoyed this podcast because it always seems to have very nice vibes. Oh, thank you. So that's why I have, I got your coffee cup because it, you know, it feels good to have a Lentavista coffee in the morning.

You've got a bunch of, you've got merch. Yeah, I do have merch. That's rare. We don't have that anymore. Yeah. Our Lithuanian mug manufacturer fell through at some point, unfortunately. But of course, like, so you guys, did, well, there's your problem, just do a tour? We did a tour of the Northeast United States.

Yes, we did New York, Boston, Boston, New York, Washington, D.C., and then Philly. That's incredible. And those cities are like 30 miles apart as well, which is. Oh, yeah. Like, you know, it's easier for me to get to New York than it is for people to get to New York from other parts of New York. That's incredible. But then I was reminded of your Elon Hyperloop video that you did in 2019. Which was sort of like very, very funny at the time kind of looking in and going, well, of course, like, this is something that's never going to happen, right?

You know, Elon was proposing, first of all, the Hyperloop being like, you know, hundreds of kilometers of vacuum tube cars, and then it became a thing where it's running underground on, you know, you drive your Tesla in and it's running on rails and it's going to transport tens of thousands of cars per hour. into the middle of the city and what you did was sort of just like take a piece of paper and kind of write some numbers out and do some like multiplication and stuff um uh to work out that that idea was um stupid yeah it's it's very bad that it was never got like kind of never going to work if like anybody checked and that's the funny thing is like people could just check yeah like it's just like, hey, you've just built a more expensive highway that only Tesla's can go, but we were chatting about this in the DMs that, like, how stupid you feel now, now that it's working, now that it's working, given all of the success with five years on.

It's just going gangbusters. They've got two Teslas down there, and sometimes one of them's not running. And they got one tunnel, which means they can use almost. to one of those Teslas at a time. Yeah. There's an average of just under one Tesla in the tunnel at a time. Which can take four people, but you only get three in there because there is, of course, the driver in the machine that is being sold as fully self-driving for over a decade now.

Yes. In their defense, they are just operating in a tunnel with no other cars and, like, they control the entire environment as well. So it's probably reasonable that they don't get that going. I was watching videos by Ray Delahanty, also known a city nerd on YouTube about... Oh, I like that guy. Is he from Pennsylvania, just going from his accent? I don't know.

Really started to enjoy a Pennsylvania accent. It's very underappreciated next to. I think people like to talk about the Boston. accent because it's so funny. I would say one of the things about Pennsylvania accent and there's about 50 of them. Yeah, but I don't know. They definitely share like a family, right? Like a regular car reviews. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, if you're like sort of in the southeast, but then, you know, if you go into cold country, it gets weird. If you go into like the Lehigh Valley, it also there's going to be some differences there or up in like the Wyoming Valley that's up

by Scranton and places like that. And then you go, like, into proper pencil tucky, which is the middle of the state. Then, you know, it is, I mean, that's, you got all the Pennsylvania Dutch out there, and they're not actually Dutch, they're German. But people couldn't pronounce Deutsch. And they got that, what's the one fucked up accent that they used for,

what was that TV show that was kind of average? The crime one, one season, what's the mayor of, what you can't call it? Mayor of East Town, set in Delco. Yeah. I can't do a Delco accent. It's too complex. It's like one of our friends who's been on a podcast a couple times, Tom Payne, you know, has like does linguistics as a hobby and has commented on, no, this, this, this, this accent is just incredibly linguistically complex. and it's also, you know, it is from some of the dumbest people in the world.

Yeah, Americans. Woo. Yeah. Hey, no. I mean, if you've got any good objections, that's, we're open to them. There are some beautiful people in America. We love them, most of them. I had to delay this podcast to get a sandwich.

I'm as dumb as anyone else. From the Wawa, yeah. From the Wawa. Yeah, from the Wawa. Hey, a sandwich. That's something that might appear on a menu. It's time for. Looks like menus back on the menu.

Looks like menu. Back on the menu, boys. Flawless. We all coordinated that. It never stops hitting, honestly. I'm really sorry about this segment. News was a little slow. It could only do this one if we're really in a pinch.

Yeah, it's not like the regular episodes where we talk about one cuck for 45 minutes. Yeah, there's no way that's going to come up again. Actually, I love the grocer-a-un guru. One of my favorites. I'm coming around on him. I think he's, I think he's got some pretty important stuff to say, like, he's got the juice. He has got the juice.

Stephen Johnson, you've got the juice. This is from the grocer-a-un guru, inside America's quiet food safety crisis and why it's about to get worse. It's a bit of a change of tack for him, right? He's usually... We're going to touch on issues of class. I only ate half that sandwich So I'm only going to get half as sick

We've all been there You're on the road hungry And the smell of fresh coffee and breakfast burritos Pulls you into a convenience store But something stops you Maybe it's that roller grill hot dog Turning one too many times Or the pre-cut fruit that looks a little too shiny

That hesitation, you're not alone This is maybe a cultural divide here The idea of getting a breakfast burrito from a convenience store. We don't really have that. That's too complex of construction to be at a gas station, right? Like, surely. You got dimmies. Yeah, you've got your chico rolls, obviously.

