The Joe Rogan Experience - #1702 - Laurie Woolever

Episode Date: August 26, 2021

Laurie Woolever is the author of "Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography," and a co-host of the "Carbface for Radio" Podcast.

the Joe Rogan experience the Joe Rogan experience train by day Joe Rogan podcast by night all day oh hi Lori hi how's it going pleasure to meet you

thank you same to you I tried watching the Bourdain documentary but I just got too sad I couldn't do it did it feel weird did you watch it Roadrunner oh yeah yeah yeah did it feel weird when you knew that the voice was AI sort of a recreation of his words it didn't feel weird to me because honestly it was less than 45 seconds in a two-hour film oh okay so no it didn feel weird. I knew exactly where one of the places was that it was the A.I., but the vast majority of that film is Tony's actual voice. And I think that really got lost in the discussion. Oh, it certainly did. Yeah. I was under the impression that the whole thing was that's how people are. They're so gross. I always want to find the one thing that's negative about yeah yeah it really bummed

me out because that was the that was the dominant conversation on opening weekend and it really kind of took away for me from you know the it's a beautiful film i was a uh consulting producer so obviously i have a dog in the fight and i want people to love the film but i think it's i think it's great it is really sad how far into you get? I just started it and I shut it off. Yeah. Yeah. I just got too sad. Just maybe it was my mood that day.

I just wasn't I just wasn't ready to watch something like that. I was just like, I can't do this. Yeah, I understand. You know, I've been steeped in all things Tony for, you know, over a decade. But since he died, I've been making these books and working on the film and talking about him. And so I've kind of got, I think, a layer of numbness in a way, but sometimes stuff gets through. The first time I saw the film, I cried like a baby, but I was home by myself. I was really glad to be alone, you know.

There's always this feeling when someone takes their own life, like, if I could have just talked to them. Like, if I was there, if I could have talked to them. That's, you know, I talked to David Cho, and he had that same take on it, you know. It's just, you just don't know. you know, you feel like you fucked something up. Like you feel like it's just, it's, there's no, there's no, there's no peace. You know, if you're always, if I think about him, I, I, I just always think like, what a shame. What a shame. You know?

Like a guy who was so interesting and so loved, you know. I found out about it from Maynard Keenan from Tool. Do you know the story? I listened to you talk to Tom Papa right after Tony died. So, yeah, he made kind of a joke, right? Yeah, Maynard's a funny guy. And he was joking around. He said that he knew that Tony was really into jiu-jitsu,

and Maynard really into jiu-jitsu too. And he's like, we should have a celebrity match. That would be awesome. And he was talking about it and then he texted me and said I guess the celebrity match is off and I was like what does that mean like I guess he just assumed that I would have already known about it but I was in Chicago and I had just woken up so then I googled it and I was just like oh yeah that Yeah, that's not a great way. I mean, there's no good way to find out that news, but that sounds like a particularly painful way to hear it. It was confusing, you know.

It's painful, but it's almost like it's painful later. In the beginning, it's just like. Shock. You're baffled. Like, how? What? Not there anymore. Like, this person's just like shock. You're baffled. Like how? What? Not there anymore. Like this person is not there anymore.

Like if I text him, it's not there. I have a phone that I won't get rid of because it has text messages from him. It's like I can always go back and look at them. Yeah. Yeah. Same. I have I'll never get rid of my last texts with him. I mean, it's, and what you were saying about, you know, you just wish you could have done

something. I mean, believe me, that is, that is a conversation I have had with so many people. And I think to myself, like if I had just been a little more, I don't know, something, if I had said, if I had said something or if I had been more supportive or, you know, I just, I knew he was in trouble that week, but I didn't, it never occurred to me that he would take that action that he did. And the fact is he had a lot of people around who were very close to him, who loved him. And he had other people that were offering to come and be with him because they knew he was having a hard time that week.

And he said, no, don't come. So it's. Why was that week so particularly hard? He was. There was some stuff in the media with with him and his girlfriend that was, you know, not great. You know, he was very, very in love. And I think there was some. I mean, I'm not saying anything that isn't public record.

And I'm always hesitant to talk too much about all of that. But it's out there. It was in the Italian press and maybe the French press that his girlfriend had been maybe or maybe not with another guy. There were a lot of pictures that made it look not great. And I think that was really hard not great. And I think that was really hard for him. And, you know, you'll see they talk about it. It gets talked about in the film. It gets talked about in my book. You know, I think he was deeply in love. And I think he was realizing that this relationship maybe wasn't what he thought it was or that it just,

I think he felt humiliated honestly you know and I mean that's a hard that's a hard thing for a private person to metabolize and then you know you're extremely public person who has been extremely public about this relationship I think it was a lot for him to handle in that week. Yeah. There's not much you can do when that happens in terms of like talking to a friend, like words just don't work. Yeah. You know, like they don't, you know, you're not going to absorb them. Yeah. It's, uh, you know, it's, I don't know that someone, I don't know that a normal thing someone I don't know that a normal thing. I don't know that a normal reaction to romantic trouble is to take your own life.

You know, clearly there's you know, there are plenty of people who have trouble in their relationships who stay alive. You know, he was a really complicated guy. He was a really I think, as public as he was, and as much as he shared about the way that his mind and his heart worked, I think there was a lot that he didn't share. And I think he was more troubled and more lonely and sad than I think any of us knew at the time. You know, in the intervening three years, I've learned a lot more about him. And I thought I knew him inside and out.

I was his assistant for 10 years. You know, we wrote a book together. I had done some traveling with him, not extensively, but I did a handful of trips over the years. You know, we were in contact every day. And, you know, when I started to talk to people after he died, there was just a lot more to him, a lot more to his story. Yeah, whenever anybody recovers from a serious drug problem, but yet still parties, I was always like, hmm, how's he pulling that off? Like the first time I hung out with him, I knew that he had gotten over the heroin thing but I didn't quite realize how hard he drank I was like whoa yeah yeah was that in Montana no that was later that was after I'd known him for quite a while I mean I think the first time I hung out with him was in Vegas pretty sure um it was when he was married to Octavia

and um they were uh there for the UFC and I met him backstage okay it was like wow it was interesting it was one of the few people that I've met that I was like a little starstruck I said something really clunky because uh like one is to do when they meet someone they really admire. My wife always used to say that he's my boyfriend because I would watch No Reservations all the time. She was like, oh, you're watching your boyfriend. And so I said, oh, my wife says you're my boyfriend. And he was like, what the fuck? He was so good at giving you that look.

Like I've said a couple of real stupid things to him too and I'll just never forget I we were standing in the telephone store you know trying to upgrade my phone and I was you know kind of new to the job and nervous and I was like oh what the what are we going to talk about for 10 minutes you know so I just said how do you decide like who to respond to on Twitter and he just gave me this look like are you the fucking stupidest person I've ever met in my life? You know, and I know he respected me and I know he liked me, but I was just like,

Oh God, sorry. It's actually not a bad question. Yeah. I just, I don't know. He just was like, I don't know.

He just, the look on his face was just like, Oh man, I should have just kept my mouth shut. And actually David Simon told me a similar story that, you know, David Simon, the creator of the Wire and Treme,

and really smart, articulate, funny guy. And he told me that he said something to Tony that he just got that look, that like, you're a fucking idiot look. And it didn't ruin their friendship, but it made an impact. Yeah. I got really excited when Tony got into jiu-jitsu because i'm like well now we have something really in common that i'm really good at so now we could talk you know it's like i'm sure you were probably an influence i mean atavia obviously was the biggest influence but i'm sure you know knowing that you did it too was another you know another strong reason to

to get involved with it well Wow, that's very nice. I'm happy that that's the case, if that's the case. It was really interesting to watch him. It's very rare that a person is deep in their 50s and has lived a fairly sedentary lifestyle, certainly not athletic, certainly not like... Jiu-jitsu is a difficult endeavor.

It's not like taking up squash which maybe squash is hard too I don't know I've never played squash but it's not like it's it's very intimate where someone is literally practicing killing you and you're trying to resist that and so to watch him get really into it and then to watch him watch his personality sort of like shift into that there's a sort of a jujitsu mindset that you get when you start doing it all the time you start training you start building confidence and you start like getting really into it like he was fucking into it like when we did that trip in mont Montana he was asking me questions and we started doing I was demonstrating shit on him in the dirt like we were in the dirt and I'm like when you're in this position and we're like going over stuff like on the ground yeah in Montana I'm like that's how

into it he was like he was really he wanted to ask questions he wanted to go over moves I was like wow you're like you're really all in. Yeah, it was. I think Mo Fallon, I think, said this to you, and he said it in the film and in the book as well. But if you weren't, like I was not into jiu-jitsu, it did not matter. Tony would just talk to you about it anyway. You just have to be like, uh-huh, uh-huh, either feign interest or feign an emergency and get out of there. Because it's just at a certain point. And then he was trying to get you recruiting everyone.

He was successful. He got a lot of his crew into it. And he's like, do you think you would ever do it? After he's telling me about like, you know, your nose is basically in somebody's asshole and you've got like blood under your nails, you know, and it's disgusting. And I'm like, sounds great.

