#1925 - Sonny, from Best Ever Food Review Show

Summary

The Joe Rogan Experience #1925 – Sonny (Best Ever Food Review Show)

Date: January 13, 2023
Guest: Sonny (host/creator, Best Ever Food Review Show)
Host: Joe Rogan

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EPISODE OVERVIEW

This episode features Sonny, creator and host of the YouTube sensation "Best Ever Food Review Show," which explores food cultures worldwide—often focusing on the most unique and challenging dishes. Joe Rogan delves into Sonny’s backstory, global food adventures, production hurdles, and the ethos behind cross-cultural culinary exploration. The conversation ranges from early struggles in Minnesota through time living in Korea and Vietnam, to eating with tribes in Africa, hunting exotic animals, and braving Egypt’s bureaucracy. The tone is candid, funny, and occasionally graphic, with both men sharing blunt takes on food, culture, and travel.

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GUEST BACKGROUND: FROM CENTRAL MINNESOTA TO INTERNET TRAVEL STAR

• Humble Beginnings
  Sonny describes growing up "white trash from central Minnesota, super poor family, one of six, failed college three times," before running one of the most-viewed travel shows online.

  “By all accounts, I should not be here right now.” — Sonny [00:14]

• Early Directionless Years to Korea
  Failed at college, worked in radio for minimum wage. At 24, moved to Korea to teach English, originally planning to stay a year—ended up staying eight.

  “I went to Korea. Korea was really challenging because it was my first time in a different country and I’d really only been in central Minnesota at that point.” — Sonny [02:54]

• Lessons from Korea
  Taught English “under the table,” learned to navigate visa runs, eventually transitioned into filmmaking, forming the “Seoul Filmmakers Workshop.” Living abroad gave Sonny “perspective” essential for the show’s empathy.

  “Living in Korea was the first taste of living in a society and a culture completely different from the USA.” — Sonny [03:40]

• Filmmaking and YouTube Genesis
  Started producing videos for clients, switched gears after reading self-help books about the “10,000-hour rule.” Inspired by Gary Vaynerchuk, Andrew Zimmern, and Anthony Bourdain, looked to create food videos that avoided the “dry,” formulaic TV style.

  “Why not mix something more spontaneous, a little bit more humor, the pacing of YouTube—faster pacing—and make a completely new travel format?” — Sonny [17:13]

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THE JOURNEY OF 'BEST EVER FOOD REVIEW SHOW'

Early Inspiration and Format Evolution

• Influences:
  Andrew Zimmern, Anthony Bourdain, H3H3, Jack’s Gap, Gary Vaynerchuk.

• First Food Videos:
  Started with international food in Korea ("grilled cheese”); realized he needed to pivot to “bizarre and exotic” for storytelling value.

  “Those types of foods just have an intrinsic story attached to them. If you’re eating something strange, bizarre, exotic, … there’s naturally a story of ‘why are people doing this?’” — Sonny [21:13]

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MEMORABLE GLOBAL FOOD EXPERIENCES

Eating Extreme Foods

• Stinky Tofu in Taiwan:
  Inspired by seeing Andrew Zimmern spit it out on TV, Sonny sought the same culinary challenge.

  “I went to the same restaurant that Andrew Zimmerman went to, ordering the same food and showing, like, yeah, I got it. I could eat this. The same food that he spit out.” — Sonny [22:07]

• Handling Challenging Food:
  Emphasizes an empathetic approach:

  “I need to have the perspective and the mindset of a local person … I need to accept it. I need to try to enjoy it.” [25:00]

• African Tribal Traditions:
  Participated in eating raw liver dipped in blood and gastric acid among the Datoga tribe in Tanzania, experiencing the Maasai’s organ-eating ceremonies.

  “It’s one of the most strange experiences I’d ever had. But I loved it because I loved how the people there were so into it.” — Sonny [27:02]

• Why Organs First?
  Rogan notes parallels in the animal kingdom. Sonny theorizes it's both flavor and preservation:

  “Meat is easier to preserve... but I don’t think it’s as easy to take a liver or a heart or something like that and preserve it.” — Sonny [39:01]

Hunting and Controversy

• Zebra Hunting in South Africa [40:09–53:41]
  Detailed the experience on a game reserve: hunters select animals from a "menu," use the meat for local villages, and revenue covers wildlife conservation.

  “The meat stays there ... you eat it the entire time you’re there. Legally, you’re not allowed to leave Africa with meat.” — Rogan [60:10]

• Ethics and Wildlife Preservation:
  Engaged with the complexities of trophy hunting, quoting local reserve managers and reflecting on media coverage/judgment.

  “Can I try to educate people along the way and educate myself along the way? Because there’s a lot about game reserve hunting that I didn’t know." — Sonny [44:18]

Eating with African Hunter-Gatherers

• Living with the Hadzabe [75:52–89:46] Ate monkey, cliff springer, and learned bushcraft.

  "I'm trying to figure out how to broadcast my emotions to the camera. I don't want to be judgmental, but also I'm not going to be like, 'oh, monkey, this is normal and cool.'" — Sonny [78:25]

• Eating Monkey
  “They throw the whole rest of the monkey in the fire, just whole thing.” — Sonny [80:51]

• Baboon as a Delicacy:
  Baboon is the most prized catch; highly sought after due to taste.

  “I think they just like the taste of the meat.” — Sonny [85:00]

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FOODS THAT PUSH LIMITS

• Whale Meat in the Faroe Islands [63:34–75:44]
  Sonny discusses the tradition, controversy, and taste of whale and dolphin meat. Whale hunts involve community participation and ancient distribution systems.

  “Whales are smart, they’re cute. This is something that they’ve been doing in the Faroe Islands for hundreds of years.” — Sonny [64:54]

• Stingray and Shark Organs
  Worst thing Sonny has eaten: “Stingray liver is disgusting. … It just has a minerality of the ocean. … Bile-y and bitter.” — Sonny [97:04]

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CULTURAL CRITIQUE: AMERICAN ATTITUDES TOWARDS FOOD

• On American aversion to “weird” foods:

  "In the US, this country of extremes … when it comes to food that's a little bit outside of salads, wraps, burgers, sandwiches, people are like, 'Oh, I would never eat that.' … That's something I don't really understand." — Sonny [37:49]

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BEHIND THE SCENES: PRODUCTION CHALLENGES

• Visa Runs & Living Under the Radar
  Sonny explains his years in Korea living on tourist visas, the anxiety/stress, and the underground expat subculture.

  “Standing in line for immigration… I'm looking okay, there's an older guy over here. This lady looks nice. This young guy looks like he's got something to prove.” — Sonny [12:22]

• The Egypt Debacle [148:12–160:44]
  The crew’s gear, including cameras and walkie-talkies, was confiscated by Egyptian police and customs. Permits were ignored, they resorted to shooting the entire series on iPhones, and ultimately exposed Egypt's bureaucracy on YouTube.

  “This is a country that brands themselves as a tourist destination. … and you just realize it’s such a different way of life.” — Sonny [155:01] “What’s amazing is that it’s our best performing series ever. … Team, we're going back. Just kidding. We're not, we're not going.” — Sonny [160:02]

  Rogan notes: “Maybe you help change things.”
  Sonny: “...A few months after we posted the videos about Egypt, the laws changed in Egypt... Tourists and locals are not required to have a permit to shoot on the sidewalk.” [160:26]

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MAD HONEY & PSYCHOACTIVE FOODS [99:56–116:12]

Sonny describes journeying to Nepal to collect “mad honey” (from bees that forage on rhododendrons), its hallucinogenic effects, and local wariness of its intensity.

“I talked to this guy, he was the one who owned the cliff where the honey is. And I said, how often do you do it? He goes, I did it 20 years ago. That’s the last time ... I couldn’t walk for 24 hours." — Sonny [104:27]

Joe and Sonny taste the honey on air, noting an odd tingling sensation (“it’s almost got that feeling, like you’re reacting to it—almost like a hot pepper...”). Sonny's advice: start slow.

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ASIA AS HOME BASE & OBSERVATIONS

• Why Asia? Sonny now lives in Vietnam, married into a Vietnamese family, has a mostly Vietnamese crew. Chose Vietnam for affordable living and proximity to varied cuisines.

• On Language:
  Vietnamese is challenging for tonal differences and honorifics; explains some basics and compares with Korean.

• American and Asian Food Abroad:
  Notes differences in authenticity and quality compared to what’s available locally.

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THE PHILOSOPHY: CURIOSITY, HUMOR, AND EMPATHY

• Empathy Over Spectacle:
  Sonny's approach is not to present foods as “icky” or “weird,” but rather to offer context and foster understanding.

  “It’s to try to create some understanding and empathy for people around the world and understanding as to why are people eating this way.” — Sonny [38:37]

• Called out the arrogance of modernity; cultures and traditions give perspective—today’s globalizing world risks erasing them.

