Grant Achatz (award-winning chef)

Summary

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard – Grant Achatz (Award-Winning Chef)

Release Date: July 15, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Dax Shepard sits down with world-renowned chef Grant Achatz, founder of the acclaimed restaurant Alinea, for a candid exploration of Achatz’s remarkable career and personal battles. The conversation delves into Grant's humble beginnings, his transformative experiences in legendary kitchens, his innovative culinary ethos, and the major health crisis that redefined his life and leadership. This episode is an intimate look at creativity, resilience, and the "messiness of being human" through the lens of one of America’s most inventive chefs.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Early Life and Small-Town Roots

• Grant's upbringing in St. Clair, Michigan:
  • A tiny agricultural town, population ~3,000, with just two stoplights
    • Grant Achatz: “No fast food restaurant. That’s how small we were. Agricultural town.” [04:22]
  • Family owned a 150-seat diner – the hub for the community
    • “It was the place that everybody gathered every morning… formative time.” [07:30]
• Learning to build muscle cars with his dad:
  • Restoring a GTO as a teenager taught him grit and tactile skills
    • “For two years, we took it all apart and built it all back up.” [05:26]

2. Early Interest in Food & Education

• Family diner influence:
  • “Did not apply myself unless it was with my hands or some sort of art. I thought I was going to be an architect. Never drank, never smoked. Tight, tight group of five guys.” [06:49]
• Culinary Institute of America (CIA):
  • Arrived with more kitchen experience than most peers, but also youthful arrogance
    • “Probably back then it was my false sense of ability… that held me back a little bit. I learned that lesson fast, though.” [11:12]
• Early discipline:
  • While others partied, he studied – “That was the foundation.” [11:59]

3. Formative Work Experiences

• Charlie Trotter's in Chicago:
  • Intense, manipulative kitchen culture, learning by negative example
    • “Charlie was a master manipulator… slid right inside your head and just pulled strings. It was unbelievable.” [14:14]
    • Notable story: Trotter making a point about food waste by tossing Grant’s $5 bill in the trash as a teaching moment [17:45]
• Thomas Keller’s French Laundry:
  • “Magical,” inspirational, and based on mutual respect and humility
    • “Walked in the kitchen the first day, and there he was, mopping the floor. It felt so familiar…” [20:21]
    • Keller as a mentor: “His integrity, his willingness to not compromise… set the tone for my whole life.” [24:35]
• El Bulli and "Molecular Gastronomy":
  • Shift to innovation, using lab equipment (centrifuges, rotary evaporators) in the kitchen
    • “You’re able to boil that liquid at a very low temperature… the essence of whatever you had.” [32:13]
    • El Bulli offered “full permission to express yourself or push outside of the box.” [33:42]

4. Alinea: Vision and Evolution

• Founding Alinea (2005):
  • Created as a “temple of food,” minimal distractions—no bar, no spirits, just wine & beer
    • “I wanted it to be a gastronomic palace. So everything else was noise. Get it out of here. And it works.” [37:34]
  • Playful entry experience: a disorienting hallway and hidden sensor door to reset diners’ mindsets [39:00]
  • Redefining fine dining: no tablecloths, minimalism, nontraditional service, all aspects questioned
    • “At one point, I asked the architect if there was a way for us to not have tables.” [39:29]
• Hands-on management:
  • “I’m super hands-on… If I’m in Chicago, I need more of my restaurants five days a week, for sure.” [39:58]

5. Creativity and Menu Development

• Sources of inspiration:
  • Researching food history, traveling, and cross-disciplinary influences (music, art)
    • “There is the unexplainable impulse… I started with a Caravaggio aesthetic in mind… then to Mondrian…” [52:07]
  • Ingredient-driven creativity and experimentation with unexpected pairings (e.g., truffle and banana) [54:03]
• Use of AI and technology:
  • Utilizes AI for research, evolving from Google to new digital tools
    • “I use AI a lot… Once I have that little nugget of something, then we can [creatively develop].” [54:24]

6. The Cancer Diagnosis and its Aftermath

• Stage 4 tongue cancer (2007):
  • Ignored symptoms for years; misdiagnosed multiple times
    • “Almost three-quarters of your tongue had this tumor in it… It was bad. I literally couldn’t talk, couldn’t eat.” [43:52]
  • Refused surgery to remove his tongue; joined a trial at University of Chicago for chemo/radiation
    • “Started chemo first… didn’t affect my taste or energy. About three months in, they started radiation… that was a different story.” [45:20]
  • The paradox of losing taste as a chef:
    • “I would build dishes solely on how they smell together.” [58:56]
  • Leadership shift—forced to communicate vision and delegate tasting to his team, which changed his management style
    • “After that, I was like, ‘I have to have other people. I can’t do it by myself.’” [47:33]
  • Struggled with feelings his awards might be “sympathy votes” post-recovery
    • “In the back of my mind… I’m getting sympathy votes… That bothered me a lot, for years.” [57:35]

7. Philosophy on Taste and Experience

• Multisensory experience:
  • Taste is not just about flavor, but also aroma, texture, and ambience
    • “Aromas, that is taste... five basic onions, your tongue, and those are like blunt instruments. Everything else is right here [nose].” [58:19]
  • Environmental cues—sound, color, lighting, theatrical service
    • “We've always been pretty theatrical with ourselves… I really look at color and light and sound and all aspects of the environment.” [59:34]
  • Innovative service moments: dining rooms silenced for synchronized, ultra-crunchy bites [60:09]

8. Work-Life Balance and Restaurant Culture

• Intense restaurant grind:
  • “When we opened, I would get there at 9am and leave at 4 in the morning… it was insane.” [42:00]
  • The work became his identity, often at the expense of family and relationships
• Industry culture & substance use:
  • More professional, less hard-partying under Keller’s influence; notes a generational shift to less drinking among younger staff [63:32]
  • Eating out at expensive places as an “experience investment”—something memorable, not frivolous
    • Dax: “On your deathbed, what do you remember? People remember experiences, not how many inches their TV was… So whatever that costs, it’s actually a bargain.” [65:40]

9. Legacy and Reflections

• Alinea renovations & impermanence:
  • Major aesthetic revamp in 2016; Grant admits he hasn’t fully accepted the result and would like to change it again [49:30]
• Embracing change and learning acceptance:
  • “Maybe you learned some acceptance over that period… I buried it.” [51:13]
• Providing life-changing experiences:
  • Telling the story of an 80-year-old guest celebrating her birthday with three generations:
    • “That compliment goes way beyond stars, the mobile stars… in that way, it is very, very rewarding.” [66:46]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On evolving as a chef through adversity:

  • “Sometimes you look back on these trials, and they’re gifts in disguise.” – Dax Shepard [47:43]
  • “They all are.” – Grant Achatz [47:49]

• On restaurant vision:

  • “I wanted it to be a temple of food. No distractions, and none of the other stuff.” [37:35]

• On taste as multisensory:

  • “Aromas… is taste. And everything else is right here [nose].” – Grant Achatz [58:19]

• On restoring the GTO:

  • “We took it all apart and built it all back up.” [05:26]

• On the struggle of illness for a chef:

  • "What could be the worst thing that could happen to a chef? And that’s what happened." – Dax Shepard [00:35]

• On legacy and moments:

  • “What should you spend money on? You should spend money on moments with people you love that you’ll remember forever.” – Dax Shepard [66:46]
  • “That compliment goes way beyond stars.” – Grant Achatz [66:52]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Early upbringing & family restaurant: 03:44–07:44
• Muscle car restoration & high school: 04:53–06:33
• CIA and early kitchen experiences: 09:02–12:30
• Charlie Trotter’s kitchen culture: 13:08–17:58
• French Laundry & Keller’s mentorship: 20:13–25:23
• El Bulli and innovation in cuisine: 30:39–33:42
• Alinea’s founding, concepts: 36:08–39:41
• Cancer diagnosis and recovery: 42:59–47:43
• Taste, aroma, and multisensory dining: 57:57–60:11
• Restaurant culture & work-life: 63:19–65:59
• Reflections on legacy & customer stories: 66:18–67:09

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Final Thoughts

This episode is a profound dive into the inner world of an artist who redefined American cuisine, with honesty about the toll of ambition and the power of reinvention. Dax’s heartfelt, curious questioning draws out stories of suffering and triumph, while Achatz shares with humility and candor. For those fascinated by the intersection of creativity, leadership, and resilience, this episode is a culinary and humanistic feast.

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Note: All sponsor messages, commercial breaks, and extended tangents unrelated to Grant Achatz’s story were omitted for clarity and brevity.

Transcript

[Dax Shepard]

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. Experts on expert. I'm Dax Shepard.

[Monica Padman]

Who are you?

[Dax Shepard]

Lily Padman.

[Monica Padman]

That's me.

[Dax Shepard]

Today we have a legendary chef on Grant Achatz. He is the restaurateur who owns Alinea and has won numerous accolades and is one of Wabi Wab's biggest quashes.

[Monica Padman]

It's true. And he's Alinea, for people who don't know, is basically the United States best

[Dax Shepard]

restaurant it had been many years in a row. Yeah, it's an incredible place. And he's an incredible chef with an incredible story.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, man. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. What could be the worst thing that could happen to a chef? And that's what happened. Please enjoy Grant Achatz. We get support from quints.

[Monica Padman]

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[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, I've been wearing them a suspicious amount. Yeah. European linen ones. They're 34 bucks, which is genuine, genuinely insane for how nice they are.

[Monica Padman]

It doesn't even make sense.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, here's the deal. They work directly with the factories, cut out all the middlemen. So you're paying for the actual quality and not some brand's marketing budget. Everything's 50 to 80% less than comparable stuff. I love it because it's all very classic and traditional and I know I'm going to be able to keep it for a very long time. And the quality's off the charts.

[Monica Padman]

That's true. The style is very consistent. Whatever you get there, you walk down the street, you're going to look good. They have these lightweight cotton sweaters which I love for when it cools down at night. It's nice. Drape around your shoulders in the summer and then throw it on when it gets a little cool. And it's not just clothes. They do home stuff. Ding, ding, ding. Travel stuff, everyday essentials. It's all the same model quality without the markup.

[Dax Shepard]

Make your summer wardrobe easier. Go to quints.comdax for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in Canada too. That's Q U I n c e.comdax for free shipping and 365 returns.

[Monica Padman]

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[Grant Achatz]

He's an object expert.

[Dax Shepard]

He's an object expert. I don't know if you know this. Are you so savvy that, you know the gold in the Boston matches the trunks almost identical, especially in the back.

[Monica Padman]

Did you know?

[Dax Shepard]

Did you clock that?

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, of course.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. God, you really know what you're doing. How much thought did you put into this?

[Grant Achatz]

My outfit? Yeah. None.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Okay.

[Grant Achatz]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, it's great you've surrendered that to someone.

[Grant Achatz]

El, my swimsuit.

[Dax Shepard]

Rob, do you know where the sprays are? In my house, if I don't have a nicotine spray, I can't continue.

[Monica Padman]

He can't function.

[Grant Achatz]

I understand.

[Dax Shepard]

Have you ever been a nicotine addict?

[Grant Achatz]

Never.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, my God. That seems hard to imagine. We're both Michiganders.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Almost the same age.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I think you're maybe eight months older than me.

[Grant Achatz]

Is that right?

[Dax Shepard]

Thank God. Yeah.

[Grant Achatz]

You were in Milford.

[Dax Shepard]

Milford, Highland, Dearborn, Detroit.

[Grant Achatz]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

You're St. Clair.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Not St. Clair Shores.

[Grant Achatz]

Not everybody. That's that wrong?

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. Big difference.

[Grant Achatz]

Huge difference.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. You would think Monica. Right? St. Clair. St. Clair Shores. What could be the difference?

[Robbie]

Yes.

[Monica Padman]

This is like Macon. Macon County.

[Dax Shepard]

That happened to be used in Georgia.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. So walk me through St. Clair. I'm pretty sure it's similar to Milford. Conceptually smaller. 3,000?

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah. Probably now more than that. But back then, no fast food restaurant. That's how small we were. Agricultural town.

[Dax Shepard]

How many stoplights?

[Grant Achatz]

Two.

[Dax Shepard]

And did you go to, like. Did they have St. Clair High School?

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah. Just one high school.

[Dax Shepard]

How many kids were in there, do you know?

[Grant Achatz]

In my graduating class, probably not more than 100.

[Robbie]

Oh, really?

[Grant Achatz]

It was really small.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And you drove a fucking GTO in high school. Come on. 70.

[Grant Achatz]

70? Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Tell me about that car.

[Grant Achatz]

When I was 14, my father said, what kind of car do you want when you turn 16? And I just had a fast one. Right. As you would. And I love muscle cars in my Head. I was like, oh, he's gonna buy me a muscle car. Right, right, right. It didn't turn out like that for the better. So he went out and found a GTO that was in boxes. It was off the frame. I mean, it was a mess. Right.

[Dax Shepard]

Someone had started a Restoration and bailed.

[Grant Achatz]

$1,400 is what we paid for it. Oh, nice. And for two years, we took it all apart and built it all back up.

[Dax Shepard]

How did your dad have that kind of mechanical prowess?

[Grant Achatz]

I mean, I think a lot of it was just, again, that small town, Michigan manliness. Right.

[Dax Shepard]

You know, a man had to know how to turn a wrench.

[Grant Achatz]

Right. And then we bought the manual Pontiac. Pushed out all of those little cars they have manuals on, literally how to put them together.

[Dax Shepard]

Right, right, right.

[Grant Achatz]

So here we are reading through that and buying the tools.

[Dax Shepard]

And I can't believe it ran, to be honest with you, hon.