I'm going to stick to yoga and weight training. Thank you. But I did make my kid do it. Oh, yeah? And it was totally because of Tony. I was like, well, I'm not going to do it. But I will, you know, get the eight-year-old involved. Oh, that's a good age.

That's a good age to start. They're all limber and flexible. Yeah, my kids got into it early on, but then they got bored. And they found girly things to do. But they enjoyed it in the beginning. And they still know some stuff, like what to my kid hated it really yeah i just and i was like you're gonna do this you know how expensive this is yeah i just i made him do it for like i don't know six months and then it was clear that like i mean he didn't hate it to the point where he was like crying but

like he did have a couple of like anxiety stomach aches the car, and I'm like, suck it up. At some point, I'm like, what am I doing? Yeah, I think it's very bad to force anything on kids. I don't force anything on kids. I try to make them finish what they start just so that they have this thing. Like, okay, I started this. I'm going to finish it. I committed to being at these practices. I'm going to show up.

But then when it's over, it's over. Yeah. You know, but that's other than that, you know, it's you just get a kid that's resentful. Yeah. And then they whatever this thing that you're trying to get them to do that might have some real benefit to them. They're never going to realize that benefit or it's going to be harder for them to realize that benefit. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Totally. I realized like this is not the way to like get a raise or, you know, get a promotion with Tony. Like he actually doesn't give a shit if your kid does jujitsu. So let him play baseball like he wants to do.

When did you like how did your relationship with him start? How did your working relationship start? So I had been Mario Batali's assistant for a number of years, like in the late 90s, early 2000s. And Mario and Tony became friends sort of at the same level of rising celebrity in New York, in the restaurant world and in media. And I was leaving the job with Mario. in media. And I was leaving the job with Mario and Tony asked him if he knew anybody that could help him with a cookbook that he was starting to work on. It's called Anthony Bourdain's Layal Cookbook. It was his first cookbook. And Mario recommended me and Tony kind of hired me sight unseen, I think, because, you know, if I worked for Mario, then I was that was like a seal

of approval for him. So he, that, that was our first time working together was I did recipe editing and testing on that cookbook. I think we met in person probably twice. Everything was on email because he was already starting to travel for television. He was still kind of had one foot in the kitchen at Layal. But we had a great working relationship. So when you say like recipe editing and testing, what does that entail? How does that work? So it's different for every project. But for this project, I would get the recipes from the kitchen at Layal.

So they were in huge quantities. And they were written in a very concise shorthand meant for the cooks to use. They were not appropriate for a cookbook. So I would take those. And I had been to cooking school and I worked a little bit as a cook. And so I knew I knew how to deal with a recipe. I knew how to cook and kind of what the my way around the kitchen. So I would take those recipes, scale them way down, kind of put them into a more accessible language for a home cook and then test them at home make sure that when I change the proportions and everything the timing and the temperatures and

that it all still worked for a for a home cook so was were these like dishes meant for large groups of people like what how did you have to scale it down well because when you're making it in a restaurant you know you're preparing enough for 60 portions in a night. Like certain side dishes and things like that. Yeah. I mean, anything really. You know, if you're making, you know, I don't know, a soup. You know, you want to think you might sell 40 portions of soup that night. So you're making a huge batch of soup. At home, you don't want that much soup. You know, you might want to make enough for eight people.

So that was that's kind of the scaling i mean there's nobody there's no reason to do anything in small quantities in a restaurant and when you say shorthand do you mean shorthand like like how some secretaries write shorthand no no i've seen people do that i'm like what is that chicken scratch yeah that's like latin i, I'm surprised anybody even does that anymore. It's cool, but I don't know. But they do still, right? Is that a dying thing? I think it must be, right? Like that's from the days of the-

Have you ever seen it, Tony? I mean, Jamie, whatever the fucking name is. Hey. Have you ever seen it? Yeah, the court reporters still do something weird like that, but it's not the same, right? They do it typing, though, right? They only have like five buttons to use. Right.

So they have combinations of it that equal things. I don't. What do they do? I've never tried to read it. I've looked into it once. I have no idea. This fucking kangaroo court system we have in this country. Yeah, but I've seen people write in the shorthand.

And I'm like, that is like, how does one even learn that today? And is that necessary? Can't you just audio record? Yeah. Like on your phone? Like you just like if someone wants to you know dictate to you it'd be so much easier there it is like what is that oh wow the fuck is that chicken scratch pitman and gray so there's different versions of shorthand that's so interesting oh my god that is

nonsense yeah look at that what look what Indian is. What is that? How does that mean Indian? That's wild. Or it's empty, depending on how big the circle is. Yeah. That's strange. I don't know. Oh, my God.

That's so nuts. Like, how does someone actually... How do you know the difference between a parent and plenty? Get the fuck out of here. That is nonsense. That's so crazy when you really look at that yeah that's taught i mean i seriously doubt it's taught much anymore but i guess right somebody's still doing it it's got to be a dying thing with with digital recording yeah you know on your phone it's

got to be a dying thing absolutely so you just would sort of test out so you you know you went to cook school so you know how to cook. So you would just test out these things. And when you were doing this, he was just a local celebrity in the New York restaurant scene, right? Had no reservation started yet or Kitchen Confidential? Yeah, so Kitchen Confidential came out in 2000. So he was already on the rise.

I think he was a season or two into a cook's tour, which was the very first iteration of Tony on television. But there was no, you know, he was always would say, like, I've got my 15 minutes. I have no expectation that this is going to last forever. I'm going to do as much as I can while I can. But I think he was always waiting for someone to pull the rug out from under him you know as far as being a celebrity whatever yeah he was it was really interesting it's like it's it's hard for people to realize that other people appreciate them I think especially people that are genuinely humble you know what like he's a he was a genuinely humble person like he really didn't buy into his own bullshit at all.

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

He doesn't think he's as great as we know he is. That's a common thing amongst at least my people, amongst comedians. It's in many successful people. It's called imposter syndrome. And it exists because you have a certain sort of a set perception of who you were just going through life sort of anonymously. And then it radically changes and it doesn't feel real. And so to other people who have just discovered you, they love your show, they love your writing,

they love your take on the world as you travel and eat everywhere. You know, you think like, I'm the same fucking idiot that I was, you know, he's probably thinking he's the same guy he was in 95 and now here all these people love him. It doesn't make any sense.

I just feel like this is going to fall apart. This is fake. Yeah. But that's also why he was so interesting is because like the people that are like legitimately fool themselves and really think everything they're doing is great are gross. Yeah. They're gross. They come off gross.

When you see someone write like I'm the shit. You're like what? like that is so gross Yeah, and it's such the opposite of what anybody ever wants to hear you know And maybe you could say it in jest and you know people think it's funny But for the most part the people that are really enamored with themselves and their work are just not Nearly as interesting as the people that are tortured by it. It's such a conundrum, right? It's like a guy like Tony, who is such an interesting, fascinating person

just to talk to, just to have a conversation with, because he had such a clear perspective on things, the way he looked at things. He was very aesthetic. He had like a very, like he had a, he enjoyed a certain style of communication and of hanging out. And there was an art to just conversation with the guy. So it makes sense that he hated himself.

Yeah. In the most fucked up way possible, it makes sense. Yeah. I think, too, there was this disconnect between the guy that he was before he got famous and the guy after. And I think he always thought about how the guy, the old guy, probably would have made fun of the new guy. You know, and or he would have he and all his his buddies who were cooks stuck in the kitchen would would sort of hate this, you know, guy with the expensive shoes and the nice apartment and flying first class. Yeah. Yeah. That's what happens. You know, you you want to be punk rock and then all of a sudden you have a million dollars in the bank.

You're like, hey. Yeah, yeah. Who am I? I think I'm going to eat at a nice place tonight. I think I'm going to buy a watch. You really can feel like a fraud. It's fascinating because so many people are really, they're haunted in a lot of ways by the past. And, you know, there's sort of like this rebellious, rigid attitude that you develop when you're struggling, when you're coming up.

And, you know, it becomes like the structure of where your attitude comes from. And then when that structure is sort of removed by success, in Tony's case, and then you're left with, okay, I'm not even, like, in his eyes, he had done all these hours of being in the kitchen, right? The real work, those long days and long nights, and there was something noble about that, right? And then all of a sudden, he's just going to visit these guys and he's not in the game anymore. And, you know, he's going to visit these incredible cooks and seeing these amazing dishes and these insane restaurants. And I think part of that he felt like a little bit of a fraud because of that. Yeah. Yeah.

He was always very careful to say, I was not a great chef. You know, I think it's very people kind of just in the same way that people thought that, you know, the whole with the AI thing that it was all of the movie versus 45 seconds. There's just a glossing over kind of sloppiness of recollection. a glossing over kind of sloppiness of recollection. And so because he was a chef, everyone, you know, would say, oh, he was a great chef or a celebrity chef or a famous chef, you know, and he was always really careful to say, I wasn't, you know, I was like, I was good at leading a kitchen. I was good at getting food out on time, but I was not in any way a world famous creative chef I was a leader of men you know and there was I think a lot of uh I don't know insecurity but just a just a recognition that he wasn't the kind of chef uh like Eric Repair his good friend or any of these guys that he

really admired you know and he wanted everyone to be to know that he knew that too no yes that just the genuine humility about him. But it's also like that, you know, there are so many layers to the way he looked at things and described things. It's what made No Reservations and then ultimately the other show. Parts Unknown.

