Breaking Bread with Tom Papa - Episode 112 - Josh Scherer

Episode Date: July 5, 2022

Josh Scherer joins me at the table and takes some bread back to his Mythical Kitchen.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Insurance isn't one-size-fits-all, and shopping for it shouldn't feel like squeezing into something that just doesn't fit. That's why drivers have enjoyed progressives' name-your-price tool for years. With the name-your-price tool, you tell them what you want to pay, and they show you options that fit your budget. Enough hunting for discounts, trying to calculate rates, and tinkering with coverages. Maybe you're picking out your very first policy. Or maybe you're just looking for something that works better for you and your family. Either way, they make it simple to see your options. No guesswork, no surprises. Ready to see how easy and fun shopping for car insurance can be? Visit progressive.com and give the name your price tool a try. Take the stress out of shopping and find coverage that fits your life on your terms. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. It's how we go.

Hey, it's time for Breaking Bread with Papa. Hey, don't you know? Hey, it's also a show. Hey, everybody, welcome to another edition of Breaking Bread with Tom Papa. I'm Tom Papa. We've got a good one today with Josh Sherer, who is an amazing guy. You're going to love him. He's a YouTube sensation.

He's an author, a culinary producer for Good Mythical Morning, millions and millions of people have watched him and his crazy food adventures. You are going to love it. And I really had a great time with him. He's a solid, solid guy. You are going to have a swell time breaking bread with our good friend Josh. I want to thank the good people at Better Help. Better Help.

Oh, these are good people. A big thanks for them being the sponsor of today's show. Easy and affordable online therapy. Get 10% off your first. first month at betterhelp.com slash papa. That's betterhealth.com slash papa p-a-pa-pa. That is better help, h-e-l-p dot com slash papa for 10% off. Thank you to BetterHelp for sponsoring today's show. We are moving quickly, quickly through the summer. We are, this should be dropping, I think literally on the 4th of July. Wow, that's patriotic.

That's pretty amazing. Or actually, it might be the fifth. Well, either way, it's the fourth. Everyone screws around that whole week, don't you? I mean, by the time that Friday comes along, that's it. No one's doing anything, anything, except for plumbers when they get called when everything goes awry, and then they get rich.

I hope you're doing well. I have planning on a cookout on the fourth. I'm going to have some people roll through. Nothing fancy. I am not going to pretend. that I have my grill game really down in any exceptional way. I mean, I do okay. I get the right rolls, of course. I, uh, I, uh, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I'll get creative with some kind of a side dish of some sort, but this isn't heavy lifting. This is just throw it all on the grill

and just let it go, let the hot dogs go until they're wrinkled and just keep it going and keep a nice cooler filled with nice cold drinks at your side. And, uh, yeah, I'm not going to go too nuts with that. We have an episode coming up about barbecue next week, and they may be, when you hear this one, this may launch us all off into honing in our grill game, but that'll be next week. That's a little teaser for the good guys at Pig Beach. It really does make you realize how much you could do and how much you're not doing. But I will say inside, I've been doing some very cool things.

I had a couple comedians come over. My friend Jim Gaffigan and Aaron Foley came over on Sunday. Broke out the, my classic go-to when people come from out of town and they haven't been here on a Sunday with me, my go-to is the meatballs. It's just meatball city. It's solid. I got it down. It's impressive. And it makes people very happy.

and then build around it. Just build out a little rigatoni, a little salad, a little oh, and we really nailed faccia. For the first time, I have to say, I know it seems like a simple bread, but it's a long process. It takes a little beat. It really does. You got to do it like the day before, which when I'm thinking facacia, for some reason in my head, I was always like, hey, we'll make up some pasta, and then we'll get to the faccia, and then we'll just have the meal. No, you got to put a little more thought into it, well worth it, finally nailed it, let it rise, give it some time, and it really came out big and fluffy and impressive. And then the other thing that I've been repeating, so the meatballs are a solid repetition, the faccia is one that has got to be in the lineup. This is all, of course, with all the rest of the bread that's just always going in the house during the week.

but the other consistent one, which I'm now dialing that in, is the biscotti. The biscotti. I've bounced around with a couple kind of a little fancier recipes, but I found in the New York Times cooking app the straight-up almond biscotti. I think it's Melissa Clark. And it is a solid recipe, and I've repeated it now two times this week. such a good, good Italian cookie. I mean, it's so perfect. You could have it in the morning with your coffee. You could have it in the afternoon with your espresso. You could have it when you're

just walking through the kitchen and want to shove it in your face before anyone sees you. And you don't feel that guilty because it's not crazy sugar. It's a nice balance. And the almond is just amazing. And I don't want to get ahead of myself. But I've always been thinking of how do we get bread to people, all you good listeners. People are always saying, when can we get some? When can I get some? It's a big, difficult thing. I'm kind of working on it. I've got some bread people that I'm talking to. But it's a big endeavor. What I think in my little primitive baking brain have come up with is maybe it's not the bread that we're shipping around. Maybe it's biscotti. And let me pitch this idea to you. What if it's Tommy Biscotti. Oh, that sounds pretty good. Tommy Biscotti. That's why Biscotti was created,

actually, was because they didn't have ways to ship things long distances without them going stale, and they created this Biscotti cookie, and you were able to transport it. And it got me thinking, well, why can't we transport that to our breaking bread friends? Why can't we bring Tommy Biscotti across the land? So, very exciting little rumblings. You know, these kind of things tend to, not all the time, but you have to really, really want it. And if you express it, if you give me a nudge, maybe they'll encourage me. But a lot of times this is kind of like when people say, I've got a great idea for a movie. And then it never pans out because you have to actually write it.

I've got a great idea for Tommy Biscotti. And then are we going to just keep making it? and eating myself, or will we spread it throughout the land? You could start small. I don't know why it has to be big. There's got to be some people that are down out here listening right now who are like, sign me up. I'll take a test run of the Tommy Biscotti through the mail.

Oh, that brings up another question. I think I need a permit of some sort or have to go to a real kitchen. I don't think technically you can make things in your kitchen and just sell it to the world. But the Supreme Court just came down with a decision that's going to do away with all regulations. It's going to slash down the EPA and all the rest of it. So if they're going to let us burn the country down and just not really worry about regulating water and cigarettes and coal mines, are they really going to come for Tommy Biscotti? See, there's a silver lining. So those are the things I'm dialing in, though, regardless of the marketing of it and the sending it and getting it to your chubby faces, I think that just little things to do within the home, the biscotti, the meatballs, perfecto, and also the Putanesca.

I was making sauce last night. This was just on a Wednesday. And the Putanesca is, you know, they call it the Streetwalker pasta, the Hors pasta. It's the idea was when you had a working gal, a streetwalker who needed to make a quick meal for her family. She would just go in, make the quick pasta, throw in some capers and some olives and some garlic and oil and some tomatoes and whip it up real quick. It's, and some anchovies, if you could sneak those in without your wife knowing. A great pasta and a good summertime pasta. It's just a quick.

It's so easy and quick. It's one of my favorites. I order it out all the time. but the biscotti and the meatballs and the grill. All right, that's enough of my stuff going on. But I hope you're cooking as well. I hope you're baking as well. And keep sharing the stuff online and let me see what you're up to.

Josh Sherer, you know Josh. Good Mythical Morning is with Retton Link is the, it's one of the most watched things on YouTube, most watch daily shows on YouTube. I mean millions and millions of people watch this show. Josh then also spun off and host Mythical Kitchen, and that has over 2 million subscribers. He also has a very popular podcast called A Hot Dog is a Sandwich. And he also wrote a book, oh man, I'm going to space on the name. I should have written it down.

I'm going to look it up because it's disrespectful if I don't. It's something bro. It's a bro. And he tells a great story. about how he wrote the book. We actually start off with it on the podcast in cookbook. There we go. Bro-down cookbook.

There you go. Bro-down cookbook. And what's very interesting about Josh, he's an athlete, but he's an author. The Bro-down cookbook is a, you know, there's a bro-y element. But what is bro at this point? There is an evolution of people. becoming guys or guys, but then if you can fill their heads with real fun culinary stuff to do, you're going to be, you're going to be in good shape. Ah, my trustee, pal, Joey, just culinary brodown.

The culinary brodown. Is that what it is? Culinary brodown. There you go. It's a cool book and a cool story. But anyway, he is very prolific. This guy works his tail off. I mean, it's not, you know, whenever you hear of people being popular on YouTube, it's very easy for people who are not in that orbit to just think, well, they just put up videos and people watch them. What is that? Mm-mm-mm-mm. Not at all. The people that work at Good Mythical Morning, this is a huge, huge endeavor. Retton Link, super popular, super hardworking guys who met when they were kids and they've built this thing. and Josh is just, he fits into that engine so well because he just writes like crazy and creates like crazy. And he's very interesting, very funny.

