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This Is Why You Keep Losing Opportunities | Bizarre Foods @AndrewZimmern Explains - Unemployable with Jeff Dudan | Wave AI Podcast Notes

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This Is Why You Keep Losing Opportunities | Bizarre Foods @AndrewZimmern Explains

Unemployable with Jeff Dudan

Fri Feb 13 2026

Summary

Podcast Summary: Unemployable with Jeff Dudan

Episode Title: This Is Why You Keep Losing Opportunities | Bizarre Foods @AndrewZimmern Explains
Host: Jeff Dudan
Guest: Andrew Zimmern
Release Date: February 13, 2026

Episode Overview

This engaging episode dives deep into the life and philosophy of Andrew Zimmern, the multi-award-winning chef and creator of "Bizarre Foods." He and Jeff Dudan explore themes of self-reliance, overcoming addiction, entrepreneurship, food culture and insecurity, the responsibility of influence, and the broader impact of food systems on society. Andrew shares personal stories, candid insights from his career, and powerful ideas about service, uniqueness, and social responsibility.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Early Work Ethic and First Jobs

Both Andrew (age 14) and Jeff began working in the hospitality industry very young, drawn by either necessity or parental advice to learn responsibility.
Andrew tells a vivid story about how he avoided hard labor landscaping jobs for more appealing, social jobs in restaurants:

“I immediately got. I said to my father, fine. And the next weekend...I rode to my godmother's seafood restaurant and I applied for a job. And of course she hired me. I was basically peeling vegetables and shucking clams and oysters. And that was the first time at age 14, I collected a paycheck in a restaurant." (03:08)
Both reflect on the formative value of working young, mistakenly spending money, and the gratification achieved from basic service work.
Andrew advocates for early work experiences as a fundamental builder of self-esteem and wisdom, not just skills.

“I developed a sense of self esteem at work because I was out in the world doing something that I wouldn't have found any other way.” (08:27)

Addiction, Recovery, and the Entrepreneurial Mindset

Andrew describes his early addiction, how restaurant culture both masked and enabled it, and his eventual downward spiral into homelessness:

“It quickly, during the 80s, went from something that I would deem somewhat manageable to completely owning me…Homeless for 13 months, squatting a building in lower Manhattan...It was a miserable existence.” (12:18)
Jeff and Andrew discuss why so many successful entrepreneurs or personalities have endured hardship and addiction. Andrew explains it via Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey and a shift from selfishness to service after recovery:

“If you go through an immense amount of tragedy and you survive, you have a wealth of experience that if turned around and focused for good, can be an extremely valuable sort of education resource.” (16:04)
“When I got sober, I predicated my life on developing a relationship with a power greater than myself. …and then predicating my life on helping other people, doing things for others.” (16:53)
He notes that truly overcoming loss and addiction often catalyzes lifelong fearlessness and possibility in personal and entrepreneurial contexts.
Memorable family therapy anecdote: Andrew’s drive to be “the best” at anything—shoe salesman, chef, entrepreneur—no matter what, is relentless.

“Doesn't matter what he does. He's going to do the exact same thing. He's going to grow it and figure out a way to make it more interesting. Because that's the joy that I have in life.” (20:51)

Life Balance, Joy, and Loving the Work

Despite relentless work drive, Andrew acknowledges the importance of investing in non-work joys: family, friends, and home life.
He describes cooking for friends as both his “yoga” and therapy:

“Most people would say, you just got home. Why do you want to cook all day? It's kind of my yoga...I was just centered and in the zone. And it was fun.” (23:35)

Focus, Luck, and Building Unique Opportunities

Jeff and Andrew agree that focus on the job at hand is what creates “the next opportunity.”
Andrew rails against “passive ambition” and stresses strategic, persistent effort—how he hustled to become an accidental celebrity by creating differentiated media content out of necessity:

“I sort of created a syllabus for myself to learn the things I needed to do so I could become expert. I spent my 10,000 hours or whatever across three jobs pretty quickly knowing intentionally that I wanted to have a television [show].” (31:21)
Iconic "Bizarre Foods" exorcism episode turning point:

“Sometimes we need those seconds and inches thing. Now if I'm sitting there with my kid, I tell him, I create my own luck. We worked hard, we made a good program.” (36:28)

Lessons in Broadcasting and Storytelling

Andrew explains the mechanics of learning TV and radio—how local live news taught him resilience, creativity, and how to connect with viewers.
He credits patience and faith as central to enduring repeated attempts at storytelling:

“Patience is faithful. You have to have a belief that it is going to work if you try it.” (43:01)

Philosophy and Guiding Principles

“Don’t be the best, be the only.” He argues for radical uniqueness, citing it's easier to be “the only” than “the best.” (44:03)
Three-question communication filter:

“Is it true? Does it need to be said? And…is it up to me to say it? And the third question is the one that always gets me.” (44:21)
His primary principle: service to others is compatible with capitalism, business, and happiness.

“Doing things for other people is what we're here on planet Earth for. And that is 100% compatible with being a capitalist and a business owner.” (46:37)

Food Systems, Policy, and Health

Andrew discusses genetic, economic, and social determinants of food health and scarcity. He advocates for massive food industry reform:

“We need to change laws to change outcomes for people in this country. … The only thing that works is giving these issues the teeth that laws provide to actually solve the problems.” (61:13)
Childhood hunger in America is, in his view, a “political problem, not a hunger problem,” costing a rounding error in the federal budget to solve; continuing not to solve it is, he says, “almost a genocidal choice.”

“We can statistically eliminate childhood hunger in America. It will take about six weeks..." (65:57)
"As my friend Jim McGovern ...reminds me, Andrew, it's a not—we don't have a hunger problem in America. We have a political problem in America." (68:45)
On processed and convenience foods: Andrew isn’t against convenience but despises the unhealthy, ultra-processed ingredients; he again emphasizes systemic, legislative change over individual shaming.
He draws analogies to the slow-moving progress on tobacco and seatbelt safety as a model for food reform timelines.