[Grant Achatz]

Me neither.

[Dax Shepard]

And were you the king of your high school with that sweet ride? Cuz in Michigan, if you drove a rad car, it really meant something.

[Grant Achatz]

That was a symbol.

[Robbie]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

I had a Mustang GT that I bought similarly for $1,800. And, yeah, I think that elevated me a few notches.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah, I think so. I wasn't very cool.

[Dax Shepard]

No, I saw a picture of you. You've got your tight roll jeans, you've got a fucking gorgeous schlong. Short front, long and back.

[Grant Achatz]

So that I should accept that because that's in.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It would be down to your an.

[Monica Padman]

It's called a schlong.

[Dax Shepard]

That's one of the names for it. Short and front, long and back.

[Grant Achatz]

That's tough.

[Dax Shepard]

Pick your poison with that. Exactly what kind of dude were you in high school?

[Grant Achatz]

Super shy. Did not apply myself unless it was with my hands or some sort of art. I thought it was going to be an architect. Never drank, never smoked. Tight, tight group of five guys. That was it.

[Dax Shepard]

So mom and dad owned more than one. Yeah. Restaurant only.

[Grant Achatz]

One at a time.

[Dax Shepard]

One at a time.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah. But it was a family diner. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, seven days a week.

[Dax Shepard]

And like, how many tables are inside this place?

[Grant Achatz]

It probably held 150 people.

[Dax Shepard]

Because I was doing the math when I heard you say the town was 3,000 at that time. And I was like, man, even if 10% of the community ate at your restaurant, I'm not trying to do the finances of it.

[Grant Achatz]

Right. It was the place that everybody gathered every morning. They would come in and sit at the same table. They didn't even have to order.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, that's the best.

[Grant Achatz]

And that was a really formative time.

[Dax Shepard]

What is funny though, when you're in a small town, like assuredly, your peers thought you guys were loaded.

[Grant Achatz]

Oh, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Because when you're a kid and someone's parent owns a business in town, you just think they're rich.

[Grant Achatz]

100%.

[Dax Shepard]

You have no idea what the finances are.

[Grant Achatz]

I was an only child. They spoiled me.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, wow.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, the cops.

[Dax Shepard]

Did you have dirt bikes?

[Grant Achatz]

Four wheelers.

[Dax Shepard]

Four wheelers, you son of a bitch.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah, I grew up on dirt bikes and I made the transition when I was like 12.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm so grateful I had that childhood.

[Robbie]

Are you?

[Grant Achatz]

Oh, yeah. I wouldn't be close to who I am today without that.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Even thinking about what I've learned about how seasonal your preparation is and how you think about oak leaves burning in particular, your obsession with figuring out how to get that smell into food, I wonder, is that us? Does everyone have that nostalgia for burning leaves?

[Grant Achatz]

And it was interesting when we were working on those concepts, I would be like, hey, where did you grow up? And if they were in Texas, there's no fleas. Right. Or it wasn't prevalent. Some people live in California where it's mostly evergreen. So how do you find that touchstone that is able to really make people go back in time? Yeah, that's a very powerful thing.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, it really, really is. Almost the most.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Had you not gone away to. Again, I love the acronyms because CIA, Culinary Institute of America. But wasn't there ICE to international cooking, all that?

[Monica Padman]

They need a rebrand big time.

[Dax Shepard]

It's so funny.

[Monica Padman]

It is funny.

[Dax Shepard]

Had you not gone to CIA, did you have any other. No, it was.

[Grant Achatz]

I had no backup.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. No backup, no other interest.

[Grant Achatz]

Academically, I was terrible in high school, so it wasn't like I was going to a university like all my friends.

[Dax Shepard]

Right.

[Grant Achatz]

I was like, this is it. But I really loved it.

[Dax Shepard]

Do you think you had any advantage having minimally cooked at the diner?

[Grant Achatz]

For sure.

[Dax Shepard]

What kind of advantages did you arrive with? Like some mechanical ability?

[Monica Padman]

Knife skills.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah, there was knife skills. There was honestly a lot of the grit.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh. Uh huh.

[Grant Achatz]

A lot of the stress. A lot of that environment, this intense. And you have to figure it out.

[Dax Shepard]

Your domain is where I probably am the most ignorant. So forgive me when I make a bunch of dumb observations, but I'd also imagine you have a relationship with heat. Like, I cook enough that I know over time, I look at that flame, I know what that flame is going to give me. I know what kind of time I want something on there if I want to be golden. I would imagine too. You also have a pretty good relationship with heat.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah. So a lot of the modernist technique is sous vide.

[Dax Shepard]

Uh huh. And so for people who don't know

[Grant Achatz]

sous vide, you're putting food in a bag, essentially, and placing that in a water bath. But you have to have the water the right temperature. So I'm pretty good at just putting my finger in there and knowing what temperature it is. Uh huh. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

You can do that.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

That's very.

[Grant Achatz]

My wife always uses me, but I can take salt and know how many rams I have. What? Ah, yeah. Muscle memory.

[Monica Padman]

So cool.

[Dax Shepard]

Just doing something over and over again for four years or whatever. What at CIA was the most challenging? What was the deficit you had that you were like, oh, boy, I'm having a hard time with this.

[Grant Achatz]

Probably back then it was my false sense of ability.

[Dax Shepard]

A little arrogance, maybe.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, because a lot of the people that start there have never hooked before.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, wow.

[Grant Achatz]

I was young. I was only 19 years old. I was like, I'm better than all these people. That held me back a little bit. I learned that lesson fast, though.

[Monica Padman]

It kind of takes that personality a little bit, though.

[Grant Achatz]

I agree. There's a certain confidence. Confidence. And you put yourself out there too. The cooking I'm doing now.

[Robbie]

Yeah.

[Grant Achatz]

You know, you're a bit vulnerable. Yeah, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

You're trying to get that perfect ratio of arrogance that can foolishly make you try something. Maybe you should try.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

It's a real balancing act for me.

[Grant Achatz]

I was so young and most of the students were over 21, so they would go party on the weekends and I would just read fluffbooks. And I think that was a very fortunate thing for me too. I was really focused. So that was the foundation.

[Dax Shepard]

I would have been like, oh, I'm in New York. I have this now degree. I will go down to New York City. That seems like the natural trajectory. Why did you choose to go to Chicago and not go to New York?

[Grant Achatz]

So originally I went back to a hotel in Grand Rapids, the Amway. And the chef that was running the hotel, he became a mentor. And upon graduation, he was like, come back for a couple months and we'll find a spot for you in Europe and we're apprenticed over there and word and blah, blah. So I went back to Grand Rapids and it never worked out. So then I just went on a big search. I wanted to work for the best chef and the Best restaurant. And that was it. That's all that mattered.

[Dax Shepard]

Which at the time was Charlie Trotter.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, so talk about the kind of legacy of Charlie Trotter in Chicago.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

This would have been what, 90?

[Grant Achatz]

90.

[Dax Shepard]

I have it written down. I can tell. He had a 25 year run of kind of being the big dog. The big dog, yeah.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

So how'd you get that job?

[Grant Achatz]

I wrote him a letter with my hand several times until finally he called me.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, no kidding.

[Grant Achatz]

And I went down there for a tryout. I was still in Grand Rapids. I remember I wanted to eat at the restaurant before I tried out because I wanted to see what type of ingredients they had. I wanted to look at the plate layer. And again, I was 21.

[Monica Padman]

Wow.

[Grant Achatz]

I had this giant, hilariously over baggy, like, JCPenney suits on. I worked there for three days and it was a tryout and they offered me a job, so I moved down.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, so I want to talk about the culture of Charlie Trotter and then we'll compare it to Keller, because I think this is kind of fascinating. Both work. Let's talk about the massive difference. So what was the vibe at Charlie Trotter?

[Grant Achatz]

Fathers was intense in a way that wasn't in the service of what we were doing. And I felt like it was getting in the way a bit. Charlie was a master manipulator. Oh, he slid right inside of your head and just pulled strings. It was unbelievable.

[Monica Padman]

What, for like power, maybe?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, if you're generous. I think it's like, look, for whatever reason that was his technique, and for whatever reason, the results were the results. So once you have the results you want, you're not likely to go re engineer your approach. And probably he worked in kitchens where he picked up these little things along the way.

[Grant Achatz]

I mean, we do what we see. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And until you can break that cycle, I never saw him push, which, you know, hey, again, he was successful.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah.

[Grant Achatz]

Right. So the formula worked for him. It was odd to me.

[Robbie]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

You said he was like a conductor, not a musician.

[Grant Achatz]

Right. A conductor from afar. But the food was amazing and the talent was amazing in a lot of ways. It showed me what I didn't want to do, how I didn't want to manage. But at the same time, I was so young and that restaurant was so good, it was hard to not go, this is the way to do it.

[Monica Padman]

Of course.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. The proof is in the pudding, but

[Monica Padman]

that's how the cycle happens.

[Dax Shepard]

Exactly how had he designed that incredible menu or did he have help, or if he wasn't really cooking, how did he come up with that aspect of it?

[Grant Achatz]

He was super intelligent. He went out and ate and then assimilated all, brought all that in, and then sort of moved the puzzle pieces around a bit.

[Dax Shepard]

So he, like, was a curator of

[Grant Achatz]

other great dishes and, you know, techniques, and then he would have us execute it.

[Dax Shepard]

Explain how he'd yell at you. I found this to be really fascinating.

[Grant Achatz]

He would not yell at the person. He would yell at either the person directly next to you or the person that was supposed to be supervising you. I remember the first time it happened. It is a double hit because he's yelling, he's making it very clear that you did something wrong. So now you're at fault, but he's dressing down the person next to you, so now you feel bad for them.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my God.

[Grant Achatz]

How do you feel?

[Dax Shepard]

It's like torturing a loved one. It's psychological.

[Monica Padman]

Whoa, that is wild.

[Dax Shepard]

Tell me about the time you had some extra basil on your cutting board.

[Grant Achatz]

It was a very sharp person that knew how to draw a metaphor, an analogy, and just pin it right in you. At one point, I was shipping out in some basil, and I had more than I needed. Not by a lot, but by a little bit. And I wiped it off my cutting board into the trash can. And he happened to see it, and he walked over, and he was very soft spoken, very polite. It was like, chef, do you happen to have your wallet with you? And I'm like, as a matter of fact, I do. Which is very unusual to have it in the kitchen. So I get it out, and he goes, do you have any money in there? And I'm like, yes. He goes, pull it out for me. So I pulled it out. I had a five on one. Oh, no. And he picked it up, he looked at it, threw it in the trash.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Grant Achatz]

He goes, you're stealing from me. So I just stole from you?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, that's what you just did.

[Grant Achatz]

And again, all of this hard notch at the time was, like, tough.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, yeah.

[Grant Achatz]

But less than word.

[Robbie]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And by the way, I always think, in my experience, the very first movie I did happened to be the hardest movie I ever did in my life. It was like in another country. We were in cold water half the time. It was so much. And I was like, oh, wow, this is movies, man. It's on. It's been way easier ever since. And I'm like, oh, that's the way to do it.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, but that's like having an Abusive stepdad. And then you have a nice stepdad, and it's like, hey, like, I am

[Dax Shepard]

so happy he's Barton.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's like, you shouldn't have had an abusive stepdad.

[Grant Achatz]

Right. The funny part of that is I didn't touch that money. When he walked away, it stayed right there. Cause I'm like, if I reach that in there, what if he sees me? Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

It feels like a test.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Like the second part of his psychological thing.

[Monica Padman]

It is worse.

[Dax Shepard]

Do you pick it up out of the tray?

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my God. I thought he was gonna cut it up like the baseball,

[Dax Shepard]

chop it really fast. And you're like, oh, shit, he cares. So you're there for a year.

[Grant Achatz]

Not even.

[Dax Shepard]

Not even a year.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah, it was short.

[Dax Shepard]

And how did you get yourself over to French Laundry and tell me? Because I wasn't aware of that at all. In 95, how big was French Laundry already?

[Grant Achatz]

Not that big. So Chef Heller took it over in 94, so it only opened a couple of years under him. After I left Trotters, I went to Europe. And back then, France was where it was at. It moved down to Spain and other places, but then it was France. So I'm like, okay, well, it was a holy land of food and very disappointing. Every meal I had was not good. Oh, so now I'm really lost. Yeah. I'm like, if Trotter's was the pinnacle and that didn't work, I'm going to go try to find it elsewhere. And that didn't work. I came home, and I was a bit lost, and I once again researched a bunch of restaurants and found the French Laundry and was like, okay, it's in Napa. Worst case scenario, maybe I'll make wine. There's a lot of restaurants there. And wrote him a letter. Similarly, he called me up, and he was like, you're either batshit crazy or you're gonna be really good. And I landed there, by the way.

[Dax Shepard]

You can be bothered.

[Grant Achatz]

Landed there. And walked in the kitchen the first day, and there he was, mopping the floor.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, wow.

[Grant Achatz]

It felt so familiar. Because of my mother and father's restaurant, my dad would mop the floor.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

You see the trash is full. You take it out.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Doesn't matter who you are in the pecking order.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah. And it felt magical. Everything about it.

[Dax Shepard]

We just blew by one point that I'm having a hard time grasping or relating to, which is, at 20 years old, the fact that you went to France and you tried the food and you're like, it's not very good. I wouldn't know. Like, I liked White Castle and Lafayette, Coney Island.