If you don't know him, you're going to, you're going to love him after this conversation. Enough of this. Enough praise. I don't want him to get too full of himself. But I really, really like him a lot. And I consider him a new pal. So please enjoy my conversation with Josh Scherer. Well, thank you for being here.

Yeah. This is really, I was psyched that, that you're able to do this. Because you're very unique in the, in the food world. Thank you. And this is all about comedy and food, and you have a good dose of both. And you make food very fun. Yeah. But there's also the other part where you're really in good shape.

You were an athlete, right? UCLA and all the rest of it. And you have this dichotomy of being like really ripped and in great shape and talking about like flaming nacho hot dog buns and stuff like that. Like your stuff is off the wall fun food. But you're also definitely health conscious. Oh yeah. So which which how did you get into this world? Because I guess the fitness had to have come first.

Not necessarily. No. Really? So, okay, so I was a, I was a track and field athlete at UCLA, but I was a shot, well, I was mostly a hammer thrower. Hammer, right. I mean, so hammer throwers, if you look at, I mean, especially shot putters in this whole world, I mean, they're these like 300 pound absolutely massive dudes. You're spending like six hours of your life just throwing heavy objects around, lifting heavy weights. And literally like there's an old story of one of the UCLA coaches, coach several Olympians, used to show up to the dining hall with a court of heavy whipping cream and go up to a freshman if you thought he was underweight and just go like, drink it. And so, you know, that's the culture that I came from. And so we're eating 5,000 calories a day.

And I'm like, one day we got home for a meat and I was like, what happens if you deep fried a Chipotle burrito? And so a lot of those foods are sort of, you know, coming from that era of my life. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. Oh, interesting. Well, let me go back, though. Track and field, when you were in high school, did they even have Hammer in high school?

No, they didn't. So I threw shot put and discus in high school. Right. In middle school, they were like, beefy teen. Here's a heavy ball. Figure it out. How tall were you in eighth grade? God, so in eighth grade, I was six feet.

tall probably 245, 250 pounds. And so right now I'm probably like 210. And the last time I was this weight is when I was 11 years old. Really? Yeah. And so I was, you know, total, total fat kid in stature and in lifestyle. Did they come for you for football? Oh yeah.

I played football for one year in high school and was really good. It was going to get moved to varsity all that. But I just hated the culture of football so, so so much. Yeah. It was a little too of the broie. version of it. Oh, yeah. The jockey.

Yeah. Yeah, super, super macho. Right. And I mean, you know, I grew up in Orange County, which is a big sports powerhouse, big hotbed for talent. And like, literally our coach told us to go to the GNC, the, you know, a supplement shop and ask for the football special. And they would just give you growth hormones.

And so there was just a much of 14-year-olds. Like legit stuff that you could get at GNC or was it under the table kind of stuff? So the product that was out when I was, I don't know if you're big into the sports supplement world, thumb. I'm not, I wouldn't say big, no, but I've dabbled. I've had a power bar. Hell yeah, hell yeah. So there was this product called Tren Extreme.

Tren is short for Trenbolone, which is a growth hormone that I believe they give to cattle to stimulate more meat production. Wow. And when you got beefy teens, you want stimulate meat production. And them, you give them that. But the makers of this product, I believe, actually went to jail because they were obscuring the fact that they were just animal. ball-allic steroids in it. And so I just saw that and I was like, I thought sports were about community

and character building, man. That's what they said in all the books, man. Doing your best. Yeah. And so I absolutely hated that. And I was like, well, I can just use the same skill set to throw a heavy ball and then get into a college that would not have me academically. Right. And get some money. And that's what I did. Wow. I did a little, I did track as a way to stay in shape for football. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. like the thing like in the off season you could still run and I did not like it. I ran the 400 which was so brutal and then when they would come for me for the relay at the end of the meat they would like put together who did you hide were you one of those kids? I would hide in the pole ball pits or I also the the shot put and the discus area was off in the like at the other end

of the field and I would go there and like practice my shot putting but I have to say I really liked that part of it. The shop put in the discus was I wasn't very good. There was like a really big guy that was so good at the discus and it was one of those sports where like you knew size and stuff mattered but really the technique of it like was really the thing like if you could master the technique of it that was very intriguing to me. I never like it really achieved much in it but I loved being a part of that. Yeah. What's cool about it, too is, I mean, I, everything I do, I completely nerd out and obsess over. I think the kids these days are calling it ADHD, you know, where you have hyper focus or whatever. Yeah.

But for me, if I'm doing anything, you know, food has been my biggest obsession for the last, like, 20 years or so. Yeah. But in high school, you know, I would read like Soviet training manuals. Seriously, like weird PDFs you dig up on the internet where it's like, well, the Soviets, they figured out that this exercise has the highest correlation to disc a success. as seen by Juergen Schultz training memoir in 1980. Me and Friends used to watch these old training clips of this insane Swedish dude. Ricky Bruch, who ended up turning into a comedian and an actor after winning discus gold, watching him train and just huff like, you know, all these weird ammonia salts.

Yeah, and so it's a sport that, you know, it all happens within a seven-foot circle. It takes less than one second. Right. But if the entire universe exists within that circle, especially if you put everything you have into that. Yeah. And it's kind of beautiful to me. It's the dumbest thing to obsess over and it's awesome. Yeah.

No, I think it's only dumb if you don't understand it. I think if you come from the outside of it, it looks that way. But once you're in it and around it, I mean, so then when Hammer comes along, so like you, were you introduced that when you got to UCLA? So I actually went to UC Santa Barbara first. Okay. And then they was able to offer me more money. And then I picked up the hammer when I was there and just took really naturally to me,

to me because it's like the shot put in discus, but even less about strength and athleticism and even more about technique. And so then, I mean, you're spinning in a circle, balancing on your heels and toes four times and then release it. I mean, it's balletic. It's beautiful to me. It looks fun. Oh, it's so fun. It looks, I mean, just like as a medieval tortured device to turn into a tossing competition. And that's legitimately it. It was like a handheld siege weapon in the Scottish Highlands. You know, and they would do that at the Highland Games.

and now it's an Olympic event. And so I picked that up there and then went to, you know, the junior nationals to try and qualify for junior worlds. Yeah, wow. And then ended up transferring to UCLA just to go to a bigger market. And every friend I had that stayed in Santa Barbara just, you know, started a T-shirt company, which means they just sold cocaine to pay their rent while, you know, telling their friends they were starting a T-shirt company. Oh, really? So, yeah.

That was that culture. Yeah. Well, like one works in real estate. The rest are doing that. Oh, really? I mean, it's just, it's a very college town. and it's tough to escape. How good were you on the team at UCLA when you got there?

They mostly brought me in to try and be the training partner junkyard dog to their better guy. It was like, hey, he doesn't have a training partner right now. You can come in. You're a hard worker. You can show him what smaller schools do who have to have a more dogged mentality, and you can make him train harder. And then instead, I just ended up drinking with him a lot. After a while, my, I don't know, my confidence in the sport got kind of shattered.

I told my coach at Santa Barbara, we don't have to get into the whole thing, but it's kind of hilarious. Told him I wanted to transfer schools and then he took it upon himself to just try and destroy my life. What? It was utterly bizarre, man. This guy has since been fired. Yeah, Pete Dolan, if you're out there, you can suck it, dude, because you're the worst. Really? He got fired for just emotionally abusing athletes.

Jeez. When you have such an insular sport and community, you kind of, you know, you can act like your own weird little cult leader God. Yeah. So he stole my phone out of my bag at a meet and then my friend was texting me, you know, a couple of my teammates sold weed, which was in California. I mean, so decriminalized at the time. Yeah. And he, you know, saw somebody texting me like, hey, can you, can you, you know, get a dime bag, whatever? And then I come in to his office the next day after he called me in. And he's just like, you're kicked off the team.

My best friend is the chief of police. He's going to search your home. You might go to jail. You're a drug dealer, which was not at all. And you're going to be expelled from school and all this stuff. Oh, my God. And in the NCAA, you are not allowed to transfer schools unless your current coach signs off on a paper saying, yes, you're allowed to.

And so eventually went through like three months of all this. And meanwhile, school season's coming up. I'm like, I don't know where I'm going to school. And then I ended up just, I actually contacted the ACLU when they gave me some advice and they were like well if he's in violation of NCAA rules print that out highlight the part that he's in violation of throw it on the desk of the compliance officer and say i'm going to the press and the NCAA if you don't release me and i did that and then what was he what was he in violation of it was just uh stealing someone stealing a child's phone well yeah i mean there was

there was that um but it was literally just stupid NCAA statutes like you must uh tell us notify somebody within 15 days that you have denied the waiver, blah, blah, blah. And so, you know, little technicalities. Right. And I'm sure he was pretty dirty. Like, if he did that, oh, yeah. Like, he was hiding a lot of other stuff, I'm sure. Yeah.

