The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - South Beach Sessions - Andrew Zimmern

Episode Date: February 27, 2025

You know him from his voyages around the world, showcasing (and eating) staples from every culture on the planet, and now Andrew Zimmern is here in South Beach demonstrating the kind of open heart it takes to do that work. From childhood hardship, to devastating addiction, into incredible ambition and drive, Andrew describes his journey and the presence of food along his way. He details the start of Bizarre Foods, his experience traveling and learning… and of course Andrew talks about his friendship with Anthony Bourdain, their shared mission through their shows, and Anthony’s legacy. In the past, Andrew has been open about the depths of his addiction, but with Dan, he explains in new light the lengths he went to support it. Andrew also explains why he’s so vocal about his journey and the incredible benefits sober life has given him since he got clean.  TRIGGER WARNING: This episode contains discussion of substance abuse, addiction, mental health struggles and self harm. If you or someone you know are struggling with thoughts of self harm, you can get help by calling 988 for the national Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Welcome to South Beach Sessions. I'm looking forward to this one and they paired this man with me for a reason because he'll crack open and he'll give you the vulnerability and the shame and you know that the grief eater loves those things. Andrew Zimmern is an award-winning host and television host and chef. I don't know what it means to win the James Beard Award. You've done it multiple times but but it means you around food, one of the best America has to offer. Thank you for being with us, but the reason that I wanted to talk to you is for all the interesting parts in your journey, it begins somewhere with radio, with a love of radio,

with understanding where it is that radio connects with people, and you've been allowed to reveal your personality to people in a way that has been I imagine life-affirming but thank you for being on with us. No no no I love it I mean you know this is these are the conversations that I love and I love what you do so yeah let's dive in. You're in the middle of these you know this food and wine festival is one of the best things Miami does. Miami doesn't do things consistently well and you've seen it grow, so this is a hugely busy time for you.

Your relationship with food, your relationship with this city, your relationship with this festival is what? Well, 24 years ago, Lee Schrager had the idea, along with Southern Glazer Wine and Spirits, to throw a little party on the beach, have some chefs come down and cook some food, raise some money for Florida International University's

Chaplain School of Hospitality, and it's taken off from there. It's now, I mean, 100 plus thousand people descending on essentially South Beach, although there are events all the way down to the jump off spot to the Keys and all the way up to West Palm. And it has become a massive,

really Wednesday to Monday scene. So much so that there are giant sized ticketed events that other people throw because they know so many people are in town. Like basil, like so many or Basel, I guess, as we're supposed to call it. Bacchanalia is what it is. It's everyone coming to South Florida and having sex with food and just pumping our region for a few days and then leaving on, on airplanes filled with indigestion and gas.

Yes, and free samples of this. Yes, excellent. It has become really something that's quite incredible and raised, you know, $40 million for this hospitality school, which is of vital, vital, vital importance because of the intersection of, you know, societal temples at which chefs and people in the hospitality industry sit

from health and wellness to immigration to national security, hunger, waste, climate crisis, et cetera. I want to talk to you about the politics of food and I want to talk to you about your story and all of these things because this is not what you're doing here. Here this is a party, right? It is fun, entertainment, I, co-hosting the closing party, something that I've done for, I don't know, the last 15 of the 20 years that I've been down here. And you know, obviously the regular demos and dinners and the other things that I've been

doing every day on the hamster wheel of excess that I've been, you know, treading. That's a great phrase. I feel like I've been on that all my life. The hamster wheel of excess. Yes, because I can't say the word no. We were saying that before we came in here. You know, once I'm coming down to a place, you know, folks look at me and they say, hey, you're here, would you, could you? And I'm like, absolutely, of course I can. What else am I going to do? Forgive me for interrupting you, but I would imagine that you just viewed from afar that you are, this is presumptuous of me, a generally happy person because you can't believe your good fortune that people keep grabbing you by the ear and say, will you please put your face and voice next to

my food, my party, given where you've been in your life, given that you did not have a home for a year, for you to find yourself, like, it must feel like a version of heaven on earth, just the gratitude of it. I'm not even talking about the life. I'm talking about the way you feel. Pete Slauson Gratitude is how I run my life. And, you know, not to, you know, words matter. You are a, you know, a wordsmith, you know, and you know, when we talk about not having a home for a year, you know, that is homelessness, right? And it's not food insecurity, it's hunger. And I've experienced both those things in my life. I've been, you know, a homeless street junkie,

user of people, taker of things. I've been in jail and prison. I've done some horrible, horrible things in my life. And then, you know, had a complete 180, you know, flip 33 plus years ago, and my life changed, all for the better. And while life still happens, I mean, life is fired at us at point blank range, right? We can't predict when the dog is gonna run away or when the relationship is gonna end or when the job changes or the parent dies

or the child gets sick or we get sick. You know, the big sort of things in life that tend to be, you know, hinge events. However, in general, the thing that has happened to me has been placed in a position where I can operate best when I'm in a state of being grateful all the time. And I'm reminded of it all the time, face to face, because I'm very public with my story. And that's been sort of the key to my own happiness.

If I wasn't public with my story, I wouldn't be getting the empathy back. I wouldn't have to talk about it all the time and having to talk about it all the time. And when I say all the time, I mean in my public life, it is the greatest gift because it's what keeps me sober, it's what keeps me healthy, happy, serene. When I am not those things, it is usually because of a problem of my own making that put me in a position to be hurt.

Are you articulating there that you've been rewarded for being public with your shame? Incredibly. And that was a choice to go from hiding, you were hiding and then- 1000%. And that choice was scary? 1000%.

To tell people nakedly, this is what addiction was for me. Correct. And I was in a position where there was an element about it that was, as my spiritual guru was in my 12-step program described to me, that was a form of service work, right? Because if I'm placed in this world where I started, well, I was placed in this world where I started to have a platform and I had to make a decision about how public I was going to be with this and the more that I kept it away from people the more not only was it secret-keeping for me because I wasn't living an honest and open life but I was missing out on the opportunity to help another person who

could look at me because on the outside I look bright and shiny, and if they heard that I was a suicide survivor, maybe they would say, oh my gosh, so what happened? I mean, if that was 33 years ago and this guy looks pretty happy and like he has a pretty nice life, and then they hear from me that I am pretty happy and I have a pretty nice life, then I get to tell them what happened and what that transformational moment was for me. Maybe it helps another person. And what I have found, especially when I do things like this and I have conversations about my life with another human being in a public way, right? Listeners are, we will change someone's life, probably many, many people's lives just by having this conversation. I get stopped every single day by someone who thanks me

because of something I said that helped them, a family member. It's your new addiction, right, to feed this particular thing and have these transformational moments daily, I would imagine. Well, you do start to benefit from it in such a regular way that it is like a lab mouse hitting that little dropper

in the cage that rewards them in some way, whether it's with sugar water or whatever. Yeah, I mean, I'm an addictive person. But that's not a placebo to connect with a human being in a way that makes you feel grateful and have gratitude for the person coming and willing to share the story to be awed by you. Why would this person take an interest in me? One hundred percent.