Food as Security and Climate

Andrew positions food as a national security, climate, and global stability issue—domestic and international.
He points to aquaculture, new protein technologies, and better use of “Big Food” infrastructure as key future solutions, but also warns of climate crisis potentially being irreversible:

“At this point, I'm starting to feel that way about our climate crisis. I think that's the only one…That's the one that scares me a lot.” (82:33, 87:29)
He is candidly critical of half-measures in plant-based products; believes technological innovation and policy are needed in tandem.

Reflections on Influencers & Legacy

Andrew discusses friendship and collaboration with Anthony Bourdain, how they shared values, timing, and perspective even as their personal paths diverged.
Emphasizes the rare timing of their style of food travel media, and the crucial role “being there first” played in their prominence:

“We basically did the same thing. We just had two different ways of storytelling and two different points of view…you can only have sort of a few. It’s the way we look at our country’s founders, right?” (54:31)

Final Advice & Memorable Quotes

Notable Quotes

“If you go through an immense amount of tragedy and you survive, you have a wealth of experience that if turned around and focused for good, can be an extremely valuable sort of education resource.” (16:04)
“Don’t be the best, be the only.” (44:03)
“Ask for help.” (102:18)
On the meaning of life (via tribal shaman):

“We're here to make other people happy and love them, and walked away from me like, of course that’s our only reason for being, you idiot.” (50:18)

Closing Wisdom

Jeff Dudan: “If you had you have one go-to sentence to make an impact in someone's life, what would that be?” (102:09)
Andrew Zimmern: “Ask for help.” (102:18)
He elaborates, expressing regret for not asking for help sooner and marvels at how universally people jump to help those who ask.

Key Timestamps

Early Career & Addiction: 01:36–17:00
The Hero’s Journey & Transformation: 15:46–19:00
Philosophy & Life Lessons: 43:52–47:24
Building Uniqueness & Celebrity: 26:04–35:01
The TV Breakthrough & Bizarre Foods: 35:00–41:32
On Food Systems & Hunger Policy: 61:02–73:52
Climate & Irreversible Change: 82:17–89:11
On Bourdain & Influencer Legacy: 54:00–57:55
Final Advice & Sign-Off: 102:09–103:07

Notable Moments & Memorable Exchanges

Andrew’s Celebration of Persistence: The story of risking an unscheduled TV segment with a witch doctor in Ecuador, leading directly to national appearances and the “big break.” (36:28)
The Therapist’s Shoe Salesman Analogy: A therapist helps Andrew’s wife realize no matter what job he’s in, he’ll scale it:

“What does your second year look like? And I say, I leave the company and I go build 400 of these stores in China.” (20:38)
Meaning of Life, via a Botswana Shaman:

“We're here to make other people happy and love them.” (50:18)
On Being the Only:

“Don’t be the best, be the only.” (44:03)
‘Ask for help’ as his most important advice: (102:18)

Tone & Language

The conversation is candid, reflective, and occasionally irreverent. Despite confronting topics like addiction, failure, and cultural divisions, the optimism, practical wisdom, and deep empathy of both speakers are prominent throughout.

In Summary

This episode is rich with hard-won business advice, profound insight into personal growth, and crucial observations at the intersection of food, policy, health, and culture. Andrew Zimmern insists on uniqueness, dogged persistence, and the life-changing value of serving others. He calls for systemic change in food policy, and leaves listeners with a simple but powerful tool for transformation: “Ask for help.”

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Transcript

Andrew Zimmern (0:00)

A show that some people view as fat white guy, goes around world and eats bugs. Would that be the thing that launched all of the other stuff that I do? Turns out yes. You have to have a belief that it is going to work if you try it. The episode in Odovalo, Ecuador where a medicine man made me undress and then he beat me with branches until I broke out in hives everywhere and he sprayed bad on me and he poured, you know, 151 on me homemade hooch and lit me on fire.

Jeff Duden (0:32)

Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Unemployable podcast. I'm Jeff Duden. If you were a chef who got your TV debut on a local morning show in Minneapolis doing a food feature segment, developed a love for writing and creating both behind the camera and in front of it. If you are the co creator of the Bizarre foods franchise, seeing the world and its people through unique cuisine and have racked up multiple James Beard awards along the way, your name can only be the fun, famous and fascinating my friend Andrew Zimmern. Welcome Andrew Zimmern. How are you?

Andrew Zimmern (1:15)

I'm good today. How are you, Jeff?

Jeff Duden (1:17)

Oh, I'm, I'm so good. I really appreciate you being on. Look forward to a great conversation. Can we start back in the beginning? I'm fascinated to know how you got your first job at 13 or 14 years old. How did, how did that happen for you?

Andrew Zimmern (1:36)

Selfishness and self centeredness is the greatest motivator of all time. I was a typical, you know, 14 year old alcoholic in waiting. I, I hadn't really, I tried pot and I tried, you know, drinks a couple of times by the time I turned 14 in the summer of 1975. So I was already like exhibiting that, that, that slingshot behavior of hyper responsibility and hyper irresponsibility sometimes within the same day. And I remember making a comment to my father, you know, in, in May or early June of that year talking about how excited I was to spend time at our summer place. And I, I must have said something about my, I just remember his response was there is no more allowance. You're, you're turning 14? Yeah, I turned 14 that July. And he said you need to get a job and make sure that you save enough money so that you have money during the winter. So what you earn during the summer you don't need to spend, you know, food and you know, room and board is paid for here at your, you live in this house. But my recommendation is you save money. Obviously I saved none of it. And you Know, he suggested that I do the. Take the job that all of my friends were taking. Everyone I knew went to work for the same three or four landscaping companies. And that meant you woke up at 4:30 in the morning, at 5:15, a truck came by your house, picked you up, you hopped in the back and sat on the edge of the truck, and you went to the job where you, being the teenager, you hauled wheelbarrows of dirt either out during an excavation or in if they were building berms. And you basically just, you were the low man on the totem pole doing a really interesting physical labor job. I was interested in none of that because you, you got home at three in the afternoon, your day was done, you're tired, not a lot left to do. I wanted to sleep in each day, go to the beach. There were girl I was. I wanted to hang out with girls, I wanted to do drugs, I wanted to do all these kinds of things, and I wanted to cook. And so I immediately got. I said to my father, fine. And the next weekend when I was out at our place, I got on my bike and I rode to my godmother's seafood restaurant and I applied for a job. And of course she hired me. And I was basically peeling vegetables and shucking clams and oysters. And that was the first time at age 14, I collected a paycheck in a restaurant. And I don't think I've lapsed a year since in collecting a paycheck from a restaurant. So I think it's been like 48 years in a row. Nowhere near a record. But for me, it's. It's something that I've done for just about. Well, I've done it the longest of anything that I've ever done. I love food people. I loved that job. I loved hanging out with older folks. I loved learning. I loved plating six oysters with a couple of little cups of garnish and a few lemons and some parsley sprigs and watching it, along with a clinking gin and tonic, cross the dining room to a waiting customer who, you know, would always take that first oyster and slurp it down and then kind of give that nod like that tastes good. And I felt an immense sense of immediate gratification and pride in what I was doing. And I was off to the races. I was hooked.