Parts Unknown. I forget the... But it was, you know, it's what made it so interesting. Parts unknown. I forgot that. But it was, you know, it's what made it so interesting. It's really his own view of himself inserted into these environments. It wasn't just the environments. It was like this genuine enthusiasm that he had for these people that create great works of art through food.

And he was the first guy that ever shifted my perception of what food is because I thought of food was just delicious. I was like, oh, this food is good. And then I watched his show and I was like, oh, it's art. Oh, you fucking idiot. How'd you not see that? It's just art that people eat. Yeah.

Like I was like, why all these chefs have fucking hand tattoos and they look like weirdos. And I was like, oh, they're fucking artists. Duh. It really took watching that show because I didn't have a lot of interaction with chefs. I maybe knew a couple chefs my whole life. I didn't know them well. If I enjoyed their food, I thought it was great. But I didn't ever think, oh, this is an art form.

I thought it was great, but I didn't ever think, oh, this is this is an art form. Like you are you're literally getting an expression of this person's essence that's laid out in food form in front of you. In the best case scenario. I mean, I think there's plenty of food that is not that artful, you know, or might be considered more craft than art. But, yeah, these guys that he loved at the highest level were definitely you know artists making consumable product every day yeah and it's just his take on all kinds of things on music and culture and it just made for you know if he maybe i don't know what how good of a chef he was but man he was a fucking amazing host of a television show. Yeah. I mean, it was really, it was like the perfect guy for a travel show. And writer. I mean, that's, and that's really what broke him through out of the kitchen. It was not his television presence, which was a little clunky at first. You know, I mean, he didn't,

he wasn't, he didn't spring fully formed as the, you know, confident guy that we saw in later years. If you go back and when you're ready to watch the film or you'll see in the book, too, you know, he was he was a little awkward and quite more than a little hesitant on television at first. But what he always was was a fucking fantastic writer, you know, from very, very young age and and worked really hard at that to develop that craft. And that's I mean, that's what comes through on television, too, is all that voiceover. He wrote that, you know, and the way that he could speak off the cuff like it was something that was written and edited and perfected that that was just in his head. And he spoke like a writer. Yeah.

Well, that clunkiness to me came off as authenticity. That's the thing. I don't like polished like top 40 DJ voices. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, hey, coming up next. Right.

There's a way that a person can behave, whether they're the host of a show or a radio host, whatever the fuck they're doing. There's a way that we know what a professional radio host whatever the fuck they're doing there's a way that we know what a professional sounds like this is tom with the weather you know like there's a way we know and that way is boring because you've you've heard it too many times you know that's not really who that person is there's a really funny video i don't know if you've ever seen it but there's this uh this black guy who's working for a television station. And he's doing the news somewhere on location. And a bug gets on him.

And he switches and goes full ghetto in the middle. So he's in the middle of his talking like this. Like, this motherfucker. And like this bug is on him. And it's hilarious. Yeah. And I'm like, man, if someone could talk to that guy and say, man, we got to figure out a way to let you be who you really are, because that was hilarious once the bug was on you. But when the bug wasn't on you, then you're just like this normal bullshit cookie cutter programmed robot.

And, you know, the thing about No Reservations was it was who he actually was. So if he was clunky or if he was fascinated by something, it came across as being genuine. It was very obvious that he wrote everything too. It was very obvious that he wrote the monologues. You're not going to get some TV hack to write that kind of shit, especially for the fucking travel channel. Right, right.

I noticed, I watched the Montana episode of Parts Unknown that you guys were on together, and there was that enthusiasm. There's a scene where he goes down into the mines, copper mines, old copper mines, and they hook up all the wires, and he gets to be the one to press the lever or whatever to make the shit explode.

And he's just got this, he's like a 10-year-old boy. He's so psyched and it's so genuine that he has had the most fun just like blowing shit up. And that's like the best of Tony. You know, like he, as you know, many experiences around the world as he had and as smart as he was, he still loved like the dumb shit you know or the just the like basic hilarity of blowing shit up you know yeah well he stayed himself yeah it's hard to do you know it's hard to do and obviously himself there was uh because of the the drug abuse past, the addiction past, and then the end of his life, the boozing in particular. It's like there's obviously a lot going on there that wasn't that healthy, you know, for whatever reason.

And whatever, it was a masking thing if it was a genetic addiction issue thing. Yeah. if it was a genetic addiction issue thing? Yeah, it's, you know, it's really hard to say, you know, and I always try to be very careful not to diagnose or to, you know, all we can do is speculate and think about what, you know, we knew when he was around. I mean, he was very upfront about his heroin addiction and his, you know, heavy use of cocaine and crack later. And then he kicked those things, you know, heavy use of cocaine and crack later. And then he kicked those things, you know.

But I think that, you know, as somebody who has been sober for a couple of years and has kind of, myself kind of, you know, dived into the whole exploration of the 12-step thing, I can see now, I can see what it is to be an addict, you know. And I don't think it's talking out of turn to say that Tony was an addict. He lived his life like an addict, whether it was drugs or that place that addicts are trying to fill. When we were drinking in Montana, that was one of the things that was shocking that he wanted to keep going. Like we were so drunk. We're sitting around this campfire and we were fucking hammered.

And he's like, where's the whiskey? Is there any more whiskey? And I'm like, you could really drink more right now? Like, how could you do this? Like, we were blasted. Yeah. And he wasn't like a big, I mean, he was a tall guy, but he was really skinny. It was just sort of like, where are you putting this, dude?

Like, this is crazy. You've got no body fat, you know? Especially when he got into jiu-jitsu and developed the six pack. Yeah. But what you saw on him though was his face his face was aging it was aging rapidly just in the time that i knew him you know the years that i knew him from the like i don't know how many years it was seven whatever it was but during that time he aged a lot yeah like you could see it on the show in the the last season or two

it's like the lines and his face he just looked puffy and worn out it just looked rough and that's where it went yeah I think you know I mean that kind of lifestyle or the the multiple lifestyles that he had you know working as a as a cook doing a shitload of drugs, drinking, smoking, you know, a couple packs of cigarettes a day, all of that. You know, plus he was – there's some – actually some funny stuff in the book about his addiction to tanning. He was like obsessed with tanning. Not like going to a tan – I don't know if he ever went to like a tanning bed. He probably did. But he was like – he would get in these tanning competitions with his cooks like in the 80s you know and he was like really competitive about wanting to be the most tan and I think you

know yeah which I had no idea until so ridiculous oh that's hilarious I think that's you know that obviously catches up with you yeah sure I guess but I don't know about that anymore. I used to think that the sun is really bad for you. But now I think it's like, how bad is sunscreen? Well, you know, that shit, that shit can't be good for you either. It's probably not as bad as skin cancer. I mean, I'm not a doctor, but you know. No, I'm not a doctor either. But it's just, you know, obviously we need some sun for vitamin D.

Yeah. So what's going on with that when i when it just i don't think that was what i was seeing in his face though i was i was seeing it booze yeah you know he he wasn't drinking that much like when he was doing jujitsu he was like very you know i don't say clean and sober but he was he was rarely drinking he never would have booze at home i mean again these are things that he said on the record. Yeah, no, we talked about it. Yeah.

And he was, you know, because he was super into his cardio, so he wasn't smoking. There was a point where he was getting ready for a competition where he was like, you know, I'm sure you've done this too, right? It's like no, like only basically like boiled chicken with no salt, you know, and maybe like some vegetable. But really just like the no salt boiled chicken with no salt, you know, and maybe like some some vegetable, but really just like the no salt boiled chicken. Well, he got no carb, but he went no carb, right? Yeah. Or very low carb. Yeah. Yeah.

Which, you know, I remember him telling me like, you know, just life loses all of its meaning when you can't have salt. You start like licking the sweat off your arm just to get feel something, you know, it's like, are you not in good enough shape? I mean, I know you have to get extreme to weigh in. But like are you not in good enough shape i mean i know you have to get extreme to to weigh in but you don't you really shouldn't do that anyway you should have probably consulted with a nutritionist that's a terrible way to have there's you you run into these guys at the gym these sort of like uh bro scientists and some of them still have like 1990s knowledge where you're supposed to eat like just plain chicken with no skin and broccoli and they don't really do that anymore like most most people even if they're trying to

lose some weight they eat a lot of healthy fat yeah okay and they eat sugar and they eat salt like you have to have a certain amount of glucose it's like it's even in like there's certain hydration supplements that are electrolyte supplements and they have sugar in them because that's the best way your body absorbs all the different electrolytes. Okay. Yeah, he definitely didn't. Yeah. He was subscribing to an old school system. Yeah.

Well, we were talking about hormone replacement too and he's like, I got to find a quack. That's what he said. Yeah. I go, no, man. That's what he said. I go, no, man, you should find someone who's going to do your blood work and comprehensively and go over it with you. Too much effort. Yeah, it was like, yeah, you want the quack that's going to give you the solution fast.