We're falling behind the world in this. This is on us, actually. You could go to Buckees, which is gradually starting to Claw's way into the northeast. Yeah, no, I have now been to one. I was amazed. I was also very hungover. because they used to be exclusively Texas when they started right and now there's just Texas and now they're fucking everywhere

well not everywhere I just keep seeing a lot of press releases yeah I see it everywhere yeah I see it everywhere yeah there's one up by uh Harrisonburg Virginia now I went to and it was um it's an experience I'd probably enjoy it more if I was not extremely hung over and also with my dad ideal Bucky's experience Yeah how did your dad rate the Bucky's experience Well my dad loved it

I was I thought it was mediocre It's got that dad juice That is a very dad place to go I will say that much I'm just trying to relate this back to my own experiences and father and stuff I know my dad likes to go to Jamaica Blue

The Bad Coffee Store The Bad Coffee Place Yeah Yeah Dad's love to go to Jamaica Blue Ziraffirs. They all love the Xeraphis, don't think.

On the way to J.B. High-Fi. I think Xeraphers is maybe national. Maybe I'm not sure. I don't know. My dad loves the Zeraphis. You've got to have something sitting in your tummy when you go into J.B. Hi-Fi and you open and close all of the fridge doors to check

like how easy or hard they are. Got to try the feel on them. You're not going to buy them. Oh no. You just got to check. You just got to know. Yeah, you're going to come along with the cheapest TV. I really like the idea of Bucky's being like

What if there was like a really big gas station Which is already kind of An art that has been covered in America In America I think they got that yes Like all the big ones What if you make it bigger than that It's it's genuinely it It seems like one of those on the nose

American parody type things to see a sign That's like we have over 100 fuel bouses Or whatever and you're like Okay why You can't have a whole way The billboards for the Buckees started 300 miles away and five years before it opened. It was insane. It was a phenomenon.

So weirdly politicized. My aunt calls it Magamart. At the right one, Buckees? Yeah, I didn't realize Buckees was political. I guess it's less political. Texas, but everywhere else it's political. Damn, we need to start a left-wing buckies now. What's the buckies of the left?

Well, EV charging stations instead of petrol, obviously. Only vegan snacks on the inside. You can keep that the toilets are always clean as a thing. That doesn't need to be politicized. That can sort of... Oh, is that a thing they advertise at buckies? I think it's something they pride themselves on is how often the toilets are cleaned. The toilets are very clean.

I will say that, yes. Okay, all right. That, I think, is amazing. We should bring that in everywhere. How about, here's a novel idea for you, big business. You should be able to go to a servo bathroom and not have one of the worst experiences of your life. They're truly the worst. I'd rather do, like, the roadside stop, like nasty, nasty bush toilet than one that's at a gas station at the server.

I had my, I had my five-year-old, like, hopping from foot to foot because he needs to go to the toilet when we're at the pub. and so we go obviously we go to the toilet and there's one there's one sit-down toilet because all the urinals are at like head height for him um so we're going to there hold him up and there's just a there's just a coiled unflushed shit just like all the way up the sides of the ball oh god and you're like like how do we get to this point as a society because obviously our the you know the rules that we have are not working We're not, we're not training people right. We're not, we're not casting them out on ice flows anymore.

I think that's our problem, right? Yeah, I think we should bring that back. You leave a shit in the toilet and you walk away without flushing? It's ice flow time. I think maybe we should like, if you go in there, you see that, you should have like a legal right to see the CCTV footage of the entrance of the bathroom, pinpoint who it was, and then, you know, He cut off his hands.

Cut off his hands. You're going to do a drone strike, you know. Prented a drone on his car as it's 50 kilometres away. I think it's Hairmaid's Tale, ironic punishment. You know, you cut off his hands, you attach toilet brushes. Yes. He's remade. Yeah.

Oh, I remember the remaking that they did in the Handmaid's tail. The remaking, no, well, the fuck off. I haven't seen it. Work with me. I'm drawing from multiple sources. Intertextual references are collage, like old mate from me without you. You don't even know what my sources are. I'm pulling from the Bible.

I'm pulling from an anime. I saw what's it's Akira. A new 2025 lodge aisle convenience store food quality and safety report found that 79% of Americans worry about contamination or spoilage and ready to eat food sold at gas stations and convenience stores. I don't believe you can get sick from a gas station. hot dog. I don't think spiritually you can like morally receive sickness from it because it's like it's so far away from food that it's like transcended

something that could make you sick. It's something else. It's its base elements kind of. Ultimately the thing about the hot dog roller is that the food has been kept above food safe temperature for a very long time. I say this as someone who has access to

a hot dog roller and who has used it to serve food recreationally. Oh shit, they let you have that Without like a commercial license Yes Yeah, no, I Yeah, well it was technically it was commercial But

Got a license for that thing No, you can just buy a hot dog roller It wasn't my hot dog roller Shit, dude You roll dogs in the home? That's fucking amazing Anytime you wake up 2 a.m. Those things are rolling

Oh, my God, oh my God, Oh, the hot dogs are just rolling Yeah Slap a bun around that That's so good Just the gentle hum of the hot dog roller Acting as white noise as you fall asleep I just have one in the fire of the house

I've never had an American hot dog though So I don't know Necessarily what texture I'm dealing with here I think Australians we're often Because like our stuff the Is it just the pink Because we boil ours right Like if you go and get a hot dog from a stand or whatever

They're being boiled Better dog tech Better dog tech If you're getting a good dog, you're getting the snap. Yeah, you're getting a good dog snap. We're getting that boiled snap. So I don't really know. Is it more similar to like the German-style hot dog?