One hundred percent. You traded addictions and this is a much healthier one. It's a swap. One hundred percent. One hundred percent because I have not, and look addiction swapping which is something as a recovering alcoholic and drug addict I would tell I mean I do tell newcomers you know we have to slow our lives down so we are not addiction swapping alcoholism alcoholism and drug addiction will kill you faster than workaholism but workaholism will kill your relationships, right?

So you better tread lightly on those addiction swapping. You don't want to start picking up candy and cigarettes and putting down one thing and balloon up and get really sick. So I tell people, you know, what was told to me when I showed up, which was slow, slow it down. And I spent the first four, four or five years in slow mode. And then as my life started to build back up, I was able to have some perspective on the things that I was starting to do on a more regular basis. So I could meter my work all ism. I could meter out the tie. I didn't want to be

number one, a one-trick pony. I also would, it would be very boring for me personally to live a life where I was just preaching all the time, but selectively, absolutely yes. I am addicted to the concept of gratitude. The way I get that way is by sharing my story and doing service work puts life in perspective for me. And service work saved my life. I wanna get into that, but take us back to where it is that your life was that you arrived in 1990 to being evicted from an apartment.

And before that, I don't know what your family situation was that would allow you to be dabbling in drug use too early for most kids. I mean the really short story is you know family of a good family, well off, private school, you know, summer home, I mean, you know, one percenters for sure. You know, I, at a very early age, I already had the addictive personality and the way that manifested itself was in extreme selfishness and extreme selfish behavior. Everything was about me. Take, take, take, take, take.

And you know, when you're 10, being a user of people and a taker of things looks differently. You know, it's spoiled Brad, okay, he's amusing, nice. Can he be tender and real at times? Absolutely. But mostly he's acting out of self, right? But loving home, discipline home, like home.

Oh yeah, no, loving home, parents trying their best. I mean, you know, kids don't come with instruction manuals. I'm well aware of that as a parent. But yeah, my parents tried the best they could. Did they have issues that were unresolved? I mean, one of the things that I love about this new sort of mental health and wellness moment that we seem to be having in this

culture with so many people talking about it and it you know telling folks it's okay to not be okay is that we're gonna end some of the generational trauma that young people in my generation were victims of for sure because our parents were told to stuff that bad feeling down so when I ask you love great okay but when I ask you loving home, and again, I'm not being presumptuous, they're doing their best, and you're meeting them with the forgiveness of adulthood

and all the things that you've learned that makes you happier to let it go, because you don't wanna resent them for the mistakes they made. 1000%. But where they made the mistakes, like, I don't know how much discipline was in your home and how it is that you came, your, your, had you arrived at your teens yet when you're using?

Yes, I did. You're, you're very insightful. The term discipline is really, really interesting. You know, there, there is a balance of affection and direction that I think we try to use with our kids. I got very little direction and a ton of affection, which is great. You want to be loved and feel loved, but without direction, we can wander aimlessly and get into a lot of trouble. And if we are already predisposed to enjoy that trouble,

some people get into trouble, they're like, oh my God, that was so uncomfortable. I don't want to go near that again. You know, I call it the tequila syndrome. They get drunk on sweet, bad margaritas at some point. And they're like, I'm never touching tequila again, right? And I know adults like that. It's just like, nope, had a bad night with tequila

once in high school or college, like don't do it. And I find it fascinating because this is, in a way, sort of describing how normies are to people like me who are addicts and alcoholics. You know, I never would describe a bad experience on drugs and alcohol, because that was my wubby. That was my solution to things. And once I found, you know, I had some situations in my life

that I didn't want to have my brain be percolating on. You know, my mother got sick. My parents had divorced. I was nervous about high school. And I knew what would make me not feel that way was smoking weed and drinking. And very quickly, those two things did not scratch the itch enough. And so then it became pills and cocaine added into the mix.

And then we added heroin into the mix and hallucinogenics and on and on and on. And by the time I got to college, I was a full blown addict and alcoholic of immense proportions. And I actually had my first intake at a mental health center when I was 18 years old up in Poughkeepsie, New York. I went to Vassar College.

And they told me that I was chronic on the Jelonek scale, which is how they measure alcoholism and addiction, relatively quick 20-question test. And you answer yes to all those things. And it's like, wow, you're at the full end of the scale at 18 years old and but you can't tell an 18 year old that you know their path is gonna lead to you know jails institutions and death because at 18 we all think we're Superman right so I just kept going and gradually over the course of the next 12 years

until the time I was 30 and I got so I got clean The the elevator just kept going down through descending Levels of you know Dante circles of hell. I mean it was just really really awful now looking back on it I can see that when you're in it You don't see it as anything as a situation to quote-unquote manage You feel like you're in a small boat in an ocean with waves bigger than your mat You can't see over the next wave. So you're just dealing with the wave that's in front of you without a long-term plan It eventually led me to losing my home being evicted

And by the way, I I was enjoying a very successful career in New York City before my drugs and alcohol absolutely made me unemployable, which is about a year and a half before I went homeless. And I wound up, you know, squatting a building in lower Manhattan, no just casements in the windows, in the space where windows would be, pirating electricity from the brownstone two or three over from the one that we were squatting. And my biggest issue was stealing Comet Cleanser to sprinkle around the dirty pile of clothes

I passed out on every night so the rats and roaches wouldn't crawl all over me. You know, I would steal purses to survive. I would roll bums in alleys for bottles they had. I would, you know, roll rich guys coming out of nightclubs downtown. One in particular that was right by a very choice alley for it, because I knew that those people would have cash and credit cards and I would just wait across the street for someone who was stumbling and push them down on the ground and take their wallet. And it was, that's how I lived day to day and I saw nothing wrong with it. I was just trying to survive. Ultimately,

you know, realizing deep inside that I was losing this game of life. And rather than work to get out of the hole that I was in, I wanted to quit, right? And the longer I dwelled on that quit life, the longer that I dwelled on that, the more that turned into suicidal ideation. Eventually, I acted on it. I woke up one day in a in a Flophouse hotel that I had gone into with a fistful of barbiturates and a couple of bottles of, you know, warm pop of vodka. And I chugged them all and I woke up and I wasn't dead and apparently I'd been out for a couple of days and my intention was not to wake up and I don't know why. I mean I took enough barbiturates to kill someone twice my size.