He just wanted to get juiced up so he could compete. Well, when he was telling me he was training every day, I go, every day? He goes, twice a day. I go, what? And he goes, yeah. He goes, I'm doing drills. So I'm taking a private lesson. And then I'm taking a class after that.

I'm like, wow. Yeah. So for someone to go from nothing to that is crazy. And I was like, how are your joints? How's your neck? How's your back? How are your elbows? Because those things are, it takes years to build

up the sort of tendon strength and endurance to be able to do jiu-jitsu especially he's doing gay jiu-jitsu so you're grabbing things all the time so your hands are always sore like god yeah i mean he did he did land himself briefly in the hospital with some injury that seemed like it was going to take him out of competition. And then, I don't know. That was the groin one? The groin tear? Yeah. There was one day where his ear got all fucked up and he got, you know, the... Cauliflower. Yeah. And then they put on this ridiculous, like, big yellow, looked like a piece of Swiss cheese from a Tom and Jerry cartoon. And it was just kind of stitched or placed around his ear. And the next day he had some photo shoot, you know, with, he had some endorsement, he had an endorsement with a whiskey company and they did a lot of shoots and stuff with him, appearances, you know, and he's like, oh, you better tell the whiskey guys that maybe we need to cancel because I got this shit on my ear. And they didn't want to cancel.

And so there's pictures out there of him looking absolutely ridiculous with this, like, giant, you know, Swiss cheese ear, you know, because he would rather, you know, look like that than miss a day of training, you know. That's hilarious. Did he get it drained? I think so, probably. I mean, he was pretty good. I mean, there was definitely in my job as his assistant, which I did for about 10 years, there was definitely a lot of, I got very familiar with all the doctors.

So there was, you know, there was the occasional draining or the chiropractor or the, you know, the skin doctor because there would be a weird staph infection from, you know, filthy mats. Or, you know, he really, yeah, he went really, really hard on the jujitsu. But he was, you know, filthy mats or, you know, he really, yeah, he went really, really hard on the jujitsu, but he was, you know, he was mentally, I mean, he was, he was really happy, you know, he was, I mean, he was, it was insufferable sometimes to listen to, like I said, but he was like, he had so much energy and he just was like, you know, it, the guys that would shoot on the show with him said it made such a difference. If he would train in the morning, he would be a different guy shooting in the afternoon.

I think human beings, men in particular, need a certain amount of physical conflict. And I think most people don't get it. And I think it's something that's built into just the human body. the human body. And I think we have these reward systems that are built into and designed so that your body can perform in adverse conditions. Your body can deal with conflict, like physical conflict. Your body can deal with physical struggle. So because of that, there's actually sort of an unmet requirement that most people have so they walk through life with this anxiety that they can't they don't know where it's coming from and i think a lot of that anxiety stems from the fact that you're not meeting the human requirements like the body has

especially the male body and the mind has certain requirements for conflict jujitsu meets all those so does trail running. So does like CrossFit. Like the reason why people get addicted to that stuff is because it's so difficult that it makes regular life easy. Wow. Like my friends who do CrossFit,

what they love about it is it's so fucking hard, which seems like, why do you love something that's so hard? Because in doing something hard, it makes regular life easy Because when you are like doing these box jumps and you know you have 25 to go and your legs are rubber And you're like I can't do this But you can and when you do do it you get out of there like

Everything else is easy the guy cut you off like who gives a fuck like guy cut you off who cares who cares if you? Miss the light who cares it's not it doesn't have the same level of significance that it does if you don't have this physical conflict in your life that makes a lot of sense yeah so for a guy like him that was kind of tortured i was so pumped like i said i was excited because finally there was something he was really into that i could like i'm a black belt like i could say ah now I could tell you some stuff before I just relied on you to tell me shit. Yeah. Yeah. And he really respected, I mean, anybody that had an expertise in anything, you know, he was really like just very teachable, very willing to listen. You know, he was really

always about, uh, you know, the more I know, the more I realize I don't know listen you know he was really always about uh you know the more i know the the more i realize i don't know you know you know he had a um he had a great respect for people that were really doing whatever the fuck it was that they were doing people that were like really committed to anything like really passionate about it where they're like he wanted to talk to me and joey diaz we did a show in vegas and he came to the show uh with his then wife at the time and then um afterwards we were talking because he was doing these book shows and he was like like how often you turn over material like how like if i come to a town like when do you think i should like how long i should take and i was like we generally do it like this and i was explaining like you don't

want to come to a town with the same material that you were at like six months ago like you have to write new stuff like you otherwise don't come back or unless you have such an audience that like more people are going to come to see you that haven't seen you before. So we talked about the whole idea of stand-up because he was kind of doing stand-up. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, he got – Bonnie McFarlane got him a spot at the Comedy Store. Oh, really? Maybe like a year before he died or maybe two years.

The store or the cellar? I'm sorry, the cellar in New York. Yeah, he was working out material for the book tour. Oh. And he actually had Bonnie helping him do some writing too. But he wanted to really feel what it was like to do that. And so she got him like, I don't know, five minutes. Oh, that's cool.

Yeah. And I didn't go, I mean, he didn't tell anybody, which is smart. It sounds like he did okay. I think he really enjoyed it, you know, but it's like he really respected the craft of comedy, you know, and he understood that it was something you had to work at and develop just as much as anything else. He certainly could have done it. He would have got addicted to that, too.

Mm-hmm. He would have got sucked into that and then he'd just be talking about stand-up all the time. Right, right. who got sucked into that and then you'd just be talking about stand-up all the time. Right, right. It's funny. That is a thing that happens with people that get really, really, really good at things.

There's a guy named BJ Penn and he's one of the greatest UFC fighters of all time and he won the Mundials, which is the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu World Championships, three years into training, which is unheard of. Nobody's ever done that before. Not only to get a black belt in three years is crazy, but to win the Mundiales in three years is even crazier.

And he and I were talking about this on the phone. And he was saying that he met this guy and this guy was getting really good at jujitsu. And he's like, man, that's incredible. You know, you're training hard. And the guy said, he goes, man, he goes, I'm addicted. Just like you. I'm an addict. And he goes, man, he goes, I'm addicted. Just like you. I'm an addict. And he goes, and then I realized, yeah, fuck, that's what it is.

I'm addicted. But it's just a good thing. It's being addicted to something that's actually beneficial as opposed to heroin. Right. Right. Or booze. Or anything. Or women or anything.

I mean, you can get locked up in a relationship that's basically an addiction too you there's a lot of things that people do that they're just massive distractions and it's hard to parse that out in real time it's hard to figure out like what is this good for me like am i just lost in this like what what's good and what's bad yeah i think he knew and to some extent that that's who and how that's who he was and that's how he operated. I think he had no interest in trying to moderate. I think that was not at all interesting to him. You know? Yeah. Uh, I remember telling him that I was, I was, uh, I said, I'll always have my phone on except, you know, I've

started going to AA meetings. And so in that hour I I turned my phone off. And he's like, what the fuck do you want to go to AA for? It's like, that's a cult. I was like, okay. That being said, I'm going to turn my phone off for an hour. Did you enjoy AA? Yeah. I'm still, I mean, I know it's sort of like you're not supposed to talk about it, but I'm still very much, I was in a meeting this morning. For me, it's great. How come you're not supposed to talk about it? Because it's anonymous? Yeah, I guess. Yeah. What mean, what is the idea about not talking? Well, I think the idea is like not, you know, not sharing anything that you hear your fellows say. But I think I'm no, you know, historian or scholar of it. But I think that originally it was it was much more

stigmatized to be an alcoholic, you know, so it was like, let's keep it on the down low while we get our shit together. So yeah, I find it to be very, very helpful. I wasn't a, you know, bad rock bottom alcoholic, but I was somebody who was on a bad path. And it's I have found it. Yeah, helpful for me. Was it exacerbated by working with him? Probably to an extent. I mean, you know, everyone's kind of responsible for their own shit, but... No, you can blame him. He's not here anymore. I mean, I will say that I found a lot of the way that he lived to be very romantic and very inspiring.

And, you know, I was kind of a mess and I thought, well, you know, this is, Tony would approve or, you know, I talked to him about whatever kind of messy shit was going on in my life. And, you know, this is Tony would approve or, you know, I talked to him about whatever kind of messy shit was going on in my life. And, you know, because I knew he would think it was funny or he could relate or, you know. So, again, I don't want to blame him because it was on me. But for sure it was like very much OK, you know, to be a little bit of a mess and to work for him. As long as you got your shit done, you showed up on time, you know, and you were you were good at your job. I don't think it was a problem. I mean,

certainly, you know, you saw there's a lot of lot of drinking on those shoots. Yeah. So definitely, the way that he lived seemed very, very appealing to me. Less so now, you know, obviously, but yeah, I think, and I think it was hard for me as someone who identifies as an addict of a kind, it was hard for me to see him as an addict until I really sort of saw myself and what my own behaviors were like, oh, that's why, you know, he did this or that or, you know. In those moments, those moments of camaraderie and the moments of looseness and of booze and smoking and there's a funness to that. There's a freedom to that. And it also there's a bonding that goes along with that.