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JOE ROGAN’S REFLECTIONS

• Rogan relates about hunting, wild game, and culinary traditions.
• Praises Sonny (and Bourdain, Zimmern) for offering windows into the unfamiliar: “You’re giving people to travel. ...most people don’t have the time or the resources to go to all these different places, but you’re going there and you’re getting involved…” [172:20]

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NOTABLE QUOTES & MEMORABLE MOMENTS

• On always having diarrhea:
  “That’s my secret. I’m always angry. So I always have diarrhea. And I don't remember the last time it was just like, a nice, really solid one.” — Sonny [25:14]

• On eating monkey:
  “I'm trying to figure out how to broadcast my emotions to the camera. I don't want to be judgmental, but also I'm not going to be like, 'oh, monkey, this is normal and cool.'” [78:25]

• On Egyptian bureaucracy:
  “With the permit ... I asked our fixer ... what's the permit doing? ... He just goes, well, we're not in jail, we're not in jail.” — Sonny [154:08]

• On success and meaning:
  “I cracked the code. I know how to do this now. ... Sometimes success can make people depressed.” — Sonny [135:53]

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TIMESTAMPS FOR KEY SEGMENTS

• Guest intro and backstory: [00:12–08:51]
• Korea years, teaching and filmmaking: [02:54–13:53]
• Starting on YouTube, show concept: [17:13–19:02]
• Food as storytelling: [20:55–22:54]
• Eating stinky tofu, bandana origins: [22:54–25:05]
• Eating blood/organs in Africa: [26:57–39:53]
• Zebra hunt, conservation debate: [40:09–53:41]
• Eating monkey with Hadzabe tribe: [75:52–89:46]
• Mad honey experience: [99:56–116:12]
• Vietnam/Asia as home: [139:58–143:56]
• Egypt filming nightmare: [148:12–160:44]
• Reflections on food, culture, and modernity: [127:15–172:20]

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CONCLUSION

Sonny's adventurous and humor-laced storytelling shakes up preconceptions about food and culture, arguing, with lived experience, for curiosity, humility, and understanding in a world rapidly losing unique traditions. The episode is filled with wild stories, blunt truths, and a sense of gratitude for improbable journeys—from Minnesota poverty to the global stage.

Connect with Sonny:

• YouTube: Best Ever Food Review Show
• Social: @BestEverFoodReviewShow

“Best Ever Food Review Show. We're on YouTube and you can look up to see any of our social media...” — Sonny [181:59]

Transcript

[A]

Joe Rogan Podcast.

[B]

Check it out.

[A]

The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.

[B]

What's happening, Sonny? How are you?

[A]

I'm good. I'm great. I'm happy to be here. I gotta say, to start off, I wanna say thank you so much for having me here in the first place. By all accounts, I should not be here right now.

[B]

Why is that?

[A]

And I say that because, not to be too grandiose from the start, but the way I grew up. I grew up white trash from central Minnesota, super poor family, one of six, failed college three times, and now somehow, years later, I have the most viewed, most followed travel show, online or otherwise. And I'm on the motherfucking Joe Rogan Experience. So how did this all.

[B]

How did. You're welcome. How did you get on this journey of food exploration? You have a really fun show.

[A]

Thank you.

[B]

It's really fun to watch.

[A]

I. Yes, I was very stoked, you know, when you reached out to me for the first time. I was in Egypt with COVID I was going through one of my worst travel experiences ever. And how did it start? I mean, everything starts obviously where I come from in Minnesota. Growing up, I was quite directionless. I didn't know where I wanted to. I didn't know what I wanted to study. I didn't really have any guidance. I didn't really have any mentorship. And so hence the reason I failed out of school so many times in high school. I was really into filmmaking because we had. Fortunately we had a filmmaking course there, but it's just not something I pursued afterwards. And so around the age of 24, I felt like I was pretty rudderless. I tried doing a couple of things, you know, I did radio for a while. I was at 104.7 KCLD, the, I think the hundredth market in the country. Not bad. Doing 11pm to 5am, making minimum wage. And so I tried getting minimum wage on the radio. Yeah.

[B]

They really pay you minimum wage?

[A]

Yeah, well, if they would have paid less, they probably would have. Are you surprised? I mean, radio is kind of infamous for not paying any money.

[B]

Yeah, but minimum wage sounds crazy.

[A]

I guess they saw it as like they're doing me a favor by teaching me a trade or a skill.

[B]

Okay, maybe.

[A]

Yeah. And so I tried getting a job doing that. That didn't work out. And so I was at a point in my life where I just thought, I need to do something. I'm still youngish. I was 24 and I want to travel, I want to see the world. I want to figure out something before I actually develop a long term career. Because at that point I had nothing. And so I had a friend, my brother had a friend who lived in Korea. And at the age of 24, I moved to Korea to teach English. And to me, it made sense because I could go there, I could travel, I could see the world. I thought it would maybe last an hour and then I would come back, but I ended up staying there for eight years. And so maybe I'm giving too long of an answer.

[B]

Don't worry about it.

[A]

All right, I gotta take a deep breath. Let me reset a little bit. Calm down. So I went to Korea. Korea was really challenging because it was my first time in a different country and I'd really only been in central Minnesota at that point.

[B]

Oh, wow.

[A]

And so it was something completely different. And this is Korea in 2008. Like, there aren't really smartphones. Maybe the iPhone one had just dropped. YouTube still sucked. I mean, it existed, but it was barely usable. It was just cat videos. And Charlie bit me at that point. And so there's very little guidance online. I went there to teach English. You might be asking, how did you teach English after failing out of university three times? Well, you can do some underground, under the table English teaching in Korea.

[B]

Did you have to learn how to speak Korean?

[A]

Eventually I did, but no. So people, Korean folks in Korea are very desperate to learn English. And as you may know, people there study their asses off. They're very hard workers and they're very hard studiers, maybe to a detriment. Like, kids go to school so much, they study so much, they get tutors and things like that. And so when I went to Korea, I was going to be a tutor. And to tutor people, I had to. Sorry, give me one second, take a sip. I'm freaking out a little bit still.

[B]

Is this the first podcast you've done?

[A]

It's like, you know, I did a couple practice podcasts.

[B]

I just feel like, what's the practice podcast?

[A]

I feel like it's so quiet in here. I'm like, I can hear my voice so well. In Korea, I wanted to get a gig teaching. And so to teach, you would think like, oh, it's going to be difficult to teach people if you don't have any experience or any credentials teaching English. And that wasn't the case at all. Because when you speak to people, they'll say something like, oh, today I go to store, and you go, oh, I know how to solve that. You know, Today I went to the store and so I'm teaching people conversational English and I'm doing that for maybe 40 or 50 bucks an hour, which seems pretty good, especially in 2008, except for it takes maybe you can do two or three lessons a day because you need to take the subway, you need to go around the city and you need to go where the people are. You do the lesson, you come back. And so eventually I learned how to get a full time job in Korea, which was what was really necessary. I reached out to a school and I find out the code word is can you pay cash. So with many schools you need to have the right kind of visa. They want to see that you have a proper degree, which is understandable. And so if you just asked, can you pay cash? Some would get your point. They would say no. Or they would say, oh yeah, cash is fine, we'll do cash. And so eventually, after being there for maybe six months, I finally figured out how to make a full time income teaching English in Korea at a kindergarten. And I know some people might judge that and say that's not okay to do because I don't have a proper degree in teaching English. But really, to teach English in Korea, all you need is a four year degree in anything. I could have had a four year degree in interior design and also taught kids English. And so living in Korea was the show I do now. There's no way I could have done it if I didn't have all that time living abroad for so long. And living in Korea was the first taste of living in a society and a culture completely different from the usa. In the USA we have a very individualistic society here. And Korea is much more of a communal society. People care a lot more what other people think. I tried dating a Korean woman one time, challenging because she's not just looking at what do I think about the dynamic of this relationship. She's looking at what are my parents going to think, what are my friends going to think, what are my co workers going to think, and so on. That's just one random example. But being steeped and immersed in this different culture gave me enough experience to. It gave me perspective and it's perspective that if I didn't have that, I couldn't make the show that I make today because the show would be a much more judgmental show if I wasn't so used to it and accustomed to being among other cultures. So after a number of years in Korea, I switched to filmmaking, my interest to filmmaking, and I started making my own content. I didn't really have anywhere to publish it.

[B]

What kind of content? What'd you start doing?

[A]

So back then I would read all these self help books and I was really obsessed with this idea of just improving myself, getting better. I felt really unaccomplished because three of my siblings had four year degrees. One was had a PhD, one was in law school. And for me, I'm the loser in Korea who doesn't have a degree, doesn't have a job, doesn't have a skill. And so I wanted to build up a skill in filmmaking. This is what I was really interested in in high school. I was like, I can do it again. Now maybe I'm filming filmmaking, like making.

[B]

Movies, documentari, what kind of stuff?