I don't know why I survived that day, but I did and I picked up the phone and I did something that I had never done my whole life that everybody had told me was sort of the key to growing as a human being. And that was to look someone in the eye and say, I don't know how to do that, can you show me? Basically asking for help, right? I'd never done that in school, with parents,

with coaches, with anyone in my life, all the people who were there to help you as you grow up. I never took advantage of that at all. You were always retreating deeper and deeper into yourself. Yeah, 100%, 100%, because you couldn't tell me anything about me. I knew more than you.

Everything was self, self, self, self, self. I was better, and not only did I reject your opinions and your advice and any wisdom, and I was a terrible listener, but I also blamed you for all the problems that I had. You got the pretty girl, you got the better grades, you stole the attention of this group of friends. Whatever it was, other people were the problem.

It was always me not getting things at the party as opposed to what I was bringing to it. the attention of this group of friends. Whatever it was, other people were the problem. It was always me not getting things at the party as opposed to what I was bringing to it. The opposite of what you have now learned and lived in adulthood where you're walking around with gratitude, you're walking around with an assortment of negative energies and just chasing the next high because you're addicted. I've got a number of questions about what you just said, but when you talk about the household and I wouldn't have had access to getting that kind of addicted to anything

without people noticing before it got, this doesn't mean that my parents could have done anything, but I was just too afraid of disappointing them that maybe I would have also gotten grabbed, but people would have noticed very early on. So that's what I would have also gotten grabbed but people would have noticed very early on so that's what I'm asking you how no one noticed because there was no direction I had a sick mother who was basically invalidated by uh you know a surgery in a hospital gone wrong and a father who was living in an apartment downtown uh far away. I've learned today that my father, who's my

hero, ultimate hero in life, was also the person who abandoned me into that situation with my mother, which is okay for me to say today. It took me 20 years in sobriety to even realize that there was an abandonment in my life by him. And because I would never do that to my own kid and it were the situation reversed and it was a you know and looking back on that home situation 14 years old self will self-will run riot, it would be the best way to describe what was going on in my head and my behaviors. And without supervision, you know, horrific things developed. So there was that in very large amounts.

And you're lost out to see at what age with the drugs? 14, 15? 14. Okay. And you're lost out to see at what age with the drugs? 14, 15? 14. 14. Okay, so your high school experience involves, how functionally were you learning? Oh, very well. A lot of addiction and alcoholism

is characterized by a duality of lives, right? So on one hand, I was sinking further and further into my addiction and alcoholism and the behaviors that are associated with it, which are just as destructive. On the other hand, you know, nine to five, I am, you know, rock starring in great grades, president of my senior class, you know, you know, doing all the right moves in all the right groups doing all the right things. all the right groups, doing all the

right things. And by the way, a lot of really fun, great stuff was happening to me in high school. But my five to nine, so to speak, was a lot of delinquent behavior, you know, things I'm not proud of, a lot of drugs and alcohol use, and you know, what would have happened if I wasn't? Would I have even been more high achieving? Yeah, I would imagine so, but you know, I did well. I got into a good college,

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So tell me about where it is that the drugs, because you're a conqueror, right? You are high achieving. You are, I imagine you were at the time almost totally controlled by your mind and then the drugs allow you to not pay attention to the revving of your mind. That's right. And so you're talking about two totally different lives but functional until the drug problem caves in everything else. It was actually the alcohol problem.

And I mean that really specifically and it's why I think alcohol and I've said this a lot very publicly, I think alcohol is more dangerous than any drug I've ever, if alcohol was invented today, you wouldn't be able to buy it in stores. It's so dangerous. It would test out so dangerously at the FDA. It just wouldn't, it would be classified as heroin is classified. You just can't get it. I quit drugs about three years before I sobered up, about 18 months before the complete instability in the homelessness and all the rest of that.

And it accelerated my downward spiral. I was completely uncontrollable. My life was completely unmanageable on alcohol. On drugs, I was able to somewhat function, mostly because I was using a combination of uppers and downers to work. I could show up. I could, you know, pop a pill and be alert, quote unquote.

And I could show up for things. When I went solely on alcohol I my life just absolutely hurtled out of control four days five days of blackout that I would awaken from and You know look around say where where am I? I mean it was really really really really bad and the worst kind of really, really, really, really bad. And the worst kind of, you know, self-loathing. Alcohol brought out the absolute worst in me.

And when I was focused solely on that and drinking around the clock, I was unable, completely unable to function physically, mentally, obviously there was no spiritual life, no inwardly directed moral set of values. that's when things got really really really bad Okay, you've said though when things got really really really bad And I don't know how much shame you have that's unexplored because I've heard you you're very revelatory with the worst of these details and and in the

Storytelling you remember which are the ones that'll land most unpleasantly. So I don't even know, is there anything for you here that hasn't been shared? Like are there shames that are a bridge too far for you? No, no, I mean I have shared privately in recovery rooms, in certain environments the litany of worst of the worst. And I have no desire to get into glorifying that behavior by listing all of it out. But I was not aware that I did it.