Andrew Zimmern (11:10)

Well, I think it's, I think it's actually the, the, the flip side, I, I think I was extremely at home in Restaura, that kind of life there. It doesn't mean that you can't be working at an ad agency or a shoe store or on Wall street or as an actor or, you know, and have it. But there is something about, especially in the 80s, this pirate ship of a restaurant where you're done working late at night and everyone, it's sort of like letting off steam is the thing you do. And so it's an easy place for an addict or an alcoholic to hide a little bit. And I also found a lot of like minded people there. There were folks who, you know, nobody says I'm an active addict and alcoholic. I need to fund my addiction because that's what I'm really focused on is using. I'm gonna go get a job teaching or I'm going to go get a job on Wall Street. Said no one ever. Some people find themselves in that position, you know, by accident, but no one says, oh, I'm going to take this job with a lot of responsibility. However, a lot of people say, yeah, I'll wait tables three days a week and the rest of the time I'll just be getting high. I wanted to work in restaurants. I, I wanted to keep cooking. I wanted to learn everything about the business. I was a voracious learner. I was insanely curious about everything. And at the same time I found a place that, that was easy to do, number one, while I was using and number two, to keep going afterwards with the other crazies that you could identify. Out of the group of 75, 80 people in the restaurant, the three or four that like to party the way I did, it was easy to find them and keep it going into the next morning and just go back in to work. I think my addiction and my experience with working with a lot of addicts, alcoholics since getting sober is that it would have flourished anywhere. And it quickly, during the 80s, went from something that I would deem somewhat manageable to completely owning me. I mean, in every sense of the word, where everything went through the filter of does it allow me to continue to, to drink and drug my way through Life eventually losing my moral compass completely and being 100% a user of people and taker of things, engaging in lots of illegal activity. Homeless for 13 months, squatting a building in lower Manhattan that was deserted, living with, you know, street people on a. I was a street person. I mean, you know, it's living on a pile of dirty clothes. And it was, it was a miserable existence. And none of that was enough to convince me that maybe I had a problem with drinking and drugging. Just wasn't. That's how bad the disease is.

Andrew Zimmern (18:51)

Yeah, they do. The idea is, or was that my ex wife and I felt very strongly that we should learn to at least get along and speak with each other so that we had the ability to co parent our child more effectively. And so I said, sure, I'll give a couple sessions with this family therapist that had helped us the year beforehand and helped me decide a hundred percent I wanted to be divorced. But there was a really interesting thing. I found it absolutely fascinating. And I don't think a month has gone by I haven't told this story. I'm in there. And my ex wife at the time was one of the big issues was my television career was growing and growing and growing. And she said, that's not good for the family and me and all the rest of this. I had my reasons why it was. And the, the therapist turned to her and said, what job do you want Andrew to have? And she's like, I don't know, you know, something Normal. And he's like, just, this is just an exercise. Name a normal job that you want Andrew to have that you'd be okay with. And she just sat there, she went, shoe salesman. And the therapist turns to me and says, Andrew, are you okay with being a shoe Salesman? I'm like 100% and I meant it. And he then followed up with me. He says, okay, what does your first year look like? And I said, I'm the best sales. I sell more shoes than anyone else in the store statewide or in my region. I just, I find out whatever that number is and I, I beat it. I become the number one guy in the region because that's my fastest track out of, you know, putting shoes on people's feet and getting into management or supervising other shoe salesmen. He's like, great. And he turns to my ex wife, says, you okay with that? And she's like, yep. And then he says, what does your second year look like? And I say, I leave the company and I go build 400 of these stores in China. And he looked at me and nodded his head and he looked at my ex wife and said, do you see who you've married? It doesn't matter. What he does, doesn't matter. He's going to do the exact same thing. He's going to, he's going to grow it and figure out a way to make it more interesting. Because that's, that's the joy that I have in life is taking things that I've create and if there's an opportunity to grow them, to do that.

Andrew Zimmern (22:02)

Work while at the same time trying to grow in life as a human being, spiritually, mentally, physically has meant recognizing that for myself, time at home with family, time where I'm just out on the disc golf course playing disc golf with, with my buddies, just giving each other a ton of crap, taking the afternoon off from work just to go fish or something is, is really, really valuable. That's, that's been the big difference maker, I think for me at least now I do some things that are not work related. The problem for some of us is that what we do is actually the thing that I would want to do for fun. I want to cook. I want to make television. I want to, you know, do those things constantly. I came home from a. I was six cities in seven days. It was just one of those brutal weeks that you just can't wait to get home. I was really exhausted and just too much on the calendar over the course of a week, which happens sometimes. And I got home Saturday, and I kind of, you know, cleaned the house and helped do some chores and, you know, do all that kind of stuff that we do and that needed to be done. And some friends were in town for dinner, which was Sunday. And So I invited 12 of them over for dinner. And I got up at, like, 8 in the morning, and I cooked from 8 in the morning till 5 in the afternoon for these 12 people and just, you know, put out a big spread and enjoyed my time with my friends. Now, I did it because I wanted to enjoy some time with my friends. I wanted the end result. Most people would say, you just got home. Why do you want to cook all day? It's kind of my yoga. I mean, in the middle of everything, I wasn't thinking yesterday at all about my little problems and the other things and my wants and desires or whatever tapes were going on in my head about problems with this kid or a problem at work or whatever. I was just centered and in the zone. And it was fun, you know, I guess loving what you do has its benefits and has its challenges.