[A]

So I guess in the beginning I wanted to be good at whatever I could be good. I wanted to be good at everything. And I didn't have a direction quite yet. So I created, I read this book called Talent is Overrated. And in that book they talk about the 10,000 hour rule. I'm sure you've heard about it in Malcolm Gladwell's book. And the 10,000 hour rule is just essentially, you need 10,000 hours of practice, deliberate practice, to become masterclass at something. Even people. People talk about this with comedians too. Or I think Louis CK has talked about people needing at least 10 years to get good or even deep.

[B]

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[A]

And so I broke it down. I looked at filmmaker filmmaking systematically. Like, how can I, week by week, day by day, improve at this and get better at this? I created something called the Soul Filmmakers Workshop, which was a place where I could bring my films. Maybe there were little comedy sketches, short documentaries, stuff I did for clients, corporate work, and people could come and tear apart my content and then that would help me to improve and get better over time. And so over a number of years in Korea, I was able to transition from teaching English to doing filmmaking full time for clients. And so at this point, I don't have any really artistic goals in mind. It's just I want to figure out if I ever get deported from this country, am I going to be able to go back to the USA and have a skill or a job or a trade I can fall back on? And eventually that answer was yes. Luckily, I never got deported. But living in Korea for eight years was one of the most nerve wracking things I had ever done because I was there on a tourist visa. And it's not something I've talked about a lot, but a tourist visa means you get to stay here for 90 days. As an American, you don't need any visa ahead of time, but you land on the spot, they give you a visa for 90 days and then within 90 days you need to leave the country. But you can come back right away. But I did that for eight years straight.

[B]

So you just kept leaving and coming back, right? So where would you go?

[A]

So I really got it perfected and I could do it for the least amount of money possible. I went from Seoul in the north of South Korea, all the way down to Busan in the south, to an island called Tsushima in Japan. And so I could do, I could wake up at 5am, go all the way to Japan and come back by evening. The nerve wracking part wasn't the trip itself or the amount of money it cost, although that was a burden too, because I didn't make that much money. But at immigration, on both sides, they would always ask, hey, you're teaching. You're a teacher, right? You teach even in Japan, going into Japan, they would say, what do you do? And I would have like a whole list of stories and answers lined up in my mind because it was so anxiety inducing, especially coming back to Korea, because this is the stamp I really need. I need 90 days more of freedom when I land in Korea. I shouldn't say land when I pull up at the port because I would take a ferry. If I get the stamp, I get 90 more days to figure out my life, to move forward and to just to have freedom. And standing in line for immigration. I'm looking okay, there's an older guy over here. This lady looks nice. This young guy looks like he's got something to prove. And I would rehearse my story. What are you doing here? Oh, I love Korea. I love Korean. I love Korean food. Try to get him on my side. I plan to go to university soon in Korea. I hope to study here. And then eventually would get through. But sometimes.

[B]

Are you speaking to them in Korean?

[A]

No, in English. So everybody, I would say, in most places you go around the world at immigration, they're going to speak English. And a couple of times they took me to the side room. And that's really terrifying, especially because it wouldn't be as terrifying now, because now I have resources. But back then, I'm completely broke. And so one time they took me to the side room. They go, what are you really doing here? You're teaching. You're teaching, right? Just tell us where you're teaching.

[B]

Why did they think you were teaching?

[A]

Because a lot of people, people do what I was doing. They go there, they teach under the table. They don't have to pay any taxes. They just get paid cash. They leave every 90 days. They come back like, I've rented an apartment in Korea. You just needed a passport. They weren't like, show me your labor contract. Show me your visa. They're like, all right, you got key money, you got the deposit, you're good to go. And so I lived doing that for eight years. While I'm doing that, I'm building up this. These film skills, this. This ability to do filmmaking. And eventually I go from making corporate videos to wanting to make content for myself. So this is where YouTube comes in. Making corporate videos sucks because clients have no idea what they want. When you make a corporate video, most companies, especially at that time in Korea, they'll say, we want a video, we want a video introduction. We gotta interview everybody.

[B]

How do you even get in contact with these.

[A]

These people?

[B]

Because you speak English.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I would imagine most of them speak Korean.

[A]

So there's a fascinating. A fascinating expat culture in most countries around the world, I'd say.

[B]

Really? So you ran into a lot of Americans over there.

[A]

There was. There's a place called Itaewon. I mean, you might have heard of this tragedy recently in Korea where a bunch of people got crushed during Halloween.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So Itaewon is known as like the foreigner neighborhood. And people, all the foreign restaurants from around the world are there tons of foreigners live in the neighborhoods around there. So there's a huge expat community there in Itaewon. And so much so that you see, like what I had, I had the Soul Filmmakers Workshop. People had the Seoul Stand Up Seoul. So people did comedy locally. And in fact, they would invite some comedians from here. I think Kyle Kanane came once, James Adomian came once. And so they would fly over comedians. And the audience is, of course, all people who speak English. Some of them might be Korean who speak English. But there is between Yongsan. Yongsan is where there's a huge military base next to Itaewon. And then there's all the expats and teachers who are there too. So there is a gigantic community of foreigners there. And for whatever reason, Korean folks, some of the business owners there, especially in media, are interested in working with filmmakers, with voiceover artists, actors who are from outside of Korea. Yeah.

[B]

Pretty cool.

[A]

It's pretty cool.

[B]

So you're finding your way.

[A]

Well, and so I. I was able to find my way in. It's like that was my film school. Like, I didn't go to a proper film school. I wouldn't have had opportunities here, you know, for example, doing corporate videos, doing Red Bull video. I did videos for Red Bull in Korea. I, at my level, I wouldn't have been able to do that here in the usa. And so I got to take part in things in jobs and experiences that I wouldn't have been able to otherwise.

[B]

And so along the way, you say, I want to make some food videos.

[A]

Yes. So I'm getting sick of doing the client work. I want to make content for myself. I've read Gary Vee's first book, Crush it, and I want to crush it. And I Love the book. And it taught me about content marketing. And that's something I started doing. Hey, instead of a corporate video, let's make you weekly videos or monthly videos. From there, you can offer value to the people watching, and then you can have a call to action. And I just thought, well, I could do this for myself. And I had a couple of different ideas, but the idea that stuck was doing food. And at the time, I had a couple of channels that really inspired me. I listened to H3H3, who did comedy at the time. And then I listened to. I watched a channel called Jack's Gap, and he had this very wanderlusty travel travel videos that I did. It's a young kid from the UK who would go to India, who would go to these interesting countries. And it felt so remote. And at that time, Maybe this is 2014, 2013, there's almost no travel content on YouTube. And if there is any, people are just trying to emulate what already exists on the travel channel, which is what I didn't understand at the time because all the shit on the travel channel was so dry. It's just like today we walk in Cairo, a city thousands of years old, rich with history, and I was like, this is so fucking boring. Why not mix something more spontaneous, a little bit more humor, the pacing, the pacing of YouTube, faster pacing, and make a completely new travel format that people hadn't seen before. Now, it took me a few years to get it right, but that was the initial idea. That was the inspiration at the time.

[B]

So where was your first video? Where'd you go?

[A]

Oh, that's a good question. So I've made a few different pivots since I started. If you look at my first six, eight videos, they're still online. I mean, my first video is just about a grilled cheese. My first few videos were in Korea, but I was just covering international food. I was doing nachos and burgers and Juicy Lucy. And at some point, I mean, I guess that was just the practice. It was like, can I do this? Can I edit a video? Can I be in front of camera? And I just thought, nobody's gonna watch about. Is a cheeseburger good in Korea? That is not international content. So early on, I decided, and I wasn't shy about it. I said I really liked Andrew Zimmern's show. Growing up, before I moved to Korea, I worked at this job. I'm bouncing around a little bit, but I worked at this job at a home, and I would have to stay overnight at the Home. I didn't have cable in my apartment, but at this home, four guys lived there. They're assisted living folks. And one guy would have seizures at night, potentially maybe once out of every four times, he would scream. He'd grab a magnet from the fridge, rub it on his chest. Somehow that made the seizure go away. When that wasn't happening, I was watching Andrew Zimmern Bizarre Foods and Bourdain's no Reservations Back to back on the Travel Channel. And this shit was so inspiring to me as someone living in central Minnesota who just had very few experiences. It's not like there were a lot of international restaurants. Maybe there's one sushi place that was also like a Thai place and an Indian place. Like, all the Asian stuff just gets mixed over here. And so I took inspiration from those shows. And that's another thing that helped me want to move abroad in the first place. And so I forgot your question. I was on a roll.

[B]

You were on a roll. It's just. How did you get started? Like, what. What was. What was the inspiration to start making food? Were you always, like, a food enthusiast or is this.

[A]

Yes, well, so I. Oh, so I love that. I loved watching that show. I remember watching Andrew Zimmerman when he was in Taipei, Taiwan, and he was eating something called stinky Tofu, and he ate something that was so smelly, so intense, that he couldn't even handle it, and he had to spit it out. And to me, that was just fascinating and the story behind that. And so I made this pivot early on in the channel. I said, I want to go explore more bizarre foods, exotic foods, foods that seem way out there. And for me, the reason is that those types of foods just have an intrinsic story attached to them. If you're eating something strange, bizarre, exotic, however you want to term it, there's naturally a story of, why are people doing this, attached to it. Recently, I was in the Faroe Islands.