But it's so fascinating that you mentioned this this because somebody asked me about this at dinner last night. I did an interview for a group called Think that creates videos for mental health and wellness support for people. And they came and interviewed me and I told them a story that wound up being in this cut They created a seven-minute video We're gonna put it up on my website and on my YouTube. I think next week I think folks can see it's think comm or think org. I really should know that But it's quite a compelling piece that they put together

They invested a lot of money in this. The animation alone in it had to cost a fortune. It's a really well done seven minute condensed version of my story. And in it, I talked about jerking a guy off in an alley for money when I was doing, when I needed money for heroin. And I realized that I had never told told that had never come out publicly before I think the way

The media works more people will probably know that now that I'm talking to you about it that we'll ever see it on think So when you talked earlier about the value of sharing these these details It is in there's I'm sure there are people out there who are just absolutely horrified listening to that but I know there are also men out there and women who will listen to that and say yeah I did that too for for some it were a version of that, that kind of behavior where you will cross every moral line to get, to prioritize your using is that, that jumping off place that we, we, as, as alcoholics and drug addicts in recovery, when we look back, we say, wow, that was another line

that I crossed. Oh, another year later, that was another line that I crossed. And in fact, it was those behaviors that year that made me think, all right, drugs bad, booze legal, I'll just do that. And it wound up, as I said, accelerating my downfall it's so interesting though for you to explore rock bottom of rock bottom i don't know what it is i don't know if there's anything worse than the shame of of of the loss of dignity that makes suicide a solution to stop the pain that's it that suicide

is the answer to my problems because I've quit on I can't navigate my problems. There are too many of them. I don't I am hopeless. It's overwhelming and you know I mean where did you get the sensitivity to that because most people aren't sensitive to that. To which part? The loss of dignity, the shame, the... All of that. I mean, it's not an... I mean, yes. I mean, could you could you absorb that intellectually? I mean, you're very empathetic. Yeah, I'm an empath, so I... and I also speak my feelings more than feel them

for the entirety of my life, So my curiosity is profound around people who are willing to tell you what they've learned from the darkest parts of their past. Because they shape you and they make it so that someone can walk around in life grateful for the human experience as, you know, age sets in and thoughts of mortality, you get to live a life that is more complete because it has the sharing of this story and a percent and the human connection that allows you you run all your businesses it the thing that you said one of the things that you said that landed on me hard though as somebody who is trying to get more and more access to his feelings is what all of this does to relationships because even now in

whatever it is that you're sharing of your life with others your ambition and your workaholic imbalances must make it very hard to still take care of others in relationships. It is. Every year I get better. It was a process to identify it. It was a process, you know, well, it was a sequence in my life. There was the first couple years that I was, you know, clean, I mean, before real sobriety kind of set in. My life was very simple. I worked from nine to five. I went to meetings.

I went home. I went to bed. There was no work-holism, there were also no relationships. There were also no bills coming to the house. You know, life, I wasn't in the complete flow of life. The more I inserted myself into the complete flow of life and became successful because I didn't have the drugs and alcohol to interfere, and because I had learned a different way of living and a different platform

on which, I mean physical platform, literal platform on which to predicate my life, things start to get good and you start to realize that, okay, sobriety is not a switch that's on-off. It's a dimmer. I mean, it slides. The room gets brighter and darker. And many times during the day, there's not on or off. Life has got a ton of gray. And so whenever I was confronted with a problem or something,

if I didn't wanna think about it as a chef in a restaurant at three, four, five, six, seven years clean, which is what I was doing for seven years in Minnesota, was I was a chef and partner in a very small restaurant group as I was kind of rebuilding my life, I could dive into work. I mean, restaurants are perfectly, day-to-day restaurant work is perfectly suited for that if you're part of the leadership team because you can find an excuse to be there early before everyone shows up and leave late after most people have gone and justify it, right? Oh, this is a job that you have to devote yourself 100% to.

I mean, devote yourself 100% to anything and there's no room for the rest of what life has to offer. And the older you get, you mentioned mortality. I think it's more about realizing, and I think it's probably the, you know, every year I have a different message for people, and I've realized kind of looking back at the last couple months, my message for people

does have a lot to do with my mortality, which is what do you want to spend your time on? Because when, you know Because when I die, which, you know, knock on wood won't be for a long, long, long time, people speak nicely of me, I hope, assuming that I die clean and, you know, I continue on the path that I'm on. I'm, you know, people will say nice things about me

when I'm gone. My possessions, you know, people will say nice things about me when I'm gone. My possessions, you know, will get divided up. My, you know, the pictures will be on people's walls. I'll be remembered fondly for a while until I'm not remembered at all, which is really, and I'm talking about on a regular, regular basis. You know, I, you, you, you will gradually fade from people's consciousness. And at the end of the day, you

know, how do I want to spend my time? Because accumulating the things is not going to do me any good when I'm gone. I need to be enjoying experiences now. So hanging out and taking a walk with my kid has probably taken on 20 times the importance today than it did a year ago. I mean, literally a year ago, because those are the things that I want to be doing more of while I'm still ambulatory and can take a walk. Well, I deflected your question and in deflecting it and realizing that I deflected it and doing what I do, I will better be able to answer your question

now that you asked me about how it is or why it is I get interested in people. It is an excellent way to avoid intimacy if you ask people about themselves because people are delighted to talk about themselves. And I am genuinely curious and that has been rewarded all my life in the reporting of details that make for my career and I get a lot of my identity from my career and it's how you become a workaholic. Like you can hide in all of those details. I realized some of that while at my brother's deathbed, right? Because you have to understand. So you grow up in a family of exiles,

it's just a small community of fear. It's one of the things people don't understand that's happening right now in America where all the divisions are. So your family is this big, and the way to get out of a family this big is to just work, work, work toward freedom, and that'll get you all the things you want in life.

And my brother did have many of the things through his arts, but burned through artistic, physical paint in a way that, you know, in just burning through his creative arts, feeding some of the selfishness, not paying attention to the places where you hide and become a workaholic, like just burnt like a comet through his life and in being next to him there

and having my old parents come over and them having procedures at a nearby place, like the frailty of light flapping on your shoulders when you're sitting at a bench with your dad and being like, was it worth it? Was it all worth it? Like, yeah, like you learn about what matters in life. But it doesn't stop me from wanting to achieve. Like, yeah, like you learn about what matters in life.

But it doesn't stop me from wanting to achieve. It doesn't stop me from getting the fulfillment that comes from having meaningful conversations that I can profit off of. Sure. Like, because this is- So you support your family. It's how you take care of yourself emotionally and mentally. I mean, there are a lot of healthy things about that. I mean, I always

describe it to young men and women that I mentor, especially in the recovery space, that, you know, we have all these metaphors for it. Stay in the center of the boat. Don't get near the edges. It's the same thing as driving down the center of the road. Stay as close to the center line of the highway. Don't start bouncing off the guard guard rails, right, in life. And it's difficult because sometimes life forces you to bounce off, sometimes that guard rail comes towards you. So it does become challenging, but we do seek out for some reason as human beings, there is an element of self-sabotage in all of us, right? It's just magnified, I think, in some of us.