[Monica Padman]

But you can understand food all the time.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, that's my question is like, yeah, what order is it? Do you think it's just because you are getting so meticulous about all the ingredients and understanding what it's creating that that in turn changes your own palate? It's just interesting at that age to be able to even discern the difference

[Grant Achatz]

between great and good food. I think part of it is here, but a lot of it is here.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. In your heart.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah. And the way a meal makes you feel, even at that age, you knew when something was special. And that was another thing. Like that cliche, stuffy French restaurant. I didn't want that. So all of that was filed away. And 20 years after, that became my ethos.

[Dax Shepard]

The structure of a kitchen lends itself to abuse in a lot of ways. Right. My stereotypical notion of some of these kitchens that had gone awry. It's like this main chef is like a God.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And all the formalities to reinforce how powerful they are and how subservient you are.

[Grant Achatz]

I mean, that whole system was based on the military hierarchy system. Oh, okay.

[Dax Shepard]

That's where it comes from.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah. Historically, that never works out well.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah. There is that toxicity that ran rampant in the years past. Now the whole industry is going through a lot of reform, a lot of changes.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, Internet came along, and your behavior is no longer that anomalous. The sanctity of that little kitchen is permeable.

[Monica Padman]

That's the good part. You can't get away with this kind of thing.

[Grant Achatz]

I certainly have acted out in my earlier days especially. It's hard to find that separation of pursuit of perfection and the standard and being a human sometimes.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, it sounds hard.

[Grant Achatz]

It sounds bizarre.

[Dax Shepard]

No, no, no. I also think it's the pressure. Someone sa. The thing has to be not just perfect. It has to be perfect in 13 minutes or whatever the window of time is.

[Grant Achatz]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. It's a very stressful job.

[Grant Achatz]

When I opened the Winnie, I was 30. That's pretty young.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Grant Achatz]

And it's pretty young to be in charge of 100 people even more. So you're the owner or a co owner. So there's a lot of that entrepreneurial stuff that I never thought about. It was all about the food, and my business partner handled most of it, but it was still there. So sometimes the pressure for her popped.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Grant Achatz]

But, you know, never physically. Just A little bit of yelling here and there.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, the fact that you named one of your boys Keller lets me know how you feel about him. But you arrived with one skill set, and then you left with a completely different one. What did you pick up there, and what were they doing that was novel?

[Robbie]

Just.

[Dax Shepard]

And tell people that's a very traditional French cuisine. Yeah.

[Grant Achatz]

The French line of food, I would say, would be modern French. What does that mean? Threw away a lot of the rules of French pudding. And utilizing a little bit of the American humor in food for the first time. I remember the very first time I ate there, they put the oysters and pearls down in front of me, and I started laughing when they gave the description. And I was eating with my father. It was right before I was about to start. And he goes, why are you laughing? You know, we're in this fine dining restaurant, right. And I go, oysters and pearls, man. That's hilarious.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, yeah.

[Grant Achatz]

And it's delicious. And that was the first time that I was like, oh, this should be fun. This should be emotional. This should quality. And so that really resonated with me. But Thomas integrity, his willingness to not compromise, it was unprecedented. The fact that he was there the first one and the last one out. I was there at the right time to find that role model that really set the tone for my whole life. I gave him a lot of credit for my ability to push through cancer. Sure, I learned so much to be a chef, but a lot of life lessons.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Like, maybe the chef part wasn't the most important.

[Grant Achatz]

Probably not.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. But did he have an overarching theory about how he cooked that you began to understand? And what was that? Like, what was his North Star?

[Grant Achatz]

If you're really into food, if you study it, it's your passion, you can look at a chef's food and understand the architecture of it and the way that certain chefs season the food, they push with acid. They're liberal assault. They're cognizant of texture. So you're able to understand the architecture and their aesthetic, the ingredients that they always have in their back pocket. And a lot of that with him was this emotional aspect of seasoning the food. So the oysters and pearls, the coronet that looks like an ice cream cone, coffee and donuts. Like, there's all of this sort of other stuff. And so if somebody read me a description of a dish, I would probably be able to tell you who created it.

[Monica Padman]

Wow.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, no kidding.

[Grant Achatz]

And visually, for sure, they have an aesthetic. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And they have a way that they

[Monica Padman]

communicate, it's like writing.

[Grant Achatz]

There is a lot of storytelling.

[Robbie]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Was there anything about the service there that you also clocked? You were like, oh, this thing works really well.

[Grant Achatz]

They were very approachable. They were the opposite of France. You know, it felt like you were in somebody's home having a dinner party. It felt very comfortable and warm.

[Dax Shepard]

This is the only one of these restaurants I've actually eaten at. Probably 15 years ago, my wife and I were about to become vegan. On January 1st, we were gonna try vegan. And it was, like, right before Christmas. And I'm like, maybe we should stop at that restaurant on our drive and let it rip before we go vegan. The reservation we got was, like, nine. Yeah. We went there, and we ate till midnight.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And there was so many special things that happened. Our one experience there, there was this man eating next to us, and he looked sweet. So we started chatting with him, and he told us that he and his wife had always come there and that she had died, like, 10 years before from cancer and that every year on their anniversary, he comes and has this meal.

[Grant Achatz]

That's sweet.

[Robbie]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And I was like, oh, man, this is really so special. And there's just so many things that were. And I'm uncouth. So a lot of this was new to me. Like, even I got the truffle option. And the man comes out with this mahogany box.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

In white gloves. And I said to Kristen, oh, I think he's gonna murder someone for us. Like, I'm waiting to see a pistol get pulled out of this box. Right. Then they educate you on truffles. And I'm like, how much is that one worth? Oh, that's like a $2,000. Wow. They're that much? Yeah. And I'm like, where do you buy? It's like a guy comes door to door. So it was a life event. Whatever the food was, it was phenomenal. I loved things I hate, like oysters and pearls. I don't like any of those things. Yeah. I was just eating things all the time. I'm like, no, I know. I don't like this. This place immediately built this trust where I was trying things I don't like, and everything was fantastic. It's on par with going to Disneyland. Like, you should do it in your life experience. It was like a real life experience.

[Grant Achatz]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare. We are supported by Allstate. Checking Allstate first could save you hundreds on car insurance. Not checking what the warning light means before Pulling out of your driveway, you absolutely convince yourself it was probably just a sensor thing, right up until you were standing on the side of the road waiting for a tow. Yeah, checking first is the right move. So check Allstate first for an auto quote. It could save you hundreds. And for fast, reliable help when you need it, add an all state roadside plan. Today, you're in good hands with Allstate. Potential savings vary. Insurance and roadside assistance plans are subject to terms, conditions and availability. Insurance provided by Allstate North American Insurance Company, Northbrook, Illinois. Roadside assistance plans provided by Allstate Motor Club Incorporated and Allstate Affiliate. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. We've talked before about Rob building our website on Squarespace. And I bring it up again because it's a perfect example of what they do. Well, Rob had all the pieces, the content, the vision, the ideas. But he needed something to actually take all that and make public facing. And Squarespace was that bridge. Maybe you're in the same spot, you've been developing something, a business, a skill set, a body of work, and it's been private, it's been yours. But at some point, you're ready to put it out there. And that transition from private to public can feel like a huge leap. Squarespace makes it feel like a step. Beautiful templates built in, SEO, email campaigns, scheduling, analytics, everything you need to go from I've been working on this to here it is, come find me. All in one place. No code, no stitching together, a bunch of different tools. So if you've been sitting on something and waiting for the right moment, this might be it. Head to squarespace.comdax for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code DAX to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

[Grant Achatz]

And Ovidia took that a step further. As with most professions or arts, any protege always wants to surpass the mentor.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, of course. To impress them. You want to hear like, you did it, man.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, pat on the back.

[Grant Achatz]

So when I was at the French Laundry, Thomas knew that I was not going to work there forever. And the style of food that I wanted to do was not of his. And so at some point he was like, hey, there's this restaurant in Spain called El Bull. I feel like it's right in your wheelhouse. So he arranged a stage there. And after I saw what was happening there, I was like, I have to go do my own thing.

[Dax Shepard]

You'd remember this place. Cause Jose Andres also went there. That's like what woke up his mind as well? It's kind of north of Barcelona, right on the coast. It's not like in a populated area. Right. It's just kind of in the middle of nowhere.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

So, yeah, when you left French Laundry, you were the sous chef, which I didn't even know what this meant, but you were the second in charge under Thomas. So when you go there, and I know you hate this word, but other people know it, and I need you to explain it to everyone but.

[Grant Achatz]

Molecular gastronomy.

[Dax Shepard]

Molecular gastronomy. So I know you don't like it, but what is the theory behind it?

[Grant Achatz]

So at some point in the late 90s, it became popular to utilize equipment from other disciplines. The medical industry was a big one. Centrifuges and rotary evaporators. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

How's a rotary evaporator work? I hear you talk about this a lot.

[Grant Achatz]

So you have a liquid or a puree that you pull under vacuum. So now you're able to boil that liquid at a very low temperature. Okay. So you're not having all of the aroma blow off and stuff like that.

[Dax Shepard]

That makes so much sense.

[Grant Achatz]

So it boils, it condensates, and then what drips is the essence of whatever you had.

[Dax Shepard]

So you've, like, extracted the essence without destroying it with heat.

[Grant Achatz]

Right.

[Robbie]

Whoa.

[Dax Shepard]

That's so fascinating.

[Robbie]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

Because this is applying what we know about water boiling at different temperatures at different ATMs, right. Like at Elevation, it boils at 2:09 or whatever the hell it is. So if there's not one atm, then it can boil low heat. That's genius.

[Grant Achatz]

And then my first time being in Aspen, trying to boil eggs, and I'm doing it in front of my business partner, whom I had only known, like, a month.

[Robbie]

Okay.

[Grant Achatz]

His whole family was there, and he's like, chef, why don't you make us some breakfast? I'm like, no problem. And it was a big problem.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, no. Oh, no.

[Grant Achatz]

So embarrassing. Hard boiling it.

[Monica Padman]

That's funny.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. So there was that. So at that restaurant, I guess the other thing I learned researching you is that what it really also broke open for you is that, oh, the sky's the limit, that we're not locked into French. We're not locked in, like, this journey of what food could be. We're not nearly at the end of it.

[Grant Achatz]

No. In fact, the opposite. It was like, if you didn't explore this, you would be doing the industry a disservice, because I felt like for the first time, there was full permission to express yourself or push Outside of the box.

[Dax Shepard]

Invent stuff.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah. And so then it was Daymond once I came home from there shortly after I left the Fanchon retail Veronication in Evanston.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, this was Trio.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah. No budget. We were paying the chefs $20,000 a year.

[Robbie]

Wow.

[Grant Achatz]

This was 2001.

[Robbie]

Wow.

[Dax Shepard]

Do they get tipped out by the house? Is there any other.

[Robbie]

That's it.

[Grant Achatz]

That was it.

[Dax Shepard]

Fuck that.

[Grant Achatz]

I know. It was bad. There was five or six of us in there. We were the Rugrats. You know, we had nothing. But that really pushed creativity. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Cause you got credited, rightly so, for really elevating Trio and putting it in a standing. It wasn't in. This was interesting to me. Of course, I know the Michelin star thing, which is already ironic because it's a tire company, but I didn't realize mobile stars were also a thing. I don't know if they still are.

[Robbie]

Are they?

[Grant Achatz]

They're a thing for Jo.

[Dax Shepard]

For hotels.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

So mobile gas station Monica.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my God. What?

[Grant Achatz]

A mobile star. I mean, it is unbelievable, right?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. So you got like, five mobile stars. Some amount of mobile stars.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah. That's another star.

[Dax Shepard]

Couldn't get the chevron star or the shell stars.

[Grant Achatz]

Right. No shells.

[Monica Padman]

What's the highest amount of stars for that?

[Grant Achatz]

Five.

[Robbie]

Okay.

[Grant Achatz]

So, yeah, we were moving, and then nine, 11 happened three months after I was there. So we're doing all this wacky food, taking big swings, and it was working, but then the whole country just pulled way back. And I remember I was just a chef. I had no ownership in this at all. And I went to the owner, I'm like, look, I understand. If you want meatloaf and mashed potatoes, then that's what we'll do. This is your business. And I'll never forget, he looked me in the eye and he goes, no, I believe in your vision. This is why I hired you. Instead of comfort, we're gonna put people's mind on another planet so they don't have to think about anything that's happening right now.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. Escape.

[Grant Achatz]

It was a dream.

[Dax Shepard]

You opened Alinea in 2005.

[Grant Achatz]

Yep.

[Dax Shepard]

It's pretty instantly a hit.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah. So the New York Times came in on night one.

[Robbie]

Oh, gosh.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, boy.

[Grant Achatz]

And first of all, at that time, the New York Times didn't leave Manhattan over the boroughs. So it was a massive deal. And it was night one, which is not fair. But like they say, I don't know, any press is good press. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Grant Achatz]

So after that, it was just straight up. The momentum was unbelievable. I was Proven in the Chicago market. That helped. In my Teddy roof, French laundry really helped. But when we first opened, Steppenwolf Theater was right across the street. And me and my business partner were like, well, we have to have a pre theater menu. Cause what if we don't have any people? And we eliminated that right away. Everybody came in. We had three menu options. Everybody wanted the biggest one. And so we were off to the races.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. So some of the things that are. Maybe they were unique or not, but they're defining characteristics. So the building has no signage. You walk in, there's no lobby, there's no bar. What informed these decisions? Were they random, or did you have an overarching theory on why that was no bar?

[Monica Padman]

Like, there's no alcohol served there.

[Grant Achatz]

There's no spirits serving wine and beer.

[Monica Padman]

Got it.