It's very hard to capture with sobriety. And I'm not saying you need booze to have a fulfilled life but i am saying that there's some something that comes out of that those moments there's like a certain wild rebelliousness that's so attractive and for a person like me who's a comedian you know once a year uh do Sober October, me and my buddies, and we don't do anything. We're allowed to smoke cigars for some reason, which we decide is kind of cheating because it does get you high a little bit,

but you realize how much you kind of lean on that, how much it's fun to just, like guys want to do a shot let's do a fucking shot ah you clink glasses and it's like whoo and the next thing you know you're hugging and bonding and it's like there's a wildness to that and uh there's a there's a celebration of this rebellious unknown aspect of life that comes from, you know, the romantic consumption of alcohol. It's very attractive.

Yeah, absolutely. It's, and if you can sort of keep it in check, people who can drink and use drugs responsibly, like excellent, you know, for me,

it was like, I'd start my engine and then not stop until I ran it into the wall, you know? And like, that's not, it's the wall, you know? And like, that's not, it's not cute, you know? And I have a kid,

you know, it's like, yeah, yeah. I hear you. It gets messy. Yeah. It gets messy.

Yeah. You know, it's not necessary, but it's, it's fun. It is. I had a real good time. That's the thing,

right? No one wants to say that. And also it makes some great fucking art. God damn it. So many musicians are just hammered and so many you know so many great poet like bukowski you know yeah my buddy uh lex read a bukowski excuse me a bukowski poem on the podcast the other day like to end the podcast i was like do you even write like that if you're not drunk i don't know you know i mean i think it's possible like i'm a giant stephen king fan i fucking love stephen king i think but i really love the stuff that he did

when he was fucked up that's my favorite stuff you know my favorite stuff is like the the carrie days like the the days where he was doing the shining like he was tortured yeah it was where he was doing The Shining. Like he was tortured. Yeah. And he was doing blow and stuff and toilet paper up his nose. Like his book on writing is amazing. Have you ever read it? Yes. It's amazing, right? Yeah. Because like he kind of goes into the depths of his addiction and the love he has for his family.

It pulls him out of that and how he got back on the horse and figured it out again. But his best stuff was when he was fucked up yeah well there's like an anxiety and a self-loathing and uh you know the euphoric highs that all kind of fuel that but you know it's not good if you're you know if you end up dead at the end of that you can't do any more writing yeah that's true too yeah i mean that's true too i mean if he died at 50 and left behind all those great books that he wrote when he was fucked up, he'd probably be even more romantic, unfortunately. Yeah. Like look at Morrison and Hendrix and Joplin. They all died at 27 and Kurt Cobain, same thing, right? Yeah, Amy Winehouse.

Right. We look at them like, oh, something about that. Yeah, yeah. Because there's a finite nature to life anyway. True. I mean, that's something I used to say a lot when I was drinking, like, life is short. And it is, but it's long too. We're probably all going to linger around a lot longer than is optimal, unfortunately. Maybe.

Who knows? Science is pretty amazing. They're coming up with optimal, unfortunately. Maybe. Who knows? Science is pretty amazing. Yeah. They're coming up with some great shit. Yeah. You can do some pretty amazing things with your body as you age in 2021. Yeah.

When you're writing these books, like, what, did you take notes while you were working with him? Did you have to go back and sort of, like, re-envision these moments in your mind? How did you structure this? Well, so the biography, the full title is Bourdain, the Definitive Oral Biography. So what that means is that this is not the strict, the biography that, you know, where the writer interviews a bunch of people and then writes their own thing. This is, I did about 100 interviews with people who knew Tony from all aspects of his life.

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

interviews and and then fit it into fit it into a narrative. You know, Tony told a lot of his story already in Kitchen Confidential. You know, he started from early childhood memories to about age 40. So a lot of that story is already out there. But it's, you know, Tony was a storyteller and he was not averse to kind of sanding down the edges of a story or embellishing something or, you know, as you do to make it like a really good story that you can tell and that has good beats and lands well. So even the stuff that we know about from Kitchen Confidential, there's a lot more nuance there.

You know, people that were there with him in the bad old days of the 80s in kitchens and in Provincetown as a teenager. So all of that is in the book. So it was about, you know, asking the right questions and listening to people, letting them really tell their stories and helping them to really, you know, remember as much as they could about him. How long did it take you to write it? It was about two years. I started shortly after he died, as much as I could. I mean,

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

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

I mean, it's not like your typical photos or, you know, whatever the travel books Lonely Planet, but it but it has aspects of that it has a lot of practical information. But it has Tony's, you know, talking about getting the shits in Brazil after eating the dendee oil or, you know, stuff that's very specific to him and his voice. Well, he literally traveled to almost every place you could go to. Yeah. I mean, he did shows in Libya, right? Yeah.

Libya. And Libya after Gaddafi's death, which was essentially a failed state. Yeah. Right? It was a very dangerous place to be. Yeah. That sounded, I wasn't there, but it sounded like it was among the most dangerous shoots that they did. And there was a lot of, there were a lot of dicey moments, I think,

behind the scenes, but it's a beautiful episode, you know, and he really talks about how, yeah, this is what you see on the news and CNN and, you know, but this is, here's some people, here's some kids playing with a balloon, you know? Yeah. Yeah, he went to 93 countries and a lot of them more than once. And, you know, he traveled extensively around the United States. And not until he was 40, which is really wild, right? Yeah, yeah. He really had traveled very little. When he wrote Kitchen Confidential, he had been to the Caribbean a bunch and he had been to Tokyo once.

And that was kind of it. Crazy. Yeah, yeah. And he became like the most traveled man in the world. Whenever I would travel somewhere for comedy or the UFC, I would text him, where do I eat?

And he would help you out? Not just tell you, but tell you in great detail. Like what's the history of the place and why and, you know, you gotta go here and you gotta do do this and you got to do that. It was just the coolest thing. Yeah.

He was a good friend to have that way. He was like very, you know, if he was your friend, he was your friend like a thousand percent, you know. He was really into Vietnam, which I thought was really interesting. It's like it made me want to go to Vietnam. Have you gone? No, I still have not. But I was like, really? He's like my favorite place to go. want to go to Vietnam. Have you gone? No, I still have not. But I was like, really?

He's like, my favorite place to go. I'm like, Vietnam. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, he was super interested in Graham Greene, The Quiet American and Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now. I mean, Apocalypse Now was sort of a seminal film, you know. Apocalypse Now was sort of a seminal film, you know. So and, you know, being of the age that he was, I mean, kind of growing up with the Vietnam War going on when he was in his adolescence, I think it made a big impact. But yeah, then he got there and it was, you know, and it is an extraordinary place. I mean, it really I was lucky. I went with him once to Hue right in the center of the country. And I got it. I understood, you know, it's like, it's just so the pace of life is different. The smells, all the scooters on the street. I mean, it truly you feel like you are, I mean, there's a lot of places in the world you can go now. And it's like, am I in Austin? Am I in Beijing? Am I in, you know, wherever, like, it's all everything looks somewhat similar. Every

place has got a, you know, a bon pan and a starbucks you know but vietnam by and large has has not succumbed to that level of kind of homogenization yet i'm sure it's coming you know but it's uh it's very much away and i think he really loved that you know and the food i mean you know it's really good i've never had you, I don't think I've ever had Vietnamese food ever. Oh. If I think about it, like maybe I have somewhere. I don't, you know. Yeah.

Houston apparently has a lot of really good Vietnamese food. So I think, you know, wherever there were communities of displaced Vietnamese in the U.S., Louisiana. What is pho? That's the beef noodle soup. Right. But is that, who makes that? That's Vietnamese. Is that Vietnamese? Yes. Okay. I've had that. Yeah.'ve had that yeah right and it's i've had that that's pretty damn good yeah although like i don't think i said it right it's not pho but it's not i don't think it's pho it's like pho right yeah i

think it's pho i never quite know how to say it but when people do say it correctly i get annoyed and i'm like oh really you know let's go have some pho. Yeah. I feel like, you know, it's almost like a little trap. You know, you spell it P-H-O. Are you playing that? Pho. Pho. Pho.

It's like a question. Yeah. But it's like, it's a trap. It's because you know it's spelled differently than it's pronounced. And if you say it correct you know this is like a certain annoying thing when someone says argentina you know like you know i mean like they say things yeah we used to call it trebecking i don't know if we still do you know alex trebeck yeah yeah he was really interested in the different styles of humans. Tell me.

Yeah. Like he loved that the people in Vietnam had such a distinctly different way of being than, like, say, people in England. There was a way that they just – there's an easygoing way that they existed. There's an easygoing way that they existed. They, for whatever reason, apparently have no resentment to Americans, which he found fascinating. Yeah. Like, how the fuck are you not mad at Americans? Yeah. Well, I think, I mean, my understanding is that, first of all, there have been so many wars, you know, before that.