I mean, it's regional. It's heavily regional. It's also like what you prefer. I mean, in the case where I was using it, we got some very simple, you know, sort of commercial, you know, pink paste hot dogs, you know, sort of you get. But we had homemade chili that we put on them. Yeah, fuck you. Chili done.

throw a little bit of mustard some raw onion some cheese you know it was a good time it's so the foods that america does well are so good compared to the other stuff that they do it's so bad you really have like sort of stacked all of your points in hot dog everything's in food wings really nailed those ones yeah then you call a bunch of other shit salads it's just not even really close oh i thought you were talking like geopolitically or whatever yeah same It's sort of morally bad. The American Empire is evil to its core. It's kind of the hot dogs and there's like the colonialism.

Yeah, they kind of balance each other out. Moloch, the shape of a country kind of deal. Yeah, yeah, yeah, looming over everyone else. Mollock with chili dogs. Yeah. And is that tradeoff worth it? Oh, it's the only one we have. Maybe.

Yeah, it's the one we have, not the one we want. Yeah. I mean, if we didn't have America, we wouldn't have a bunch of shitty facsimile American style bars here. So, you know. I'm so sick of that shit. when is that done when is that over it's never going to be done i just saw a thing on my instagram yesterday for like a fine dining version of an american diner that opened up in

sydney and it sounds insufferable but the menu looks so fucking good oh really yeah thinking about what is an american style bar in australia i oh you don't skip the obvious joke which is it's upside down but um it's miserable it's fucking miserable it's imagine like someone intentionally trying to make their place look dingy, putting up a bunch of like cause light signs, cause light signs, even though we don't have it. And then you've got to pay 15 bucks for a can of PBR and like... Do we have any in Brisbane? I think they've all died.

Oh, there's one near me. Like, is it five boroughs? Oh, yeah, but I mean five boroughs. There's just kind of that everywhere. It's just like burgers and wings and wings that aren't very good. Well, that's what I was going to say 10 years ago was the it was the wings craze, right? where we had like just maybe 15 years ago in Brisbane there was just like five wings places opened up simultaneously yeah yeah take a pick of wings do they do they like also I

one of the things we have at bars in the United States is um for some reason the bathrooms are intentionally made shitty oh yeah like disgusting like drawn all over just like really nasty they're drawn all over sometimes the the stalls don't work or they're too short or they're too tall That's one of the other great American evils. No, no, no. Yeah. We've talked about this before, but American toilet door design. Yeah, what's going on there?

What's the deal? Is that like for an active shooter situation so you can kind of like fire a gun out, like a crannulation? I mean, when I went to go take my SATs, the American college entrance exams, it was like I went to a different high. school than the normal one I was in that I had to use the restroom between like the exams and I go into the restroom and you know I had to I had to do a number two and I look at the bathroom stalls they didn't even have doors on them in like high school what yeah what the fuck yeah and I was like nah I'm gonna hold it and do worse I guess yeah right I'm not doing that that's fucking what that's what Yeah. Jesus Christ. Evil. Evil country.

There's something wrong with bathrooms in this country. There's no dignity. I mean, there's the, there's the Pittsburgh toilet, right? Is that the Pittsburgh toilet? Yeah.

The Pittsburgh toilet, which is... But they're in your own home. That's you enjoying your own space. It's in your own basement and no one actually knows why it's there. I remember that. With no walls or anything. It's just some ceramic sitting in the middle of it. There's like several theories as to why those exist, and none of them are right.

The kind of the coal miner theory where you've got to be able to get there, like in your coal duds or whatever, right? Or it's just like a convenient plumbing fixture that if the sewer backs up, it backs up into your basement as opposed to. Sorry, Ben's apartment actually played that role once for the apartments above his. Yeah, I don't think that was fucking bum. design. Well, if it works, it works. It works for everyone else in the apartment building. It works for everyone else, yeah.

You are welcome. You jumped on the grenade. Yeah, we're going to put all the dooky in one spot. I didn't even get a single goddamn, thank you. Not even when I was moving out of my apartment, did anyone make eye contact with me and say, hey, sorry about my turns. Yeah, some of those turns, some of them were mine. I'm really sorry.

God damn. This happened during Tom and Demi's wedding as well. It's just fun to think about. What, that's a, yeah. Synecdochie. Over the past 20 years, the U.S. food industry is reinvented fast food. We now live in a world where you can grab a sushi from a 7-Eleven in Tokyo or a burrito from a gas station in Tulsa. Grocery stores like Kroger, Publix, and Walmart sell chef-prepared meals that rival restaurants.

And even Dollar General is testing grab-and-go sandwiches and salads. Yep. Yeah, crazy. In a restaurant meal from Kroger? Yeah, what are we talking about? You know, chef prepared in what sense? In what way? There's a person involved at some point in the meal, I think, is what they mean, right?

I guess, I, yeah, I don't know. You know, that's from Kroger, no, that's not, no, that's, it's not real. I'm sorry. I think you can't be throwing around the word chef that easily. You say cook prepared, perhaps? Yes. I'm not picturing a guy with the hat with the hundred folds in it or whatever. This isn't fucking happening.

We've got sushi at the supermarket. Oh, it's not a good idea. Some guy behind the deli counter put together a sandwich and then he wrapped it up and then they put it on the shelf. That's fine. He's not a chef. No. He's the guy delivering Listeria to you via boar's head cheese or whatever. He doesn't even sell amphetamines in the alleyway beside the shop.