[Grant Achatz]

I wanted it to be a temple of food. No distractions, and none of the other stuff. So it was all about purity of the experience with food in mind. Spirits were not something that went well with food at that time, at least. And I just wanted it to be a gastronomic palace. So everything else was noise. Get it out of here. And it works.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. So for people who haven't seen any of these dishes. Yeah. You're using liquid nitrogen. You're making mousse crispy. Like you're doing wild, crazy stuff. It's all prefix. Yeah. People sit down. That's it.

[Grant Achatz]

No issues.

[Dax Shepard]

So you knew what you wanted to do with the menu. Obviously would be very intuitive for you. What were you thinking about, what you wanted the other elements to be. Like the service aspect. Did you have a novel idea about that, or did you have environment? What did you want for that stuff?

[Grant Achatz]

The entryway was very special. It was a very long hallway with a false perspective and a hidden door that was triggered by a sensor. So it was a little bit like a fun house. And the reason for that was there was no Uber then. So, like, you had a yellow cab or you had to drive yourself from the suburbs or something. And I wanted to eliminate all of that before you sat down.

[Dax Shepard]

Like you've entered a magical place, kind of.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Grant Achatz]

And you're disoriented and you forgot about your babysitter and your sick kid at home. And you're ours now. And the overall aesthetic with the restaurant was very minimalist. I would say that we were one of the first fine dining restaurants to not use the tablecloth. We were trying to challenge everything. At one point, I asked the architect if there was a way for us to not have Tables.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my God.

[Grant Achatz]

That is how much we were, like, willing to every aspect of what a restaurant was. We identified, didn't challenge it. We have tables.

[Dax Shepard]

You've just given me an idea of having a restaurant that's lazy boys and then dinner tray, like TV dinner trays.

[Grant Achatz]

That's how I eat every night.

[Robbie]

Yeah.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

How do you handle service? Is that something you micromanage or do you bring in someone that you believe in their approach?

[Grant Achatz]

I'm super hands on.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Grant Achatz]

Even now, if I'm in Chicago, I need more of my restaurants five days a week, for sure. A lot of that I probably shouldn't do anymore. Yeah, I should be spending my time on other stuff, but I love it. And when the cat's away, the mice play. It's just a fact. Yeah, it's true. And so I like to be there to make sure everything's moving.

[Dax Shepard]

Had you accumulated grievances? Because I imagine if I opened a restaurant, the first thing would be like, I would X out all the things that annoy me about a restaurant. Is that kind of what you were doing as well?

[Grant Achatz]

Yes, a bit. For the table. I hate it when you would put your hand on the edge of the table to stand up and the whole table wobbles. So I'm like, why do they have tablecloths? Well, they're hiding a bad table. Let's have a nice table. So it was a lot of that.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Very meticulous.

[Dax Shepard]

Or nothing will ruin your meal more than when it's just uneven. I'll get under there. Sugar packets. I'm always manipulating it.

[Monica Padman]

Are you impossible to go to a restaurant with?

[Grant Achatz]

No, the opposite. I mean, now I have a whole different set of challenges because of what I have going on up here. But no, I'm pretty sure my best

[Monica Padman]

friend works in service and has a whole business. He has a whole business on service. And it is nearly impossible to go to a restaurant with him. And I've had to tell him, like, you gotta. You gotta turn it off. Like, I can't do this right anymore.

[Dax Shepard]

I kind of get it, though. Like when I'm watching a movie and they take a shortcut or they fucking lied about the logic. I'm like, ah, fuck you. You know, like, it irks me just because I know the math.

[Grant Achatz]

Right.

[Monica Padman]

I know, but you gotta keep it to yourself.

[Dax Shepard]

So by 07, you've gotten your own mobile five star there. They're starting to rank in, like, the best restaurant in America. The best restaurant in the world. That's all taking off. I Do notice you have a marriage that ends in 06. Is it possible to start a restaurant of that caliber and be spending the time nurturing all the other relationships?

[Grant Achatz]

No. I mean, let's be honest. When we opened, I would get there at 9am and leave out at 4 in the morning.

[Robbie]

Yeah.

[Grant Achatz]

I mean, it was insane.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Good luck.

[Grant Achatz]

Jordan Khan, who has Vesper team here, he was on the opening team. And Dave Barron, who has Celine and Santa Monica was there too. And that team, pretty stuffy. Who you had on, we were burning ours. It didn't matter.

[Dax Shepard]

You loved it.

[Grant Achatz]

You know, it was like we had a mission.

[Robbie]

Yeah.

[Grant Achatz]

And then when you realize that you're accomplishing that mission, then you work harder, you know. So now we're in there all the time. At that point we were open five days a week, but it didn't matter. We were there on Monday, Tuesday. It was infectious.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, well, the work becomes your identity. Nothing else is happening in your life. So that's your singular identity. And you're crushing. You're getting all the accolades and people love it. So it's like you finally have an identity, which is the hottest shit in the world.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

It's intoxicating.

[Grant Achatz]

Very much so.

[Dax Shepard]

In 07, you get diagnosed with stage four tongue cancer. And I want to know, prior to the diagnosis, were you experiencing anything that was cluing you in that this diagnosis was coming that you were ignoring?

[Grant Achatz]

I didn't know what it was. I definitely knew something was wrong. But I was so committed.

[Robbie]

Yeah.

[Grant Achatz]

That I didn't even want to go to the doctor. I was like, no, I have to work this.

[Dax Shepard]

But was it fatigue you were feeling?

[Grant Achatz]

No. It almost felt like you bit your tongue. Oh. Uh huh. And it would be like sore, tender and. Yeah. You know, hot coffee. I had that for probably three or four years.

[Monica Padman]

Years.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah. And I would go to the dentist and they'd be like, uh, you just had your second kid. You opened your business. Right.

[Monica Padman]

Stress.

[Grant Achatz]

So they missed it seven or eight times.

[Monica Padman]

Oh boy.

[Dax Shepard]

And at the time you were diagnosed, almost three quarters of your tongue had this tumor in it.

[Grant Achatz]

It. Yeah, it was bad. I literally couldn't talk, couldn't eat.

[Dax Shepard]

And the first suggested treatment was what?

[Grant Achatz]

They wanted to remove the whole tongue. And then both sides of my neck, it had metastasizing.

[Dax Shepard]

It was in your lymph nodes.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah. So they wanted to do like major dissection.

[Robbie]

Wow.

[Grant Achatz]

I mean, bad, bad surgeries.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. You wouldn't have nothing.

[Grant Achatz]

The whole thing. I couldn't even process, of course, the shit that I can't taste right.

[Dax Shepard]

Exactly.

[Monica Padman]

That's a sick joke.

[Grant Achatz]

But also the business owner that now I have to figure out how to communicate with everyone. What am I gonna say?

[Dax Shepard]

The staff's gotta learn sign language.

[Grant Achatz]

People left because they thought I was gonna die, you know?

[Monica Padman]

Oh, God.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah. That was a bizarre time.

[Dax Shepard]

So you did six months of radiation like, every single day?

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

How quickly did it start working?

[Grant Achatz]

We went to five major hospitals. They all said the same thing. And I'm like, now what? Maybe I should just die. And I had my sons, and, you know, I was like, no, we're gonna fight this. And it just so happened that University of Chicago in my backyard was like, hey, we have this new thing with a trial, but we feel confident. And I'm like, where do I sign?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah.

[Grant Achatz]

So started chemo first. That really didn't bother me. I lost all my hair and got pimply and all that, but it didn't affect my taste, and it didn't affect my energy. About three months in, they started radiation, and that was a different story. That is intense.

[Dax Shepard]

They're microwaving your tongue?

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah, well, from my collarbone to my nose. And so at one point, the skin on the inside of your throat and your tongue would shed like a snake. No swallowing, no taste, no nothing.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my gosh.

[Grant Achatz]

But it was worse.

[Dax Shepard]

That sounds torturous. You had three months of that feeling.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah. And then afterwards, it hangs on.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I thought this was interesting. I didn't know how this happened. This works. It makes total sense. But you. I heard you explain, like, your. Your job as the chef is to educate the people under you on basically, your palate.

[Grant Achatz]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

So, like, the underlings are going, chef tastes this, and you're going, great. But add a little bit of this. Like, they're learning how to know your.

[Monica Padman]

To be you.

[Dax Shepard]

So luckily, you had enough people that had fully understood. In la, we go, like, they know how to write for you.

[Robbie]

Right?

[Dax Shepard]

Like, they know your voice. And so you were able to rely on them to taste. But were you panicked at all? I mean, you have to be a control freak, so that's a lot to turn over.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah, I wasn't panicked. My experience with the whole thing was very bizarre. I never fully thought that I was going to die. And my comfort, my family, was the restaurant. So I would go to work every day. I thought that I could communicate with the top three chefs and be like, hey, I want this acidic, light apparel, and I want it sweet like X, like Dairy Queen ice cream. And we would build it that way.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. This probably pushed your communication skills forward in a way that maybe otherwise you wouldn't have been forced to develop.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

And let you relinquish some control. That's a hard thing.

[Grant Achatz]

So that. Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

I mean, you have to be forced sometimes.

[Grant Achatz]

At that point, it was all about me. And after that, I was like, okay, yeah, I have to have other people. I can't do it by myself.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. I almost forced your hand. Sometimes you look back on these trials, and they're gifts in disguise.

[Grant Achatz]

They all are.

[Robbie]

Yeah.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah. For sure.

[Dax Shepard]

You cannot think that at 32.

[Grant Achatz]

I felt pretty invincible at that age. And then when that diagnosis hit, I was like, what the hell is this?

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I just mean the notion when you're in it that you're gonna go, oh, I bet I'll look back on this and be grateful for this is like, almost an impossible perspect to have in that moment.

[Grant Achatz]

But not for sure. It made me a better chef.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Life would just be really easy, though, if you really could embrace that. All the shit's hitting the fan somehow.

[Grant Achatz]

Wait till I break.

[Robbie]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I can't wait to reflect on this. That was this great moment where I had to learn and grow. So you guys got three Michelin stars between 2011 to 2024. So you have real longevity in this, which is impressive. When you decide to close and revamp the place in 16 and readdress the men, kind of start all over.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

What prompts that? Is that scary? That seems like a big decision.

[Grant Achatz]

It was. You know, at that point, we were 10 years old. I said the ethos of the restaurant was evolution, and that meant not only the food, but the container. If we were renovating the restaurant, we had to keep Everybody employed. There's 100 people.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Grant Achatz]

Because we wanted them all back, obviously. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

You don't want to lose them.

[Grant Achatz]

So we had to find a revenue stream, and we did a pop up in Madrid. I was there while all of that renovation was happening. So before we left, I knew what we were about to do. I helped design it and signed off on everything, but I was away, and this was my baby.

[Dax Shepard]

This is terrifying. Yeah.

[Grant Achatz]

So that entryway and the staircase I designed, and that was really personal. And when I walked back in, I went, huh? This isn't an idea.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, no.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah. It was tough because we went the opposite of where we were, which was, like, really minimalist, really a lot of industrial materials, like, really modern, to a Parisian row house in the 30s. Ornate ceilings and all that stuff, and it just didn't feel me. Wow.

[Dax Shepard]

So what did you do at that moment?

[Grant Achatz]

Learned how to deal with it.

[Robbie]

Yeah.

[Grant Achatz]

I'm sure we'll either pick it up and move it soon or renovate it.

[Monica Padman]

Okay, so you still feel that?

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah.

[Robbie]

Wow.

[Dax Shepard]

It never grew on you in the way.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, interesting.

[Dax Shepard]

How do the diners feel about.

[Grant Achatz]

I mean, everybody likes a fresh look.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Rob, you were there post renovation. Yeah, yeah. And what did you think of the. The decor? It wasn't my favorite. Oh, okay.

[Monica Padman]

Okay. I bet I would love it. It sounds like me.

[Dax Shepard]

I think I would too.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah. I wonder. I wonder if he would have been confident to say that if I wouldn't have said I didn't know.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, he definitely would not have said it.

[Grant Achatz]

Absolutely not.

[Dax Shepard]

Of course not.

[Grant Achatz]

Of course not. Not.

[Monica Padman]

I wish I could have gone in all, like, the first iterations. That would have been cool.

[Dax Shepard]

Did you have the impulse to go like, no, we gotta. We gotta redo this?

[Grant Achatz]

I mean, that would have been impossible.

[Dax Shepard]

It would have been impossible.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

But which is good, because maybe at some point in your life, you would have.

[Grant Achatz]

Right.

[Monica Padman]

Maybe you learned some acceptance over that period.

[Grant Achatz]

I buried it.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. So I want to know, like, when we talk to musicians about how they come up with songs, there's, like, some pretty common patterns that people. You know, people are in the car, they're in the shower. There's these areas where, like, you're just distracted enough that comes. So I'm curious, like, how do dishes come to you?

[Grant Achatz]

I would say primarily three ways. Education. I don't have a move sitting on my bedside table, wake up in the middle of the night and write an idea down that doesn't happen.

[Dax Shepard]

Two pickles, three carrots, turmeric.

[Grant Achatz]

So there's a lot of study, actually. What other chefs are doing now, what they did 100 years ago. Are there forgotten dishes that we can resurrect or spin offs? So there's.

[Dax Shepard]

That is some of that research, though. Just traveling and eating a lot of food. So that would appeal to me.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah, yeah. There is the unexplainable impulses that come in, whether it is music or a painting. Where I recently, I started with a Caravaggio aesthetic in mind. Really baroque, really. And I was trying to replicate that on the plate, and it went very, very far from there to, like, a Mondrian aesthetic of geometric. So, like, it's vitally unpredictable. When we first opened, I was into Rage against the Machine, and there was a track that they had that. I mean, you know, their music, it's intense. But there was an area in a track that broke really hard, really abrupt. And in my head in that second I was, how can I do that with the menu, the progression of food? So it's that sort of everything goes through a food filter. Yeah, Yeah. I ask myself, can I spin off of that shape or, you know, this, this and that. The other thing is ingredients. Like I pick up a tomato and I smell it and my head goes somewhere.