Yeah, it turns out he'd done something really similar to a bunch of athletes and one had suicidal ideation. It was just like the, for track and feel, the sport that makes no money? Yeah. Freaking cares, man. Oh, but it must have been a, how many months did you have to deal with it? It was probably like a solid three-month thing. And then since that last meeting, I would just, this is a hilarious example of how college

athletes don't really have to apply to school at all. I literally just contacted the coach at UCLA. I sent him one video of me throwing hammer that I posted on YouTube. And he said, great, you start class in a week, which classes you want to take. So yeah, shout out. That's great. Shout out, Coach Mike Maynard to UCLA. Yeah, that's amazing.

Oh, man, it's people that nuts. Utterly, man. I can't imagine. And those guys that have been, I don't know if what, I had a guy. I guess they're just something wrong with them, but they, like, all those gymnasts horror stories. And they just, you're right. Like, they feel like they're a God in this one little space. And it's all that weird human stuff.

Mm-hmm. Just comes out. Oh, it's so, what a creepy, creepy thing. It's gross. Especially when you're dealing with young people. Yeah. Like, even as an adult, someone throws that stuff in your face. It's like, oh, you're not sleeping at night.

Yeah. You must have been pretty reeling. Yeah. No, it wasn't great. I am, though I've always had just an incredible distrust of authority, and I mean, oh, to this day, and of course, like, hampers me at times. Yeah. But, like, it's one of the things where if somebody is put in a position of power and just like,

well, how'd you're in that position? You're in that, like, ethically, were you democratically appointed? Like, how did this happen? I think you probably just rise to power, you know? Yeah. That's healthy. Yeah. And I can't wait to teach my kids that and then have that turn against me.

Yeah, right. Exactly. I know. And they tear you down. So, okay, so thanks for sharing that. That's so bizarre. Yeah. When you went, when you started messing around with after the, the cream challenge from the coach,

fattening up, fattening up kids, did, did this thing like start happening where you, where the food thing? Because when you start doing it, you're just doing it for fun and you're creating some stuff, there isn't this YouTube universe yet that you can even think about, right? No, I mean, it had just started popping up. off. So I, um, I didn't graduate from college, but I dropped out in 2014 during my senior year. School's just hard, man. So, it's really hard. It's a lot. They got to know all the things. They want you to wake up.

Oh, tough, tough, tough. You got to go sit there. And so YouTube had started popping off, but not to the point where, you know, now a kid in elementary school, their number one answer on what they want to be when they grew up as a YouTuber. Yeah. Yeah. That certainly didn't exist. Yeah. at that time. And what did exist were food blogs. And so I, you know, kind of grew up reading like Tucker Max,

that type of stuff. Yeah. And I was kind of really influenced by that. A couple food memoirs. I mean, Bourdain, Eddie Huang. Right. And so I was just like,

you know, I can write really funny things. And I started kind of writing from the caricature perspective of like a super college bro, which of course, there were elements of truth in that. Sure.

But kind of like a dumb idiot bro with the heart of gold who also made food. And so I'd write these humor essays and couple it with a recipe. And then within a couple months, that got nominated for an award by Sever magazine, which was a lot of the big lawsuits. And then I got a literary agent a couple months after that. Jeez. Which all sounded very impressive and still kind of does.

Yeah. But there was like no money in any of it. Sure. And so it wasn't like, you know, uh. Yeah. I didn't like drop out of college because I actually had a sort of plan. Yeah. It just sort of happened and then figured it.

What were you writing about in those early? blogs. I mean, you got the character, but like, do you remember, like, what were some of the, the, what were you blocking about? So there was, there was one piece that, um, you know, I've, even though I was like a fat kid, I, especially in college, I took nutrition really seriously, even though it was, you know, eat 300 grams of protein a day, all that stuff. And so I've always been obsessed with all these weird diets. And at this point, the paleo diet was the biggest thing. Yeah. And it was most of these macho crossfit guys were like, paleolid man was so virile and they could bang all night and they could do burpees until like threw up and all they ate were beans or whatever you know and so i wrote a piece that was about the velosa diet which was you know if you want to look at the most virile badass creatures you got to look at the velocirapt man you got only eat sides of beef and i just wrote it from the same perspective and then the wackiest thing is now you got people on the carnivore diet which is literally the velocity diet that i had outlined in 2014 is it

Really? Yeah, so you're welcome to the Joe Rogans of the world who are doing the carnivore diet. That was me. It was me. It was meant to be a joke. I hope you all don't get scurvy. Oh, that's hilarious. That's so crazy.

Man, that's had to be encouraging that, I mean, so especially at that age to write something, you hardly think anyone's ever going to see it. Of course, yeah. And that you got traction so quick, it must have been really encouraging. It was, yeah. I mean, it totally gave me the confidence to, you know, from this. then I started just pitching publications because I was kind of approaching senior year. I was a political science major international relations thought I might want to work for the CIA because they're you know higher athletes and stuff like that and then I actually thought about the prospect of doing that

and I was like oh I don't think so man yeah what was the appealing part of it like to be with the CIA like to travel or to literally just stable government job right that I could do because I mean I grew up you know poor my dad and mom like never really had super stable jobs bad divorce killed my dad's career and all that and so I'd just grown up with the idea of like government job government job pension do that right security what was your dad's career so he he was in um airport cargo management uh-huh so he just like worked in different airports managing cargo shipments but then by the time he and my mom got divorced, which is when I was four, so around 96, he, you know, tried to follow us out to California, and he just, like, aged out of his career and just couldn't get any, you know, positions at that time.

Right. And was, like, homeless for a bit and then just worked at Rite Aid and 99-cent stores. And eventually ended up becoming a special ed teacher in South L.A., which super, super commendable and really awesome. But, you know, I just grew up with a lot of financial instability. So I was like, I just need to be as stable as possible. Yeah. Carve a way out and give me, I don't want to feel like I'm in free fall forever. Exactly. Yeah. And so I became a freelance journalist.

Yeah. Right at the end of it though. Like it was still at that moment, like still kind of a thing you could do. Right? Like 10 years after that it's like, well, yeah. I think I made 50 bucks a pop for my first online post for Los Angeles magazine and I was buying like $80 worth of food to write that. And I was like, I'm no economist, but this don't exactly work out in my favor, man. So, yeah. So when do you make the move to YouTube? So I told you I got the literary agent. Shout out Dotto Dervasgadich out there. Let's get that money, baby.

He looks to nobody in the distance. But I got a literary agent and I'd been working on a cookbook proposal while also freelancing for whatever publication would have me. I eventually got a full-time staff position at Los Angeles Magazine. You know, eating at Michelin-Star restaurants being a 23-year-old with negative $40,000 to his name, which was very fun. That's so great. Yeah. And so I eventually sold the book and then wrote this book and utterly just burned myself out. So, I mean, I had a crying meltdown in a Starbucks where I went catatonic.

What do you mean? Why? So I am. This is after the book came out? No, this is right when I finished the manuscript. Like literally hit send from the Starbucks. immediately had a breakdown. I was working full-time at Los Angeles Magazine where they already told me, like,

don't take your lunch breaks. You're going to have to do your reporting on weekends. And you're making $30,000 a year. And so you're going to have to pick up. You're living in L.A., so you're probably going to have to pick up extra assignments. And so I was also freelancing, trying to get as many bylines as possible. I had a weekly column for Maxim magazine writing recipes. Maxim, for a time, tried to get away from just titties.

Yeah, they became a little men's healthy. Yeah, they put Idriselba on the cover and I think a 40% fewer magazines sold. What a horrible idea. Trying to have some integrity. That was a core business model that worked for a reason. And then it just, you know, so I guess part of that was bringing in me to write recipe content. And so I was doing all that and I mean really burning the candle at both ends. And when you sign a book deal, at least in my experience, I thought it would be like, hey, every month we're going to check in on you.

You need two chapters by this date, two chapters by this date. And instead it was like, you got nine months. See you with a full manuscript. Yeah, exactly. Or else we'll sue you for the money back. And so I basically left the book for the last month. You did? Yeah.

Oh, man. That's weird because you, I was just thinking as you're telling your story, like, this is a story really of a writer. This is, this is, you're in the habit of cranking stuff out at this point. Like, you've written a lot of stuff. Yeah. But too much stuff, though. Yeah, right. Exactly. And you're still doing other stuff. This is a side thing as the book.