In Australia, though, I would say we have a proud tradition of this being, like, put together by very stern-looking cafeteria ladies. You're talking about like at a carvery, like an industrial area? Perfect. There's the word, yeah. Yeah, that's a dying art, I think, the like industrial area of carvery. It's a shame. Another thing after working from home, just the damage it's done.

That's brutal. I've never heard of this. before, but it seems very nice. It feels very like 1970s Australia. They do still kind of exist. It's like a deli counter where they will have like a couple of whole roast porks and whole roast beefs. And like you're getting a pork and gravy roll. You're getting a beef and gravy roll.

You're getting maybe some dim sims deep fried, obviously. They might do fresh sandwiches, maybe, but not always. You get some veggies on there though. You're getting some shredded lettuce. You get some iceberg lettuce. yeah there's no there's absolutely no features on the inside of this as well everything is made of like if you take um the plastic that the cheapest cutting board is made out of and kind of extend that to an entire store that is the inside of a carving yeah um yeah no i'm interested now i i need

to go to one of these they are maybe the only truly authentic australian experience left There used to be a really shitty carvery at Tuong. No, I've already talked about this on the podcast several times, I think. I fantasize about one particular schnitzel and gravy roll that was at a carvary at Twong Village. I used to get when I was 19 all the time. It was just so much food for so little money. Yeah, but was it good because it was good or good because you were 19, Ben. I was way more depressed when I was 19 that I am now.

I had a lot of mental health back then. Yeah, people are talking about, well, when your childhood, you know, everything was good. You're like, what the fuck are you mean? That's wrong. What do you mean? Yeah. Oh, this is going to be the easiest part of your life. It's actually the worst and hardest.

It was so hard. It was so hard for the, dude. When you turn 30 and everything gets better, oh damn, that's the feeling. It does, though. It does get better. It low-key does. Yeah, you know, you want to write off huge parts of your life. Like, that was bad.

Don't need that. Oh, absolutely, yeah. Not only do I want to write them off, I kind of want to put them in the. the car cuba and cube them and then yeah yeah the 20s are the pencil sketch with which you trace over with your good copics in your 30s to draw a beautiful anthro dragon with a huge cock and yeah big dragon cock but here's the twist while they're ready to eat revolution exploded the infrastructure meant to protect consumers didn't keep up since 2005 the fda's food safety inspection funding has dropped nearly 15% in real dollars even

global imports and fresh food sales skyrocket. Today, fewer inspectors monitor more suppliers, more imports and more complex temperature-sensitive products than ever before. When FDA oversight weakens, history tells us what happens next. Well, it's got to be that the prices go down, right? Business becomes more efficient. Less red tape. I wish.

When you move to a punishment-based model, right? You still have the laws there. When someone messes up, you come in and you bring down the hammer. but you've got to let business regulate itself. I will simply go to the other grocery store in my neighborhood that doesn't give me the listeria. Let people vote with their feet and their dollars. Yeah, and their toilet. You know what the thing about prevention is?

Yeah. With prevention, you have to do it to everything. With revenge, you only have to do it to the ones that go bad. So it's way more efficient. It's targeted. It's laser targeted. It's much more efficient. I was just, just in parallel, I know I talked a lot about the hyperloop up front, but

like this just happened by itself when we were kind of putting stuff, looking at what we could do for this episode and that sort of stuff. I was seeing, I saw an article about all of the like safety violations at the Vegas loop. Obviously, there's a lot. And Elon being on record being like, yeah, we don't, we want to punish people that do the wrong thing, but we, regulation just gets in the way. And you go and read the list of, say, of, of, like violations is like just people melting in puddles of acid in a tunnel somewhere under the

surface of Vegas that's noble awesome I don't think the tunnels have fire escapes either like they did some weird shit to get around the National Fire Protection Act well that would only work if they have kind of like the implicit

agreement of the government that they're not going to look into anything at all and I'm pretty certain the Vegas government is at all all above board. Yeah. Yeah. But as you said, like, as long as like none of the cars set on fire, everyone's going to be.

No one's ever heard of a Tesla catching on fire, yeah. They'll say they look stupid as well. They look kind of bad as well. They look kind of stupid, bad looking cars. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you should kill himself.

Yeah, you should. Here are some examples of what happens when FDA oversight weakens. The 2006 E. coli outbreak in spinach, sick and 200 people in Shuddered farms. Chapatley's 2015 food board illness crisis cost the chain over $25 million in fines, wiped out billions off its market cap, packaged salad recalls, once rare, have surged 40% in the last five years, according to CDC data.

I feel like that's one of the other things you learn when you turn 30 or whatever is like e-cola is mostly in salad. Listeria, almost entirely in salad. Spinoch spinach leaves. Letters. I was about to say, the one thing in common here, uncooked greens. folks cook your greens yeah boil

boil your lettuce you never know what's on it safety first yeah I never used to like rinse my vegetables until living in the US and then everyone's like

no you've got to wash your vegetables you don't have to yeah let's leave that one in there I don't believe if 2026 brings federal budget cutbacks to food safety programs experts

experts warn that the next contamination event might not start in a big factory, it could start at your local stores cooler. Logger's research makes one thing clear. Americans are hyper aware of what feels unsafe. 85% wouldn't buy sushi from a gas station. I think that's one way to describe Americans, yeah. Yeah.