[Dax Shepard]

Wow.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Almost like synesthetic.

[Dax Shepard]

Do you love going to like markets in Italy and stuff like that?

[Grant Achatz]

Being around the stuff you have to touch it is so visceral. And then once you're in Japan or anywhere, anywhere else, Mexico, watching them, what they do and their traditional food is wildly inspirational.

[Dax Shepard]

And does some of it come from just you're preparing something and you just get some weird inkling to incorporate enough another ingredient or something that spins off into its own?

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah. I mean, one example would be truffles and banana.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, sure.

[Grant Achatz]

I don't know.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, that's a weird pairing.

[Grant Achatz]

And then when you look into it, there are aromatic components that they both have that connect them. But I didn't know that.

[Robbie]

Ooh.

[Dax Shepard]

This wasn't even one of my questions. But now I'm thinking about it. Do you think that AI at some point will be able to analyze all these things that are. Are patterns that emerge that we're not seeing that everyone loves?

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah, I use AI a lot. Oh, you do?

[Dax Shepard]

How will you use it?

[Grant Achatz]

Mostly research. When I was interviewed in 2002, the writer asked me what my favorite Tiffan tool was. And I said, Google. Google. Because everything's right there. And that's what the inspiration, the information. I know how to fish.

[Monica Padman]

Right.

[Grant Achatz]

So once I have that little nugget of something, then we can.

[Monica Padman]

What's like your weeknight dinner, 20 minutes eating.

[Grant Achatz]

For me, it's very complicated.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, you probably have a really hard relationship with it.

[Grant Achatz]

The irony of it all is it's a lot. So I go through that period where first of all I'm diagnosed and I'm like, this is insane. Is this a joke? Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Grant Achatz]

And then you go through treatment and you're unable to taste, but then that comes back and you're like, I'm good. The issue then becomes the atrophy from

[Dax Shepard]

the radiation, the long term effects of it.

[Grant Achatz]

Everything stiffens. I mean, you can see everything. It's really tight. So there's a muscle or there's a flap that when you drink or eat, it folds over and covers your windpipe.

[Dax Shepard]

Right.

[Grant Achatz]

So you don't aspirate. Mine doesn't fold down.

[Robbie]

Oh.

[Grant Achatz]

So. So it's very, very hard to swallow.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, wow.

[Grant Achatz]

And then about seven years ago, because of the radiation as well, my gums recede, and I got a really bad infection. My whole face swelled, so they had to pull all of these bottom teeth. Oh, wow. So now here we are again. As a chef, I'm not able to eat chew, really. With that comes this social stigma where I'm like, not only if I go out with friends, I have to really be careful and navigate that, which is a little bit awkward. But also, I'm me. So if I go to a restaurant that is of a certain level, they know who I am.

[Monica Padman]

Yes, definitely.

[Grant Achatz]

And what do chefs want to do when other chefs come in? They want to feed them the whole menu.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

If I were you would only eat at McDonald's. It'd be too much pressure.

[Grant Achatz]

My relationship with it now is complex. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare. Now I have the type of brain. I know Monica has it too. I would have in 2007, thought, yeah, of course. Because I didn't deserve this success of this restaurant. I don't really deserve it. And now this is the universe's right side. Do you have any of those terrible thoughts where it's like, oh, of course this is happening.

[Grant Achatz]

No, that's good. I didn't have that. But what I did have, really bad, was after treatment, the restaurant won a lot of awards.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Grant Achatz]

And in the back of my mind, it was always like, I'm getting sympathy votes.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, you thought that?

[Grant Achatz]

That bothered me a lot.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Grant Achatz]

For years. Interesting. I was like, they feel bad.

[Monica Padman]

I mean, that's definitely not what happened. But, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I hate being pitied. It's like my most.

[Grant Achatz]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Grant Achatz]

I hate it. What are your favorite? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I do want to ask really quick a couple technical things, because I think it'd be fun to educate all of us a little bit on this. When I think of taste, like, if you ask a civilian what is taste? You're just thinking, like, what the flavor is on your tongue. And then maybe, you know, oh, a lot of that's coming from your nose. But tell me about aroma and texture, because I don't even think that's something people realize are impacting what they quote. Taste.

[Grant Achatz]

Right. I mean, aromas. That is taste. So you have the five basic onions, your tongue, and those are, like, blunt instruments. There's no pinpoint there.

[Dax Shepard]

No scalpel in there.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah. And everything else Is right here. That's why when you smell a glass of wine and you smell chocolate, there's no chocolate in there. Right. But you taste it, you perceive it. So that is wildly important. And it became really important when I couldn't taste. I mean, I would build dishes solely on how they smell together.

[Dax Shepard]

So you could smell.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Grant Achatz]

That never went away. That's a blessing in texture. People don't realize how complex the body is. Certain textures will produce saliva, and then that saliva mixes with whatever you have in your mouth and it hits different areas of your palate and the body's afraid.

[Monica Padman]

So Fascinating, right?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Grant Achatz]

So all of that ties in. And it really is not something that people pay attention. Attention to.

[Dax Shepard]

Right. You get all of it at once and it's hard for you to parse out which thing you're enjoying.

[Grant Achatz]

Right.

[Monica Padman]

But it's biology.

[Dax Shepard]

Is there another thing missing? I guess the environment too.

[Grant Achatz]

So that's what I think. We've always been pretty theatrical with ourselves.

[Dax Shepard]

Some pageantry.

[Grant Achatz]

And so I really look at color and light and sound and all aspects of the environment. Smell, we really play with.

[Dax Shepard]

Is there any music?

[Grant Achatz]

If it makes sense and it's curated. We did a force at one point where everybody was served it in the room at the same time. It was ridiculously crunchy. So we passed out a card, and on the card it said quiet.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Grant Achatz]

So the whole room just was quiet.

[Dax Shepard]

Self conscious.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah. And then everybody at the same time started chewing on these, like, Cheetos or whatever. And the whole room is like.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my gosh. Like a chorus.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah. Oh, wow.

[Dax Shepard]

Was it your restaurant that did something too? Like something outrageously hot too. Everyone had to eat something really hot.

[Grant Achatz]

No, no, we played with temperature. Hot and cold in your mouth at the same time.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, I meant like spicy capac.

[Monica Padman]

Capsaicin.

[Dax Shepard]

Capsaicin.

[Grant Achatz]

We remove the spiciness from it with the rotary evaporator. So none of that capsium comes up in the distillate. So chilies smell amazing.

[Robbie]

Yeah.

[Grant Achatz]

I personally.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Grant Achatz]

You can't fuck with them.

[Robbie]

Yeah.

[Grant Achatz]

But the smell is amazing.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I wouldn't. Again, I don't really think of this, but food, you think in seasons. Right. So we're gonna have morels in the spring. And so you just know, like, we have to do something with morels in the summertime. We're gonna have different fruits.

[Grant Achatz]

Tomatoes.

[Dax Shepard]

Tomatoes.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And so because you have to be ahead of the game. Right. You can't wait till the morels arrive. Right. I can imagine your existence has Been very, very compartmentalized by seasons in a way that other people's probably aren't.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Can you like feel that? And what has that done for your experience of life? To be so aware of what's happening seasonally? I think it could make you feel like time is passing way too fast. Or I could imagine too, since you're in it so presently, maybe it slows time down. I don't know what it does.

[Grant Achatz]

I think it speeds it up. And like we were saying, if it's December or even February and you're like, hey, we have to have a morale dish. So we have to start planning it. What did we do last year? How do we manipulate it? It has to be. Be different. Can't be the same dish and you don't have them. Right, Right.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Grant Achatz]

So they have to be new.

[Robbie]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

It's its own challenge.

[Grant Achatz]

So it's like a movie or a book, you have a deadline. And that self imposed pressure, or nature's pressure, it templates your whole year.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Grant Achatz]

And as far as perception, it's like, I was always a big outdoors person in Michigan. We did a lot of hunting, you know, so the seasons really resonate with me. Yeah, they're very. When you smell those oak leaves or that first snow, the feeling of it quiet.

[Dax Shepard]

I always think of fall. When it's fall, you're going back to school, there's new girls, you have new clothes, you go to like a Halloween party. It's dark early. To me, like, a lot of people think spring is romantic. To me, fall's like the most romantic. Romantic.

[Grant Achatz]

My favorite. I feel like that's probably a Midwest thing. Yeah. Because of the. That. That lead change. That whole thing.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. And then come like end of May, you're like, oh, it's time to party. I also think we have a very bipolar existence up in Michigan. Right. Where it's just like, it was miserable.

[Grant Achatz]

Miserable.

[Dax Shepard]

You see it. It gets to 39 degrees and the sun's out in April and dudes are in convertibles with no shirts, dying to come out of this gray hell. So I just think it's really heightened the just overall temperament.

[Grant Achatz]

I believe that.

[Dax Shepard]

Now the restaurant culture I talk about all the time. My girlfriend of nine years, in my 20s, she worked at a bunch of different restaurants. They all party fucking hard. Their hours are crazy. They sleep in. It's a culture.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

How did you navigate that culture?

[Grant Achatz]

Pretty good. That was another thing with Thomas. His professionalism was paramount. Is paramount. I had a rule that. That I wasn't friends with my employees, sometimes that didn't work out.

[Dax Shepard]

Some people are just too attractive as

[Grant Achatz]

friends, but I was too busy working the party. The priority wasn't that. And like I said, I had never drank heavily up until a little bit later, so I was focused. But yes, it is rampant in the industry, and I think it's getting a lot better. But it's because of the generation. The generation's not drinking. Yeah, yeah. You know?

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Grant Achatz]

So there's always some substances in there, but I think it's getting better.

[Dax Shepard]

I think the industry selects, though, for people who a. They're night owls, generally. Right, right. They like arousal, they like high stress, they function well in high stress, and they're fast.

[Grant Achatz]

You're surrounded by it.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Grant Achatz]

All the time.

[Dax Shepard]

Probably a lot of ADHD in that world.

[Grant Achatz]

Probably.

[Dax Shepard]

I think you're kind of self selecting for a lot of qualities that themselves to also be an addict to eating also.

[Monica Padman]

If you're dealing with such a high pressure situation at work, you want to let go, you want to release.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah. It's very, very there.

[Dax Shepard]

You know, the thing I used to be really judgmental on that I've done a complete 180 on. And it was with her, it was with Bri, who worked at all these restaurants. And the servers would all, once a week, generally on their day off, they would go eat at a really nice restaurant.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And. And we lived in a one bedroom apartment in Santa Monica. I think our cumulative income was like 18,000 a year between the two of us, she was making 10, I was making eight. And I'd be like, you just went out and spent $180 on dinner. Like, I could not wrap my head around spending that amount of money on something when we didn't have shit. And I was more like, let's save up for blank this tv. And then I remember there was this whole movement, I don't know, about 10 years ago, where people were getting really critical about millennials. They made fun of them, about the avocado toast.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Now after that, I think now there's a lot of great social science that has studied this. And they're like, okay, on your deathbed, what do you remember? Well, people remember experiences on their deathbed. They evaluate their life based on their experiences, not how many inches their TV was. It's not how it works.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And so whatever that costs, it's actually a bargain.

[Grant Achatz]

It's about it.

[Robbie]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And so I've come completely around, and I guess I just want to end this on encouraging people do it, man. Save up for a amazing experience at a restaurant because it's so memorable. That trip to French Laundry. Yeah. It was obnoxiously expensive. And I remember it so well. It's like a moment of my life.

[Grant Achatz]

We had a three top come in. It was an 80 year old woman, her daughter and her granddaughter.

[Monica Padman]

Aw.

[Grant Achatz]

And they came down to the kitchen after the meal and the 80 year old was like, it's my 80th birthday. I never thought I would have a meal like this. It was the most magical thing. She started to fry and she's like. And I got to share it with my daughter, my granddaughter.

[Robbie]

Yeah.

[Grant Achatz]

So like, to your point.

[Robbie]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

What should you spend money on? You should spend money on moments with people you love that you'll remember forever.

[Grant Achatz]

That compliment goes way beyond stars, the mobile stars. Right, right.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Grant Achatz]

So, you know, in that way, it is very, very rewarding living here to have that platform to provide people to make those memories.

[Dax Shepard]

It's rad.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

That's awesome.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, it's an honor to meet you, man. Really? Yeah. It's really cool.

[Monica Padman]

I can't wait to come into the restaurant. I know it's really hard to get in, but I feel like now I

[Grant Achatz]

have suddenly knows somebody.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, people may famously remember we tried to shame you guys into giving Rob a reservation over Christmas. And you guys did. And we were so, so grateful. Rob, was it the most memorable night ever? Yeah, it was incredible. Despite the decor.

[Robbie]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Rob, you really stuck your foot in your mouth.

[Grant Achatz]

Can you imagine if he would have just said, yeah, it was okay?

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Grant Achatz]

Oh, my God.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, my God.

[Monica Padman]

No, he came back really glowing.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, that's great. Well, Grant, thank you so much. This has been a blast. Just a quick reminder that as part of our summer break, here's a rerun of one of our favorite fact checks. I'm in an incredibly beautiful new sweater that my friend got me.

[Monica Padman]

It looks gorgeous.

[Dax Shepard]

I just put it on for the first time and I'm truly blown away.