I mean, it's not even other stuff. It's, um, this is a huge reality of new media that people don't talk about enough, I think. I, you know, grew up reading Jonathan Gold in L.A. as did a ton of people. And, you know, he famously walked down Pico Boulevard and ate at every single restaurant. You know, he wrote his reviews. And I was hearing some people talk about how, um, all the writing in L.A. sucks compared to Jonathan Gold. No one could be Jonathan. No one would be, which I agree with. He was a fantastic, absolutely virtuosic writer, big old heart, just a beautiful, beautiful soul. He can make a living writing one column a week. I had a quota of three posts a day, you know? Right.

Of one length. What do you mean posts? I mean, whatever length gets you SEO value and also can be a story that would get people to, you know, everything's so tracked online. But these are articles. You're not just talking posts of social media posts. These are like, oh yeah, no, full on articles. Full on articles. Yeah.

Three a day? Yeah. And then on top of that, freelancing, and you just need more and more and more. And now I make. Sheen. Yeah, they're like beasts. Yeah, it's insane. So I was used to cranking stuff out.

And even then it was procrastinating like crazy. And so this book comes along and I was just like, we'll figure that out later. Yeah. And eventually wrote 85-ish percent of it on a Greyhound bus trip from L.A. to Reno, Nevada. How'd you, why'd you buy that ticket? Well, the National Rib Championship was in Reno, of course. I had friends going to Reno, and I was like, if I can just shut myself in a metal box with no distractions, you know, you're driving up through like, you know, the grapevine and through Tahoe and you're not even getting service. I was like, if I can just shut myself off, I can just write and right and right.

Yeah. And I did for like, I think 24 hours, I banged out something like 40,000 words. Yeah. What were you writing on? Just, who knows at this point? No, what physically. Oh, oh, a little Chromebook. A Chromebook.

Before I even had a real laptop. That's good. It's actually good. There's not a lot of distraction on that. Literally nothing. 40,000 words. In how many? 24 hours total.

Oh, my God. I took about it to, between the 12-hour periods, I took a break to eat a bunch of ribs and get drunk in Reno. Uh-huh. Which, Reno, biggest little city in the world, what a nice place. It is beautiful. It's like a bunch of cruise ships that have been stranded on land. You know, and they're like, screw it.

It's a great way to put it. We're just docking here. It really is. And the people that populated never found a way back onto a ship and they just dried out in the desert. And they didn't need to, you know. They got some boots. Their skin acclimated to the sun.

Oh, yeah. It's just like raisins at that point. Yeah, it really is. So what was the book? It wasn't a cookbook. It was. It was a cookbook, but a bunch of... Put just a lot of fat around it.

Exactly, yeah, yeah. And what's the, what was the working title or the theme like you were going towards? So the, it was, uh, the, the blog was called Culinary Brodown, a name that a stone man at a party blurted out when I was thinking about starting a blog and said, that's the ticket. It is a good one. Yeah. And so it was called the Culinary Brodown cookbook, uh, recipes for a dope-ass life. Right. So it's meant to be like recipes, but also the, you know, just how to live virtuously, I suppose.

in brospeak. Right. Yeah. Right. That's really good. That was, because when I was reading about it, when I was in college, it was the, I got a book by the frugal gourmet. Do you remember the frugal gourmet? And it was like half a laugh, but also like, no, I'm going to, I have no money. We have no food in this place. I'm going to make an onion cinder. I'm going to take an onion and wrap it in tinfoil and put it in the fireplace and then eat it. Like it actually, you know, that part useful part, whatever. But 40,000 words in 24 hours. Yeah.

Man, oh man. How much re-editing of that did you have to do or were you pretty solid? Almost none. For real? Yeah, the cookbook process. And it's a major publisher too. And I think the book is good. I like to, you know, write pretty clean copy despite being absolutely whacked out of my

gourd. And then, yeah, roughly no major re-edits. A lot of formatting stuff. and recipes. Other than that, they just, it's pure stream of consciousness, uh, writing in that book. You must be pretty proud of that. I certainly am. I'm like proud of, I mean, I'm proud of the book. I, I've, you know, gone back and reread it and, you know, it's, it's funny. I think if we're doing a big critique, I think it is missing a larger thesis that ties everything together. Um, but I I still look back on that and I'm like, one, I'm incredibly proud of the writing in there. And then

two, I'm incredibly proud that I got the money, um, and successfully finished a damn book. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And also, even just creatively, like the, there's something very cool that you were able to distill this stream of consciousness just this burst in that short time. Like, that's a very unique thing. Yeah. It was. I mean, the cool thing, too, is that you were writing all this other stuff, but you knew this was looming. So your subconscious is going to work on it without you sitting on your Chromebook, right? Like, a big. time. It's kind of happening even when you're not really aware of it. Yeah, it was, it was all pre-written in my head and then it just kind of, blah, vomited out on the page. Yeah. On route to Reno. It's so great. It's so great. It really is kind of like, you know, you heard this story of like Sylvester Stallone writing Rocky, right? Like, went into the room and, like, painted the windows black and just stayed in there and did it. Like, that's, it has that kind of a cool factor to it. Yeah, it was very much like that, except I was, you know, smoking camel extra rides with the local

townies, you know, hitting back up to Reno in between. That was a good writer's block thing. But then you hit send and you, it's something like the computer just fritzed out? No, I, so I, you know,

wrote like 80% of it and then I went back and tried to sort of edit it. This is maybe a week after the Reno trip. I am so sleep deprived at this point. Yeah. That I started hallucinating. Really? Which had never happened to me before. All right, let me ask you that real quick.

Yeah, yeah. Because I've been in this, I'm literally putting, handed in my third book this week. Oh, wow. And there was that thing, like this weekend, I just had to bowl through it. And part of me was thinking, what if I just stay up? Like, why go to bed? Yep. What if I just keep going?

And I was like, that's really number one on wise. And number two, I don't think I can do it. Yeah. I think I'll think this is going to happen. And I'm just going to pass out at the desk. but at that age you can do it yeah I must have been like 24

at the time yeah let's just go you're still in the mindset when you have an early flight let's just drink and stay up and party through it and go through the thing yeah it turns out you can't just party through it

with a whole ass book not advisable you will think you are in the matrix inside of the Starbucks and start crying because you don't know how to escape is that what was that the hallucination straight up yeah I started seeing everything

in a green and black grid And so I would look around and it was like the Terminator, you know, scanning or Neo when he gets lost in the Matrix. Yeah. And it freaked me out so hard. And my serotonin levels must have just been so depleted at that point. Yeah. That for like two hours, I was just sitting there just like silently tears streaming down my cheek, unable to move. It's so funny about that is how many times you see people upset at Starbucks over a laptop and you're like, yeah, yeah, they're just dealing with it.

No, no one's going to ask like, are you okay? Yeah, yeah. No, if you're going to have a catatonic meltdown anywhere, let it be a Starbucks. Don't do it in a wiener-snitzel. People can start asking questions, you know? Right, exactly. Starbucks, that's the place to be. Do you remember what you had, what your order was? Did you have like a big grande, venti, something next to you?

It was a, not only that, this is the era of the 30, which is a uniquely American, big gulp, I believe is what it would be called. And it was a Trenta Red Eye. Oh, my God. Which is black coffee mixed with shots of espresso. And so, you know, it's a kind of Starbucks speedball is what you would call it in a 30-ounce cup. And so it was just like grabbing any stimulant to stay awake at that point. Oh, my God.

Yeah, it was brutal. That's so great. And then you hit send and it goes out. And then you just hear nothing. It's so. Isn't that the worst when you send it and you don't hear back for longer than what? Yeah. I thought it would be like the party horn and confetti from my computer. It's going, you know.

Good job, Josh. And now a word from our sponsor, Better Help. Better help. Help is the key word here. Look, everybody needs assistance at some time. We all have a need for some help. And these are complicated times. It's as we're, look, let's just take away the times.

Let's take away all the anxiety of the news. Let's take away the anxiety. of the planet warming, let's take away the anxiety of inflation and gas prices and all the rest of it. Let's just just deal with us, you, me, and our little heads. It is a natural thing for a human being to need to work through problems all the time. That's what our busy brain does. And sometimes it's a bit of a load. Sometimes you just need to bounce stuff off another person.

Sometimes you need a little perspective. Sometimes your friends and family aren't even enough. And sometimes you can be open and share things with a therapist that you can't share with the people just around you. And that's where better help comes in. They have all of these therapists that are standing by, they can match you with a therapist within 48 hours. Within 48 hours. I mean, this is the cool thing. They just made searching and finding help and finding someone to talk to very easy.