Oh, supermarket sushi. Eh, a little suss. Assault weapon. Yeah. Good. Very good. Give that to an eight-year-old. Yes.

I mean, I think I'm on board with probably stay away from gas station sushi. I would never buy sushi at the gas station. But I would buy one from the Konbini, you know, if I was in Japan. It is a strange meeting of worlds, though. Sushi at the gas station. Yeah. Could be something comedic. Maybe.

Yeah. Like if your dad was Japanese or your mom was Japanese. His dad was from Ohio. That's a callback. 41% skip pre-packed salads. 40% avoid pre-cut fruit. 59% won't touch food. if the prep area looks dirty

and only 9% feel highly confident eating from convenience stores my personal belief this is operating by Australian rules is if they sell it it's fine it would be a legal nightmare it would be illegal yeah

but then I've also had places from some things where I had a a hamburger from like the pie warmer at a servo in Wilcania that was basically uncooked Like took one bite out of it The outside was like light brown

And it was still fully pink on the inside And it had probably been in there for days Rare Didn't make me sick though So you know The system works Yeah it's the exception That's sort of a

Very cheap steak tartar there Yeah I guess so It's very high class experience That gas station steak to tar It was fucking nasty Slaps of horseradish on it You're good It's the only place in Wilcania you can buy food

get some steak tartar and sabazzarola sticks on the side. I feel like this is, I feel kind of the same about this as I do about cruise ships where like it's insane that there's a thing where you just guaranteed to get sick and society is like, ah, yeah, it's fine. This is the cost we pay to be on a cruise ship. Yeah, and the money as well. And the money as well, yeah. Yeah, the cost of the ticket and your accommodation and the drinks, that's where they

get you. Yes, the drinks and the diarrhea. cleanliness is no longer just about aesthetics it's brand trust in action what do you mean cleanliness is only about it's cleanliness is what is no there's something else that cleanliness is about there's another reason there's another reason there's another reason food prep bench yeah there's a reason why we are trained that the aesthetics are pleasing yeah it might be linked to something else there's a reason our brain likes it when it's clean clean is nice clean it's visually simpler and I like things that are visually simple

I don't like noise or clutter. I don't like to see a bunch of, you know, old food lying around everywhere, you know. It's just against my sensibility. It's just like, yeah. I'm just kind of OCD like that, you know. That's right. That's just kind of an interesting quirk of me. Consumers don't just want food that looks fresh.

They want proof that it's fresh. Trust us isn't enough anymore. Consumers want to see the system working. As Logile CEO, Perna Mishra puts it, What do you mean? Quote, empowering frontline workers to deliver confidence at every touch point isn't just operationally smart, it's essential to long-term loyalty. That means digital temperature tracking, freshness monitoring, and real-time cleaning alerts,

not buried in a back office, but displayed for shoppers to see. Imagine walking to a convenience store and seeing a digital board that says salads prepared at 812am, last temperature check, 947am, cooler sanitized, 10 a.m. I don't want this. This is not going to make me more anxious about it. I've never thought about the temperature. Richard. I just want to blindly trust the gas station. Yeah. It feels good to me. Sandwich on the shelf. That's for me. Yeah. Yeah. And I buy it and eat it.

Americans. You need your ring cameras. You need your meat thermometers. Everything's got to be documented. Everything's got to be recorded. Everything's got to be scanned at all times. Anxious society. The way it works at 7-Eleven, I don't know why I know this, but I know this, is that, okay, hot dog's been on the roller for three hours. Change it out. New hot dog. That's probably for the best. It's a simple system, right? Simple system, yeah. Every three hours, we're changing out to hot dogs.

In a society, we should be able to trust if something is for sale, it's not going to kill you. That's just a belief that I have. I don't know if it's because I'm a big government sicko. That's why we've got food safety standards, so you can trust it. This is a vector for paranoia. Yeah. Absolutely. And like, yeah, I don't want to have to track all of this shit as well.

They should someone, like, as always, you can kind of take the unicester. extremist kind of approach and just go like, well, someone else should track this for me. Well, maybe we should pay someone, but they'll have to be trusted. So they might have to come from some sort of central authority. And it's probably good if they kind of like check all of them themselves. Talk about Judd. You're saying society needs Judd. Society needs Judd.

Society needs Judd. I feel like the Times thing is insane because you're then asking, you're either doing two things. you're either providing the information so that the customer can make a judgment call about whether they're safe with that which is insane because it shouldn't be a judgment call

it should be 100% trust. It shouldn't be my judgment. Or you're putting your accountability for whether the employees are cleaning off and enough rotating stuff often enough as a the way you're doing accountability

is public shame instead of just having like policies that people follow you're putting the stuff on display so that they're like oh fuck people. Paul, no, I didn't swap this. It's like another objective for them to gain yoga.

Yeah. Which is not. I think it's worse. You're turning, the customer has to become their own health inspector. This is another job. I have to do. And then I have to do self-checkout. And then I don't know.

They'll find something else to make me do. I'm sick. I just want to buy a hot dog. I'm fucking sick of the shit. I want to be able to walk into a place. Pick it up off a shelf and say, can I buy this and a person says absolutely you may and then that's it. If I get diarrhea, that's my problem.