Andrew Zimmern (30:16)

Well, yes and no. Yes and no. With the food radio thing, it was another radio station was experimenting with it. They thought I'd be better at doing a two hour food show on Saturdays. Eventually I got moved to Drive time because it went, it got really, really good. The local magazine. I started out writing one column. I wound up then being given a senior editorship position and doing six or seven pieces in our food section and winning a lot of awards and realizing with, well, well, I had a great editor who helped me become a. A good writer from a decent writer. And then I was doing this TV thing over on a independent TV station that got sold to Fox and became a Fox O and O. And I wound up, you know, doing one segment a week, then three. Then I was a fixture on the morning show there. And it was when you put it all together, I learned in those three jobs how to write, how to communicate, how to communicate consistently. I mean, you do three hour drive time, radio people are not listening for three hours. One person, the same person may listen at 1:30 one day and 2:30 the next. And you better be the same person, you better be the same at, you know, hour one is, hour two is hour three and deliver the same amount of enthusiasm and interest in what it is that you're talking about. And obviously I learned a lot in the TV station because as a, as a local TV reporter, you, you pitch your segments, you write your segments, you shoot your segments with a videographer, then you and the videographer typically edit them. And I learned how to do all the aspects of my craft. I sort of created a syllabus for myself to learn the things I needed to do so I could become expert. I spent my 10,000 hours or whatever across three jobs pretty quickly knowing intentionally that I wanted to have a television. I was telling people when I left the restaurant that my ultimate goal was to have a show on television. Now Again, this is 25 years ago. So you know, today I get asked every day, oh, I want my own tv. Everyone wants their own TV show. It's great, go ahead and make it, put it on YouTube, you can do your own website, create your own thing. I mean, it's very democratic and I mean look, there are people on TikTok who are getting 25 million views a day, right? Doing food stuff and telling stories, so, and making a lot of money. So it does work. This democratization of, of the Internet and social media has been a boon for food creators. But at the time there were limited avenues. I pursued all of them, all the while putting together tape of myself and pitching show ideas. And eventually Discovery networks, which own travel channel said, well, this sounds interesting, come talk to us about it. And I did. And we made a sizzle. We then made a paid for piece of a developed sizzle, then we did a pilot and then ultimately that became the series. And then, you know, the, the show was not doing, it was doing well, but not great. And I didn't know, but the series was probably going to be canceled. You, you, you either hit your number or you don't. And if you are losing viewers over the first three or four episodes, that's not a good thing. And we were up and down and up and down, which typically means eventually you're just going to go down. And my fear was we were Trying our hardest. I thought we were making a great product. I later was proven to be right. Just that the show was new, it had no marketing budget assigned to it. Right. And we were the lead in hour to a very a strong show. And I did the third episode, which was our. The episode in Odovalo, Ecuador where a medicine man made me undress and then he beat me with branches until I broke out in hives everywhere. And he spat on me and he poured, you know, 151 on me homemade hooch, lit me on fire. And he took guinea pigs.

Andrew Zimmern (35:01)

Oh, it's a great one. Against my chest until the animal died. The idea was it was an exorcism. It was a witch doctor and captured all the evil spirits and all these things and then burnt them and took the ashes and threw them in the river. That was the third episode that aired of Bizarre Food Season 1. And it aired on a Monday night. Wednesday night I got a call from a booker on the Jay Leno show, the Tonight show and said, we saw the clip of the Witch Doctor and showed it to Jay. He loved it. Can you be in LA tomorrow night? And I said, I don't think so, but I can be there on Friday. And they said, okay. And I showed up Friday night. I did the Tonight show and suffice to say the ratings the following Monday were really, really, really, really good. And I wound up doing the Tonight show with Jay three or four times. And it kind of set the show without that booker seeing that episode. I don't think I'm sitting here today with you. I think my career goes in a different direction. But sometimes we need those seconds and inches thing. Now if I'm sitting there with my kid, I tell him, I create my own luck. We worked hard, we made a good program. I was proud of all of it. And the reason why I was in the witch doctor scene was never in the show. We were stuck in this town and had nothing to do from 1pm to 4pm and I have a cameraman and I have a producer and me. There's three of us today. I travel with 18 people, right? There were three of us. And I told, you know, and this is probably really instructive for our listeners because I didn't want to waste any time and I saw a story. I really. There was a sign that said brujera witch doctor. Right? And so I had my translator there. I said, what is that? You know, what is that? He says, it's a witch doctor. I said, yes, I, I know the Spanish word, but what do they do? And he said, well, this one is actually an exorcist. And I said, can I get exercised? And he said, sure, it's 25 bucks. And I'm like, okay. And I then went to my videographer and he's like, dude, I'm tired. I'm like, dude, I'm getting an exorcism. Let's shoot this thing. And I had to convince my photographer and my producer. And eventually they said, okay. And when it started, you could just see, the three of us were like, this is magic television. It may have been the best 5, 7 minutes of TV. It was certainly the best 5, 7 minutes of tv I've ever spontaneously made. And the whole thing was created instantly. And it's a really, really, really fun moment, exploring culture in another part of the world. But it put me on a path that I would not have been on otherwise.