It takes the stigma away. You don't have to ask for referrals. Better help is your friend. In online therapy, they offer video, phone, and even live chat-only therapy sessions. So you don't even have to see anyone on camera if that bothers you. It's much more affordable than in-person therapy. And like I said, you'll be matched with a therapist in under 48 hours. Give it a try.

even if you just want to talk through something, if you just have this little inkling, like, hey, maybe that would be cool for me. You may not even be aware of how much help you can get, and you may not even be aware of what just speaking to somebody who has a little knowledge and a little guidance can do for you. You may open up a whole new way to balance your life. Look in my comedy world. Every comedian I know has their weekly session with their therapist, and they're bringing up and even talk about it on stage. these are people that are just very busy heads and always just looking to be honest and truthful and try and help themselves out and that's what we want for you. Our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com slash papa.

That's better help h-e-l-p.com slash papa. You will get 10% off slash papa. Thank you, BetterHelp. You're just like, how can I drive my car home? Yeah, exactly, exactly. Oh my God. How old are you at this point? Yeah, 30.

Just turned 30. Yeah, and I feel ready for it. How old were you when you did the book? 24 when I wrote it, and I suppose it came out when I was 25. And then that is how I ended up in the YouTube game. I had done one video with Mythical, which does Good Mythical Morning with Rathen Link, who I currently worked for. I did one video with them randomly. I got hooked up through, you know, one of our producers used to work with one.

of my editors or something. And she asked her, do you know anybody that does weird stuff with food? And then she was like, well, my associate editor, this luxury magazine happens to have this weird-ass food blog. And so I produced one episode for them. And then I was so busy at the time that I just didn't keep up the relationship until my book came out. And I had technically gotten fired from the magazine on the day that I was going to quit.

So, you know. Yeah, screw them. Yeah, exactly. But then you get fired. You can get unemployment. Right. I'll take it. But I sent mythical.

a copy of my cookbook and, uh, you know, our chief creative officer, Stevie literally called me and was just like, hey, do you want a job? And I was like, I've never done anything like that before. And she's like, I don't care. And I've been there for almost five years now. Wow. Yeah. That's a five years, really? Yeah. We've only been, um, doing, so mythical kitchen is the spinoff that I now host. Right. Uh, we've only been doing that for about two and a half years. Oh, okay. So I was doing sort of behind the camera. Right. When you would make stuff for them and exactly. Yeah. once in a while kind of thing. Yeah, yeah.

Right, right. Did you hit it off with them right away? Was it a tough environment to kind of break into? Because they so had a lifetime of, I mean, literally their whole lives together. Yeah. It kind of was, but it was more tough to break through the fandom, which YouTube fandom is very, very intense. Because unlike you watch, say, a sitcom, you might really enjoy Ray Romano.

We're talking about Phil Rosenthal earlier. so Rick Ramanos on the brand. But, you know, you might really enjoy him, but you understand you are watching somebody playing a character. Even as stand-up, they're on a stage and you have, you're watching other people watch them. YouTube, especially the roots of it, you know, Rhett and Link started making videos in their garage. So you feel like you are a part of them. You feel like they're talking directly to you because they are in a way. There's an intimacy there.

Exactly. Yeah. It's closer to like radio almost. Yeah. in the old days of like people yeah had this connection with them that yeah it's very one-on-one yeah right right right that's it and so getting getting the trust of the audience as like a new person in that environment you know that was something that i always took like really seriously like don't come in and rock the boat too much or swing too hard like understand why people love them so

much and then try and figure out how to take the the base of that and then filter that you know sort of through me and how I can become my own version of that. Right. So it's kind of like a long process. That was pretty savvy. Did you figure that out on your own? Or were you just kind of conscious of the, of the atmosphere at that point? Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I think so much, I've had to produce so much content over my life that you learn really fast how to code switch. Right? And so I'd write an article for Vice. That would be in an entirely different voice than an article for my blog would be in an entirely different voice. Right.

Than an article for Los Angeles Magazine where we're trying to, not lose our sponsorship from infinity motor cars. You know what I mean? And so I just learned to code switch so much and to adapt to whatever medium, which again also switches freaking constantly now. Right. That any new thing springs up. I'm like,

how do I still stay true to myself, but also learn the medium, learn the audience and learn what makes it tick? Right, right. But it seems like you had your kind of your voice of what you decided you were going to do there, like pretty figured out. This was probably just you. It was probably just a little true to yourself.

It was definitely different speeds maybe. A different version. Can you, do you curse on this podcast? Yeah, if you want. I might as well. It would serve a point. The term fuck appears over 300 times,

I believe, in my cookbook. It was just part of the schick. The bro thing, yeah. The fucking pork building, the fucking oven. That's it, you know? Right. It was the thing. And then, you know,

Red and Link were, at least started a very sort of Christian and also YouTube demonetizes any cursing. And so suddenly, you know, that was taken out. Suddenly any of the very blue stuff was taken out. Right. You know, and so I had to sort of abandon that schick and still also as I matured, I was like, well, maybe that stuff isn't as funny to me anymore. Yeah. And so I sort of, you know, did adapt, but also just, it's still just been me the whole time. Yeah. Because I mean, when you go back to your, the reason you left

football in that one year. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because you weren't really broie. Yeah. You weren't really that thing. But you knew how to speak that kind of, you know, that thing. And there's a, there's a, there's big, it sounds funny, but there's a wide spectrum to browness. Certainly. Right? I mean, there's just guys that are really crude and mean and whatever, but there's also just guys that are guys and just enjoying themselves with they're also kind and, you know, are going to be nice to a girl.

Yeah. I mean, in college, I would literally, you know, go from deadlifting 600 pounds in the weight room and then I performed a spoken word poem about toxic masculinity in the Bruind End coffee shop. Right. In the same day. Yeah. So, yeah, you know, I like being able to swing a.

cross that whole spectrum. Yeah. Yeah, which is kind of like it's, it isn't interesting, it's interesting how men are actually changing, like that there is like this, you know, from our fathers or grandfathers, you could just, you had to be this one way. And there was like, and you just shut up and you dealt with it and you, you don't talk about anything to anybody at any point. And now there's, you know, without losing masculinity, there's, there's, you know, you

everyone's open and searching and looking for ways to relate and be more thoughtful and be more kind. And you see it with podcasts and all these different things that are emerging. Like it's almost like people have been craving it. Yeah. Men have been craving it. Oh, God, they've been craving it for thousands of years, man. At least watching like my own father and him talking about his relationship with his father, you know, it was just very just tight-lipped clenched teeth.

Yeah. Don't express yourself too much. You know, and I watched my dad just, he always tried to pantomime. I mean, he's a boomer's boomer. Like, he is a direct victory baby, you know, and he always tried to pantomime this kind of macho man, but, you know, I'd watch him take a sip of a dark beer and kind of grit his teeth and, like, you'd not finish it over the course of the meal. Like, we're trying to impress eight-year-old me, dad?

What the hell is that? And so, yeah, I love that we're just redefining what masculinity means. Right. Right. It's incredible. And especially moving from, football to track, I feel like I found my exact tribe of people who were all, you know, big into weird, nerdy stuff and history and poetry. And they were also these, you know, six, six,

300 pound bearded lumberjacks, you know, throwing heavy metal balls in the Olympics. Yeah. And I absolutely love that, man. Yeah. I'd like to advocate for more of that. That was one of the points of my book. Yeah. You know, it's kind of tearing it down via this like reductio ad absurdum kind of parody of it all and showing how dumb it is. Right. But I guess a lot of people have lost weight on that carnivore diet now. Eggs on my face, I guess. Right. Yeah.

Then there's always that thing of like people that see the irony and don't see the irony. Yeah, yeah. And they kind of go along for. The people who watch Fight Club and go, oh, we should start a fight club. That looked badass, dude. You know? Exactly. There's all those people out there.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. All right. So you start working for them and feeding them. and feeding them stuff. Was it, was it, was it, was it the unique kind of outrageous kind of like finding new fun snack foods and that kind of thing right off the bat? Or did, and you've just kind of carried that through?

Or was it, were you kind of finding your way and were they asking for different things in the beginning? Yes, I mean, they're, in the reason they immediately called me when I sent them my book was because they were like, this is exactly where we want the food on our program to go. Right. it was very YouTubey. It's very, you know, I would make stuff like Flaming Hot Cheeto Fried Chicken in the cookbook because there's some dumb stuff I do in college,

especially after drinking. And that was a very YouTubey type thing, right? These very iconic images that you can put in the thumbnail of a video and people want to click on it to see what it is. For real, yeah. And so they'd been doing things that were sort of similar, but they didn't have anybody with the actual culinary acumen to pull it off. Right.

And so I came in and, you know, we would just make the most absurd things possible. and they really loved it, the fans really loved it. How were you coming up with the ideas for it? Like when I spoke with Babish, and, you know, his thing is all like from TV shows, like, whatever they make, and then you would make it. Where were you coming up with ideas? Was it just off your head of, like, this would be fun? Pretty much.