[B]

Why were they eating a stinky tofu?

[A]

So stinky tofu is. There's a lot of cultures around the world that like to ferment food. And for some reason, that fermentation process, I mean, they have almost like this goo or a batter that they put the tofu in, and they let the live bacteria saturate the tofu over time. And it just gets incredibly putrid and smelly over time. And I think people developed a taste for it. And it's hard to say why, but I guess there's.

[B]

Did you try it?

[A]

Oh, yeah, no, I went to. I made a Point of going to the same restaurant that Andrew Zimmerman went to, ordering the same food and showing, like, yeah, I got it. I could eat this. The same food that he spit out. And I sent him that video on Twitter, and he laughed. He thought it was funny. It was all, you know, in good spirits. And.

[B]

So what is it like?

[A]

Oh, it's really stinky.

[B]

I mean, it's tough compare it to something.

[A]

Yeah, everybody wants to compare stuff to, like, oh, it's like cheese. It's like a stinky cheese. It's kind of like that, but it's also, like rotten mushrooms. Really intense, putrid. It's like you taste it up through your nose. I think it gave me ptsd, and I don't want to make light of ptsd.

[B]

Was that rough?

[A]

But it was finished the bowl. I ate the whole thing. You know, I made a decision at that moment that really helped me. I literally had anxiety before eating this. So it's tofu, but they make it into a sandwich, and it's. So you've got a tofu bun. Yeah. Okay. So you've got a tofu bun on top and on bottom. Oh, I was so cute back then, wearing my little muscle man shirt with no muscles. And there's tomato, and there's some vegetables inside and a bunch of sauce. And when you eat it. Yeah, it just has.

[B]

It's good to see the different iterations of the bandana, too. You started off with a headband.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

What's the story?

[A]

That's also a bandana.

[B]

What's the story of the bandana?

[A]

It's not that good of a story. I sweat a lot. Yeah. That's the shortest version of the story. I live in Southeast Asia. I live in Saigon, so Vietnam is my home. It's real humid over there, so it'll get, like, you know, 90% humidity, 100 degrees.

[B]

So you just got accustomed to keeping sweat out of your eyes.

[A]

Yeah. What do you do, like, when you work out? Like, I sweat in my eyes, it seems like there's. Well, that's one of the options. Otherwise, you can wear a basketball headband, which isn't that good of an option. You could wear a baseball cap, I guess, but bandana just worked for me. And then I was so intent on it not becoming, like, a symbol of the show. I didn't want to be called a douchebag.

[B]

Well, you're not a douchebag. You're a nice guy.

[A]

Oh, thank you.

[B]

Don't listen to those people. And did you have a bandana?

[A]

I just gave it A douchebag? Well, yeah, because it's like, who's this guy with this. What do you got this fabric around your head for? When one guy wrote, like, well, you gotta tie that around your head to keep your brains in. It's like, all right, fair enough. And eventually, I just gave in. And the point I knew I gave in is we went to Japan and it was actually cold. And I'm like, I'm still wearing the bandana. I'm not sweating at all. But I gotta wear it now.

[B]

It's just your thing.

[A]

Yeah, so it's just become now. So listen, when I'm outside of here, when I'm on the streets, I don't wear it. I'm not desperate for attention. I wear it for the show.

[B]

Oh, interesting. Okay.

[A]

Or if I work out. Actually, when I work out, I do wear it. I wear a different color, though.

[B]

Okay, so red is only when you're working.

[A]

I saved the red ones for work. I got the whole rainbow pack.

[B]

So back to this stinky tofu sandwich. What kind of diarrhea does that produce?

[A]

You know, I. People always ask about diarrhea.

[B]

It must be phenomenal.

[A]

And here's the secret. It's like, there's. In the Avengers, there's this. The scene with the Hulk where they're asking like, oh, you can control your anger now. And he goes, that's my secret. I'm always angry.

[B]

Right?

[A]

Right. So I always have diarrhea. And I don't remember the last time. It was just like, a nice, really solid one. So back.

[B]

You ever gone to a doctor? It might be an issue.

[A]

It might be. But then what, you know? I got a brother allergic to milk. I got a brother allergic to gluten.

[B]

That's pretty normal.

[A]

He's gonna say, stop eating this stuff. I'm not gonna stop. This is my job. The thing about the tofu, this is what I was gonna say. And this was a pivotal moment for me, a realization which is I literally had anxiety before walking in there. I was like, oh, my God, what if I eat this and I throw up? It's gonna look disrespectful. Then I didn't show up. Andrew Zimmern. And I looked at it this way. I said, I need to eat this food. I need to put my mouth around this sandwich, and I need to have the perspective and the mindset of a local person. I shouldn't be, like, someone on Fear Factor trying to get it down and just. I need to accept it. I need to try to enjoy it. And I need to think about what would local people enjoy about this? And that worked. And that's what I do. Anytime I'm eating something pretty unusual around the world, it's not always something I'm pumped to eat. But when I was in with the Datoga tribe in Tanzania, and they've just ripped open this cow, they've got blood in one gourd, and then gastric acid from the small intestine, essentially liquid green. And they're tearing off pieces of raw liver. I wasn't. This wasn't in the outline. It's just happening. And they're like, we. We gotta roll. They're doing it. We gotta roll now.

[B]

So they dip. I do deliver into the gastric acid into both.

[A]

Yeah, they double dip. And let me tell you, they double dip. So they go, blood, gastric acid, they toss it down. And it's one of the most strange experiences I'd ever had. But I loved it because I loved how the people there were so into it. And for them, too. You know, people talk about, you never want to be overtly disrespectful on camera, but oftentimes people are aware within their own culture if they're eating something strange.

[B]

So here's you doing this.

[A]

Oh, yeah, that's a different one. So. But that's right.

[B]

So this is also.

[A]

I mean, we're watching a video here with the Maasai, also in Tanzania. In. In Tanzania, they have a very interesting way to kill the goat. What you see here is that the blood has pooled inside, and I'm scooping out the blood with my hands. It's still warm. And they coagulating, they slurp it up well, and you got to try to get it all before it coagulates too much. And if you wait, if you hesitate, like, oh, I need to get in the right headspace, it's going to be gone. They're going to eat it.

[B]

All right. Geez. There's a lot of Native American tribes that would take raw liver and squirt bile on it. Yeah, they would squirt gall bladder juice on it.

[A]

Have you had bile?

[B]

No.

[A]

It's the most bitter thing you'll ever taste. All I can compare it to is, if, you know, when you are a young man, if you dry heave to the point of just throwing up stomach acid, it's that.

[B]

So why would they want that on their food?

[A]

Remarkably, cultures around the world develop a taste for the extremes in different directions. I mean, there's the four main tastes that people talk about. Whether it's like sour, savory, sweet places, like stuff that's really salty or bitter. In the case of bile in northern Thailand, they will take the buffalo bile and drip it over their rice, their sticky rice over raw buffalo meat. It's just been a taste that they've acquired over time and they look forward to it. Oh yeah.

[B]

Have you ever talked to a doctor or a nutritionist? Is there some sort of a reason to do that? Like, is there some nutritional benefits to putting that stuff on your food?

[A]

Bitter, sorry, bile in particular? I've not talked to a doctor. I don't know that many doctors.

[B]

That would be an interesting question to ask. Like, why would tribes do that? Like, maybe there's some sort of a secondary, not just a taste thing. Maybe there's some sort of a benefit.

[A]

Yeah, I've seen it a few different places around the world. In Vietnam, I experienced it too, mostly in Southeast Asia. But yeah, some folks just really love the intensely bitter flavor. Yeah, it's an interesting question because I guess if you're looking at the lens of evolution, like, what do you call it? Through evolution, like looking at societies and cultures through evolutionary biology, you might assume, like, well, people ate things because they were the right things to eat, but sometimes they ate things because they were available.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And with that one, I couldn't tell you.

[B]

But do they ever eat the liver without all the other nasty stuff connected to it? Just raw liver, because raw liver itself is difficult. Wouldn't it be great to manage your portfolio on one platform? Well, now you can trade all in.

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[A]

Yeah, so it was nice to be distracted by the green poop juice on there, no? So at that time, they ate, you know, so to back up a little bit, this Datoga tribe was super interesting. We're way out in the middle of nowhere in Tanzania. They have these beautiful huts with a flat roof, grass growing off the top of it. And in this tribe specifically, it was a woman's job to dispatch the animal and to butcher up the animal. And so the way they kill it is because this is a whole different topic we could get into. But the way people dispatch animals around the world varies greatly. And here they would take the cow, they would tip it on its side or on its back, and then they would essentially suffocate it. They would put different logs, like wood, long pieces of wood or branches, into its throat. It would take about 10 minutes. Eventually, it would pass away. Then these same women cut it open. They get to butchering. They have their first initial feast. They get dibs, which you don't see in most cultures, especially in Africa. Usually stuff is going to go to the guys. First, they take what they want. Then they mix the rest of the bile, blood, and organs all together and present it to the men.