Andrew Zimmern (38:25)

Both. I think anyone who says they're instantly comfortable with it is lying. You actually have to learn the blocking and tackling part and then you're comfortable. And that's why I'm glad I came out of live, local news. That was the best learning ever. When I talked before about finding the story, editing the story, I remember they sent me out with my videographer and a live truck to do five hits over the course of the two hour morning show, local morning show. And we, we all have watched local morning television, right? It's very low budget. Some of it's really goofy. They sent me was like the week before Halloween, they sent me to a corn maze. And they're just like, you have five four minute segments. Figure it out. And by the way, you get that assignment at noon when you're leaving the day beforehand. So you have to come up with some cool things to do, get some people down. You know, we had a school band, we had. There was a maze, one of the. Someone didn't show up and I did the Blair Witch thing where I took a flashlight and just ran through the thing. Holding the camera. I mean, like stupid, stupid stuff. But you learn, you learn the craft that way. You learn how to talk to the audience. You learn how to sort of be yourself on camera. And either people are going to accept you or not accept you. There are a lot of people who are, you know, funnier, smarter, better looking, more interesting, all of that stuff. And the audience doesn't want to follow them week to week to week to week, network to network, show to show. It's a really honorable position to have. Is there something inside of me that I just naturally have that makes me appealing to people? Yes, I believe there is a piece of that. But I also believe that there's a lot of people who have that and blow it because they're lazy and they don't want to learn to actually learn how to actually do the job. And there is some blocking and tackling to all that. You know, when I got to do the first season of Bizarre Foods, everything in television was about what we refer to lovingly in old TV as the standup. You know, I'm like, I look at the camera right down the barrel and as I'm walking down the street, I say, here in Tokyo, Japan, there are thousands of asadachi, small, little humble restaurants with single cooks preparing for. And you describe what you're going to do and then you literally have to walk in the door because the producers feel if they don't see you walking the door, then how do you get there? Right. It's a very old way of doing television. Today we just start out in scene with the guy handing me food and through a series of exchanges with him, we bring out language that we can then cut and put ahead of it that describes where I am and what I'm doing. So we no longer have to do standups. Right?

Andrew Zimmern (44:21)

If you're the only, it really is easier, you know, and I look at different people in different worlds and they, they are an only. And I think that is. It's an easier way to try to interpret things. I've learned to shut up. You know, I've learned that I have to evaluate everything through. I ask myself three questions. Is it true? Does it need to be said? And if it's true and needs to be said, is it up to me to say it? And the third question is the one that always gets me. It might be true, it might need to be said. It's not my job to say it, it's someone else's. And that's how I decide when it's my turn to speak or not. Right? If I'm the only person that can communicate it, I communicate it. If it's. If it's not, then don't be a selfish son of a bitch and let other people communicate the idea. And that's very important as a business owner because I want everyone to feel like they're contributing. So unless I'm the only person that can say something, I like to keep my mouth shut. I've learned that, you know, over the years of owning several different businesses and I really think that being curious, staying teachable, trying to be patient, tolerant and understanding with other folks, all of those and the, the other examples I gave you are are guiding principles and ideas. But if I had to pick one, it's the idea that doing things for other people is what we're here on planet Earth for. And that is not, or I should say that is 100% compatible with being a capitalist and a business owner. 100% compatible. I'm always striving to do things for other people. They're always. And it doesn't mean that everything you do, you need to give 5% of it to a CH. That's not what I'm talking about. But in the creative businesses that solve problems, that make the world a better place, in the attitude of always lifting up other people here in the workplace, trying to at least and making them feel heard and known, there are so many different ways in which we can be always giving. And certainly in my private life, it's what I predicated all on. And I think with. Without that I'm really lost. It doesn't give me. It doesn't give me. It takes my compass away. Takes my compass away.

Andrew Zimmern (48:40)

And when, when Bill Murray has the opportunity to meet the Dalai Lama, he asked him, what's the meaning of life? And when I was filming bizarre food, bizarre foods, I, I had the opportunity to live with, live with about 20 different tribes, protected tribes that have very intense spiritual systems all around the world. And these kinds of shows take years to pre produce and years of petitioning to the governments and because they, they regard these tribes as sacred cultural institutions and try to prevent their interaction with modern people. And whenever I found someone who I believe to be, and it was usually the shaman or religious leader, spiritual leader of, of that family group or tribal people, I would always ask them what the meaning of life is. Always. Because I was just, I mean, these people had something on the board. I watched, I watched them do too many miraculous things. I mean, suffice to say, and we documented a lot of them, others we didn't, and it would just take too much time. But I mean, I saw some things that are just inexplicable to me other than these people have some sort of connection that we don't. And I remember in Botswana going through a trans dance and being taken out of my body. We documented the whole thing in our Botswana episode with the gentoisie and the shaman who performed this act of out of body experience on me. I needed to ask him what he did because if anyone else had spoken to him in between the time it ended and he kind of passed out and was carried and put inside his little hut. I sat outside his hut for like 10 hours because I, I needed to be the first person to talk to him because either I was crazy or I had just experienced something that was inexplicable. And I believed it to be the latter. And he comes out of his tent and I had the translator there with me and he asked me what I was doing and I told him and I said, did you pull me out of my body? He said, yes. And I said, I had this image of you looking through pages of a book in my life. And he said, yes. You know a lot about us, we don't know a lot about you. And you showed us some pictures. But I wanted to know more. And I was, I was blown away that we both had this image. And I asked, he's walking away from me like I'm a moron for asking these Questions like, of course I did that, right? And he. I said to him, in. In my own broken way, as I'm. As he's leaving me, why are we here? Right? I mean, human beings have asked that of themselves and of other people, usually in a position of power for as long as there have been human beings, Right? I mean, we've recorded it on cave walls and, you know, canvas and art and sculpture and everywhere that you could imagine in books and music, all trying to explain what our relationship is to the outside world, to each other, to a power greater than ourselves. And I'm just fascinated in finding out what different people think about this. And this, this one witch doctor, shaman, Bohm, who's a Geni tribal member in the Aha Hills outside of Maun in Botswana, was. Was the person that I had. Have met in the history of. Of my life that I. I truly believe. And by the way, I should also mention there are dozens of the most famous anthropologists in the world that believe he and Ka, this other shaman with this one tribe, are the only two people in the world that astrally can project themselves. They've put numbers and drawings and letters and shapes inside caves a hundred miles away, and then these men have done their trance dances and then woken up and described what's in those caves. Right? So. And I'm talking about, like, not. Not Acapella University on. I'm talking about, like, University of Indiana, which has one of the best, you know, teaching universities for anthropology in the world and. And a lot of other very big global international organizations. And Bohm turned to me and shook his head like, I'm an idiot, which I was. And he just looked at me and he grabbed me by the shoulders and he said, we're here to make other people happy and love them, and walked away from me like, of course that's our only reason for being, you idiot. I supplied the parenthetical comment, but it stuck with me forever.