But, I mean, a lot of the times, if somebody just gives me, like, an adjective and a noun, you know, I'll just be like, great, I can cook that. And so we have a team of writers who, you know, they're all. all comedy writers. And so they would, we have this pilot series, or sorry, this flagship series called Willet where the idea is we'll take a cheesecake. And it'll be like beef bile, willet cheesecake? And so I'm just sitting there in a writer's room and they'd be like, can you make a beef bile cheesecake?

I was like, yeah, of course. I was like, you'd have to do the piles liquidies. You'd have to reduce it down because that way it's not going to, you know, cause a consistency to change and shift the fat to water relationship. But yeah, of course I can do it. Why? You know, like, no reason. And then that ends up on the show.

You ever say no? Was there ever a no? There's certain things and like, God bless our writers, but I will never forget when someone came to me and they were like, can you make a sandwich invisible? And I was like, I think this is what's called a logical paradox. Unless you're talking about some like deep state military technology that exists that I don't know about.

Yeah. That can cloak the bread. No, we can't. And they were like, no. My head went right to gelatin. Yeah. Jelton and some good lighting. And we did that, man.

did the, uh, the chef, Wiley Dufrain famously made a clear pumpkin pie. Mm-hmm. And so I was like, I can make any pie clear. Right. So like, what if we just made a, uh, and have people guess what the flavors were? And so, you know, we did like a tobacco flavored, uh, clear pie. Oh, really? So it's kind of being referential to a lot of things that existed.

And then, like, how can we make this as insane as possible? So where did your knowledge come of, of food? Like, like, you legit have, like, an understanding and working knowledge of it. It wasn't, like, it seems like, it seems like, in the beginning. it was just kind of fun and thinking about fun shit. Like in college, we used to make grilled cheese with an iron just putting in a tinfoil and, you know, in the onion cinder. But where did you, did you study it at all? Did you, were you into cookbooks?

Did you practice? Food Network, baby. Food Network? I mean, honestly, being a latchkey kid, you come home at 2.30 at night and you watch Food Network till 8.30 at night. You're getting six hours of free culinary school. Right. And then when I was like 11 years old, my dad noticed that I was watching all this. And, you know, he kind of bristled.

He was like, I, you know, pay for cable and all you watch is cooking. And then he was like, well, if you're going to do that, might as well just cook for us. And so he was straight up like, I will clean the toilets. I will do all of your chores if you cook dinner every night. Really? This man did not know how to cook. That's a great deal. Yeah, it really was.

Yeah. He gave me a budget. And I would set off when I was like 11 years old to trade her Joe's with my little, you know, little, you know, reasonable plastic bags. You know asking people like hey is this the only Gorgonzola that you that you have you know trying to check my budget see if I could afford the 499 And so I literally was cooking for my family every day for a long time and then I started cooking for friends in high school cooking for friends in college I would just read Everything I could yeah Tom Cleekio's book think like a chef Yeah, a really formative one for me yeah I would read all the food memoirs I could just trying to very cool

I'm always perpetually scared that I am underprepared for something and so especially when I I decided to get into food media, or at least try and chase that dream. I was like, I'm going to read everybody and everything. And I was memorizing menus on Yelp. And when I interviewed for Los Angeles Magazine, I was too poor to eat at any of the restaurants they wrote about. And so I memorized their menus on Yelp. And, you know, somebody asked me in an interview, they're like, oh, my God, have you been to Otis and Penelope yet? And I was like, ugh, yeah, I had a 730 res and get this, they ran out of the beef rib.

Like no way at 7.30. I was like, yeah, they had a tent top. I've never been to the restaurant before. I looked up a Yelp review that said order the beef rib early because they run out. And I was just like lying about all these. There's still places to this day that I don't think I've been to in L.A. But I don't know if I've lied about it in the past to somebody important to where I just go, oh yeah, I've been there. You know, I've been everywhere. I haven't. Did you have when you start becoming the family chef, did you have a, did you have a, did you, did you, A favorite of the families or like a signature dish? Like either out of just ease or you were just like known for like it's chicken night or whatever? Yeah, so I had an early signature dish that I've actually always wanted to try and recreate or make it not terrible on the show. But one thing when you get an 11-year-old watching an unfettered food network, you know, you learn how to make a nice baked chicken and stir fry from Rachel Ray. But then you start getting a little out of your league out kicking your coverage, so to speak. So one of my signature dishes was savory spiced crepes.

This is the efficient language filled with a mushroom and scallop risotto. Wow. And when I say that, I mean, I boiled minute rice and I mixed a can of cream of mushroom soup with the 99 cent frozen bagged scallops that they had at Albertsons. Whipped that all together and then filled it in Biscuit that had been spiked with hot sauce. Oh. Yes. Yeah.

That's, this is great because this is kind of your whole thing. Yep. This is your origin story. This is. Really? Because as, as funny as any of those items are on their own, I know that must have tasted amazing. Like, you put that together. Oh, yeah.

You're no one's going to complain about that. Yeah, the verbiage was a little highfalutin for what it actually was, I'll admit. I think I was an early marketing and branding expert. But, you know, I feel like that combination could still work to this day. Yeah. A lot of vinegar and that pancake, though, I'll tell you what. Oh, really? It's a heavily vinegared pancake, Tom.

Oh, it's so great. All right, so here's the thing. This is kind of back to the new man, right? You have all these great things like you just want to click on any flaming hot, whatever. Did you ever have the flaming hot mountain dew, by the way? Yeah, we actually turned it into a guest streak for chicken wings. Oh, really? Which is really nice.

Yeah, reduce it, mount it with butter, a little bit of vinegar. Pretty nice. That's pretty good. I've been meaning to try it. I haven't stopped off and got it yet. It's just okay, man. Is it? Yeah, you kind of know what it's going to taste like before you taste it.

Right. And you know what you're going to feel like. Yeah, exactly, exactly. All right, so you have this really fun, outrageous kind of stuff that you can make and play around with. But back to you're still an athlete. You're obviously still working out. You've been out of school for some time.

But it seems like it must still be a big part of your life. Yeah. In your mind, how do you balance? or how do we balance, having the fun and being really healthy? Oh, man. I don't know if what I do is balance, right? I think I, and a lot of people ask me that, and they're like, you know, you're healthy, you're fit.

And it's like I was in a wheelchair because I tried deadlifting too much on my 30th birthday in an urgent care, getting a shot of Torridol to the butt. Wow. Like what I do isn't healthy. I've stumbled upon these weird meme pages on YouTube that are like very kind of pro-toxic masculinity. You don't know why the algorithm served me that. But it'll be like they showed this video that was kind of very fatphobic and whatnot. And it was like, this is healthy.

And it shows Ronnie Coleman. If you know that it's deadlifting, it's like, this is healthy. Push. If you know anything about Ronnie Coleman, he is absolutely, I mean, crippled. Yeah. Dude, can't walk. That's not healthy. Me doing CrossFit, you know, nine sessions a week isn't healthy.

Yeah. So I don't know that I have an answer for that, man. I think I... Yeah. Well, well, all right. So let's stick with your mania then. Yeah, please. Let's stick with it because we have a good food origin.

Like we have the good fun. Like, that all makes sense. That story you told. At what age do you start becoming conscious of like what you're going to put in your body, not just working out and going for football and all the rest? of it and track and field. Like at what point were you starting to become conscious of how you're going to fuel this system? Yeah, I think it was probably after I had quit slash gotten fired from Los Angeles Magazine because I was, you know, one, didn't make enough money to have a nice gym

membership. And so I credit a lot of my fitness just being able to afford the 180 bucks a month at the place that I currently go to. I was having to eat out three nights a week at these lavish, you know, restaurants, which like, I know it's so sad that I had to do that. No, but that's taxing. It is. Any food-oriented thing, people don't realize, like, that guy, that man versus food guy, he traveled around with like a cardiologist because it was, it's a real thing. Frank Bruny from the New York Times got gout.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And so after that, I was like, I feel bad. And then as much as I love the idea of new masculinity and, um, shunning toxic masculinity. I also love embracing it for like an hour and a half at a time. And I mean, honestly, this is true. Yeah, it's like a lot of people ask me for advice and

how I got in shape. And the answer isn't what I think is good to put in the world, but it's what worked where I looked myself and I would never use this language to anybody else with me. I said, you fucking pussy, get the fuck out of your bed. Get to that goddamn gym. Like, you know, I had to sort of will myself to do it. And, um, you were, your own military guy yelling at the guys in the bunk. Yeah. And like I wish I had an answer that would make me a better role model.

Like, oh, it was self-love. And I said, God gave you this body. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, any of those guys that you see like David Goggins of the world, like all those guys, it's, there's, our brain is very clever. Our brain can get out of anything. Oh, yeah.