[B]

Why do they kill the cows that way?

[A]

So I'm really. This is something you may have seen in my videos that I don't really shy away from how the animals are dispatched or how they're killed. And I think it reveals something about the culture and about people. I just find it fascinating because it's different every place you go with the goat that you just showed. With the Maasai, they killed a goat and they suffocated it. So they put their hands on his nose and mouth and they held it there for 3, 4 minutes until it stopped moving. And I asked the guy in the interview, why are you doing this? Doesn't that seem cruel? And he said it would be far more cruel to slash the animal's throat, to make it suffer from that and then to have it also suffer from dying afterwards. So it's kind of like two points of suffering compared to one.

[B]

Hmm.

[A]

I mean, it's a tough question. Would you rather have your throat slashed or have someone suffocate you to death?

[B]

Well, throat slash would be quicker.

[A]

It'd be quicker, but it would feel so traumatic and insane.

[B]

Like, you don't think it's traumatic to get suffocated?

[A]

Well, I do think that they're both pretty bad.

[B]

Yeah, they're both pretty bad.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. So they just have come up with some sort of a moral reason.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. And it's also about blood collection. So if they. They want the blood to pool within the body. So I think it's moral, but I think it's practical too, because then they can cut the body open, the blood's pooled in there, and they can scoop it out to.

[B]

They don't waste any of the blood because they eat the blood. Now, when the women get first dibs, what do they choose?

[A]

Organs. It's all over the world. Organs. Organs are always eaten first. And liver is one of the most valued any place you go. Also with the Maasai. The Maasai are really interesting. So I've heard you talk about the Maasai before. The Maasai are really famous for eating milk, blood and meat almost exclusively. At least it used to be that way. And now, you know, corn, corn flour. And like people mix corn flour with water. It's called ugali, at least in some countries. But that's eaten all over Africa. And so that's more pervasive now. But it used to be just those three things. And the blood, you might think, oh, so to collect blood, they just. When they kill the animal, they eat the blood? No, the Maasai will take an arrow, put it into a live cow's neck, drain some of the blood, then seal it up with some shit and then drink that blood or mix up blood with milk.

[B]

Why would they seal it up with shit?

[A]

Yeah. So to me, that seemed not like the cleanest choice.

[B]

Right.

[A]

But maybe the shit saturated with piss, which helps to keep it clean. I don't know. I was kind of shook. I was shocked when I saw it. I, I, I'm not sure they're using animal shit. They're using animal shit or the cow's own shit. And so that did stop the bleeding. And so they have this really peculiar diet. And so here they're doing it. Yeah. So I got this. Got demonetized, that's for sure. They don't. You two doesn't love when you show arrows going into a cow's neck. The worst.

[B]

Strange looking arrow too. Like, what's on the.

[A]

It's got like basically like a little razor blade. The worst part about shooting this is that they were fucking bad at it. I was like, do you guys still do this all the time? Because why is it taking you 20 times? At least. Be good at it.

[B]

Yeah. So they're just trying to get into that vein.

[A]

Yeah. And, and they tied off like a heroin chunky. So the vein gets all big. And the point I wanted to make, getting back to the liver is that the way they section up meat is really interesting among the Maasai tribe and many other tribes are like this too. So how they separate the meat is that each quarter, each piece goes to a different group. And so they have ribs, they have front quarters, they have hindquarters. Some might go to pregnant women, some goes to young women, but the liver, the liver always goes to the older men.

[B]

How interesting. It's so interesting that we don't eat liver over here or very rarely or that is usual for people over here.

[A]

To eat liver that is looked down on too. Like liver. It's like a hacky joke from like 80s or 90s TV, like, oh, liver and onions.

[B]

Gross.

[A]

Liver is great. And what I find that there's a lot, I find there's a lot of food in the US that people just don't know how to cook well. And it's just not part of our culinary lexicon here.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And this is something I talk about a lot. I find it very lame that in the US this country of extremes, this country where people are so into whether it's entrepreneurship or extreme sports or fighting, we're so extreme with everything. But then when it comes to food that's a little bit outside of like salads, wraps, burgers, sandwiches, people are like, oh, I would never eat that. I would never eat that. And it said with pride. Not like, I wouldn't eat that because I'm a pussy. They're like, oh, I would never eat that. And that's something I don't really understand when it comes to how many Americans look at food from around the world. And so, I mean, part of my show, really, the point isn't to be like, ew, look at this icky, weird food. It's to try to create some understanding and empathy for people around the world and understanding as to why are people eating this way.

[B]

And so when these cultures, it seems like they all go to the organs first. And you see that in animals, too, you know, and you see that in lions. You see that in wolves. Like, wolves, the alpha male always gets to eat the liver. And what. Did they have any sort of explanation as to why they do this? Did you ask them?

[A]

So I've seen this dozens of times. At this point, I've not asked. And I have my own. Excuse me. My own assumptions. My assumptions would be meat is easier to preserve, period. So people have tons of different ways of preserving meat. Mostly, you know, drying, turning it into some kind of a jerky. But I don't think it's as easy to take a liver or a heart or something like that and preserve it. I also think it probably has the most flavor because people love getting in on the stomach, too, the intestines. And this is really powerful, potent, gamey parts of the animal. And again, I think people, in many places, they've developed a taste for those really intense gamey flavors. Have you had, like, beef, tripe or intestine?

[B]

Yeah, yeah. I like menudo.

[A]

Right.

[B]

The Mexican dish is filled with tripe and all kinds of stuff. And I eat a lot of liver. I eat liver pretty often.

[A]

Yeah. And so menudo can have a lot of gamey flavor to it.

[B]

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Sometimes it smells like a barn.

[A]

Yes, exactly.

[B]

Good.

[A]

I ate. I ate zebra. I had zebra liver and kidney when I was in South. South Africa.

[B]

Yeah, I saw that video where you shot a zebra.

[A]

Yeah, I shot a zebra.

[B]

That was heavy.

[A]

That I. Well, I wanted to see if I could pull it off. But the liver. The liver, it tasted like a horse barn. And it's. So. I don't know if that's like, manure or. Like, sometimes it can taste. Something could taste, like the animal's fur. Like, if you scratch the animal and smelled it, sometimes it'll have that kind of a flavor to it. Yeah, yeah. So you watch that video, what you think?

[B]

Well, I've Always wanted to know what zebra tastes like too, because I know people that have hunted zebra and eaten them. They said it's very good and it makes sense. I've had horse before in Montreal. Yeah, There's a great restaurant called Joe Beef in Montreal. It's one of my favorite restaurants. And the first time I went there, they served us horse meat. They served us like it was a horse tenderloin. And it was a little weirded out. I was like, whoa. But in Canada, horse is normal to eat. In a lot of parts of Europe, horse is normal. It's a normal food to eat.

[A]

Yeah, Yeah. I think. I think they're trying to make it illegal here, if it's not illegal already. But, I mean, I'm sure you could get it in Texas. It seems like you can get every type of exotic meat here in Texas.

[B]

Definitely get zebra.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Really?

[B]

Yeah, you get zebra here. You could hunt a zebra here. A friend of mine asked me to shoot a zebra on his property because he has an evil zebra that's killing the younger zebras.

[A]

See, they must be cold. Yeah, that's some of them.

[B]

When you talk about animal preservation and wildlife management, one of the things that people who are not in the know must take into consideration is that when you have older males that are no longer viable, so they're not breeding, but they're still dominant, and so they attack the younger males to keep the younger males from coming up and challenging them eventually, and they wind up killing all these younger males. And the only way to preserve the younger male population, to keep them healthy, is to kill this very aggressive older male. They actually have to do that with rhinos sometimes, even though rhinos are in danger. Like, that was the story of. I don't know if you remember that story, but there was a big deal. It was on CNN many years ago where there was an endangered rhino and there was an auction to shoot this rhino because they had to kill it because this one large rhino who was no longer viable was killing younger rhinos, and he had already killed at least two. And they were very concerned that, you know, they have a small population already. And so the only way to solve this was to either a move this animal somewhere else or shoot it. And so they decided to auction it off. And I think. What's the gentleman's name?

[A]

Corey Moulton.

[B]

Corey Knowlton. Corey Knowlton, who had been on the podcast before I actually had him on and talk to him about this. He. I think he wound up paying a quarter million dollars to go over there and CNN following him, followed him around. But what was really interesting was their perspective was educated. They learned along the way. They're like, okay, we had this idea that people are going over there and they're just shooting a rhino because they're an asshole, and they want to take a poster with it or a photo with it, rather, and put the head on their wall. But there's a lot more to it. And then that money is the $250,000 is the money that goes to wildlife conservation over there. It goes to protect against poaching. It goes to protect habitat and keep them maintain, you know, the. The structures and the fences and all sorts of different things they use to keep these animals healthy. But they have higher, higher numbers of all these animals that were at one point in time endangered. They're much higher than they've ever been before, specifically because they're valuable. It can be very conflicting to a lot of people because you think of wildlife conservation as what we need to do is protect their habitat, give them more food, keep people away from them. But that's not really profitable. And the way to make sure their numbers are high is actually to make them valuable. And the best way to make them valuable is people pay a lot of money to go over there and hunt them, which sounds so counterintuitive.