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For additional terms and responsible gaming resources, see dkng.co slash audio. There's so many things I wanna do and see. Like redoing the basement without having to do it all myself. Or doing absolutely nothing. With a spectacular waterfall view of course. So I'm starting here investing with RBC. When it comes to reaching your goals

personalized advice and performance matter and now you can get $300 when you invest with RBC. Offer ends March 3rd 2025 terms and conditions apply. Invest with RBC today. Terms and conditions apply. Invest with RBC Today. What would you say you've learned through, I like these things to be a platform, it's obviously a broad question, but if you could point to one thing that ends with the most enlightened you that sits in front of us right now through everything he's lived and experienced. What do you feel is the highest form of learning that you've done? Oh wow, what a great question. Well, if I had to pick one concept that was specific but touched the three, four, five biggest things that are guideposts for me. It's very hard to pick, you know, we don't look at one star and say I'm going to navigate towards that. Stars are too far away. We need to have a cluster of stars we need it's a grouping I have I think it's it's

learning to be the dog my goal in life every day when I get up is more and more to try to be the dog the dog is pure empathy, pure empathy. I mean, even Hitler had a dog. You know, you know, think of the worst person, you know, they have a dog, that person comes home, they sit on the couch, the dog jumps up in their lap and puts their head down and is just with that person. That's what that's what dogs are their pure empathy. And I have learned that I don't have to fix your problems. I don't have to judge you. I don't have to do anything in

life but just be with you. And if I am really just with you I mean there's that beautiful moment in the in the movie Big Night and you know Stanley Tucci is and Tony Shalhoub are in that kitchen and Tony Shalhoub just makes scrambled eggs for them all their plans have gone awry they're going to lose everything, but you kind of are left with the feeling that they won't. They're gonna figure a way out of this because they're finally just with each other. The movie ends with the two of them in silence

eating scrambled eggs and toast, right, in that movie. And there is an element of being the dog there that is so beautiful. And in that piece of film sort of capsulizes everything that I'm talking about. But if you can just be the dog with someone, you have incredible access and incredible ways to touch each other in relationship.

And I've got a really short example for you. You're in a relationship. Your significant other that you live with comes home, walks in the door, hot. I mean, red hot, anger, swearing, slamming doors, throwing bags. I lost my phone, you know, the dog ran away. I think I'm gonna get fired. My new boss is a jerk and there's a lot happening.

There's a lot happening. And I turn to that person and I say, well, did you ask the security guard at work if they found your phone? And the thing was like, you know, up yours. I don't I'm an adult. I don't need you to solve my problem. Of course I talk to the security guard. I'm just venting. I need my best friend.

You know, screw you. You are not connecting as human beings. If that person comes in and does the same thing and I say, sit down and I go into the kitchen and I get a glass of water I put it down and I turn to them I said that sounds awful what else happened and I just let them like oh well better than I talked to security I did this did that and it's like you know thank you for listening thank you for just being there for me we we see examples in space for it all the time to be the dog. We just don't,

we want to, you know, I call it operationalizing before co-regulating, right? You have to co-regulate with someone first and then operationalize. If I tell you what to do before we're co-regulated, my advice is meaningless. Well, I would say, I don't know if I think I can be generalized about this, but I know I've lived it. The idea that if I don't live in my feelings and I'm male and not self-aware about where it is that I'm male, I have blind spots about maleness, then of course I'm going to lapse into just problem-solving or how do I'm going to lapse into just problem solving

or how do I fix this as opposed to just feeling whatever needs to be felt. All you're articulating about what you've learned through your life's journeys is human connection, really value it, just really treat it as a treasure. Any opportunity you get to have human connection. By the way, that human connection is the essence of my storytelling you get to have human connection. By the way, that human connection

is the essence of my storytelling. And it is the thing that I hear back the most from fans about my TV work, right? I mean, very few people relatively taste my food, buy my products, do the other things that I do. But in groups of millions of people, they see my weekly TV work that I put out now, and a very large number of people collectively

have seen the eight or nine TV shows that are up on the HBO Max. You make a lot of content. You make a lot out of, you have learned, you have learned through radio, through storytelling, through the connection points that allow you to tell someone how many different ways they can arrive home angry and not connect with their other.

You have learned the art of connecting with human beings. It's your craft. Yes, and on television, that is what people, when they say, oh, you're so respectful to other people, or I can go with you anywhere on that journey or I will watch any piece of content that you put out, whether it's talking through a recipe because of the story that I tell that goes along with it or whether it's a six hour docu-series on MSNBC like What's Eating America or even stuff that I produce, the Hope in the Water, the PBS series that we made, docu-series that came out last summer, is a great example of that.

I'm not in it, but as the owner of the company that made the series, it is infused with our DNA. Because the people who I work with, who are my colleagues in that business, they are phenomenal carriers of the messages that we try to weave. And it is such an interesting thing to have that spat back at you by friends and fans alike,

where inside I'm thinking to myself, okay, that was good. I was able to connect that way with people. People don't, you know, we don't have it written out in a lower third or graphic that crawls across the bottom of the screen. But I, you know, I've written about this and talked about this a lot. It's like, you know, food is good. Food with a story is better. Food with a story that

you haven't heard about is better than that. But food with a story you haven't heard about that you can relate to is the best of all. And that was Bizarre Foods, it was Delicious Destinations, it was Zimmern List. Some of my other work that isn't necessarily always about food is, you know, because we've stretched a little bit

at our production company. We do, I mean, the company itself produces a lot of different types of shows and not just in the food space but with the stuff that I do it's not always no but you're you're you're a you're a mercenary merchant about understanding that you can tell I've learned this mm-hmm I can tell all the stories through sports you can tell all the stories through percent I do it through hardware and so could you you. You either have that storytelling, Gene,

or you don't. You've just chosen the world of sports and competition. I mean, without breaking down everything that you do, what I love about sports, because I'm a sports geek, it's how I discovered your show years and years and years ago. And we talked about this a little bit or hinted at it both on and off air when I did your,

that other show with you a couple of weeks ago. Yeah. The podcast, yeah, the Daily Show. It is, I love sports because you can get every itch scratch, you can tell every kind of story through it. The human drama in sport is great. The human drama in our food world is great, because I can talk about international relations,

national and international security, voter suppression, climate crisis. I mean, every story that I wanna tell, I can tell through food. That's my, food is my tool. Sports is your tool, but we tell the same kinds through food. That's my, food is my tool, sports is your tool, but we tell the same kinds of stories. It's the same stuff.