Like, come on. Lucy, do you remember the wonder at the first convenience store bento box you got in Japan? Yeah, probably. It's crazy over there. It's crazy, right? You just walk in and it's just like, hey, here's a. We've all talked about this plenty, but. Yeah.

And it's like a better world is possible. It's not necessarily Japan. It's not going to happen here. It's not going to happen here. It's not going to happen here. Never to the same extent. And they're trying. You can tell 7-Eleven is like hooked into how like millennials love Japan and Japanese convenience.

But they don't have the fundamentals. We don't have the fundamentals. We don't have the culture for it. We don't have. They're not willing to put the money in it. Yeah. Like they're already, 7-Eleven in Australia has already been part of several big underpayment scams and stuff as well.

Yeah. Yeah. Already not paying their employees to not do this. I think we need some high-profile CEO suicides. I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about this. I'm in America, we're cracking down. Oh, yeah. We're going to start getting people to do this podcast from international waters just to be safe.

Yeah, no, that's not. That doesn't save you anymore. Yeah, no, some guys in Columbia have something to say about that. Yeah, you get in JD vents as cross-airs. Where are we going to put all the Americans when all the good ones have to leave? What are we going to do with them? Like the rest of them? Yeah, like the good ones.

Like the half of Americans. Yeah, like 100 million Americans. Yeah. In Brisbane, yes. Mega City 1. Mega City 1. Out west of Dolby. Yeah.

It runs all the way to Mount Warnd. It runs all the way to Mount Warne. Set up a company town. Yeah, that's right. You only get paid in Yanktown bucks. We did this in World War II. We did this in World War II. My grandma, Viv, still alive,

tells us about when they were living in like regional Queensland, there was an enormous Brisbane I'm sorry an enormous US military base out there and she'd go out there

and flirt with all the army boys you slut bitch yes and by my math she would have been 14 maximum

God damn wow all right and I assume they're flirting back as well come on man this is a great

charming anecdote for a while. Consumers aren't just comparing prices anymore. They're comparing trust. In an age where the line between restaurant and retail food blurs, next brand to win the fresh food race won't just serve great meals. They'll serve peace of mind.

No, I have to be my own health inspector. Oh, yeah. That's fine. We already had the peace of mind. I already blindly trust it. Yeah, we've lost the peace of mind because like every week I see another story about mass recalls of lettuce, lusteria.

I think we've talked about this before, but, like, we assume that, like, there's not as much salmonella and stuff in Australia, but we just don't get as many reports. I think our salmonella levels are, like, higher than the US. I just assumed it wasn't such a big deal here because we just don't really talk about it on the news as much. But, like, sometimes again, I think we have a much higher level of salmonella outbreaks. Well, you know, we get the, because we eat a lot of salad in, like, big, wet plastic bags. And it's quite hot here. So those plastic bags get hotter and wetter, I assume, in there. Do you know those plastic bags are made out of a special plastic?

It's not regular plastic? They're made out of like a special kind of like breathable plastic that's the only reason that they can let us survive in there. Otherwise it would just like turn wet and mushy in six hours instead of 12 hours. It's like a weird kind of high-tech bag and I can remember no specific details about it. But I did learn about it on an episode of. 99% invisible. Can't remember what episode.

Just sort of Google lettuce, Roman Mars. It'll come up. Hey, I bet some things were maybe better or worse back in the past to find out we'd have to ask someone from Gen X. We talk about Gen X in GenX watch. This comes to us from R slash Gen X. X, what road trip memories do you think were unique, or did everyone experience them? That's a pretty... We probably had a lot of universal experiences on road trips, even between countries, you know?

Dad's saying you can't turn the light on in the back of the car because you'll instantly die. Yeah. Stuff like that. Yes. Yeah. I'll send your poor old dad to jail. Yeah, for having the rear interior light on. Having the rear interior light on.

I actually have to do that one a lot. Oh, you're already doing it? Oh, yeah. They're getting in there. fucking with every switch okay so here's how it goes right so sometimes the kids won't get out of the car straight away when we get home right and then we're like carrying big piles of shit all our burdens out of the car we got to put them away by the time we come back they're having a nice little game in the car they're playing they're like you know jumping all around we go hey

what's the harm in letting them play you know what the harm is every fucking switch is He's fucked with. Turning your car into eco mode, whatever the fuck that is. It's always an eco mode. Let's be real. I call it not being an eco mode fast mode and I give it to the kids as a treat. It's going to put the car in sports mode? Do you reckon?

No, not sports mode. Not sports mode. Let's be very clear about this. So in the Schoda there is three modes. There's economy, which it's always in. There's drive and then there's sports mode. What do you mean? it. Now, sports mode is for when I need to get, like, when it's a really busy, like, four-lane road and I've got to turn right across it. Sometimes I'm going to check that in sports mode, but it's not for enjoyment. Now, in the leaf, there is an eco mode and then there's eco-off. And it's always in eco mode because it's an EV and the battery's not going to last otherwise. But sometimes there's a little treat to my boys. We're going somewhere. They don't want to go. We're going to Kendi.

Right? And they start winging, I say, hey, you want to see if fast mode works. And that's when Eco comes off. Zero to 50 in like six or seven seconds. In your tiny, compact, electric joke car. It's not a joke car. Hey, kids, check this out. God, you're a great dad.

That's top quality dad stuff. My car has a snow mode button, which obviously don't get a lot of use of. I got to turn it on one time when we're. in Ginderbine. I felt fucking amazing. No idea. Didn't bother looking at the manual. The traction control, right?