Really is very good at, I deserve coffee in the morning. Shouldn't I sit with the paper and isn't that what life is? And then you need that other part of your brain to be like, you piece of garbage get to work. Yeah. You really do. You have to break down your own cleverness. I think there's virtue to suffering.

Yeah. And I think, you know, people throughout history have written about that, the Stoics. Yeah. I think there's just flat out virtue of suffering. And I think, you know, everyone who is into the self-cahundred. movement, which to a lot of people, it just seems like they equate self-care with like moisturizing, which to me is really weird. Like I told somebody that I don't have a skin care routine.

They're like, don't you believe in self-care? I was like, what the hell? They're not the same. But I think a lot of people conflate self-care with either laziness or selfishness. Right. In a way that I, you know, I think we're still at a place in the world where we can say there's virtue in hard work, right? There's virtue in pushing yourself.

There's virtue in making yourself uncomfortable. and growing and becoming a better person from that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, 100%. It's amazing how, uh, it's amazing how, uh, when you start out, how little you have to do to suffer.

Yeah. Yeah. For real. Which is a good thing, though. It is a good thing. Like, I just got put the, had this guy's put this little gym in my, uh, in my garage. Um, shout out to Adam, Adam Fitness. And, uh, and, and, um, and, and, um, and, um, and, I, had this guy's, he's, he's, um, and, um, and,

It's like this cool thing and it has these classes and I was like, oh, yeah, this will be fun. And I'm like, all right, it has a pull-up bar. When's the last time I did a pull-up? It has rings. Like, I'm going to do what with these rings? Yeah, yeah. And then, you know, in a box to step up. And I was like, all right, and I took the first class.

And like when you said burpees, I almost twitch. And there's three different people like doing the class on the TV at the same time you're doing it. Oh, yeah, yeah. and of different levels. And I'm like, I'm probably the middle guy. I'm the middle guy. I'm not her. Like, she's going to be really fast.

I can tell she's going to have crazy, crazy girl strength. And this guy in the middle is probably close to me. And then that big giant guy with his belly hanging over the side, that guy is going to be eating my dust. I always want to know how those people are cast and those. Because I did the same thing with the yoga video once. And there's like, Karen in the back is struggling with her movements. And that's okay, Karen. Right. I know. They're like slapping the big guy around. And I was closer to the, when we got to the burpees at the end of the workout, I was closer to the big guy by far than either of the other two. And I was like, ooh, this is going to be a journey. Like this is going to be it, but it felt so good. Like I was literally sore that night. Like you normally are sore the next day. I was sore that night. And I hadn't really been pushed like that since like high school.

Didn't it feel good? It felt great. It felt great. It felt great. It felt great. Did you, did you keep doing it? Like, this literally is five days ago. Oh, man.

Well, I guess the question still stands. Yeah, the question does. I have not been back. Yeah. I did the Peloton in between because it's, I,

it's 98 degrees here right now. Yeah. And it's in the garage. It's a scorchial. I haven't really dialed in that. Well, that's good. It's like,

how about a fan? I'm like, yeah, maybe that's a good idea. Or get up early in the morning and do it. Just train like a boxer. Just put the, put the trash bag on.

And then make sure you have like a life alert in case you, you know, get heat stroke. And that's... I know. I literally... There's the box that you do the step-ups on, you know? Yeah, yeah. And you hold a dumbbell and go up on the steps.

And I was just, like, laying on the box, watching them at a certain point. But there is something so great to it. There is a really... Something pretty solid. It's entirely changed my life. I mean, I had always worked out really hard. And even, you know, when I was working for L.A.

Mag, I'd still, you know, lift, like, three days a week. stuff like that. Yeah. But then now every single morning, getting up at 6 a.m. And I don't want to sound like that schmuck who's, you know, Mark Wahlberg wakes up at 3.30. No, he doesn't. Yeah.

I know. Like, he's just not true. Exactly. He's not getting out of his first workout and praying at 3. 3 in the morning. No. No. No.

What Father Stu said. But in any time anybody describes their fitness or diet routine, you got to just do like, okay, times 0.7. Because that's what they're actually doing. Uh-huh. There's days. when they get invited out from people. You know, there's days when they're not actually doing that.

And if they're not doing that, then they are just actual sociopaths and certainly not role models to look up to. In that case, you know what I mean? Yeah. And so I just, yeah, I mean, every morning at least, let's say, times point seven, getting up 7 a.m. in the gym and get all of my toxic masculine rage that is inherited by all of us through our fathers and their fathers. I just put that into the barbell and then I can show up to work with a clear head and be ready

to be non-competitive and collaborative and empathetic. And I think I just need that, you know, 90-minute release of just purging all of that listening to death metal. I mean, my hand is literally bleeding on your table top. Right. Right. You know, just get it all out of your system. That, the mental part of it, I mean, I don't want to say it's completely blows away the physical part. But during the pandemic, when I was just like, all right, we can go to.

directions here. We can either work out every single day or we can, you know, just deal with a mental health crisis. Yeah. And getting on that bike corrected me every single day. A hundred percent. Just the mental part. I was like, I don't care if I'm losing weight. There is no physical part. It's all the mental part, right? Like it's not to get back to the matrix. The spoon does not exist, right? Even the way that you are reacting to your body changing, right? That's literally all mental. I don't know how you feel about Cartesian dualism and whether the brain and the mind are one of the same.

But I will say when people talk about the split between, well, there's a physical part, the physical benefits and the mental benefits, they're all mental benefits. The physical benefits that you're perceiving, you perceive that with your brain, it's all a mental benefit, if that makes sense. Not to get all mystical. Almost, almost. Keep going. Seriously, because...

Think about people with like body dysmorphia, right? which a lot of, I mean, I'm probably subject to a little bit of that. I know a lot of bodybuilders certainly are. Yeah. You know, they... They think they're big and fat and they're fatless. They're 4% body fat and they're looking like... That's not a physical...

One could say that, you know, the physical part of that is not working because their brain is processing it wrong, if that makes sense. The mental part didn't work for them because they're processing it wrong. Like, everything is a matter of perception. Right. And now I feel like the college freshman who smoked weed for the first time. It's all in it's hard. It is heavy stuff.

And it's stuff that I deal with all the time. I think we all do. I mean, I literally, I literally the other night, I had this really good workout on the Peloton and it was like sweating like crazy. And it was spent. Like it was one of those good feelings.

Yeah. And 30 minutes later came out of the bathroom, where the, like, the toilet door is to, the to the mirror at the sink and caught myself in the mirror and was like, you're a piece of garbage. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Hey, welcome to the lifestyle, brother. You're here. You're living it. You know what I mean? I mean, I don't think we, I think we're all always kind of, kind of wrestling with that. Yeah. But I don't really care so much about the looking chubby in the mirror at that moment, long term throughout the day after that workout.

Like that, what, how I'll feel two hours later, just when someone's, you know, just when someone says something aggravating and it rolls off the back, you're just like, you don't care. Yeah. Where if you hadn't worked out, your pride and this is a problem all of a sudden, right? Yeah, 100%. I am. I once gained 20 pounds because somebody commented on a YouTube video, they said, Josh looks like he's at, quote, JV muscle mass.

And I read one comment from one person. I was like, I'll show you JV, I'm varsity, bro. And then I proceeded over the next two months to just gain 20 pounds and just lift like a madman. And so, yeah, it's funny how this guy anonymous, yeah. Could have been a 13 year old in Bangladesh. I don't know, man. He could have misspelled. It could have been an IV muscle mass. Who knows what he was saying? We don't know. And so yeah, it's funny how fickle and fragile this whole ecosystem is. Yeah. And I accept it. So how do you deal with your diet part of it? Like, are you, because you, I mean, it's kind of funny now that I'm thinking about it,

because not to put you in the same boat as Babish, who, have you ever met him? Oh yeah, yeah, we're pretty friends. Yeah, great guy. And, uh, but you're also, you're, like, you're, you're, you're, you're both attractive, healthy people. Thank you. I think you're very handsome. Thank you. I wasn't, I wasn't digging, but I think, but I mean that thing of like, you would think that guys that were putting up, you know, sandwiches from SpongeBob or the flaming hot whatever's would be, uh, a different shape and size. Yeah. But, uh, but it works. Like, it works. But what do you, what do you, what do you? put in your body on a daily basis.

Are you really strict with yourself? No, I mean, I have my sort of rules where, one, I work out so much because I can be less strict with it. I love drinking on the weekends. I love, you know, eating. I just had all you can eat Korean hot pot two days ago. That was fantastic. Right.