[Monica Padman]

The green is really nice and the

[Dax Shepard]

fit is really kind of perfect.

[Monica Padman]

I know they know how to do

[Dax Shepard]

it and I think I like these cuffs. We have to roll them up. They're too long on their own. They're clearly designed to be rolled. See, look, that's a 7 inch, 9 inch cuff.

[Monica Padman]

It's nice though.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, but you wouldn't wear it like that, right? You're supposed to.

[Monica Padman]

Well, I'm not allowed because I'm short. And they have a rule that if you're short, you have to show a little bit of skin. If you're wearing oversized clothing, you have to show a little bit of skin

[Dax Shepard]

on because you'll get lost in it. I just rode my bicycle.

[Grant Achatz]

Oh, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

My first time in biker shorts.

[Monica Padman]

How'd it go?

[Dax Shepard]

Well, I just can't believe I'm a person that owns biker shorts and wears them now. I'm having a hard time.

[Monica Padman]

Well, you're 50, so a lot of things have changed.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. But also, I think that's something that's best done much younger. Almost the 50 compounds it first. I never envisioned myself as being someone that would be in those biker shorts.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, sure.

[Dax Shepard]

Um, but it.

[Robbie]

It.

[Dax Shepard]

They have a pad built into them, and the seat is very tiny on the road bike. And it hurts. Your on ooze.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I don't want to say it hurts here. It just hurt.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, it hurts.

[Dax Shepard]

I was like, oh, this is a nice padding. I put them on for the first time. I felt like Panay always talks about, like, eventize your run. I was like, well, these are built for nothing other than riding a bicycle.

[Monica Padman]

Sure.

[Dax Shepard]

And let's do that. And the padding was nice. And I love that there's no fabric flowing anywhere else. I think I went up the hill faster because of them.

[Monica Padman]

Probably aerodynamics.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm not gonna adopt the lycra shirt, though. I decided I just wore a wife beater.

[Monica Padman]

So you're back home?

[Dax Shepard]

I'm back home. I'm very, very, very happy to be back home.

[Monica Padman]

I got you a present for your birthday. Do you want to open it?

[Dax Shepard]

I would love to open it. Let me really take my time here. I'm looking at a beautiful tissue paper with. Oh, can I say one thing? This will sound derogatory, but let me preface it by saying I could be in the tourism board for Mexico City. I love it. It's an enchanted, romantic city. Food's dynamite. If you ever go, go to Havre 77 French restaurant. We went twice. The French onion soups are the best I've ever had in my life. On the second trip, on my birthday night, I got two bowls of it to start.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, wow. Like when you got two steaks.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. And I would tear out a fingernail right now to have it again and share it with you. It was the most incredible. But anyway, anyways, the facial tissue and I had a cold. It wasn't ideal.

[Monica Padman]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

And where it really hit me was

[Monica Padman]

one ply, maybe less.

[Dax Shepard]

I was at a nice hotel, mind you.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, very.

[Dax Shepard]

We got on the flight, I went into the bathroom, and I pulled the Tissue out of the mirror. That's in the lavatory of the airplane. And the second I touched it, I was like, ooh, that's soft. And then I thought, how bad was the tissue where the airplane tissue felt? Felt like puffs. Plus with lotion.

[Monica Padman]

Oh my.

[Dax Shepard]

Just to make it relative.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Cuz that's one ply.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, I think it was like 0.6 ply.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, okay.

[Dax Shepard]

Anyways. Beautiful tissue paper.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

With purple flowers. Really nice.

[Monica Padman]

The tissue is from Nikki Kehoe. The present is not, but.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, this is a multi stage gift.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. Beautiful tissue paper. And then a burlap sack.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. Also from Nikki Kehoe. That's how they wrap wonder.

[Dax Shepard]

Wonderful. Oh, buddy. The stories of Raymond Carver. Will you please be quiet, please. Is this an original?

[Monica Padman]

I bought it as a first edition. And it is signed.

[Dax Shepard]

It's signed, yeah. Did you pay the face value of $8.95?

[Monica Padman]

No, it was on sale, actually half off.

[Dax Shepard]

What year was this published? Because we can. I think it's fascinating that a hardcover, beautifully bound book was 8. 95.

[Monica Padman]

I know, that's true.

[Dax Shepard]

I know. I'm all over the place and a little manic. But I just gotta add back to Little Women, which I love. You know, Greta Gerwig's number one super fan. Now at the end of that movie, they show them pressing and making her first book. The book Little Women.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I don't know if you remember that sequence.

[Monica Padman]

I don't know if I remember it,

[Dax Shepard]

but the amount of time and effort it took to make a book in the 1890s where they were pressing it all, they were cutting it with a saw, they were sewing the binding by hand and then they were cutting leather out in a pattern and then gluing and putting that in a press. I'm like, it took like a week to make a single volume. They should have been $600.

[Monica Padman]

Exactly. Well, that's why they're so rare.

[Dax Shepard]

And it explains why I think it was Carnegie who invented the library. There were no libraries. Books were just too expensive. They were like probably in today's dollars. They probably were hundreds of dollars. That amount of manpower. Okay, so this was first published.

[Monica Padman]

We think about wealth disparity now, but then in order to even read a book, you had to be a millionaire.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, I'll get the number wrong. But to put it into perspective, like, so I guess Elon is now worth $400 billion recently. Although that stock just fell. Whatever. Let's just say he hit 400 billion. 400 billion of our total GDP. And national amount of money isn't even 0.01%.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

When Rockefeller hit a billion, he. They say he actually had like 15 cents of every dollar that existed in America. So it's like as bad as it feels now, it was.

[Grant Achatz]

Was.

[Dax Shepard]

It was worse, exponential order of magnitude crazier with the first rich people.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, that's true.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, so this was 1963. So this book cost 8.95 in 1963.

[Monica Padman]

How much do we think that is now, Rob? Can you put it in?

[Dax Shepard]

Well, that's a great. We. We have that technology.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, we sure do.

[Dax Shepard]

I added a new. I actually wrote up my resolutions last night.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, great.

[Dax Shepard]

Which I don't know if I've ever written them down.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, I wrote some down, too.

[Dax Shepard]

You did? Did you journal this morning?

[Monica Padman]

I did.

[Grant Achatz]

Congratulations.

[Monica Padman]

Every day.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm proud of you.

[Monica Padman]

I had therapy too, and we talked about it and she said I could burn em. Yeah. Or shred them or whatever.

[Dax Shepard]

Can I have her number?

[Monica Padman]

No. She's like, if that's gonna allow you to really be able to be honest and truthful with yourself in a way you won't be able to otherwise and

[Dax Shepard]

let it out of your body.

[Monica Padman]

You know, sometimes her and I talk about, like, there are things that I talk about with her that I. That only. Only she gets to hear. And she said, you know, it's not just me. You also have. You.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

And you have a dialogue with. You can have a dialogue with yourself.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Especially via the journal.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

But. But yes, of course, I have to be very honest with myself there. And so if I. If I'm out of fear not doing that, that then it's not worth it. So I do. I'm still deciding.

[Dax Shepard]

We may have talked about this, but. And I had mentioned there was a period I stopped journaling over the last 20 years. And then I had a relapse, obviously. And I didn't even put all this together. But through therapy with Mark, I think what occurred to me was there were things I couldn't write down. Just like you were saying. Are you afraid someone's going to find it? And I'm like, no. But in truth, there was a moment. Yes. I'd be afraid someone would find it. And I had this weird dedication to never lie to that journal.

[Grant Achatz]

Right.

[Monica Padman]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

So I just kind of. I didn't. It didn't feel like I was making a decision to stop journaling. It just was like, this is really weird. I've been journaling for 17 years or whatever, and I haven't In a while. But I'm not overthinking it. But of course, in reflection was like, I couldn't really. Yeah. Be dishonest to this thing.

[Robbie]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I love this. This is such a thoughtful, wonderful present. It would have cost $89.18. Wow, $89 for a book.

[Monica Padman]

That's a lot. It's not enough though. I wish it was. 5,000.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. This is a fantastic present. Very thoughtful. Thank you so much.

[Monica Padman]

You're welcome.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. How was therapy?

[Monica Padman]

It was good.

[Grant Achatz]

Good.

[Monica Padman]

It's my first therapy of the new year. You know, for a second I was debating, I was like, maybe I only need to start going like as check ins now. Like, maybe I don't really need to be on this consistent of a schedule. But then today I was. I was like, no, I need to keep up my. My once every two weeks.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, look, I've stopped, so I really am in no position to say this.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

But it definitely falls under the umbrella of like, well, it couldn't hurt to go.

[Monica Padman]

It does not hurt.

[Dax Shepard]

And it potentially could hurt to not go.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

It's kind of the vitamin debate. It's like the scientific community is kind of split down the middle whether vitamins work or not.

[Monica Padman]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

But it's like, I don't know. On the chance that they work.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

They're not gonna harm you. All right. Someone's gonna comment. There are so. Yes, I hear you.

[Monica Padman]

There are some bad ones.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, I know. And you can have too much of certain things, but just in general, if you're taking. Taking the, you know, not above the daily dose of any one thing, it's not gonna harm you.

[Monica Padman]

Speaking of. Okay, you know how I'm always paranoid about drowning my cells in too much water? Yeah. Or people in general, like drinking too much water and then drowning themselves. And you.

[Dax Shepard]

You know, Gundry's new movement is less water. Not shockingly

[Robbie]

so.

[Monica Padman]

Him and I are aligned, soulmates. That's why he's got. Got those fresh hands. He doesn't drink any water.

[Dax Shepard]

No hydration.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my gosh. I'm going to put my hair up real time if you want to see.

[Dax Shepard]

It looks so good down, but go ahead. Let's see what happens there.

[Monica Padman]

Okay. If you want to see it, go to YouTube.

[Dax Shepard]

Do you ever do an up and then a braid and back?

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, well, I did it for. When's this out?

[Grant Achatz]

The eighth.

[Monica Padman]

I did it for a commercial we were just in together.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, yeah? Yeah. That comes out yesterday.

[Monica Padman]

It came out yesterday.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, my God.

[Monica Padman]

Our little commercial.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes, our Second commercial of I hope many.

[Monica Padman]

Yes, exactly. It was so fun. And it's out. It was out yesterday. It's on our Instagrams.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Monica Padman]

And in it. I do have a ponytail with a braid.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

That I love. It's just really hard for me to do by myself on my own. I had a hairstylist that day.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, right, right.

[Monica Padman]

But I do like it.

[Dax Shepard]

Maybe your therapist could style your hair on the days you don't want to share hair play.

[Monica Padman]

I would go every day.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Monica Padman]

I'd pay for that. Anyway, okay, so drowning cells. Everyone. Everyone laughs at me. They guffaw. And I met someone who drowned his cells.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, tell me.

[Monica Padman]

And it was really bad.

[Dax Shepard]

Tell me more.

[Monica Padman]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

Who did you meet? Where'd you meet him? In front of 7:11.

[Monica Padman]

No, he's a real person. I know. I'm not going to say who.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm not going to outlaw him or hers. Name.

[Monica Padman]

Right. He's a friend of a friend. This is a sad story. I'm transitioning into a sad story. When I was.

[Dax Shepard]

If you were having fun and laughing. Sorry.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, stop. A big group of friends was meeting. And one. Robbie.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, sweet Robbie. From our chain.

[Monica Padman]

Yes, from the connections. Chain wasn't there. I was like, where's Robbie? And his wife said, oh, he's at the hospital.

[Dax Shepard]

With the mutual.

[Monica Padman]

Yes. With the unmentionable.

[Grant Achatz]

That.

[Dax Shepard]

No. Because he's not Underwear.

[Grant Achatz]

Cuz that's his name.

[Monica Padman]

No, his name is Unmentionable. We can't call him Untouchable because he's Indian.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, he is.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. So now I'm giving a lot of info away.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

It's pretty easy to narrow this down at some point. If you know an Indian in Atlanta who's friends with Robbie.

[Monica Padman]

That's true. There is one. There is one. Anyway, this is sad. This is sad. And he had a seizure and I guess he had. Had already had a seizure a year before and was on seizure medication and stuff.

[Dax Shepard]

But when you're the perfect person to tell this story because you have the same condition.

[Monica Padman]

Right? Exactly.

[Dax Shepard]

And you're Indian and I'm Indian.

[Monica Padman]

When he went the first time after his seizure, they checked his salinity levels and they were so low. And he did drink in like really excessive amount of water.

[Dax Shepard]

Do we know why he drinks.

[Monica Padman]

And he drowned his cells.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, he got rid of too much salt.

[Monica Padman]

But he drowned his cells.

[Dax Shepard]

That was the medical.

[Robbie]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, okay. Okay. You have a good deal of salt, I think, from your diet. Don't take offense.

[Monica Padman]

Are you Referring to like the potatoes I made or something?

[Dax Shepard]

No, but you like. You'll have a nice seasoned chicken. I think you have a good amount of salt.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, I feel fine about my salinity.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. So.

[Monica Padman]

And I don't drink any water. Water. So I'm good there.

[Dax Shepard]

Do we know why he was drinking so much water? Was he on like an exercise routine?

[Monica Padman]

He was ex. He was on an exercise routine and I'm not sure why. Anyway, so turns out, per usual, I'm right. You can drown yourselves per usual and unsurprisingly, please look out for that.

[Grant Achatz]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. You and Gundry, you and Gundry should collab on this.

[Monica Padman]

I'm happy to join forces also, just

[Dax Shepard]

if you are having a lot of water, maybe use some electrolytes. Electrolytes, that's right. Keep an eye on your electrolytes. Yeah. The only cases I've ever heard of is like, no one's ever died from ecstasy. But people have drank too much water on.