[A]

Yes. So we had the opportunity to do a different story about three years ago in Africa, and I just didn't think I was ready for it. I wasn't ready for it then. And at this point, I wanted to take on the challenge. I wanted to see, can I do a video that some people are gonna hate? And can I try to educate people along the way and educate myself along the way? Because there's a lot about game reserve hunting that I didn't know. And so specifically, what we did in that video is going to a game reserve. So somebody privately owns all this property in South Africa. It was maybe five miles by three miles. And they have a certain. So I'm so naive in the beginning, and I'm like, oh, so, like, if you don't shoot the zebra, then will a lion get it? And it's like, there's no lions in the fence, dummy. It's like, they don't.

[B]

How big is this preserve is?

[A]

3 by 5 miles.

[B]

What is that in acres? Do you know?

[A]

Oh, no. I'm so bad at acres.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

I've been abroad too long, and I've never bought land here, so I'm not sure.

[B]

Got it.

[A]

So they have a certain number of animals on the Property. You tell them ahead of time what you want to shoot. I mean, they literally have. It's like a menu. They're like, here's the animal list and here's the price for each animal. They even have baboons. They have vervet monkeys, which are these tiny little, I don't know, seven pound monkeys. I don't know that people set out to do it. But if some cynical bastard on his way to get some other creature, if he saw the vervet monkey, he could be like, how much is that again? Let me check the menu. Oh, 40 bucks. It's 40 bucks, by the way.

[B]

$40 to shoot a monkey.

[A]

To shoot a monkey.

[B]

That's weird.

[A]

And so they have this menu. And to me, I looked over the animals. I didn't want to shoot something that just. I was gonna sound bad. It's tough. Cause I am still a YouTuber. I was. I've also. I didn't. So I didn't want to shoot an animal that was just brown. That blended in with everything. I also went to safari recently in Tanzania and I saw zebras, and they look juicy. Have you seen zebras like hindquarter?

[B]

I did on your show when you guys smoked it.

[A]

Juicy.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I thought, okay, this will be interesting on the menu. That's 1,000 bucks, by the way.

[B]

A zebra is $1,000 to shoot.

[A]

Yeah. The most expensive one is the buffalo, the Cape Buffalo. $10,000. And what surprised me is after you shoot it, you don't get the meat. You can mount it if you want. You can get the mount or a rug or whatever would be made from the animal, but you don't get to keep the meat.

[B]

What do they do with the meat?

[A]

It's their property still. So what they. Yeah, I know. I was like, I paid $10,000.

[B]

I don't believe you can bring Africa back to the United States.

[A]

No, you can't anymore. And especially ever since the Cecil the Lion debacle years ago. Yeah, so somebody, I think it was a dentist in Minnesota actually, where I'm from, he went there, he shot a lion, he posted the picture, it got on the wrong website. And then this guy, I think, had to shut down his dental practice. They changed laws from that point. And so they wouldn't let you bring any lion mounts and perhaps maybe not certain types of meat or maybe not any meat at all. And so what's interesting is I talked to the game reserve guys when I got there, and I thought some questions would be layup questions or even dumb questions. And I said, what kind of animals are not okay to hunt? And these two brothers look at each other like, oh, shit, people, this is a tough one. Yeah. And basically, people, because I thought for sure they would say lions are not okay. But they said there's every type of hunting, basically you can imagine in South Africa.

[B]

Well, there was an issue after the cease of the lion thing where they no longer had lion hunters going over there because they didn't want to get attacked. And even people that wanted to hunt lions wouldn't go over there. And so they had to wind. They called some large number of lions because if you don't supply that, then it decimates the antelope and the. All the. The different. The different game species that the lions eat and kill.

[A]

Well, okay, so that's tough because I know that they had too much supply and the demand was no longer there. And so that was a problem. I don't know for sure that those lions are mixed in with other live, valuable creatures.

[B]

I think they could be differently in different game parks, for sure.

[A]

And some of them would have been private. And maybe when it's time to hunt, they relocate the lion. I believe that does happen. So what I found was there's a lot of gray area. I brought my friend Greg out there. He's an avid hunter in Minnesota. He's been to Montana to hunt. What do you hunt in Montana?

[B]

Y' all would know deer, Mule deer.

[A]

Mule deer. And it's like, so is this hunting? Is it not hunting? He's like, it's not really hunting to him.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And so there's a lot of gray area too, because the zebra populations, even the zebra I hunted, they said that was nearly extinct years ago. But because of this, you know, this personal interest people have in the animals being around, they'll help try to breed them and make sure they're healthy, make sure they have enough water so that people can come and shoot them.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. What we're talking about before this is like, again, it's a very, very controversial topic, you know?

[A]

Yeah. And I mean. And that's why I wanted to go for it. And I think we did a good job of presenting their case and their point of view and just logistically how it works. And I think it's a fascinating topic and I probably wouldn't do it again.

[B]

Well, I mean, it's a food source for those people. I mean, zebra is something that's traditionally eaten over there. And it's. According to you and according to people that I know that have eaten it, it's Very delicious.

[A]

Oh, the zebra was fantastic. Except for the organs. The organs were weird because, yes, it was like a horse barn, but I still kind of liked it.

[B]

Have you ever seen Louis Theroux piece on African hunting?

[A]

No.

[B]

Very interesting. You know Louis Theroux, the documentarian from England?

[A]

Maybe if I saw.

[B]

Really interesting guy. He was a great podcast guest too, but he did this whole thing where he stayed over there for several weeks and really annoyed them and, you know, like, really just constant questions, constant this, constant that. And this guy who was running this game park basically laid it out to him like, the only way these animals survive is if they're worth something. And even then you have to spend so much money to keep them from getting poached because while they were over there, they're constantly finding animals that were. Had been snared and then the meat had gone to waste because they didn't get to the animal before, you know, it died early and then was rotten. And it's. It's very conflicting because we like to think of Africa as this just wild, amazing Narnia place where all these animals are running free and you can go there in a jeep and they won't kill you.

[A]

Right. But.

[B]

But the reality is a lot of those animals are there because they're valuable to people. To go over and hunt.

[A]

Yeah. Or to look at.

[B]

Yes, or to look, but much more. It's much more valuable. That's why cape buffalo is $10,000 to hunt. How much does it cost? Take a picture one, Right? Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so do they eat the Cape buffalo? So if someone. Because one of the things about buffaloes is my good friend Adam Greentree, he hunts them up in Australia. They're invasive. It's an Asian water buffalo. Enormous, like, very scary buffalo. And they're so tough, you could barely eat them. My friend Cam went over there to hunt, and he said he was chewing on one piece of meat for 30 minutes.

[A]

Well, I think it's all about preparation then.

[B]

I'm sure you have to. But they're in the woods, you know, they're out there in the field. So there's not like a smoker.

[A]

And no pressure cookers, no brining.

[B]

Yeah, there's no pressure cookers, no electricity.

[A]

I didn't find it to be exceptionally tough. I find it to be just very similar to beef. Typical beef. In fact, even buffalo meat is also called beef.

[B]

How do they prepare it?

[A]

Well, so what's interesting is we did the zebra on the game reserve, and so it's a couple of afrikaner dudes cooking that stuff up. And then with the buffalo, the idea was to take the meat from there and donate it all to a nearby village. And so this was cooked up by Khoisan people. Khoisan are these legendary trackers from the southern part of Africa. And these are the folks that, I don't know if you've ever heard of these stories, but they would just track down animals to. The animals were exhausted and fell over.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And so of course, they're not stories.

[B]

Persistence hunting, they call it.

[A]

Yeah, they're not doing that anymore, but we're still, we're with the Khoisan and they're cooking up in the way that they prefer. So they did a stew which was kind of braised for hours and hours and hours, and that was soft and delicious. That was really good. And then they grilled it and they grill. They grill it till it's like black. And this is something you'll find pretty much in all of Africa. No one's eating medium rare steaks in Indonesia.

[B]

Most they do that because they're worried about contaminants or parasites.

[A]

Yeah, I think the idea is like, don't get sick. Cook everything all the way through, all the time.

[B]

Did you try to cook one medium rare?

[A]

No, no, but the, like I said the zebra we experienced like that. But even that, like really well done buffalo wasn't that tough. Not like I was chewing on it for 10 minutes.

[B]

But it's similar. Like a well done steak.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

So when they have a buffalo, I mean, that, that must be able to feed an enormous amount of people. It's a huge animal.