But then during the weekday, and I know Babish said the same exact thing. We're like, clock strikes five on Friday. No rules, baby. Mom's out of town. You know, we're putting marshmallow fluff on the pizza. Right. And then Monday through Friday, there's stuff we have to eat. on set stuff you get to eat on set because I love the flaming hot Cheetos at Lote

pizza that we make right you know but it's like I'll eat a slice of that and then worse before I might have eaten half of it and then you know I like today for instance I have had a protein shake a protein bar two eggs and then a chicken salad from CPK and then three additional chicken breast tenders right and so I'm climbing my way to two hundred guys ate two hundred grams of protein every single day and then if I have no excuse to not eat clean, then I'll eat clean. But then somebody invites me out to dinner, I will never be that schmuck who goes like, I'm on a diet and I'm right. And so as long as, you know, it doesn't affect my social life, my social obligations. But if you left me in a room alone, like my fiance's out of

town right now, she used to be a restaurant publicist. And so we really bonded over our love of food and eating in restaurants. And she's out of town for like a month. And so I'm like, I can just hold myself up and just be Spartan. Yeah. Just go to the gym every single day and eat jarred salsa dumped on top of rotisserie chicken. Yeah. And so I've left to my own devices, I'll kind of do that more or less. Yeah, you get a little bit monastic about it.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. As soon as, like my wife was just away and she came home last night and all of a sudden, should we have a glass of wine? Yeah, exactly. And we're like celebrating, you know? And those are very meaningful. I mean, those are the meaningful experiences, right?

But really, if you could just be alone, you could be like. Yeah. I'm not eating dinner tonight. What? The whole family is like, what do you mean? We're not eating dinner tonight. We want to eat dinner tonight. And it's cool for like two weeks.

And then you're like, man, I'm sure lonely. Right, exactly. I'm in good shape. I feel lean, but I'm sad. In good shape for nobody. Right. All right. So that leads me to this question, which is very concerning.

I just gave you a big loaf of bread. Oh, yes. Pondick and Panya, which is it's really a pretty beautiful loaf. your fiance's gone. Will you eat it? Yes, I will eat it. That is another thing. Especially if somebody gives me a gift, like to receive food, especially food you didn't pay for.

What a freaking gift, man. And that means so much to me, and I am really excited. I don't think I have, oh, no, I do have, I know I'm going to do with it now. Instead of going grocery shopping. This is my, just interrupt you? This has become my favorite thing. Really? Because everybody I give it to, I give it to everybody.

Yeah. Everybody reports back or tells me what they're going to do or what they send me pictures of what they have done. I will send you a picture of what I make tonight. Because it's so creative and everybody has their own design of what they're going to do with it. Because I mean like a beautiful love of, you know, Pandicampania, you're not like making a PB&J with it. I mean, you know, maybe you are.

Maybe you are. I'm actually, we're going out of town for the YouTube convention, VidCon. Cool. And so I got back from a little weekend trip, and I was like, I could either grocery shop for two and a half days for the food, or I could buy two family meals from Zanku chicken and just ride that out. And so I've been eating just rotisserie chicken for every single meal. Oh, nice. Eating all the pickled turnips. And so now I'm going to make some sort of nice, like a tartine with mutabal and chomp pickled turnips.

Ooh, nice. All right. Send me a picture. I promise you. I'll do that. I'll give me my number before you do. All right. one last question, which may not be the last, because it's kind of a big one, I shouldn't have

opened with it. This YouTube thing, you've got a whole team and you're part of this larger mythical family. But people don't realize, I just, because people wanted to know how I made my bread, and I just posted like six videos of making sourdough bread and I showed bagels and, you know, a couple things. And it is a ton of. of work. I mean, it was just me and my assistant in my kitchen. Similar to what you were talking about of writing and having to do with three articles a day. Yeah. This is a beast. Like, people are looking at your thing and wanting more all the time. Yeah. How much of a full-time gig is it? Oh, man. I mean, it's, so I'm also the director of

culinary content across all of mythical. It's a bit of a made-up title. But, you know, we have so many irons in the fire everywhere because you have to in digital media, right? Yeah. There's, you know, we're making, just on my channel, 104, actually I think it's a, it's 102. We do two little dark weeks as a treat. But it's 102 videos a year, you know, it's twice weekly.

And these aren't five, six minute YouTube videos. These are 22-minute cooking shows. This is stuff that used to be on the Food Network. And we're doing that twice a week in perpetuity till the day I die. We're producing right now we are doing four 60 second recipe videos across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube shorts. We are also syndicating our content across Snapchat, which gets edited by somebody else from YouTube. And then there's all the ancillary stuff. We're ready cookbook.

We're prepping for a pop-up right now. We record a podcast called a Hot Dog is a Sandwich. had to plug it. Yep. And, you know, we're doing an hour podcast every week. And we, this is the only entertainment that I've grown up, not only really consuming, but also working in. So for me, it's all normal where it's just go, go, go all the time.

Yeah. And so it's been very normalized for me. But is it the kind of thing, like doing a game show where you'll do, like, just go hardcore for three weeks and bank as much as you possibly can, like, whatever number that is? Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. So we do, you know, and again, it's the people who are even figuring out the schedules. We have like a meeting of a triumvirate of people who are like, well, this camera is being loaned out on that day for that show.

So we can't shoot there. And like the director is doing a special project with this. And so, you know, which is kind of the beauty of our companies that we do everything at scale, right? Right. Almost, I mean, hell, everybody's full time at the company. So we're not hiring, you know, people on day rates to cam-op or to edit. and stuff like that. Right.

It's just everybody working on all these things constantly. They keep the organism thriving and just feeding a constant coal fire. Yeah. It's really great. Yeah. It's cool. Because there really is like that thing you start to see about all this stuff. The ones that are successful, there's a real energy behind them.

Yeah. There's a real energy. And you have great on-screen energy. And it's fun to watch. Thank you. Really, it's like you're learning something, but you're also amused and like hanging with this guy. But it's things that have.

have pure energy and like they it's almost like to you have to feed the machine but in order to feed it you need that energy it kind of is all kind of feeds itself in a way it does and uh in the fact that you can't languish on anything yeah i mean and again when i wrote the cookbook if you want manic energy look at a 24 hours on a bus to reno right in the cookbook you know and you click send and you can't languish on anything because well there's another thing you got to do Yeah. And so I will get, one of the trippiest things to me is, like, someone tweeted at me the other day. They were like, I finally get that reference you made to the fighter.

And I was like, I say so many things. There's like three hours a week of me just saying stuff. Can you be more specific? Like you said head body, head body. I was like, yeah, it's a great reference. Thank you for the. But people will, you know, send these things as if I remember anything I did in a video three months ago. I mean, it's like severance for me where it's like I clock in.

I record things, I leave anything that is made on the screen, that is an avatar and barely representative of the flesh and bone. But it's kind of cool. Like when you tell the whole story, it's like you're kind of built for this. Yeah. You really are. Like if there is a little ADHD component, it was kind of a blessing. Oh, 100%. Right?

I couldn't thrive. Yeah. Can you imagine me doing data entry? What the hell? Yeah. Yeah. If you did, it would just be like a ton of it. Oh, yeah.

I entered all the data. None of it's right, but it's all in there, man. I got the numbers for days. Well, this was great. I really appreciate you coming by, and I can't wait to do more. Come back and let me know what you did with the bread. I promise you all do that. Thanks for having me. Thanks. And I'll let you know if I ever get on those rings. Let me know, man. The rings are a new thing. I don't love the rings. Yeah, I don't know about the rings either. You know what I like doing with the rings? Just holding on to him and laying back. Yeah, it's going to, like, it feels good.

Yeah, it's a nice stretch. Don't make me do dips on the rings. We got it, Aaron. Aaron, we got him. All right. That's our big show. I hope you had a good time. I told you, Josh, was an interesting fellow.

Of course, go and check out all of his stuff on YouTube. It's very funny. It's very watchable. It is a very cool experience, and I thank you for coming along. Now, get out there and enjoy yourself. Enjoy this week. Enjoy the Fourth of July week. Whatever, your straightforward.

grass level is with the country right now, don't be a quitter. Stay in it, get some hot dogs, and start changing people's minds if that's what you need to do, or just embrace it if that's what you want to do. Either way, stuff your face with something good. Thank you for listening. We will see you next week. I'll also go to tompapa.com. I mean, I have a lot of tour dates we just released. We're coming to the Wilbur in the fall. In Boston, we're coming to the New York area. I'm going to be in Borgata next week in Atlantic City. We've got a whole bunch of clubs coming up throughout the summer to get ready for my Netflix taping, which is going to be in September. So we're going to hit Brea Improv. We're going to hit Wise Guys in Salt Lake City. We've got

Arizona Improv. We've even going to Hawaii to perform there. Go to Tompapa.com. All the dates are there. Like I said, we're going to Boston. We're going to New York and New Jersey and Florida and Texas all over the tour. We'll be rolling along. All right, enjoy yourselves. We'll see you next week.