Yeah, or something. I don't know, because my car's already all drive. It's already pretty good with traction stuff, so I don't know. It's like amazingly applying chains to the tires without you. Yeah. That's right. My parents fought like cats and dogs on family summer trips. Dad worked for the government and they had a convention every year that they paid for his room.

That was our vacation. The thing that really stands out in my memories other than mum and dad fighting the whole way was Dad would pull up to a random hotel if he had to shit. He'd ask to see a room and do his business. Then he'd take the key back and we'd be on our way. What are your memories? Not that. I don't think that's probably not universal.

I don't think that's universal. I think that might just be your dad, dude. That's a good bit. That's a good bit. I like that. That's such an insane dad move to pull me. I've got to check out the room first. I won't stay there unless we can see the room.

And, like, no wonder they're fighting because your dad's insane. Like, oh, my God, your dad's got to go to another hotel to shit. We can't do this in another fucking Ramada. We can't. I can't do this. We've been banned from a red roof already. We can't be doing this shit. I got to pull off the Jersey turnpike to go find a hotel and take a shit.

I mean, this is costing us $2 extra in tolls. They're not shitting in like a McDonald's, like the rest of us? I mean, they're terrible. We talked about this. That's true. This is why. He's like, obviously he's onto something here. Like obviously, logically, he's completely correct.

Oh, yeah, yeah. In a sort of like cold clinical Anton sugar logic. Yeah. Yeah, I cannot disagree with the strategy in any way. It doesn't cost you any money. Guaranteed clean toilet. Fun. A little fun thing to do.

A little fun thing to do, yeah. And you're smiling. You're walking back with the keys. And you're just like, No, not for me. Ooh, it's stinky in there. Goodbye. I don't want this room.

It kind of smells like shit. It smells like shit in there. I can't even say it's like not sustainable because there's so many rooms in a hotel. So many. People could do that constantly. Everyone could be pulling off the highway to pull this. And it's like, yeah, there's like a hundred rooms in that hotel. It doesn't fucking matter.

There's so many toilets that aren't being shit in right now. There are people out there who need shit. Yeah, there are people out there who need toilets. Everyone insists that they need to have like one toilet in their home, but they're not using it 24 hours a day. We should just have some sort of communal toilets at the end of the street that everyone shares. Time shared toilets. Well, I mean, make them a public resource, obviously.

I think I just invented public toilets. Public toilets, yeah. Yeah, we've got it. You're going to have to jail block this episode in like California. No one in San Francisco could hear this idea. Yeah. where did it see was it

was it Japan I can't remember I've got this this incredibly vivid memory of this public toilet that you pay like $2 for and it's just this metal box

on the street and it looks like Bender's like suicide booth but you go in you do your shit and then like something happens like a big dishwasher

on the inside and it just sprays the entire thing with hot water and chemical Yes. What the fuck? Yeah. Where was this? Where did I experience this?

They just installed something like that near City Hall in Philly, I want to say. Oh. Do you give enough shot yet? Apparently there's a lot of interlocks to make sure that you don't get trapped in the dishwasher scenario. You don't want the fucking machine that cooks homeless people. Like, God damn. Gavin Newsom's ears just pricked up. What did I say this?

I saw a movie recently where someone got trapped in one of the self-cleaning toilets somewhere. Fuck it. To our robot ones self-clean or are they just robot toilets? You know the ones with like the automatic lock? What? Do you guys not have the, is this not a Brisbane thing? What are you fucking talking about? You know, like the robot ones where you've got to press a button to unlock it and it's all automatic.

It sounds like an alarm when you've been in there for too long and you've got to press the thing. Just the door is all automatic or what? Yeah. You guys don't have these? All right. All right. Never mind. I don't know if robot toilets are just anti-heroine measures, right?

Like, they're all just to stop you from nodding off on the toilet. They've got like a 10-minute thing on them, which is not enough time. Which is not enough time. It's not enough time. Sorry, I figured out the thing I was trying to think of. It's an episode of how to with John Wilson where he deliberately gets himself inside one of the toilets and then gets off. the floor to make it think that he's not in there anymore so that it cleans itself while he's in there.

Oh no. He survived. He's still live. He finished the show. That wonderful program too. That was that whole Reddit post, by the way. I didn't bother going to get the replies. I was just really delighted to find one completely insane person.

Like, I mean, obviously there are universal feelings to road trips, right? That's not it, though. That's not the universal. Yeah, I don't think it's your dad cheating in the motel tour. Did you guys, in those sort of pre-mobile internet days, when we went on road trips, like multi-day road trips or whatever, if we were driving, you know, Brisbane to Melbourne or whatever, yeah, yeah, that when we stopped to stay somewhere, we'd never book anything in advance, you'd just roll into town and dad would just pull up out the front of basically every single motel in town and be like, how much does it cost? What are the facilities? Interesting. And then we'd go to the next. next one, and they'd sort of try and haggle them down sometimes, but it was like an hour long process of like rocking up to Coffs Harbor and then eventually picking the Matador Hotel. Well, I sort of have done that when Liam and I went on road trips, but I just

booked the hotel at the very last second through Hotwire and had a talent for getting something that was very nice. I used this through a unique technique called paying more money. not yeah which is not always a dad option no that is not always a dad option this is true when I like the big road trips that I've done through America my usual M-O if I was staying in a hotel and not like camping and stuff was just to go into a town

pull up at a park somewhere and then get on like hotel or booking.com or whatever see whatever was cheaper by like $10 and get that book it and then drive two minutes to where the hotel was and be like, oh, you've got to be getting a hotel.com thing coming through soon. They're like, oh, there's nothing there. And they just stand around where they're, like, hit and refresh. Because apparently they fucking hate it when you use those things.