[A]

Yeah. So, I mean, a lot of it we just put into a freezer for them to, to use later for people. And I mean, there's one freezer in the community. It was a village of about 60 people. So they'll be eating that for a while.

[B]

And so when you hunted the zebra, this is, this is. What kind of zebra is this again?

[A]

It's called mountain zebra. Mountain zebra.

[B]

And the mountain zebra was at one point in time protected.

[A]

That's my understanding is that it was at least, you know, nearing being a vulnerable species. The numbers were quite low and I believe they weren't allowed to hunt it for some period of time until the numbers came back up.

[B]

And when you hunted them, did they have a specific zebra they wanted you to target?

[A]

No. So they have a group. And so for me, it was exciting. And maybe it's like, maybe this sounds too cold, but I don't know, it's like paintball, but on another level, because you kind of know you're gonna get an animal and you go through a couple of fences, you get into the reserve and you have a tracker. And so I'm guided the whole time, which is what I would prefer. I hunt maybe once a year and I do it for the show. And so eventually they triangulate, you know, they send out the khoisan guy to, to rustle up some zebras and maybe three came by and they were basically like, whichever one you can get is fine. They all looked about the same size, so it didn't seem like they were pushing me to shoot a specific one. It wasn't like they had an outlier that was creating trouble for them.

[B]

And what does the terrain look like? Are the zebra aware that you're there? Are you hidden? Do you have to follow general principles of hunting, like stay downwind of them?

[A]

Yes. Yeah, yeah. And we had to. They ran away from us several times and even when I shot it, maybe the first. Oh, you said you watched that one, right? Yeah, I mean, I hit it. I got a lot of shit for that. I hit it in the leg, but I was about 250 yards away. It's rocky, the train is rocky, there's a lot of shrubs and so there are things to hide behind. But yes, if they catch your scent, then that's going to be an issue and they'll bolt.

[B]

Yeah. So you had to do a follow up shot.

[A]

Yes, and luckily I was able to do that quickly, but. But again, it's like buck fever. I'm doing my best. It's like I don't feel nervous, but my body doesn't care. My heart's beating like crazy. And if you're off by 1 millimeter, by 1 hair, it's like that second shot, they could have told me, oh, you missed by like 15ft. And I would have believed them, but it was like dead nuts on.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And so I'm happy about that because you can't predict how a hunt is going to go and you just don't want the animal to suffer too much.

[B]

Was that the first time you'd killed a large animal like that?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

It's a weird feeling, right?

[A]

Yeah, yeah. And I, you know, I did hog hunting in Alabama once and I got where I scoped myself and I had, I had to get four stitches. It's funny, I. I scoped myself.

[B]

Let's explain to what scope yourself is. When you're looking too close to the scope, as the rifle goes off, it kicks Right. And the scope comes back and slams you in the forehead.

[A]

Yeah. So ideally you should have your, I'm, I don't know, maybe inches back from the scope to have the full view. And I didn't realize that, that at the time I was like, I'm gonna get right up on this fucking scope. And then it kicked. What's funny is I got two practice shots that day and then I had to go to the hospital and then my head was swollen and I had to wake up the next day at 5:00am and yeah.

[B]

Oh, I started bleeding immediately and I.

[A]

Point to my forehead and I go, bro, what the.

[B]

Yeah, you can see it happen here.

[A]

And so the next morning, this is a lot of pressure. I'm like, I have a permanent scar in my head now I have to get a frickin hog. I can't leave this place without shooting an animal. And so luckily I got two the next day. But that also was this type of exhilaration. And it's a weird feeling, it was even a stranger feeling with the zebra because it's a mix of accomplishment and duty, I would say, because when I just injured the animal, I was like, it's my duty, it's my obligation to put it down as quickly and efficiently as possible. But I can't just go crazy and just start shooting like crazy.

[B]

Yeah. Is it a different feeling? I mean, what does it feel like to eat an animal that you just shot? It is a different feeling than just eating meat. Like you have this connection to that meat now.

[A]

Yeah. So I know you're more versed in this than me and I guess I do feel like, you know, tracking down an elk or going hunting for days would be. You'd feel much more accomplished. Accomplished.

[B]

So this was more like shopping with a rifle.

[A]

It's something in between. Yeah, shopping with a rifle, it's something in between. It still, it felt like a sense of accomplishment for sure. And the meat was incredible. I guess I was most taken aback by eating this type of meat that I'll never probably eat again in my life and just having the privilege of trying that.

[B]

And is that like a common cuisine amongst the people that work in that ranch that you went to?

[A]

No, not at all.

[B]

No.

[A]

So you know what's interesting in South Africa is the. Oh no. What is the animal? The animal with the spiral oryx horns? It's not that one.

[B]

Oh, there's a ton of them.

[A]

I know. Yeah, it's not coming to me now. There is some game meat that's widely available even in Grocery stores in South Africa.

[B]

Which one?

[A]

Kudu.

[B]

Kudu, yes. Kudu is supposed to be very good.

[A]

Thanks, Jamie.

[B]

And eland.

[A]

Yeah, it was incredible. But you'll find kudu in the grocery store, so it's really all over the place. And so people might be eating kudu, but not the. More like rare game meats, especially people in the villages.

[B]

So these people that you hunted with, this is the first time they had eaten zebra as well?

[A]

Oh, that's a good question. You know, I didn't ask them. I'm assuming not, because they have zebras there and people hunt the zebras and, you know, if you're going to have a game reserve, you need to be good at cooking and at hunting. It can't just be one or the other.

[B]

The people that I know that have gone over to Africa say that the meat stays there, but you eat it the entire time you're there.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So the meat does go to these villages, but also you get to eat as much meat as you can while you're there. I just think legally you're not allowed to leave Africa with meat.

[A]

That sounds correct. By the way, I brought you meat.

[B]

Oh, would you bring.

[A]

Speaking of. But you might want to throw this away immediately.

[B]

Really?

[A]

Well, hold on. Okay, this still might be good. I was gonna put it in a Ziploc bag from China yesterday.

[B]

Phantom smells or am I smelling something?

[A]

You might to be smelling something. This is yak meat, Yo. From Nepal. This has been dried. If you want to chuck that.

[B]

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[A]

The trash right after I leave. That's fine.

[B]

Yak meat from Nepal.

[A]

So we took out a whole yak when we were in the mountains, in the Himalayan mountains. This is just a few weeks ago. And so one of the ways they preserve the meat, it's interesting because they dry it, but how they dry it is they have a big hearth or fireplace in their home, and then above that they'll hang the raw meat. And they don't do anything special. The meat just gets dried out over time because of the fireplace. And so I have that one and then I have one more that you're probably gonna want to throw away because I looked at it this morning. It's a little bit moldy. Is it this? You want to take a guess?

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And you can give it a sniff, too. That might. This is gonna really confound you. I think you're gonna be confused by this.

[B]

Yeah, it seems like it's a little.

[A]

Bit off, but it's not gonna hurt to smell it. But the smell is gonna help you figure out what that is to. I don't know, does it smell more like land or sea?

[B]

Smells more like land, really.

[A]

Okay. So. Well, I think that is whale meat.

[B]

Oh, Jesus. Dude.

[A]

Yeah, I'm not sure if that's allowed in the U.S. let me explain. I went to the Faroe Islands about two months ago. They dry the whale meat. But again, it's been in my suitcase for a while. You probably chucked that. But whale meat is fascinating. They also eat dolphin there, too, which I wasn't aware that you could do legally anywhere.

[B]

Is there a little knife over there? Where's that little knife? Yeah, but where's the little knife that Santino had yesterday? There it is. Thank you.

[A]

There you go.

[B]

So. So you were saying that they dry this out and what kind of whale?

[A]

It's called a pilot whale. So this is a very controversial food on the Faroe Islands. And in fact, if you go there, you know, I was going there to film, obviously. If you. Yeah. All right. He's slicing it up now.

[B]

And you just eat it. Right like this.

[A]

Yeah. It might leave a little taste in your mouth.

[B]

I'm gonna put that aside.

[A]

Yeah, okay.

[B]

I'm gonna think about it.

[A]

You know, I would say to, like, get the bark off, get the outer layer off, and maybe take a piece from the inside or not at all.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

So it's very controversial food because people like whales.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Whales are smart. They're cute. This is something that they've been doing in the Faroe Islands for hundreds of years. In fact, it's one of the oldest records of any country. They've kept these insane records going back hundreds of years of these. It's called the grindabap, something like that. It's. It's like they. They get the whales and they bring them to shore. Have you heard about this?

[B]

No.

[A]

Fantastic. So I was just there. I was hoping to see one in action. I was told if you see one and you approach them and you film, they will destroy your camera because they've had so many issues with protesters there. Among them, Sea shepherd, who is trying to put an end to the wailing.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So the wailing they do there is far different from the wailing that you're going to see in a place like. Like Japan. Japan. I think they're hunting blue whales. They're hunting whales that are actually vulnerable species, and they're doing it under the guise of research. And they put, like, research on their boat as we're like.