They're just like, all right, come and get us. You know, fuck you. Like the Chinese, the, you know,, the French, everyone has fucked with us. But also I think, sort of gruesomely, I think a lot of the people are dead. It's a very, very young country. I forget what the percentage is, but it's a huge percentage of the people that are living now in the country were born after the war. So they don't have a memory of it. who were born after the war, so they don't have a memory of it. But yeah, I mean, again, I don't claim to be a scholar or historian, but that was my understanding of how it could be possible, right? Because, yeah, we really visited some pretty bad shit on that country. Yeah, yeah. But in talking to him, one of the things that he was really interested in

is just the authentic way people existed in wherever you went like and that it was there was they varied so much and to really understand people like to really get an appreciation of all the amazing things this world has to offer you kind of have to go to all these different places to see and every time you go it's like it removes a little layer of the onion where you just get a little bit better understanding what it means to be a human being on earth and that there isn't just this one set sort of culture that we're so accustomed to particularly in america where we're kind of arrogant about our culture and like this is the shit we're america fuck you and you know then you go to other places and you go oh okay why are they so happy in thailand you know like then you go to other places and you go, oh, okay, why are they so happy in Thailand?

You know, like, what's going on? Like, why are they so, why are they celebrate so much in Brazil? You know, as you do visit all these different places, I think he had this almost bottomless appetite for that sort of exposure to new cultures and meeting new people. And was really good at listening and being able to hear and engage with an argument or a point of view that didn't match his, which I think, God, you know, I mean, there's a million reasons why I wish he were still here. But that is one of the, you know, right at the top is this capacity that he had to have a conversation with people who disagreed with him, you know, without just trying to shut them down. I mean, he had very strong opinions about things, but it didn't stop him from just communicating with people, which is, you know, it's not easy. I'm sure you know this. You know, people get real riled up and then don't even want to just have a discussion

about whatever it is that's, you know, that they disagree about. Yeah, it's a very valuable thing if you can do it, to be able to just talk to people, even if you disagree with them. And it's really rewarding to have a conversation with someone where you completely disagree with them, but you're very friendly. And at the end, you really enjoy that person's company and you actually like them. Even though you don't, like, there's quite a few people I have on this podcast where I agree with very little of what they have to say.

But I like to talk to them. Yeah. And especially if they're kind, if they're nice people. Yeah. And then we, we sort of have this interesting relationship over the years of these kinds of conversations where they know that I'm very different than them. And I think I,

I see things different, but, but we're nice to each other. And so we can talk about stuff. And so I, I can find out, you know, what it's like to be this person who thinks about things politically,

socially, you know, religiously, sexually, they think so different than me. It's, it's like to be this person who thinks about things politically, socially, you know, religiously, sexually, they think so different than me. It's, it's, it's real valuable. It's, but people are so dogmatic in their perspectives and they almost like they're, they're defending their position like they're defending themselves. Like it's not, these ideas ideas are themselves it's not just an idea and it's very unfortunate that we you know there's nothing wrong with shutting down morons right there's nothing wrong with it's fun i love watching on youtube right there's nothing wrong

with um arguing your position on stuff but there's also a great benefit in listening to how other people see things yeah and he he definitely was really good at that and not just really good at that like there was a genuine enthusiasm about these kind of conversations with people definitely i mean that was his that was like the only word in his twitter bio was enthusiast yeah it's beautiful yeah and that and that's really what it is. From everything, one of the most enthusiastic things he ever told me was how disgusting fermented shark meat was in Iceland. He was fucking animated with his hands. He's like, it's fucking disgusting.

It's the most disgusting thing. And I was like, like how because that was the single thing like i said like what is the grossest shit you've ever had to experience and you're trying out these different cultures because i've got a pretty wide palette i love all kinds of different kinds of foods very spicy foods and but he's like that's the one did you ever have that no no i mean i want to try it. Yeah, I mean, he kind of makes it seem so unappealing. I might try.

Yeah, I don't know. I'm all in. It seems awful. If I go to Iceland, that's the first thing I'm eating, 100%. I want to experience that pickled shark or that fermented shark meat. It just sounds like full survival food, right? Like you're just like basically trying not to die. And then all the people that are alive all these years later just kind of celebrating the fact that their ancestors survived off this

dog shit right right that's like probably the most fermented food you could have right like real good for your gut flora if it doesn't you know kill you maybe good yeah might not eat well they're fucking animals over there you know like they have some huge human beings. Yeah. Like Iceland produces an extraordinary amount of the strongest men in the world. Yeah. Like when they have those world strongman competition, they're fucking Vikings. These are leftover marauders. So they know. They're huge people.

Like, have you ever seen like the strongmen from Viking? No. There was a vice piece on it many years ago trying to like decipher. They were trying to figure out like, why does so many men who win strongest man in the world come from Iceland? And I think it really is just Viking DNA. Like this idea that there was these giant marauders that showed up, a lot of them on mushrooms, by the way. That was the thing. They would take, yeah, they would take psilocybin and then go on these marauding raids. Wow.

Huge, giant, mushroomed-up men. And now they're throwing barrels. Yeah, here it is. Here's the vice piece. The giants of Iceland. So this dude goes over to Iceland and sees all these men who are competing in this strongest man competition. And there's not that many people in Iceland, too, which is kind of crazy.

Like it's not like the biggest place in the world. Wow. Wild. Now you guys went hunting together, right? Yeah. Tony went pheasant hunting. Yeah. I had gotten into hunting while I knew him.

went pheasant hunting yeah he i had gotten into hunting while i knew him um i had gotten into hunting because uh i had come to this sort of um ideological impasse in my life where i was like okay like you you you claim to be a person who thinks things through and you care about life and the world around you but yeah you, you're eating fucking jack in the box, right? Like what is, what's in there? And I would watch too many of those goddamn PETA videos. And I was like,

okay, I'm either going to do one of two things. I decided I'm either going to become a hunter or I'm going to become a vegetarian. Those are my two options. And I had done vegetarianism when I was competing back in my, uh, martial arts competing days.

And I, just cause I was trying to make a weight class that I was too big for and I'd, I'd starved myself and I was really fucked up. And then I did it the wrong way, clearly. But then when I went back to eating meat, I felt so much better. And then it was like the best of my competition years were all,

I ate so much meat. And then I was like, you know, an older person trying to like think about what my place in the world is and Seeing these videos that I'm sure they don't represent most Farming but it was enough to know that that was out there and that perhaps I had participated in that so I got into hunting and and that's actually how I met Mo Fallon. I met Mo because Steve Rinella was the star of the show Meat Eater and Mo was the director of the show.

And that's how we met. And when he and I had talked about hunting, he had done some hunting with, what's that gentleman's name in England? Marco. Oh, Marco Pierre White. Yeah, Marco Pierre White. So I know that he had done some hunting with him. And remember, he shot a deer and they smeared blood on his face. And so we talked about like doing stuff for the show.

And he said, you know, have you ever been pheasant hunting? I said, no no let's go sounds like fun it looks like fun it was just for me an excuse to do something with him yeah yeah i think a lot of people that was his form of friendship with a lot of people was we got to have a reason to be working together so that we can have a reason to hang out yeah so um yeah i love the i always love those hunting scenes i I grew up in a, in a, my dad is a big hunter, still is a big hunter. So I, I, uh, you know, I always knew my parents were going to like that episode and not complain about it. And, uh, it just is always, it was

always interesting to see him kind of Tony. It was almost like travel host Ken in a way, you know, you put him in the hunting gear and he, and he hunts and then you put him in some other thing. And he, I mean, he was so adaptable in that way. And it just, for somebody who didn't handle a gun very much in his life, he did all right. You know, I mean. Yeah. He shot a bird that day. I didn't. Yeah. Yeah. There was duck hunting in France that he did pretty well in. And, you know, I'm sure there was some magic of editing at times too, uh well he was enthusiastic about stuff and when you know when you're enthusiastic about stuff you can you can figure it out you do it you know he had a lot of horsepower he knew how to dig into things and um it was just uh it was a fun experience just

i'd never been pheasant hunting before and it it's a fun experience, too, because you're just kind of like walking through these fields, hoping these birds freak out and fly away. And you've got to be ready at any moment. And the dogs. I mean, that's a cool aspect of it, too. You know, there's a lot of moving parts. And then there was the cooking at the end. It was really cool because he cooked for everybody. Yeah.

You know, so we were eating this fresh-cooked, you know, freshly killed bird and some steaks and some other stuff and doing it by the firelight. And it was just, it was fun. Yeah. It was wild. But I remember going home going, man, that motherfucker drinks. Because I had such a headache the next day. And I was like, how does he do this all the time? Yeah.

He had certain things I mean he also could get by on very little sleep you know yeah just like how what like I mean when he was writing kitchen confidential he would talk about how he would work until 11 go out drink until 1 go home and sleep for a few hours and get up and write you know and like whether that whether or not that was sort of a little bit of self-mythologizing, maybe he didn't do that every day, but he did it enough to very quickly write a best-selling book. So there was something there. Well, he was very appreciative of hard work. Hard work meant a lot to him.