Ah, that makes sense. I'm on the call, call them up directly method now. Say, hello, do you have a room available? Yeah. Might I stay there. And that way, no money going to big tech either. Yeah, they're not taking a little cream off the top. Yeah.

A lot of places also now, the hotel websites will say, it's cheaper to book through us directly. Please book through us directly. Well, they do that for food. too like the pizza joint near our place is like yeah you can find us on menu log but don't do that we hate it when you do that

I don't want you to we are on Uber Eats please please don't yeah because they take a lot of money we live in now my hotel approach with my family I assume is probably something hey you know how a lot of conditions

are congenital and they're kind of a hereditary yeah so the hotels are booked in a long in advance Okay, yeah. From some sort of magazine or something, right? They've been all sorted out. Yeah.

You drive out there. It might be the Claremont Hotel where we'll all get food poisoning from bad sausages. Bad sausages at the Claremont Hotel? Yeah. Don't go there in the 90s. I like the freedom of the spontaneity of being able to book hotel. Like, choosing the town that you're going to stay. in by just being like, oh, I'm starting to get sleepy, I'll stop here, getting it on the same

night. The only time, that is actually nice. It feels fucking amazing. America is the perfect country for it as well, because you've got all these fucking tiny little, like, unincorporated communities, like, every 20 minutes. It'll have, like, a fucking Best Western or whatever, like, or some insane, like, hotel from the 70s that hasn't changed even once. And, like, it's a nice way to do it.

Australia is just like, oh, I'm starting to get sleepy. Oh, all right, there is no way to stop for another hour and a half. Yeah, well, yeah, apart from the military base. Yeah. Which is also literally on fire now as well. So that's good. I found a frustrating thing about road trips was that I would say, dad, look, we live next to a train station.

Our destination is next to a train station. There are 50 direct trains a day between them. This is the only place in the United States where we can do this easily. Could we take the train? I really like trains. I would like to take the train. I didn't take a train, a proper M-track train, until I was 19. Wow.

God damn. You finally get that taste of adulthood, and you're like, I'm taking that train. Taking the fucking train. Taking that fucking Amtrak. Taking that goddamn train. City to city. Point to point. I got the sleeper train from L.A. to Flagstaff was my first, like, long train experience in America.

It was fucking wonderful. It was delightful. I got a sleeper cabin for myself as well, because I squashed out a little bit. I love the Amtrak. It's real nice. It's beautiful. We should have... It is very nice.

Our fucking... We have like rail holiday options in Australia, like sleeper trains and stuff that are so unbelievably fucking expensive. I keep being like it's got to be cheap because surely no one does it. And then you look up the prices. We all live on a big line. Yeah. And there's...

There are train tracks on that line. And there are train tracks on that line. 100%. And it is like four times the cost. of flying. Yeah. It's fucking so not. I definitely want to do it at some point, but I'm going to have to inherit some wealth

from somewhere. I think we would have to change overnight at Rockhampton. Hmm. And then you've got to be in Rockhampton. It's, you know, it's all the labor costs because, you know, you've got to hire some, hire people to run that train the whole time as opposed to the plane where you're just there. Yeah.

True. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, I think this was technically an episode of the podcast, Punta Vista. Does that sound correct to you guys? I think that's it. Oh, yeah, nice.

We usually do the plugs up the front because we all have acquired brain injuries on top of whatever else we got. But we've got to do that this time. So what do you want to plug? Listen to, well, there's your problem podcast. It's a podcast about engineering disasters with slides. We promise we're going to try and get more consistent about releasing episodes. other than that I guess yeah

listen to all our colleague podcast trash future kill James Bond what's the other one that November's on no gods no mares yeah 10,000 losses I think Liam's doing a new one

what's it called they only released one episode there's one that's out I think he named enough of them to have covered your bases I think we've got to get a fucking empire going we need we need to have a web yeah yeah we've got the we need to spread our seed okay i wouldn't there's always there's the the nate bethaye averse um as they say yeah

they do say that they do say that yeah we've got the the i'm trying to make a portmanteau out of valentine universe because there's both a v in there but it doesn't really work This is a good time as any to remind you that Lucy has another podcast as well. Savongard. Oh, check it out. Yeah. Savongard. You can hear a podcast about the TV show The Good Doctor and Monk.

And Monk. It's fun though. I would say mostly more about Monk than The Good Doctor on a Good Episode. The Doctor is no good. Pretty ironic, given the name. She call it the Bad. You should come on the show with gear like that. Have me on.

I'm not autistic and I don't have OCD. Pretty sure. Thank you so much for joining us, Justin, thank you so much for joining us. You, the listener, thank you so much for joining us. And hell, I think I'm Lucy, thanks so much for being here. You're welcome. We will talk to you maybe on the bonus episode if you want to get a little bit more of this, patreon.com slash bonavista.

Otherwise, we'll talk to you next week. Bye. Bye. Bye, everyone. I'm going to be able to be.