Andrew Zimmern (65:53)

We're the richest, most successful, most highly developed culture in the history of the world here in America. There's never been a nation like this one as exists today. While we're talking we can, we have the ability to food to feed. Let's just take kids. It's an easier one to talk about. Number one, from a moral standpoint, anyone who's out there for keeping kids hungry should raise their hand. I don't think anyone would. Right. I mean who wants to keep kids hungry? Okay, so we all agree we need to feed kids, but 20% of kids don't know where their next day's meals are coming from. We have built a system in this country of highways, schools, community centers, churches, access points. We've, we've developed a, an economy, robust economy with a lot of food companies and a lot of farms. We actually could statistically. And I talked about me. I was, I was lucky enough to be one of the 300 participants chosen to be at the President's Conclave on Hunger, Nutrition and Health, the September before last in Washington, D.C. you know, I don't think I need to give my cv, but trust me when I tell you that I talk to everyone who knows what's what about this issue. And we can statistically eliminate childhood hunger in America. It will take about six weeks because you just have to reroute the trucks and reroute the food. We have to put equipment into schools and other places where we took the equipment out of during the Reagan administration so that people are actually cooking wholesome and nutritious food. We have the vegetables. We would have to fix the immigration reform issue. So let's just assume that we're able to increase the number. By the way, we've eliminated about 30, 40% of those specialty visas that we need people from other countries to come help us harvest all of our food and work in our meat industry, et cetera, et cetera, so we can get the product out the door, so to speak. And we take about four and a half, five, seven weeks, depending on who you talk to for this. A very short amount of time. And the cost is $17 billion the first year and goes down to about $14 billion a year after that because the first year is a lot of infrastructure that needs to be put in there. And I'm using just the top line budgetary items.

Andrew Zimmern (68:45)

So as my friend Jim McGovern, congressman from Massachusetts, is always fond of reminding me, Andrew, it's a not. We don't have a hunger problem in America. We have a political problem in America. It is beyond my understanding that there isn't bicameral and bilateral creation of a bill that would pass with no one against it to feed kids in America. When you're talking about a rounding error. Now, the sway for economic conservatives is the amount of money that would come back into the system from this. Right. One of the, you know, one of the hallmarks of the food stamp program is for every dollar that goes out, it's $1.17, $1.19 comes back. Right. One of the benefits of a charity on whose board I sit, the Giving Kitchen that gives money to people in the food service workers who are in crisis is that if you actually pay their rent and they don't get kicked out of their apartment and you feed them for a couple of months, While they get back on their feet, then they're not accessing public services and they're not going to the emergency room for their doctor visits and all this kind of stuff. And it actually saves our economy dollars, right? And they keep work days rolling. So not missing work. Imagine if we were able to to feed all those hungry children. Test scores would go up, attendance in schools would go up. That frees up parents. We'd save job days for parents that don't have to take days off from work. Single parents especially to take care of those children. The healthcare costs, the criminal justice cost, I mean everywhere a child and a family meets the public dollar, those dollars that spend that pressure in our economy would go down. It doesn't necessarily automatically pay for itself, but I will just point out $17 billion a year max to feed all the children in America, statistically eliminate hunger versus a trillion and a half dollars a year for these big three or sorry big four processed food related diseases. Imagine after eight, nine, 10 years, we haven't even spent 100. Well, we've spent $200 million, right. In 10 years a little less how much money net net would come back into our system? Staggering, staggering. A huge game changer for this nation. I can't think of a more important thing. And by the way, I have no desire to be a part of a country that deprioritizes hungry children over other issues. It doesn't matter whether you are left right in the middle or from Mars hungry children. It's almost a genocidal choice because it disproportionately affects people of color and women. So if we have the solution and it costs that little money, it's a rounding error, why can't we muster the political will to do it now? I also think concomitant to that, we need to have a cabinet level position for food. Food represents such a large part of our gdp. Independent rest, just independent restaurants. That's not changed. It's just independent restaurants I think are seven and a half percent of gdp. If you start to figure in all the other restaurants and places that food connects farms, hotels, the, I mean you, you take the piece of the bowling alley that and their food service thing and their pizzas and microwave hamburgers. You add up all the food systems in America and you're at almost a quarter of our nation's gdp. It literally is the driving force for tourism. Baltimore, Maryland, the, the, the Chesapeake Bay. Take away crabs and, and watch, you know, 500,000 jobs disappear and whole sectors of the economy for Maryland disappear. Right. You know, it is. It is absolutely crucial that we have one office that oversees all of us instead of five government agencies that manage pieces and parts of it that don't talk to each other. So I think we need to have a cabinet level secretary for food and one office that handles all of them. We do that and we feed children. We're on our way to solving a lot of the problems in America today. Today.

Andrew Zimmern (74:38)