I was watching, you know, I follow so many different sports things on my phone and now my phone knows what I like. You know, all the AI stuff that's integrated into these social media platforms and on our devices. So I turn on my laptop or my phone and it's throwing stuff at me that I love, which for an addict I can sit there for hours watching, you know, the right kind of little videos and I yell at my kid for spending five minutes on his phone.

But that's great. I saw last night that someone was counting down like greatest moment in sports and what came in at number two was the the Korean Winter Olympics, the cross-country ski race where that we had never been on the podium in cross-country skiing. It was Sweden, Norway, Sweden, Norway, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Finland, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Finland, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Norway. And you know, which is great if you love herring, which I do, but you know, US had never done

it. And what was her name? Diggins, the young who wound up getting the gold medal. And she was third by like 10 yards over the last, know quarter mile and you just watch her digging deep and she it's that famous picture where she's sticking her foot out like stretching doing a split to get her tip of her ski across the line and squeaks out the gold and then collapses literally collapses having spent every ounce of energy and I hadn't seen it in years.

And it's a little 35, 40 second clip of the end of that race at night. And you can see that the Scandinavian skiers are kind of coasting to victory at one point. And she has to physically get up this little hill and then physically catch up getting down. And you're just like, there's no way, there's no way she's going to do this and she does and you could talk about everything about life in that moment

everything the same way that if you serve me a bowl of soup I can tell you everything about that culture and we can talk about our food system in America if you serve me a bowl of minestrone I'll break it down for you that way. It is one of the many things that makes you an artist in the culinary world. What do you remember? Because Bourdain was happening at about this time, but what do you remember about November of 2006? That is when the pilot episode of the first

of 140 episodes of Bizarre Foods, that day, what do you remember about it airing, the pilot? Oh my gosh, disaster. It's very funny and my pride always talks about this. The network, in an effort to promote other seasons of Bizarre Foods, would call them different things. So we made 140 episodes of Bizarre Foods, but we made 140 episodes of Bizarre Foods, but we made 40 episodes of Bizarre World

that was the same show. We made 80, 90 episodes of Bizarre Foods America, which is just the domestic stuff, because you want the press to report on it. There's nothing new about a new season, season eight of Bizarre Foods. There's nothing new there to get PR and marketing out of at any earned media. So we would call it something different, which is saying I always have to

clarify for myself because I have to remember how really how privileged it doesn't come from a place of ego. It's just that there's hundreds and hundreds of hours of that show and hundreds, I mean, 400 episodes of Delicious Destination, something ridiculous. And that's just my first two shows, right? When the very first show came out, it was Morocco aired, the first three were Morocco, Spain, Ecuador. And I was so proud and I was like, I can't believe I'm on TV.

And by the way, the network only bought the first 10 episodes, right? And you're just so lucky to get there. And so few people get to that point, even fewer get a second season, right? I mean, it just doesn't happen. To be doing what we do for as long as we've done it is super rarefied air, right?

And I just remember being overwhelmed with happiness, but also overwhelmed with this feeling of, please let me do more of these. The joy, the personal satisfaction, the adventure of traveling. I mean, mean the selfish the healthy selfishness part of it. Oh my gosh I'm doing things on someone else's dime that only television can this is the This what yours this is the this is the height of what all of your addiction could manifest Purdue and I had no idea Except you're looking back on it that actually 25 years later when I made What's Eating America, I was like,

oh no, no, no, that's the apex, right? I mean, it just, the goalposts keep moving, right? If I had been satisfied with stopping at the first season of Bizarre Foods and just said, you know something, I've reached my dream, I'm putting, you know, it's like, you know, knives down. That's it. The buzzer has gone off. I would have undersold myself, but I, the next week,

what's really, really, really interesting is how lucky we get in life, because the next week, the show rated exactly the same number, which was a very small number. Very few people watched the first episode of Bizarre Foods. Very few people watched the first episode of Bizarre Foods. Very few people watched the second episode of Bizarre Foods. What networks look at is episode number three.

If it hasn't caught fire by then, they're not gonna buy a second season, especially in the unscripted lifestyle space, which is the space that I occupy. And so week three, we had a lot riding on it. And the number came in, it aired that third Monday of the season, we did not get a great number. It was a few percentage points lower,

ratings points lower than weeks one and two, which I think were the same, identical numbers. And that means the audience is not coming back. It means you're not growing audience. It is the episodic number they look at. And all I'm thinking is, well, it was, I mean, I got that first year. I'm gonna have to think about what the next show

I wanna sell is, if I wanna keep doing this, what else would I wanna do? How do I take this first season and get a book deal? I mean, all that stuff is going through my mind. Phone rings Wednesday morning. It's the Jay Leno show, Booker from the Jay Leno show, and says, we saw this clip that was sent around of you in episode three getting spat on,

lit on fire, having your whole body break out in hives because you're beaten with these poisonous bushes. They were beating guinea pigs, live guinea pigs against your chest until the guinea pigs died, hitting you so hard with a live animal. In this shamans, basically a brujera, an exorcist, exorcised demons from me in a small little town called Urvalo in Ecuador. And we put it in the show, and I had actually made that scene happen.

It was me, a producer, and her boyfriend, later husband. Great television, indisputably great television. You know it when you're making it, and now J. Lowe, Leno knows it, and soon America shall too. And then Friday I go on the Leno show, you know, we weren't supposed to be shooting that. Everyone was on lunch break.