[Monica Padman]

Exactly. They drown their cells.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Robbie]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. I wonder if they drown their cells or if when they drink way too much water, it backs up like congenital heart failure. Basically, like ends up filling up their body. Because, you know, my father, who had congenital heart. I don't know if it's congenital. He had heart disease. And what would regularly happen is his heart was too big on one side and normal on one side. And so it would pump in a lot, but it couldn't pump out a lot. And then it just ends up backing your whole body up with water. And you, you get really bloated, you put on all this water weight and then it starts really affecting your breathing and your lungs and everything else. And so my dad would go into the hospital for like four days and all they. He'd be on diuretics and he'd just be getting rid of gallons of water.

[Monica Padman]

Right? Oh, my God.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Okay. It says, yes, cells can drown in a condition called water intoxication, or hyponatremia, which occurs when there's too much water in the body. When there's too much water in the body, sodium levels drop, causing water to move into cells and causing them to swallow. This can be especially dangerous for brain cells as it can lead to pressure in the brain, confusion, drowsiness.

[Dax Shepard]

Wait, though. Epilepsy, Pressure in the brain might have been completely all related.

[Monica Padman]

Exactly.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, man. Well, I'm sending love and well wishes to this anonymous person.

[Monica Padman]

Untouchable.

[Dax Shepard]

Why does Robby have two very close Indian epileptic friends? He's very over indexed.

[Monica Padman]

He Is extremely overrated.

[Dax Shepard]

I consider myself kind of unique in America. Low percentage where I have a best friend who's Indian and epileptic, and he's got now two. I know he has a fetish. I know you don't like that word,

[Monica Padman]

but you think it's a king.

[Dax Shepard]

Ask if there's a third. If there's a third. He has a condition.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, it is weird. Then I wondered is, like, what ethnicity is Robbie?

[Grant Achatz]

Wife.

[Monica Padman]

White.

[Dax Shepard]

White.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. She doesn't have it, actually.

[Dax Shepard]

No, no, no, no.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my God.

[Dax Shepard]

Is he giving everyone this? He's poisoning everyone. Oh, my God. He's so sweet. That would make sense. He's one of the sweetest people I've ever met.

[Monica Padman]

Over dark side. Hi, Robbie.

[Dax Shepard]

Nasty.

[Monica Padman]

So his wife is my oldest best friend. And. And when we were in high school, she had seizures. And they were dating at that time.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Monica Padman]

And she got in this car accident because she had one. Hers were different, though. She had, like. She didn't have Grand Mall seizures.

[Dax Shepard]

Were you about to say petite?

[Monica Padman]

Petite mall. That's what they're called.

[Dax Shepard]

That's so cute. And then she has me picture like a mall. You'd walk in, but there's only three stores. And then there's. The food court is like four food carts.

[Robbie]

Hearts.

[Monica Padman]

They should call it Boutique Seizures.

[Dax Shepard]

That's way better. Yeah, you and Gundry can work on that.

[Monica Padman]

So anyway. Yes, he has three.

[Dax Shepard]

There's a fourth. I mean, I only know of three people in his life, and all three of them have seizures, so certainly there's more. Should we get Robbie on the phone?

[Monica Padman]

Do you want to?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. We gotta grill him about this.

[Monica Padman]

Probably. I mean, he's definitely at work.

[Dax Shepard]

Unsafe Saturday.

[Grant Achatz]

Oh, I forgot.

[Dax Shepard]

During a NFL playoff game. I'm so sorry. Georgia Lush, by the way.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, no, the Sugar Bowl.

[Dax Shepard]

You didn't know that?

[Monica Padman]

They lost.

[Dax Shepard]

They lost to who?

[Monica Padman]

Don't say. Texas.

[Dax Shepard]

They didn't lose to Texas, but Texas won theirs. Texas is still in it. Yeah, Notre Dame.

[Monica Padman]

But they're still in it because. Oh, no.

[Dax Shepard]

That game we saw was one of our only two losses. They ended up being really good.

[Monica Padman]

I know, but they played.

[Dax Shepard]

Welcome to the sec. Is that what you said?

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, I did. Hold on. I got to call Robbie. He's the one also that knows about.

[Dax Shepard]

He's not at work. He's at the hospital. One of his. Minneapolis, don't say that.

[Grant Achatz]

Knock on wood.

[Robbie]

Hello?

[Monica Padman]

Hey, Robbie.

[Robbie]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

You're on Candid Camera. You are on Armchair Candid. You're on Air.

[Robbie]

I'm on air.

[Dax Shepard]

And can you hear. Do we have your consent? And can you hear. Hear me?

[Robbie]

Yes, yes, yes to both. Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, great.

[Monica Padman]

Well, we started. We wanted to call you about some one thing, but now we have two things to talk to you about that are very important and we did not

[Dax Shepard]

name any names, but I'm just learning of the fact that you have a second Indian friend with epilepsy, which I find to be almost statistically impossible. And then Mani said, it doesn't stop there. His wife has epilepsy.

[Monica Padman]

Well, she doesn't have. Okay, not specific epilepsy, but you do have three people in your life that have had seizures. And it's now we're starting to worry

[Dax Shepard]

and think you're at.

[Robbie]

Yeah, I see where you're going. I honestly hadn't ever thought of this.

[Monica Padman]

That's what. That's what he would say.

[Dax Shepard]

So my. I have Monica.

[Robbie]

My sister too.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, I knew it.

[Grant Achatz]

I knew it.

[Dax Shepard]

I said, Robbie. I said there's a fourth for sure.

[Monica Padman]

Fuck Robbie.

[Dax Shepard]

What are you doing to everyone on.

[Robbie]

I don't know. I really don't know. Oh my gosh. Looking at things in my life. I don't know.

[Monica Padman]

This is wild.

[Dax Shepard]

You think it's cuz you're so calm and sweet. It may all of a sudden the other person's brain feels erratic and. And unhinged. Is it like relative to your calmness? People short circuit.

[Robbie]

It could be. I mean, yeah, that's the best. I think that's the best we have going.

[Monica Padman]

My guess is Gino would say otherwise. But this is wild. 4. Okay, Robbie, 4 is a lot now.

[Dax Shepard]

I mean sincere it. Is there something environmental in Duluth where half the population.

[Monica Padman]

Wait, no, because mine happened once I left.

[Dax Shepard]

But you, you grew up with that water.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, you think it's the water?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. You have late onset Duluth.

[Monica Padman]

Because I drink. I didn't drink enough water and then it caught up.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm not, I'm not moan about the logic of that. What I'm saying is there's something in the soil where you grew up where 70% of all people have seizures.

[Robbie]

There's got to be. Monica's house was super close to mine. The other friend also lived like right down the road too.

[Monica Padman]

And Gina.

[Robbie]

Yeah. And so honestly, if you draw like a polygon of the four points, it's like a very small area and so likely shared whatever water source. Yeah, it's pretty, pretty narrow there. There. Yeah. You're.

[Dax Shepard]

Guys, did we just break an enormous case? Do we need to call the New York Times? Immediately, you're gonna have to do a new podcast.

[Robbie]

You're gonna start a new podcast where you're investigating this issue.

[Monica Padman]

Wow.

[Dax Shepard]

It's gonna be called Poison Paradise. Under the veil of suburban beauty and tranquility.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my God.

[Dax Shepard]

Lies a burbling poison that results in the shutters.

[Monica Padman]

That's a lot of words. That's a lot. That's too many words. You need it to be small, short.

[Grant Achatz]

No, no.

[Dax Shepard]

First was the title, and then I was. Then I was. Then I was entering into the first episode.

[Robbie]

Oh, you got going already. I mean, you're halfway there.

[Dax Shepard]

It sounds like this thing writes itself.

[Monica Padman]

Okay, now we have. Moving on to point number two. That's.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, no, I have one follow up on that, Robbie.

[Robbie]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

In your free time, which I know you don't have much of, just can you sniff around, see if any more folks have had seizures? Like. Yeah, okay, I will.

[Robbie]

Yeah, I'll report back. Yeah, I'll just. I'll start kind of casually throwing that into each conversation I have. Like, so. By the way, you know, this is kind of weird, but do you have a history of epilepsy and just kind of move on from there?

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, that sounds like a good plan that's gonna work. Okay, now, point number two is football, and you are my main source of information for football. I was texting you during the Texas Georgia game, and we were. We were secretly gloating while I was amongst a bunch of Texans, and then Dax just told me me that then Texas went on to, like, win all the rest of the game.

[Dax Shepard]

They're still in it.

[Robbie]

Yeah, they're still in it. Yeah. So they. They have a tough matchup against Ohio State because Ohio State looks really good right now. But, yeah, they're still in it.

[Monica Padman]

But does that be, like, a fluke?

[Dax Shepard]

Shut up.

[Robbie]

Well, it can't be a fluke because the only team Texas this year is Georgia. Georgia's beat Texas twice this year.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, twice. Twice.

[Robbie]

So.

[Monica Padman]

But it's. Then it's kind of a fluke that we aren't like. It doesn't make sense that we beat them twice and we're now out.

[Robbie]

Yeah. You know how it's like, how can you. How can Federer be the best ever if you can't ever beat it all? You know, it's very similar.

[Dax Shepard]

We all have our albatrosses.

[Robbie]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

All right, well, that clears that up, I guess.

[Dax Shepard]

And I just want to end on this, Robby, your voice was built for radio. You must be involved in poison Paradise.

[Robbie]

I'd Love to help you. Let me know. I'm a hard worker too, so. Yeah, just let me know what you need.

[Grant Achatz]

All right.

[Monica Padman]

Thanks, Robbie.

[Robbie]

All right, thanks, guys. Take it easy. Bye.

[Dax Shepard]

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare. Well, that was a great use of time.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, I wasn't expecting.

[Dax Shepard]

Expecting his voice to be that.

[Monica Padman]

He's a very handsome man. You know, I only have handsome and beautiful friends, right? This has started from day one.

[Dax Shepard]

Good for you.

[Monica Padman]

I know. Anywho.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. Good luck to. Will you plug your ears? Good luck to. Ut. Hook em.

[Monica Padman]

I'm cutting that.

[Dax Shepard]

This is the same as that story I told about the people flying to LA to watch the Red Sox play la, hoping the Red Sox would lose because they had just beat New York. But the other guy was like, no, they must win that way. New York's number two, too. Wouldn't you want your team to have twice beat the champions?

[Monica Padman]

I guess you're right.

[Dax Shepard]

I think it's time for you to like, transition into rooting for them for your own.

[Monica Padman]

For my own gain.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Okay, I see that logic.

[Dax Shepard]

Speaking of which, and I know we're all over the map and have taken up too much time, but I just. I want to. I want to go on to say that I finished the Churchill documentary on the flight home yesterday. And I got very swept up. Up in it. This has happened a few times and I'm sure you've watched shows on this when you are forced to watch what the Brits went through. 57 nights in a row of carpet bombing of London, everyone sleeping in the subway, no bathrooms, getting up, going straight to work and carrying the on. And they were so outgunned and outmanned and out every thing. And they alone took on Nazi Germany. At that point, everyone was already defeated.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

The amount of will and resolve is so historic. I found myself, like, this is so cheesy. I found myself being like, really proud that I know Jethro.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, that's nice.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. I was like, by God, that little island you refused.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And Churchill, he is a very flawed person. He was horrendous to India, I'll acknowledge that. But truly, one man got those people to that state of mind. If you watch this doc, you're like, who knows if that person doesn't exist, what happens? Cuz he had two, two burdens. One is to be fighting off these Nazis who are just mobbing every single night, trying to keep morale high. And he has got to get America into the war or they're gonna die. Everyone's gonna die. Because they're not gonna surrender. And so his skill at wooing FDR and developing this relationship and slowly getting us more and more involved is so impressive. And his own story is so unique in that he was a soldier during. In his youth, and he was an incredible soldier. Then he went into politics, and he was a boy wonder because he was right the whole time he was in the war. He was also a reporter, so he was reporting firsthand from all these wars. And he's one of the best writers to ever live. So he was in this crazy, unique situation where he leaves the service as a hugely popular figure in Britain, goes into politics, has this meteoric rise and then plateaus and then plummets, and he's completely on the outs and he can't get anything done. And then World War I comes along, and he decides in his 40s or 50s to rejoin the army. He becomes a commander, he wins all this glory, returns, and for four years is begging Britain to understand Hitler cannot be trusted. And don't believe a thing he's saying. And we can't be signing these deals and no one's listening. No one's listening. He never relents. And finally the Brits realize he has been right the whole time. And overnight he becomes Prime Minister. Like the story of the up and the down and the out and the. The miscast in the. It's.

[Robbie]

It's.

[Dax Shepard]

What a story.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Robbie]

Horrible.

[Dax Shepard]

To the Indians, let's be clear. A colonist, grew up in Elizabethan England. Definitely wanted the empire to stay alive. Also, miraculous feat of will and resolve in the poetry with how he motivated. He gave this speech to our Congress to help us embrace the fact that we were entering the war. And it's like, the most incredible speech. I cannot recommend the doc enough.

[Robbie]

Wow.

[Dax Shepard]

I don't know why I went on that tangent, but it's been burning a hole in my brain. I know I'm making you nervous. My energy level is a 15. I'm high.

[Monica Padman]

It's not making me nervous. Nervous.

[Robbie]

It's.

[Monica Padman]

It's like, go ahead. No, it's just like, where's it going?

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, I'm just sharing all the things that I missed out on sharing in

[Monica Padman]

the last three weeks. God, you're. You're so much like my father.

[Dax Shepard]

I am.

[Monica Padman]

He just loves to explain stuff.