What I'm against is the processed food that's necessary to go into the sauce, when in fact, the sauce can be made with very natural ingredients. And I can do it as quickly as you can make Hamburger Helper. I can melt a tablespoon of butter and a tablespoon of flour and make a roux and add a cup of milk to it. And there is my sauce that's very healthy and nutritious that then can bind all those things in that creamy, delicious thing. My version is called a bechamel. It's got a fancy French word. Right. And I can do that quicker than most people can pour the packet in and add boiling water. Right. But I would want there to be vegetables in there. I would want it to cook for five minutes longer. It needs to be convenient. But if you cut carrots, onions, broccoli, celery. I'm just talking about the more expensive, inexpensive vegetables out there or even just adding frozen vegetables to that, which are still nutritious. Right. We've learned a way to freeze vegetables and maintain their nutritive qualities. It is. I'm very pro Hamburger Helper. I'm against using unnatural ingredients and other things because what it does is, is it allows very large food companies to profit on unhealthy foods that we know are bad for us. These companies, however, are multinational, gazillion dollar companies that hold a tremendous amount of sway and power in our world. Now it took about 30 years between the discovery that cigarette smoking was bad for us, for us to essentially ban TV commerce, do all the things to limit cigarettes, and we've seen a huge fall off in cigarette smoking. Kids no longer think it's cool. It's not in movies, not in commercials. You know, the bad guy takes a puff of a cigarette, not the good guy anymore. Right. The Marlboro man doesn't exist. It took the same amount of time for us to put seat belts in cars. When I was young, when we bought the family station wagon, my father tucked the seat belts in between the area where the back of the seat and the bench of the seat met because that seatbelt would never be pulled out. Right? Now anyone out there who gets into a car with my kid every time we. Put your seatbelt on. Put your seatbelt on. Put your seatbelt on. I mean, like a broken record takes 25 years for those social justice movements to move through the system with enough velocity to actually change behavior in America. We have been at this food thing probably for about 17, 18 years. In seriousness, right. I mean, really put it front and center. The last presidential election was the first one where a food topic was asked at a presidential debate. That delighted me, but also shocked me. We should be talking about literal kitchen table issues at kitchen tables and at elections. Right? How do. And I'm talking about at the community, city and state level, as well as the federal government, we need to be talking about these issues. These are the vital issues of our time. How do we feed and keep people healthy? I'm not sure there's anything better. If people to. To your point before, about processed food, if we're not healthy and well and feeding folks our best, then we're not taking care of our fellows, our fellow human beings. Right? And let's start that at home. Let's. Let's grow where we're planted and then export that wisdom out there. There. I don't think there's a reason for doing it other than greed and an inability for some people to want to do the work. We know on every single level that having people eat nutritious, healthy food saves money, solves problems. I mean, you know, you could just keep going. I could repeat what I've said for the last half hour. I would also point out, and people don't think of it this way. Food is an international and domestic security issue as well. If we keep. Keep people fed and happy and export food jobs overseas or create companies that use overseas labor and skill to create food businesses, those are good for our national security and international security needs. Right. We build friends by doing that. Help people help themselves. I mean, you know, it's, it's, it's a biblio, you know, give a man a fish, teach a man to fish different, right?

Andrew Zimmern (79:37)

I'll give you a great example. Sweet potato vines are a. A gourmet treat in Japan. They pay a fortune for them. A lot of Japan looks like the, you know, New England got the same kind of weather. They have snow in Hokkaido. Great skiing. Right. Okanawa in the south, more like South Carolina. Gets hot in the summer. Right. Big long island chain of a country. They can't grow sweet potatoes down too sandy. Gravel's not right. All the rest of that, you can literally, like, asparagus grows a foot a day in the Midwest under the right conditions. In Haiti, a country desperate for businesses, you can grow sweet potatoes and just watch the vines grow. I mean, that's how rich the soil is. It's volcanic. Right. It is the perfect place to grow it. 88, 90 degrees every single day, 12 months a year. Start a sweet potato vine company there and ship them to Japan and watch what happens. Right. I believe capitalism and entrepreneurship can solve these problems. And if we focus in the food space, we can solve global problems. But it is a national security interest of ours. Climate crisis, immigration reform, domestic security, international security, hunger, waste, these things all intersect. They all sit under the same tent. I've given talks on this at south by Southwest for many, many years. It's why I'm personally such a, you know, I try to pick my battles. It's why I'm such a proponent of aquaculture and how important aquaculture is to solving our problems. I believe we should eat wild fish stocks, but if we're not farming seaweed and farming fish on land, at sea, in fresh water, in saltwater, we are not going to be able to feed this planet in 50 years. It is an existential crisis that we are enduring. I could go on and on and on. I should say I have a really fun substack. If people go to andrew zimmern.com, we have tons of recipes, lots of fun stuff, lots of entertainment. I occasionally address things like this in my substack. We have a lot of recipes and an ask me anything conversation that I do a video ask me anything segment every week. And if people want to dive into more of this with me and build that community, go to andrew zimmern.com subscribe to my substack. My website is free. Thousands of recipes, lots of info, but that's the way we're going to do this together.

Andrew Zimmern (82:33)

At this point, I'm starting to feel that way about our climate crisis. I think that's the only one you know. What's Eating America was the best piece of work I've ever done in my life. It was six part, six hours on msnbc. We did our climate crisis episode and I went to four or five places in America where a food has disappeared, and then one, the apple in Minnesota that's threatened. And just to give people a quick notion, the most significant and prolific oyster bed in the world was in Apalachicola, Florida. And the oyster bed that sat there. More oysters were harvested annually out of that bed than any other oyster bed in the world. And for that reason, dozens, dozens of processing plants sprung up to can and pack and freeze oysters. Seafood restaurants, tourism, home prices shot up. People were building mega mansions on the water. It was beautiful part of America, beautiful part of Florida. Great, great people. The rain changed and it moved a little bit, just a little bit. And over the course of the last 20 years, there are now no more oysters in Apalachicola Bay. 0. It went from being the Michael Jordan of oyster beds to the person no one heard of of oyster beds. And the reason is with a little less rain, the water became a little more saline, saltier. And so invasive species that like the water a little more salty came in. They're called oyster drillers. Dead. And now you can't grow oysters. There are some people that are trying to raise oysters to revive the genetic species of oyster there. Because occasionally they find a couple and they're struggling. The town has essentially boarded up. It's one of the most depressing places I've ever been. You want to buy a big home on the water, go there. They're available for pennies on the dollar. It's a very, very, very, very, very, very sad story. And the people who used to, the oystermen who used to work 12 months a year in that business now do stuff like fishing, guiding and duck hunting and carpentry and A mixed bag of jobs. And so you can see families starting to change, and there's not a lot of future down there for a lot of people. Now every month we learn that our climate crisis is getting worse. We're not doing anything to stop it. And what we are doing to stop it isn't happening in enough time. That same rain that has left 10% less in Apalachicola has moved north to Minnesota, where I live. When I moved here 30 years ago, we had soft spring rains and never had a problem with planting crops. And we had soft fall rains and never had a problem with harvesting. We now have drought in the middle of the summer. I think seven years in a row. I experienced it at my own house. We're losing trees right and left. Never used to. We have to run sprinklers all the. Never used to. Now I'm trying to plant grasses that don't require sprinklers, right. Because I want to do my part. But we have these very heavy rains in the early spring that are a bear to deal with. And then more importantly, we have these heavy rains and big storms in the fall. Those big storms call what's called apple cracks, where all the apples crack where the stem goes in. And of course, the usda, because they don't understand food, remember my call for a food czar, insists that those apples not be used for juice. Even though any apple farmer will tell you, all we do is rinse them and juice them. Apple cider can be pasteurized. There's no, there's no problem going in there. It's just we can't sell a cracked apple right to a consumer as a fresh apple. Now we can't juice it. Can't can it, can't turn it into applesauce, can't jam it, can't bake with it. We have an antique set of laws that can't keep up with this enduring climate crisis that we have. That's shifting weather all over the world. That's the one that I think is going to get us. And I hope I'm wrong, but of all the. I mean, look, five years ago.