Punctuality meant a lot to him. punctuality oh yeah met a lot of him you know he was um he was uh you know he in a lot of like he had a he had like a certain ethic that he lived his life by that it was it carried over into all the other aspects of his life yeah definitely his writings everything yeah man that i think you have to credit the the for that. You know, I mean, you just, whatever kind of fuck up you are in the rest of your life, when you show up in the kitchen, there's, it doesn't matter. You gotta, you know, you gotta do your prep list. You gotta be ready for service. You've gotta, you know, make the plates when the stuff gets ordered. Like there's just no, there's no two ways about it. You know, it's just, it's a military

style precision and, and, you know, well, in best case scenario, I know, it's just it's a military style precision. And, you know, well, in best case scenario, I mean, it's also much sloppier than the military, I would think, in most cases. But pirate ship maybe is a better metaphor. I always love how he gave so much credit to the cooks that were working underneath him, too. And he was like, the backbone of this city is these immigrant cooks that come in and some of them can barely even speak English. And they're the people that are serving people and making these amazing meals in these incredible restaurants. Yeah. Guys from Ecuador and Mexico, just like that is 90 percent of the cooks in Manhattan.

And he would shine light on that. Yeah. He wanted them to get the shine. he would shine light on that. Yeah. He wanted them to get the shine. That meant a lot to him. Yeah. Call them out by name, you know, and really acknowledge that they're incredibly skilled, incredibly hard workers, cheerfully, you know, sweating 12 hours a day making, you know, beef bourguignon and French fries. Yeah.

It's a wild life, that kitchen life. You know, the people that do it, they almost universally tend to party. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It is a it is a drunk, drunk profession. Like, no question. But it's also it's like it's a profession that is celebrating this sort of extravagance of dining, right? Of consumption. You're consuming these incredible meals and you want to have great wine and a great whiskey. And, you know, there's something to all that that it kind of fits in together. Yeah. It's hedonism as a product and hedonism as a lifestyle.

But, you know, also as a way to sort of dull the pain of your aching body and your tiny paycheck and your busted up relationships. I mean, it's really Island of the Misfit Toys. It really is. In a lot of ways, it's a lot like comedians in the misfit toy aspect of it, not in the hard work aspect. It's the comedy world. It's so much easier. But there's something about that. It's like, oh, you guys are like kindred spirits in a lot of ways.

You're just more tempered by your profession because your profession is so – it requires so much of you. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's easy to forget that he was in the trenches, Tony, for close to 30 years, just pretty much nonstop cooking. The crazy thing is that that life, I mean, I don't think anybody should work for too little pay, right? But the ones who do are really amazing. It's like, why is that? Why is it that these people that do struggle and do have all these obstacles and all these problems and yet keep showing up every day. They're so exceptional.

Like so many of those people that I meet are so interesting. They're the ones I want to talk to at the bar. They're the ones I want to sit next to. I mean, it's a certain, maybe it's another form of addiction or it's just, I mean, yeah, all the cooks and chefs that I know, it's just it is who they are fundamentally. Right. I mean, you could leave the business and go sell used cars or whatever. But fundamentally, you're always going to be a cook and a chef and have that thing.

Yeah. Maybe it is a thing like an addiction thing in a lot of ways because there's a fun. There's a funny aspect to it where the it's hard work but you have to keep up it's not hard work like you're digging a hole and you know you're forcing you have a certain pace that you can go at and you can dig that hole all day no you the plates are coming in like let's go like you have to and so I think there's probably an addiction to the rhythm of it an addiction to the rhythm of it, an addiction to the requirements of it. Absolutely. When you get into that flow state and I mean, at the highest level or even just a chef of a, of a, you know, mid-level steakhouse, I mean, they're taking the tickets, they're firing the plates, they're watching this guy, that guy,

you know, they see the garbage needs to go out. They've got a manager and a waiter on their shoulder. I mean, there's like, it's air traffic control. It's really, it's very undersung, I think, the level of skill and concentration that goes into it. So of course you want to drink 1800 beers at the end of the night. It's so stressful. Was Kitchen Confidential really the only time where anybody had ever really kind of nailed that in book form? I think so. I mean, I think it definitely was a completely fresh perspective at that time. I think the precursor is Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell, which I think was published 1920 or something. So it had been a while since there was –

And that's about Kitchenware? Yeah. Really? Yeah, that's about him. Was George Orwell a writer and slash kitchen work? Yeah. As a young man, he worked in some, you know, big, very punishing kitchens and, you know, labor conditions not great in those eras, you know, in those cities. So, but after that, it was really not much. And then Tony kind of broke down the door. You know, everything. I had just started working as a food writer a little bit on the side when Kitchen Confidential came out.

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

You're always going to know that you've read that book. Yeah. Yeah. That's part of the problem, right? Yeah. And same with travel TV. I mean, you know, and again, I talk about it a little bit in the biography that number of people said, you know, people who work in television, they get all these pitches like this is going to be the next Bourdain or the Bourdain of this or the Bourdain of that. And they're like, you know, fuck you.

There's done. There is no Bourdain of, you know, you can have a travel show or whatever, but like don't try and replicate that. It's they're just there isn't going to be another one. Yeah, that is disgusting language of the producer yeah I mean producer pitching the show you gotta have your you know it's whatever it's yeah this meets that yeah but always yeah there's no way you can just yeah unless you have something that's already successful in some independent way like on YouTube or something like that yeah yeah when you say you were a food writer, like what does that entail?

Would you like review restaurants or? No, I was never a reviewer. It was, you know, writing about maybe talking to a chef who has something interesting going on using a new or interesting ingredient or, you know, I did a lot of like very just basic kind of service stuff like this, you know, new restaurant opened up in this place and here's 25 words about what their menu is and what the dining room looks like. I did a lot of recipe writing. I went to Sri Lanka actually with Tony. on my own learning about Sri Lankan home cooking and got recipes from these different women who would teach me what they were doing and then wrote a feature about Sri Lanka.

What is the style of cooking in Sri Lanka? It's very similar to Indian. Obviously, they're very close geographically, but it's a lot punchier. There's a lot of roasted whole spices. Very little dairy is used. I mean, of course, you know, Indian cuisine is a huge, you know, it's varied, you know, because it's such a big place. But Sri Lankan tends to be a lot of coconut meat and coconut milk, super intense spices, a lot of warm spices, not a ton of meat, you know, a lot of seafood because they're a little island nation. You know, a lot of seafood there because they're a little island nation. So it's, you know, it's obviously related to Indian, but it's really its own thing to really interesting, delicious cuisine. Super, super spicy.

Now, how complicated is it to recreate dishes like that? Like if you're if you're a person who goes to Sri Lanka and you sort of learn from someone who's cooking specific dishes over there and then you write down the ingredients like can you even get most of the ingredients in America and like putting it together in the way they cook like how specific is their implementation like what yeah it's not I mean it's a challenge I'd say now with the internet I mean you can really there were very few ingredients that I couldn't get it back in the States there were a few things that I picked up in Sri Lanka because I knew I wouldn't be able to get that specific spice blend or certain, you know, preserved fruits and stuff. But for the most part, anything you want, you can get it now, you know, as long as you're willing

to pay, you know, sometimes exorbitant shipping. And you just do your best. I mean, every, you know, I'm not going to cook something exactly the way that this, you know, auntie taught me to do it, but I'm going to, I took a lot of notes. I took a lot of pictures. I took video in some cases, voice recording to try and get as close to it as possible. So. And then when you do that and you try to recreate it, how difficult is it to recreate it on your own? Depends. I mean, sometimes if it's a straightforward stew or something, it's like, well, you just follow the steps. And, you know, if you know what you're doing and you've taken careful notes, then you can get pretty close. Maybe not. It's not always going to be as good or as exactly right, but you can get pretty close.

There were some things, though, like there's a dish called hoppers, which is like fermented rice flour pancake. And it was just, I mean, it was a disaster trying to recreate that, you know, it's just I just couldn't do it was gross, you know, and I just at some point I just gave up and was like, that's not something that I know if I can't replicate it myself at home, I'm not going to write this recipe and tell somebody that's reading the magazine to try it. Right, of course. What was it like? You tried that over there, though? I tried it over there, but I had, you know, like somebody standing over my shoulder who had already made the dough and they had the pan that was, you know, very well seasoned. I mean, I bought a pan on the street and, you know, I think you probably have to cook with it 150 times

to get that patina so the dough doesn't stick. And I just realized, like, this is not an endeavor that's worth it for my, you know, dollar a word article for this very small circulation magazine. I'm going to let the hoppers go and just focus on stuff that's easier for the home cook to do. Now that you're done with these books, obviously your main focus will now be promoting them and getting them out there. But what do you do with your life now? I mean, you had a decade of working with him. Yeah.

I mean, that is something I started asking myself from the very first time I heard that Tony had died. And, you know, I was very lucky to have a couple of years to do these projects. You know, I'm going to keep writing books. couple of years to do these projects. You know, I'm going to keep writing books. I have got I'm working on a bakery book now, a bread book with a British baker called Richard Hart, who has a bakery in Denmark. So we're writing a book about sourdough bread, which, you know, everybody loves it. Everybody loves to make it. It's it's easy to do, but it's not easy to do well. So we're going to try and teach people to master that. Shout out to Tom Papa.