I'm walking around. I'm curious. I go in, I realize I can pay this guy $5. He'll perform an exorcism on me. I'm like, Shannon, Mike, let's shoot this. They said, okay, begrudgingly at first and then way into it. And, um, we stuck with this for a couple of hours and skip what we're supposed to shoot that afternoon. A year and a half later, the Leno show calls me because they see

it. And that Friday night I'm on the tonight show and you get that. And as someone who grew up watching Johnny Carson, I'm just waiting to hear the words, Oh my God, you're fantastic. We've run out of time. Will you come back? And Jay says that to me, and I just was like, oh my God. And I had a sense, I really did have a sense, because I'd grown up with the Carson show,

and I had watched the Jay Leno show a lot, as America did back in those days. Oh my God, I said, this is going to something's going to change. The next week, the ratings numbers went through the roof. Tony's book came out that week and they had us on back to back nights. So you could settle in on travel channel and there was a two hour block later a three hour block with our reruns alternating shows and then double stack our reruns. You had four hours of Zimmern and Bourdain and it was for three years, I mean we pulled some numbers that

were equal to Monday Night Football, you know after season two, season three. You're not, you're ushering in right? Food is content, I mean you're not... But not standing in a kitchen. network. Remember at the time was not doing competition shows. This is 2007 8 9 Food Food Network had no competition shows. It was you know chef standing behind a cutting board You know, you know Emeril and all of those great chefs great friends of mine doing great TV But it was all, I mean, Emeril Live was the most adventurous thing. Emeril had a lot of ego.

I've told this story before on this show. The reason that I did the BAM introduction on Pardon the Interruption is because one night he had come over, it was a charity dinner, and he'd come over, and at his restaurant, he comes over and he asks us if everything was okay at the table, and I'm an idiot. And so the person I was with, she had asked for a vegan dish that hadn't come out yet. And I just said, well, and he

got, he didn't like it so much. I'd insulted the great, the great chef. And so, Oh my gosh, some of the stuff that we do. He is a wonderful human being and an amazing, an amazing parent and an amazingly... I'm just saying he took his chef... Oh, no, no, no, I do it all the time. It was my mistake. I'm not saying he's an asshole.

I'm just saying that for years I did BAM on television to make fun of him because I thought it was wrong. I didn't take it that way. We get caught up in the night. Like, I do that stuff all the time. When people come up to me and they say, oh, well, this is actually, I met you four or five years ago, I often, really, my lips to God's ears, I will oftentimes say to them, was I nice or was I a jerk? Because sometimes in the moment, someone, people have

said to me their version of, well, this dish didn't come out or, you know, my sea bass is cold. And they've insulted the great James Beard award-winning. Yes. Don't short me. Four of them. You've made him nice. You've made somebody nice food. Yeah. And their response is, could have used some more garlic.

Of course, which is why I'm a nice Jewish boy from New York City. In restaurants, I would always do a second Seder in them. I love cooking my grandmother's Seder menu, because it's traditionally a really dead night in the restaurant business. And I realized it's the toughest crowd in the world because no one's chicken soup, even if mine is twice as good as your grandma's,

is better than your grandma's, because it's what you grew up on, even if it's dish water. So I realized I was competing. I would go table touching, how is everything? It's okay. And that's what you would So I realized I was competing. I would go from, I'd go table touching, how is everything? It's okay. You know, and that's what you would hear because everyone was like, well, you know, my grandmother would always put carrots in her soup. And I'm like, well, there are carrots in the broth, we strain them out. And then we want to do something a little. And I realize, oh my God, it's, it's not working. It was, it's one of the reasons I think that Tony wound up just cooking

for friends and family and sort of never went back into that space because you leave yourself open for too much other stuff. It's kind of safer to be on TV. What was your relationship with Anthony? We became really good friends. Were you competitive though? I would imagine. Of course, 100%. The first couple of years, 100%. As a matter of fact, I'm always reminded of it because we had our big sort of friendship breakthrough where it kind of went to a much better level.

Down here, the first year he ever did South Beach, which I had been doing for a while, where he asked me to come out during his demo, which was basically he did this Wonder Wheel thing where he spun this wheel and, you know, he would answer questions from the audience depending on what was going on on this wheel and some other things were going on.

And I came out and he put his arm around me and said publicly how much he admired what I did, because we told the same stories and we loved the same things and we were, you know, sons from different mothers, brothers from different mothers. But he was a man, he made a very funny joke about it. He said, you know, I eat the walrus anus and so do you, except you have to do it sober. He said, which is, he said, which is why, you know, I, you know, mad respect for you. And it was really, really interesting because, you know, we were on Monday night together. We built that travel channel.

I mean, we really did. I mean, I can look back on it now and say that again without Having to apologize for it that you know our Monday night allowed them to spread out the the content wheel across the other weeknights and bring on a Half dozen other shows that did really is there some discomfort for you and having some public pride about all of that You're allowed to have public- 100%. Why? Oh my God, because it would be acknowledging that I've actually achieved something. Okay, but you did, okay.

I know, but it's like I'm- You're not allowed to have ego about that? You're not allowed to say so? No, because I'm scared if I get too much ego about where it's gonna take me. It's not about acknowledging that, you know- Isn't there self-love there though? Like in being proud of yourself? Should be, I'm just not, you know. Isn't there self-love there though? Like in being proud of yourself?

Should be, I'm just not, you know, I'm not, you know, I've feet of clay. I'm still frail in different parts of my life. But the point is I am okay today when people, someone said to me, well, you and Bourdain built that channel. And I was like, in my head, I'm like, just say thank you, just say thank you. Don't argue, just say thank you. And I finally just said, thank you.

Five, six years ago. And, and, and I've been able to say thank you and, and acknowledge that we did do that. Uh, and then they put us on different nights to kind of stretch the slate as it were. It's just network strategy for growing audience. It worked. Tony stayed on Monday. I went to Tuesday. I brought my audience over. They could put other shows underneath me and just grow a night. And then they take that person I grew and put them on Wednesday. I mean, so it's a long term, decade long strategy to grow the network, which they did. And, But we really made that for them.

And when they put me on Tuesday night, we became very competitive. And people always, you know, you're the two best shows on Travel Channel, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we sort of had the same content wheel. So our competition started to become, who's gonna get to Cuba first?

Who's gonna get to North Korea first? Who's gonna get to Syria first? You know, and we would call each other on the phone and kid each other about it, but you'd hang up and you'd be like, I'm going to get, you know, we got to get our visas before Bourdain does. Do you like competition? The reason I ask the question- I'm insanely competitive.