[Robbie]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

It's kind of a male trait. But does that story, like. Is there a male female thing going on? Is this the Roman Empire? Empire? Like, does that whole chapter just, like, not interest you?

[Monica Padman]

Parts do, but not that part.

[Dax Shepard]

Of an individual story where someone's like completely discarded and publicly reviled, then finds their way back, then becomes so valued and important, then gets discarded again and then it doesn't quit. Like, has a calling that can't be ignored and then matched with this, like, Shakespearean ability to write speeches.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, no, I, I'm. I'm more into like the Anne Frank story of that era. Like, I, I don't. I guess I'm. I'm really not drawn deeply to people in power. Like, I'm not. That's not a thing you're drawn to.

[Dax Shepard]

The disenfranchised. Yeah, this makes total sense.

[Monica Padman]

Well, I just find that way more,

[Grant Achatz]

or

[Monica Padman]

as a human story, way more compelling. I find that kind of overcoming, like a true overcoming, much more compelling than someone who's like, just feeding off power.

[Dax Shepard]

I think the thing that interests me about it is as big as this world is and as complex and dynamic as it is, is single individuals radically change the face of the world.

[Monica Padman]

Yes. I find that fascinating. Those figures, they don't do it for me.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, they don't. They don't get you going.

[Monica Padman]

I'm kind of like towards them, you

[Dax Shepard]

know, for the listeners. She just kind of. It was an interesting one. It wasn't an eye roll. It was a back and forth, side to side.

[Monica Padman]

Speaking of.

[Dax Shepard]

Go ahead.

[Monica Padman]

I roll.

[Dax Shepard]

You found the origin of your.

[Monica Padman]

I figured it out. I figured out where my eye roll comes from. We thought it was an Indian thing

[Dax Shepard]

or just maybe a genetic innate thing.

[Monica Padman]

Thought it was maybe just a full resentment I have of everything and everyone we didn't know, but I knew. That's not right. That's not it. It's a habit. But why? And now I know.

[Grant Achatz]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, you sent it to me, so I saw it.

[Monica Padman]

Well, I'm gonna show the world.

[Dax Shepard]

The world. Show the world. And I'm gonna have to describe for the listener because. Let's just be. Let's be clear. 98% of our audience is still just listening.

[Monica Padman]

Check us out on YouTube and you can see this.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes, please do. All right, so for the listener, it is a. A two or three year old Mary Kay and or Ashley Olsen from the Full House program. It says duh across the screen. She's shaking her head and she gives the most expressive eye roll you've ever seen.

[Monica Padman]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

And she has. Or they have enormous Disney eyeballs where it's very expressive and clear.

[Monica Padman]

Yes, yes, we got it.

[Dax Shepard]

We got it.

[Monica Padman]

All right, now, I. Full House was my original friends.

[Grant Achatz]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

I was obsessed with it. The only time I was ever punished for my parents, the punishment was I couldn't watch Full House that night. That's in my cells. Yeah, that's where I got it. I got it from original Mary Kate and Ashley. Full House.

[Dax Shepard]

You started probably reenacting it always. Yeah. Taping it.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. Mimicking. They were my models then and now.

[Robbie]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

It might be all the way till the end.

[Monica Padman]

I think it is.

[Dax Shepard]

They might be your Aaron weekly. I mean, you already have your Aaron

[Monica Padman]

Weekly, but I think it would be sad if they're on my Aaron weekly because they don't know me. But. But they are my ride or die.

[Dax Shepard]

What I'll say is they're radically different people, which is so fascinating.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Sense, but also doesn't make sense.

[Dax Shepard]

It doesn't make sense.

[Monica Padman]

Well, they're not identical twins. You know that, right?

[Dax Shepard]

They have to be.

[Grant Achatz]

Baloney.

[Monica Padman]

They're fraternal twins.

[Grant Achatz]

No.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, sisters have never looked that much alike.

[Monica Padman]

It's crazy.

[Dax Shepard]

How do we know this for positive? I don't think AI Google says that.

[Monica Padman]

Thank you. I've. I know, I know.

[Dax Shepard]

They're not.

[Monica Padman]

That's like me saying I know something about Valentino. Ross.

[Robbie]

See?

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, tell me, what do you know?

[Monica Padman]

I know nothing.

[Dax Shepard]

Yellow 46.

[Monica Padman]

Exactly is the whole point.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm impressed you remembered his name.

[Monica Padman]

Thank you. So, yeah, one's eternal, one's left handed,

[Dax Shepard]

one's right handed, but that's super common in twins. And one's one inch taller than the other. Even when they're identical. Well, they're fraternal, but that could be a posture thing.

[Monica Padman]

Okay, whatever.

[Dax Shepard]

All right, let's stop.

[Monica Padman]

They're fraternal twins.

[Dax Shepard]

I believe you. And you'd never know by looking at them. Don't judge a book by its cover.

[Monica Padman]

You would not. I mean, I agree with you. It's shocking.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, I. I've met a lot of boy, girl twins and they have all told. They have all had the experience where someone asked if their twin was identical even though they knew one was a boy. Was a girl.

[Monica Padman]

What?

[Dax Shepard]

Yes, I'm telling you.

[Monica Padman]

Okay, well, some people don't understand twins. They don't understand what identical means versus fraternal. They must not.

[Dax Shepard]

Or it must be way lower percentage that you get a boy and a girl then then same gendered twins for fraternal. For fraternal.

[Monica Padman]

I think the opposite. You do feel like if most fraternal twins I know are boy and girl.

[Robbie]

Oh, really?

[Monica Padman]

That's why they are very confusing.

[Dax Shepard]

We should have A twins expert on. Yes, because what that means is that there were two ova in the uterus and that one male sperm and one female sperm hit the two. And generally you would think, well, either the males were because they swim slower and they're more robust, or vice versa, and one swim fast. So it's weird that one would swim fast, but you know what I'm saying. I don't know.

[Monica Padman]

The body seems like a wonderland.

[Dax Shepard]

It is a wonderland.

[Monica Padman]

John Mayer.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

All right, let's do a little bit of facts. This is for Ken Goldberg. He was wonderful. I really, really liked him.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. What a unicorn.

[Monica Padman]

A lot. Okay, now, this episode starts with your

[Dax Shepard]

underwear on the floor, which was interesting.

[Monica Padman]

That was shocking. Walking.

[Dax Shepard]

That's an experience to look down in your underwears outside your pants. Because your first thought is, my underwear.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Came off.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. And it doesn't seem to be torn in half.

[Robbie]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

That's a real. Like, where am I at in time and space that my underwear has made itself off of my body and onto the floor.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I mean, it's so obvious later when you think it was clearly my pant leg.

[Monica Padman]

I know, but in the moment, you're like, can't think straight.

[Dax Shepard]

Falling off. It's like. And I think you should leave. When Robinson, they put a whoopee kission on his chair, and he doesn't understand it. He goes, what happened? Like, he really is shook because he didn't feel himself fart, but he heard a fart. What happened?

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my God. That's so funny. Okay, but also. So that happened. The underwear. But then I realized when I was editing it, the inside out of my pant pocket was exposed. Was exposed the whole time.

[Dax Shepard]

That's a weird coincidence.

[Monica Padman]

It is weird. And. But no one caught that. So the whole episode, the inside of my pant pocket is which people could

[Dax Shepard]

have thought might be her underwear. Like, you know, it's the lining of your pocket. But other people could be like, why are there. Why are both of their underwears falling off?

[Monica Padman]

Now, the vaccination mark, the smallpox vaccine scar is a small mark you might have on your upper arm. If you receive the dry vax or ACAM 2000 smallpox vaccines, it's a sign that the vaccine successfully spurred an immune immune response in your body to protect you against smallpox. Not many people receive a small pac. Not many people receive a smallpox vaccine today, so the scar is far less common than it used to be. The smallpox vaccine leaves a scar because it causes a minor infection in your skin. Your body fights off the infection. But this process leaves behind a small mark on your skin where the infection and related inflammation took place.

[Dax Shepard]

That makes a lot of sense.

[Robbie]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I assumed, wrongly now, that it had something to do with the mechanism of injecting it. Like, did they use some weird thing? Because, again, my dad's was. I. I have such a good memory of my dad's. I don't know that my mom has one. Weirdly.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

But my dad's is, like, seared in my brain. And I was like. It looked like. I think I said a cigar. Like, they administered it.

[Monica Padman]

You can look at pictures online. They have them, and they do look like that. Okay. The book, the scientific management book that was influential on Stalin is called the Principles of Scientific Management by Frederick Taylor.

[Dax Shepard]

See, this all paid off my diatribe on Churchill, because Stalin was the trickiest figure in that triumvirate.

[Monica Padman]

Okay, now, so Kim Kardashian posted some pictures with the Optimus robot, and it said that Elon gave it to her. And she denies that she was paid for those pictures.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. Other than the free robot.

[Monica Padman]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

That she may or may not have.

[Monica Padman]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Monica Padman]

This is what it says the robot can do. The Tesla Optimus robot. Okay. It says it can do physical labor. It says it can move materials, assemble parts, and load items onto machinery.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, I'm skeptical.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm skeptical. That's how we do it without getting sued. I'm highly skeptical.

[Monica Padman]

This is also on the AI overview. So they like their buddies.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Monica Padman]

So he's.

[Dax Shepard]

They're all in cahoots.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. Inventory management. Optimus can use barcode or RFID scanning to track inventory in real time. Home chores. Optimus can carry groceries, help the elderly. Help the elderly, and perform.

[Dax Shepard]

Other homes helped elderly.

[Monica Padman]

I mean, that would be good data collection and research. Optimus can be used in labs or. Or remote monitoring environments to collect data. I mean, that's just like.

[Dax Shepard]

That's a computer.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. Smart home integration. Optimus can link up with Tesla cars and energy systems to become part of a smart home. Optimus can walk among people and serve drinks at a bar.

[Dax Shepard]

I doubt it, but. I'm sorry, I'm skeptical.

[Monica Padman]

I've heard about that. Okay. Apparently there's a place in, like, Culver City or something that is run by. It's like a burger place that is run by robots, and the robots drop off your food.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, I think I've heard that, but also. So my assumption of what that was was, like, very simple mechanized arms, not bipedal robots walking it out. Like, it can make it in the kitchen. Then it goes on a conveyor belt, and then it exactly lands in front of your thing. It doesn't necessarily mean that a bipedal robot carried it, as much as there might be automation that gets it all the way to your.

[Monica Padman]

I think it's saying it delivers it to your table, but it might not be bipedal.

[Dax Shepard]

We should go.

[Monica Padman]

We should go.

[Dax Shepard]

I'd love to go to a robot restaurant. What is it? Cali Express in Pasadena. Oh, it's in pas. That's much closer.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

That just upped the odds of us actually doing that by a lot. I do think there's a little. A little guy that rides around and brings you your food. Hello.

[Monica Padman]

AliExpress by Flippy the world's first fully autonomous restaurant. Grill and fry stations are automated.

[Dax Shepard]

It looks like a little thing with serving trays and American flags that goes to your table.

[Monica Padman]

We'll have to go, but. Okay. It says Optimus can perform precise movements and heavy lifting. Optimus can adapt its behavior over time to reach the desired results. Optimus can play games like rock, paper, scissors.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Monica Padman]

So anyway, that's what AI Claims its buddy Optimus can do. Okay. They're best friends.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Monica Padman]

And our robot feels a little left out.

[Dax Shepard]

No, he's more boy. Like, remember, big time, Glass half full.

[Monica Padman]

I was wondering what's going on because, like, there's a lot of other robots now.

[Dax Shepard]

There are a lot of other robots, but he's, like, becoming charming and flawed. Wabu sabi sabi. Wabi sabi.

[Monica Padman]

Robby Sabi Robby rob sabi. There was. Prada has these bag chains that I really want that are rope bots.

[Dax Shepard]

Bag trash? Is that what it's called?

[Monica Padman]

No, it's a bag chain.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm learning this from Nicole. This is. The movement now is, like, you have these very fancy handbags, and then you put all these little trinkets that far off the side. And I think she calls it, like, bag trash or something.

[Monica Padman]

She might. But they're called bag charms. And look, Prada has this one. This one's in, like. This one's in, like, snow gate gear.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. That's really cute, isn't it? Yeah. I was about to be critical. I just think it's funny. Fashion is very funny.

[Monica Padman]

Sure.

[Dax Shepard]

So you get this perfect, outrageously expensive bag, and then you're supposed to, like, drape some trash. Obviously. Downplay it. It's like, what's happening?

[Monica Padman]

I agree. I. But it's not trash. This is $1,100.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, I don't I didn't say it was inexpensive. Oh, yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Well, okay. But I agree. I would not not put. People love that, and I think that's great, and it's a way to, like, show your identity. But they're not for me on my bag. But I want this little robot to just, like, sit in my house. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, that's great.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, he's pretty big. Look at him compared to the bag.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, that's preposterous. He's larger than the bag.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. You said 39% of U.S. jobs are still manual labor. According to the Bureau of Labor statistics reported that 39.1% of civilian workforce in the US performs physically demanding jobs that require lifting, carrying, pushing, pulling, kneeling, stooping, crawling and climbing activities in varied environmental conditions.

[Dax Shepard]

Sucking, fucking. Don't leave out sex workers. That's manual labor. No, we, like, don't we honor sex workers?

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. But I'm just wondering, is it really manual?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, it's definitely manual.

[Monica Padman]

It's laborious. All right, well, that's it for Ken.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm glad we ended on that note for Ken. I think he would appreciate that. All right.

[Monica Padman]

Bye, Ken.

[Dax Shepard]

Love you.

[Monica Padman]

Love you.