Andrew Zimmern (93:03)

Yeah, exactly. I mean it's, it's pretty fascinating which is why I believe in business. I believe in ca. I mean look, General Mills and Cargill are two companies out here that get pilloried all the time. General Mills because everyone says, oh, they make sugary cereals that kill our kids. And Cargill because people are like, oh, they ammoniate meat and all the rest of that big business is lousy at telling their own story. The there's no company in the world or government that spends more money researching drought resistant grain than General Mills number one. And the reason is, is that Big G, their cereals division is their most profitable. So as they see problems globally getting wheat and rice and other grains, they have to be Looking at things like Kernza and trying to figure out how to get more ker per stock. Right. So they're doing that. Cargill, for all of the things you read about on the front page that people feel they're doing poorly. And by the way, I don't have a business relationship with either one. I just know them intimately because they're Minnesota based. Cargill are the ones who looked at the aquaculture problem and said, we have a solution. We'll create a one to one product instead of one to eight for, for feed for aquaculture, especially for salmon. So we were feeding eight pounds of salmon chow to fish to yield one pound of meat at the end. That's not sustainable. Now we're one to one. In fact, we're almost negative on it in terms of how much feed it takes to raise them because of they're now finding ways to use fish bones and fish skin and other species around the world and safely transport it and turn it into fish pellets. They also developed the machinery that times the food so none of it's falling to the ground. They're feeding the salmon less food, but more frequently putting less per square meter in these giant tents in the middle of the ocean. And so salmon aquaculture went from being a little sketchy to be one of the most dependable and reliable of all the aquaculture systems that we have. And a lot of the reason that aquaculture has exploded is because of the work that companies like Cargill have done to address the feed issues, which was the biggest barrier to success there. So I believe the answers are out there. I believe, financially, I mean, I'm stunned from an energy standpoint that the, the batteries in cars are still reliant on so many high end metals that we need. I'm, I'm holding out hope against hope about the hydrogen batteries. You know, I mean, the problem there, of course, is that hydrogen is essentially free, so there's not as much money to be made on it. So you know that sadly, while capitalism I believe will save us, I also believe that capitalism is a root cause of some of our problems. When you ask me about processed food, it's simply greed. I mean, you can't go to a business and say, hey, stop selling pop tarts. They're not good for kids. We need to feed them whole grains and eggs and juice and other things to start their day that are more natural and vegetable. We need to eat our breakfasts in America need to look more like the ones in Japan, but go ahead and try to change food culture that quickly, not going to happen. So it's a very difficult challenge.

Andrew Zimmern (97:44)

Between pills like Metformin, dozens of different types of short and long term acting drugs like Semgle and Ozempic and Novolog, all the things that people inject themselves with, some insulin based, some non insulin based as well as medical procedures for everything from amputations to eyesight to all kinds of stuff, you know, with, with cardiopulmonary issues and diabetes. You add those in to those other two groups that you talked about and statistically try to get those companies off the gravy train when they know they can give away hundreds and hundreds of outspend everyone that's right to make sure that we sort of stay sick. It's a problem and it's why we are in desperate need of legislation to get ahead of this. And by the way, and I'm very concerned about divisiveness in our country from a cultural standpoint, which is why I remind people this is not left or right or red or blue. This is forward diabetes and the other processed food diseases, all the other things we talked about affect everyone in this country equally. It does not select liberals or conservatives or reds or blue states and stuff like that. Well, I should say it does. Disproportionately. There are certain food issues and hunger and other issues that do disproportionately affect what were all red states in the south. I mean Georgia is now kind of a purple state. And I don't want to get into a political thing, but there are a lot of facts and figures around those, around those issues. A lot of our poorer states tend to lean right. But this is an equal opportunity issue. I mean, grandpa still gets the heart attacks too early. Kids are getting juvenile diabetes too early. It's kind of a mess. I will end on this note. I am still very optimistic. And the reason is that I do believe in what we talked about at the beginning of this conversation, which is the indomitable nature of the human spirit to want to collect information and do good things in this world. I believe in that. I believe that's bigger than the challenges that are in front of us. I just think we need to, to get more juice in that system. And here's what I mean by that. When you ask me about things I believe in and I talk about with my teams, we all have the power and wisdom inside of us. It's like we're lamps with arms and we're carrying around our own electrical cord and we're just looking to plug in somewhere to get some more juice. You know, I believe we come built with everything that we need to, to overcome these challenges. I think what's important is that we find that energy resource. Which is why, you know, I was another reason why I was eager to come on and talk with you. I think the more we have these conversations, the more people that there are like us who are talking about actual real world issues. I don't want Cargill or General Mills to go away because I actually need their distribution systems, their global factories. There are standards and practices groups that understand how to feed a hungry planet. We need big food. We just have to eliminate their bad practices and accentuate the good ones with other people and start to level that playing field. And I think we can do it.