You are still insanely competitive? Insanely competitive. I have found that later in life, I have found that that is less helpful than it used to be. Much less helpful, but I mean, even if we're playing darts, people say to me, what kind of sports do you like to play? And I always say anything where I can keep score. Because even if you beat me 90 to 60,

I'm like, okay, there's a benchmark. Next time you'll beat me 90 to 70, and the next time it's gonna be a toss up, right? I'm just gonna practice, I'm gonna figure it out, I'm gonna, and it's what I love, it's what I love about life or those little, little competitions and scorekeeping, however I can go into a dangerous place with it where it is much less helpful. I was just going to ask you whether moderation is a governor in any of these places, because it sounds like in the places that you jump in you just got a clamp it on there

and realized that I don't have to just keep pushing pushing pushing pushing but I asked about Bourdain and competition is was your relationship able to get into the place where you and he would talk about percent the the deepest of the stuff so that you would have a unique access. At a certain point after that South Beach thing we got together, we got together with our kids, we got to know each other a lot better, we were able to talk about the issues that we were having in life as opposed to just our work or you know you just go to that next level of relationship

with somebody. And it was a, and in fact, the very last time I saw him was down here at South Beach Wine and Food Festival, the year that he passed, that he killed himself. And, you know, I was working when that happened and it was a very, very, very difficult day, a very tragic day, but I was able, because we were close friends, I was able, with dignity for him, to address, because of my own experience with my for him to address, and because of my own experience

with my own mental health issues, to talk about an aspect of his life that other people could not address because they did not have suicide as a event in their own life. As someone who is a, what's the best way to describe it? I'm not recovering from it. It is an act that is no longer an issue for me. But as someone who had those feelings and acted on them and tried to take his own life, I think I had an understanding of what was going on there

that other people didn't. So... The question I was asking you, if you also had an access to what kind of pain he was in, the two things so that you're... Yes and no. So that you're... Yes and no.

Yes and no. I heard things come out, I mean, we all hear things come out of friends' mouths where we're like, you really believe that? What? I mean, that's not cool, bro. And there were aspects of life and relationship that he would express joy or concern about where you remember I talked before about staying in the center of the

lane and not hitting the guardrails where you see a friend hitting guardrails, but I didn't put it all together. And, and I should, I hate to shoot on myself, but I didn't put it all together. And I hate to shoot on myself, but I guess a better way to say it is you would think with my background and what I've experienced in my own life that I would have been more aware of the pain that he was in because nobody goes around broadcasting it. We all have that TV commercial idea of depression where the sad music goes on, the camera dims, maybe it goes

to black and white. And you know, that's not how life works. That's not how life works. And that's not how depression manifests itself all the time. It's not like the TV commercial. And I am so repulsed by it. And it makes me so fucking angry to see it that commercial after commercial has the face of suicide depression is a 20-something year old woman sitting on the edge of a made bed head down with sad music playing because that's not how it manifests itself that's how a a a commercial will symbolize it in an effort to get more people to buy that drug, right? Which really hospitals and doctors. I mean, some people, you know, watch a commercial

and go to a doctor and say, can I get this medicine? But very few. You're really trying to sell to a very small audience, but they're going to buy in very large numbers. You're enraged by the manipulation of mental health. The portrayal of it, which is why I love saying, I have all of these issues and I'm a suicide survivor, and looking at you, but you're so happy and successful. I'm like, yes, you can be both. And by the way, I'm in recovery.

I am active in my recovery. That's why I'm happy and productive, and it's why I'm joyous and free. And the minute I cease to be active in my own recovery, I give up that joyfulness and that freedom but with with Tony what when when he would tell me about the new relationship with the woman or the feeling of not being there for his daughter or issues in

his relationship with his daughter's mother and both when they were married and not there are daughter's mother and both when they were married and not. There are, you know, looking back at it, I'm like, oh my gosh, there we go. You know, that was something that I, as a friend, I realized that there were so many gifts. You know, one of the things that I have to practice

is trying to find something that justifies sadness in life. When there's something like that. And it took me years to remember that what I need to be talking about when people ask me about Tony's death is not fetishizing it. It's not telling stories, oh, look at me, I was a friend of his and everybody, he was the most magnetic person I've ever met in my life.

I mean, he is worshiped, and rightfully so, in a way that is reserved only for our greatest of people in our culture, and very deservedly so. However, I have to also remember that rather than fetishizing that and talking about it in a way that makes me look good, I need to take the messages of what that experience taught me to help other people. And there are so many things in there. You asked before when we started this conversation about the things that motivate me to be more open and more

revealing about my life. It's not only because I don't want to go back to that really dark place where I was when I tried to take my own life, but it's also because I can use those things to help other people. And, you know, I mentioned that an hour ago when we were talking, but it's really underscored when we talk about things like Tony's death,

which by the way is one of the things we will look at. It's all those suicides. Remember, you know, we will never know. I mean, Robin Williams, Philip Seymour Hoffman, how many actor, Heath Ledger, right? Discovered with drugs by his bed, right? Do we, Matthew Perry, were those, were those acts of people taking their own lives? For someone like me, they are, because those people knew the behaviors, right, could lead to jails, institutions, and death. Knew it. Were they doing it consciously?

We will never know, right? Those people died alone. You know, Whitney Houston, same thing. Was it an attempt, was she trying to take her own life? Or was it just simply an overdose? She happened to be in the bathtub. We will never know. But those are things that, and I'm specifically mentioning public people because when I'm

talking to other people, I can use that because it's a common reference point. Again, not fetishizing, trying to use it to help other people to point out that we don't know what's going on and in those moments when you're alone it is reaching out and asking for help rather than keeping all those things stuff down that's gonna wind up saving lives. Thank you for the work that you do. I am sure that many people will find your honesty helpful. So thank you as always for being as open as you are with the things that you're open about.

Oh, well, I appreciate that. Thank you. I appreciate the platform to be able to talk about it. You know, I truly believe that the more, you know, sunshine that we throw in all this stuff, the fewer problems we're gonna have in this area and that society has taught us that looking good is something to be prioritized when in fact I think being vulnerable is what should be prioritized. We need to make being vulnerable something that is a regular part of our lives.

Look, I've got to, look at this, I've spent all of this on tissues just so that vulnerability can be showcased here. Just in case, that's exactly right. And I've got to, look at this. I spent all of this on tissues just so that vulnerability can be showcased here. That's exactly right. And I didn't use a one of them. Not a one. Useless. The whole thing was useless. Didn't get what I craved the most. We just saw the All-Star Game in basketball and it was great, but you know what would

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