Oh, he's a big baker, right? He's awesome at it. He makes incredible sourdough bread. I'll have to start looking at his. Does he share on social media? Oh, yeah, yeah. He shares in real life, too. He always brings a loaf of bread whenever he visits us.

We have a deal. I give him elk meat, and he gives me bread. That is a good trade. Yeah, you know, I'd like to keep writing. I've gotten into trying to start being a producer a little bit, you know.

What are you producing? Like a couple of different TV shows. I mean, it's very, very, I mean, when I say TV, I mean probably like YouTube or, you know, whatever that's streaming. One is about, one is with a salsa singer named Tito Nieves.

We're in the very early stages of it, but he's starting to do a little cooking show with his wife, Janet. And the other one is very early stages of a show about food and musicians. So I think there's also some kindred spirits between, you know, chefs and musicians, maybe not so much as comedians, but, you know, there's that kind of road warrior, you know, mentality and perfecting your craft. So we'll see. It's, you know, I feel like having worked for Tony for so long was such a gift. And having these books has raised my platform a little bit. So we'll see. I would love to be able to keep writing and working creatively and not have to get a real job.

Yeah, fuck that. I think you could do it. I have faith in you. Thank you. The desperation of just fucking don't get a real job. Yeah. I mean, the last real job i had was working for tony you know and i just don't see myself working as an assistant for somebody for anybody else you know i had already kind of aged out of the assistant gig but when tony came

along was like well obviously yes i'll work for you but uh yeah i don't want to want to be a glorified secretary do you feel tied down to the food genre? I mean, it's a lot of what I've done, you know, but not necessarily. I realize that, you know, there's a lot more out there for me. You know, I mean, I've tried to develop myself as a writer over the, you know, since I've always, you know, so no, I guess the short answer is no, I'm interested in writing about learning about other things. Being connected to him, though, it's sort of like there's high expectations on whatever you do put out. Well, you know, and he himself kind of drifted away from food a little bit in the later

years. I mean, obviously, there was always still food involved in whatever he was doing for television, but the focus really had started to shift to people, you know, and maybe food as an initial way to kind of break the ice with people. But he really got away from food porn, you know, except in special cases. But it really was, what does the food tell me about how you live, you know, or what you do or don't have, or what your government is or isn't, you know, providing for you. So, you know, I see Tony kind of forging a path there of going beyond just like what's delicious on the table, you know. Well, that seemed to shift of Parts Unknown. Parts Unknown seemed to shift more into a sort of an exploration of these different cultures as much as their food. And almost the food was like sort of, OK, we got to do this, too.

because it's so intrinsic to the culture. In other places, it was like, what's the specialty? All right, we're going to shoot that, and then we're going to talk to this guy that was a political prisoner for 10 years or something. There were plenty of scenes toward the end that had nothing to do with food. There were so many wild moments. Wasn't there an episode where they sat around and ate a camel? That probably was early on, maybe. I can't say with certainty that he ate a camel. That probably was early on, maybe. I'm not, I can't say with certainty that he ate a camel.

It's very possible. I'm pretty sure he ate a camel. I think they were all sitting around eating a camel because I remember, like, you had to eat it with your hands. And there was, like, there was very specific rules to where they did it. I forget where he did it. very specific rules to where they did it. I forget where he did it. But, you know, there's parts of the world where you wash your ass with your left hand.

Right. And you eat your food with your right hand. And they were all 90% sure that they ate a camel. I'd have to go back to the archive, but it seems totally in the realm of possibility. I mean, he did, you know, he went to Egypt, he went to Oman and, uh, I mean, just everywhere, you know, is it when, you know, you're looking back on this, uh, this time that you shared with him and, and then you put all this down in, in these books, do you feel like you've sort of in some way closed the chapter? Does this give you closure

in any way? I'm not sure. I mean, I think there will be a time when, you know, both of these books, this one will be out in the world, the biography, the travel book is already out, and the promotional period will end, and that will be it. And I think it will be a very sad time for me, because I think I have kept some sense of Tony's memory alive by working on these books. I don't know. I feel like the more time that goes by, the less closure I have in some ways you know I I learned this morning watching the the Montana episode it was like just every time I see something that I haven't seen from him in a while it kind of breaks my heart open again you know and just makes me realize how

fucking incredible he was you know and I think working for him I kind of you kind of lose perspective when you're talking to somebody every day and you're working with them and you sort of forget how great they are until they're gone. So yeah, you know, I mean, I think very early on after Tony died, I had to, and a lot of us that were close with him had to sort of tell ourselves right out of the gate, this is not our fault. You know, this is not something that we could have prevented as much as I still to this day think about like we said at the top of this conversation what if I had said this or that what if I had you know alerted somebody what if you know all the what ifs you

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

He would be really engaged with it. He would have so much to say. You know, he might, he might, who knows, you know, and I mean, that's sort of like the daily heartbreak is like all of these things that are happening that the world has gone on and he stopped, you know, in June of 2018. And he's not getting to see the way that the people that he lifted up are continuing to grow professionally, you know, to see his daughter, you know, all of these things. There's that's I don't I don't think there's ever any closure to that. You know, there's just peace trying to make peace with it personally and and and try and somehow try to understand it.

And unfortunately, and I say this with all hesitation because I know it's a fucked up thing to say. There's a certain romantic aspect to even the way he died. It just one day when people review the life of Anthony Bourdain, that that will be a part of the legend. It would be a part of the chaos of who he was and the pain and suffering. And then ultimately what he felt like was betrayal and humiliation and he takes his own life and he's missed so dearly by everyone it's just it's part of the romantic legend that is that person and this wild unforeseen ride from you know writing that one book to becoming this person that affected so many people that, you know, became in a lot of ways like a cultural icon for, for travel and for the exploration of,

of different regions of the world and different people and different, different cultures. Yeah. Yeah. It's, you know, it's, it sure is, you know, more romantic and dramatic than like getting ass cancer or something. Right. I mean, he would have. That sounds like something he would say. Right. You know, and he, I mean, you know, there's, it's just not a surprise to say that, you

know, he had, he made a million throwaway suicide references as a joke, you know, always all, there's a million of them you know in the tv show in in conversation i mean this was just like breathing for him you know but i i don't i don't know i just have to feel i just have to think that it was a spontaneous shitty decision and uh oftentimes that's the case apparently i've talked to people who are air quotes suicide experts and that's one of the things i say is that you'd be surprised at how many people commit suicide with like a literally like an off-the-cuff random thought and they just fall through with it yeah yeah

and you know we'll never know really but um you know i i wish i wish that he had made a different decision. I hope that, you know, people who think that it's a romantic way to go out will listen to the voices of the people that he left behind and see that, you know, the tremendous amount of pain that that caused. I don't mean to laugh. It's just it is what it is. You know that it's that it's I mean, he tapped out. He's good, you know, but the rest of us are here kind of kind of picking up the pieces. We're left wondering what his take on the world at large today with like, I mean, in so many ways, a lot of the facade of what we imagined was a rigid structure of government and society has eroded so rapidly before our eyes over the last year and a half plus that it would have been fascinating to see his take on that. It really has revealed the true character of all these human beings grasping at straws, trying to find relevance in this weird time that we find ourselves in. Because it is unprecedented.

So for a voice like his, which had been so sorely needed in a time like now to not have him around. It's a fucking shame for every reason, but that's just another one. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. He would, you know, who's to say? I could never predict where he would come down on one issue or another. And I was, if I would guess, I'd be wrong 50% of the time,

you know, but he would certainly have a lot to say about the way that we are or are not taking care of each other. You know, the way we are or are not following rules and, you know, just who knows? Who knows what he would have said. But he was so well read. You know, he had such a deep, deep knowledge of history, especially U.S. history in the, you know, in the 20th century. I feel like it was always comforting for him. He could always pull up a reference like, well, this is like this time. There was this sense of he knew.

He knew what was going on. He knew all of the factors that had led up to whatever was happening in that moment. He was a really incredible scholar. For a guy who basically flung out of college, he was like a really incredible scholar for a guy who like basically flung out of college. Like he was an incredible scholar, you know, and that kind of and he was very humble about that. You know, he would never tell you that he was a super well-read guy, but he absolutely was. Well, he was interested in things, right? You know, it didn't really matter what his actual formal education was.

is he was interested in things and the pursuit of those things and trying to understand stuff, which also contribute greatly to his enthusiasm as a traveler. Yeah. Yeah. Anything else, Lori? Should we wrap this up? I guess so, before we both start crying. I'm glad I didn't cry. In the beginning, I thought it was over right away.

I'm like, God damn it, you pussy. You're going to cry in the first 15 seconds. It's good. Get it out of the way. Bourdain, the definitive oral biography.

Hold them up so people can see it. There you go. So this is... And that's out soon. Yep. September 28th, published by Echo.

Okay. So that's out in about a month. And then the other one is out right now. Yes, this is World Travel, An Irreverent Guide, and this is available now. Laurie, thank you very much for being here. I really appreciate it, and I really appreciate you writing these books, too. Thank you. It was great to talk to you. Great to talk to you, too. All right. Bye everybody.