[B]

They're selling the animal.

[A]

Yeah. And then they sell it. Oh, my gosh. And some people there, I mean, somebody took me on a market tour in Japan, and they're like, well, the meat is left over. They don't want to waste it after the research, so they sell it here. And I'm like, you buy that? You. You believe that? And she did. So what they're doing is different in the Faroe Islands because they're not going out to sea. And so they're never. Their method of getting the whales is never going to lead to their extinction. The whales populate the Atlantic, and the Faroe Islands is just a tiny, small collection of 18 islands in the middle of the Atlantic between, like, Scotland and Iceland. And they've got 50,000 people. So when a pot of whales comes by and somebody spots them, they kind of sound the alarm. First of all, they'll get some boats together and try to guide them to one of the Bays, at this point, this is what I love, this idea that everybody is so into the Grint. This event that happens, that you could be in your corporate job, in a room, talking about quarter four sales, doing your report, pitching to your team, and then you could get a phone call. Hey, the whales are here. Let's go, everybody. When the alarm goes off, if you gotta leave church, if you gotta leave work, you do it. It's understood. Yeah. Go get the whales. Really? Yes.

[B]

Even today? Even today, corporate jobs.

[A]

I went to the most normal family's home ever and I did a fridge tour, like on men's Health, on YouTube. And it was like all like, here's a whale that we got from earlier this year. We got about £300. It was so interesting. And this is like the most normal corporate white collar guy ever. And so they all get the call, they go down there, because the amount of meat you get depends on how much you help out. They have a very detailed system for how to allocate the meat. The process of actually getting the whales, though, they steer the whales towards the shore. Then once they get close to the bay, they start clanging on the boats and making noise and trying to throw off their sonar. Eventually, the whales get close enough to the shore where people can run out from the beach and hook the whales in their blowhole and start pulling them up. What? This is our video that's going to be coming up.

[B]

Oh, my God. This is horrific. Well, yeah, Shit.

[A]

That's why it's controversial.

[B]

So all of these people and these people wearing, like, modern clothes and I mean, these do not look like tribal people. They look like anybody. They could be in fucking New Hampshire.

[A]

Yeah, exactly.

[B]

And they're just slaughtering these whales, so. Slicing their necks. Oh, my God, this is horrible.

[A]

So what makes it horrible to you that they're whales?

[B]

I mean, just whales to me are like. It's almost like killing a golden retriever.

[A]

And I'm not.

[B]

This is rough.

[A]

I'm not saying you're wrong or right, but I think it's interesting to explore where that.

[B]

Well, I think if you look at.

[A]

Ethics exists for each person. So for you, like, what is the line for okay to eat? Not okay to eat? To eat. Because, like, I wouldn't. I mean, I have eaten dog, but I wouldn't probably eat it again.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I'm not that into it, but we all have these lines that we create for ourselves. So where's the line for you?

[B]

It's a good question. My friend Steve Rinelli, he went To Guyana. And the. The tribes people there were eating monkeys and they. They cooked. I think it was Guyana.

[A]

I ate monkey this year.

[B]

And he said it was like smoked turkey, like, the way they do it, like. Like that's what it tasted like.

[A]

Oh, wow.

[B]

And he said it was just. There's a part of you that's like, what the. Like we're eating a primate. Like.

[A]

Right.

[B]

This is intense. I'd probably eat a whale before I'd eat a primate.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, I. I did something similar this year with the Hadzabe, but to. Just to finish about the whales.

[B]

Yeah. I. Bolivian jungle with tsunami hunters. How do you say that?

[A]

Simone, maybe?

[B]

Simone. Simone. Hunters. And we ate monkey. Only got 35 likes 2014. So what if he Shadow banned after?

[A]

Yeah. So, I mean, no wonder people. No wonder it's controversial. No wonder people get upset because it's in your face. It's not like a slaughterhouse.

[B]

It also looks like so many whales. It's not like a couple.

[A]

However many whales they can get is how many they kill. And so once they bring them onto the beach, they have this tool they use to kind of go into their spine quickly and that severs the spine and it kills them pretty much instantly. And then from there, it's just about moving them around, cutting them up, portioning up the meat, and then you get a portion of the meat, depending on how you helped. And, you know, if you had a boat, you might get more, and if you're just cutting stuff up, you might get less. And it's a fascinating system. I understand why it upsets people, but it was interesting. There's so many documentaries like this, the footage you just pulled up. The difference is nobody ever goes to their home. They just end it there. Isn't this terrible? Look at the whales. And so I actually got to go into someone's home, look in their freezer and eat a whale meal that they prepared and experience that with them. And I guess my biggest takeaway was it's so different from any other animal. It's got a big layer of blubber on the outside. There's skin which is about a quarter of an inch thick. And then the blubber must be, I don't know, three, four inches thick. And then it's just protein, this dark red protein after that, and there's no taste you could compare it to. And so it's not like, well, you know, just eat chicken instead, just eat beef instead. You cannot replace whale meat. You can only take it away. And it's a tradition that they've had for hundreds of years at this point. So I understand why they really want people's opinions or points of view when it comes to this. And my biggest thing in going there was finding out is this sustainable. And from everything I could see, it seems this is sustainable. It's something that they could keep doing long term because they're not going out into the ocean to seek out whales. And so I kind of get why they do it and why they're going to keep doing it.

[B]

Well, I get why they're doing it. If you think of the fact that these people have lived on this island for who knows how long, probably thousands of years.

[A]

Right, right.

[B]

How long have they been there? And that was probably a main food source to keep them alive for a long time.

[A]

Yes. And the weather you see there, I mean, it's very rainy, not a lot of sun. They're not growing a lot of crops. They're growing basically potatoes. They got sheep on land and then they just have very rich sea waters.

[B]

In the middle of nowhere. Oh, yeah, really? In the middle of nowhere. So it's between Norway and Iceland, Right in the center.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And how. And you said there's thousands of people live there. How many thousands?

[A]

50,000.

[B]

And, you know, cities there. Is there a city, a village?

[A]

Yeah, I mean, they have a capital. About half the population is in the capital. I mean, but it just looks like a cute little village. It doesn't look like it's no metropolis.

[B]

And how do they prepare whale? Do you have a video of you eating whale?

[A]

Oh, sorry, it's coming out this Sunday.

[B]

Oh, okay. There you go. Sneak peek, folks. So when you ate it, what was your thought when you were eating this?

[A]

I. I guess I wanted to try to identify how it tastes so I could convey that to the audience. It tastes very beefy. I didn't really have beefy.

[B]

Yeah, interesting.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But where's a mammal?

[A]

It is a mammal and it breathes air. It just happens to eat a lot of fish.

[B]

And so how do they prepare?

[A]

Yo, it's so funny, they had a couple different preparations. I'm trying to remember now. They had a way of almost like they put it, it's almost like a chicken fried steak where they were simmering it in oil and they created this like thick gravy around it. I think they maybe even put some beef bouillon or beef like flavoring on it and it just came out looking like a big flat steak. And. Yeah, I wonder if you tried it, you wouldn't be like this. You would say there's something unusual about this steak, but it looked like a beef steak. And the meat is really remarkable because it's almost black. I mean, you could see it right there.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

While I was there, I pull it.

[B]

Up to the camera so people can see what it looks like. So this is a pilot whale.

[A]

Pilot whale. While I was there, I also tried dolphin meat, too.

[B]

So what is that? That's pilot whale with blubber.

[A]

Yeah. Yep. Okay. So if you look at the plate here, this is like a typical plate that they would have. And it's interesting because it's like all your macros, it's like potatoes for carbs. The black part is the protein, and then in the middle, that part right there is all the blubber. It's very thinly sliced blubber. It's very. It's so. It's very rich, oily, but it's not oily like pork would be. It's almost like a more thin oiliness that can dissipate, dilute more quickly in your mouth.

[B]

And do they eat it raw?

[A]

They have. Yes. They have a few different ways of eating it one way. So, I mean, this isn't technically raw, but it's dried, so it's not cooked. So they have dried, but then, of course, they cook it, too. And then the blubber you can eat raw, they slice it, but just like you saw there, they slice it very, very thin.

[B]

And so that's just how they get their source of fat. Because this meat looks very lean.

[A]

Yeah. But it's something that they don't eat every day, and maybe they eat it once a week. And they're also very aware of the mercury levels that are in the seafood, and they want to be careful about that. And so people like it. They want to have the right to do it. The other tricky thing is it's not like it happens every day. It might not even happen once in a year, because it depends on if the whales come to the island or not or come near the islands and if they're spotted and if they're able to corral them and bring them into the bank.

[B]

So it's just a normal part of their culture.

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

What is the food that you've eaten that conflicted you the most?

[A]

Monkey was challenging. Yeah. So you brought up monkey earlier. I went to hang out with the Hizabe tribe earlier this year in Tanzania. I think you've heard about the hijab, right?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Just for the people listening, the Hizabe are. I think they're known as the last Hunter gatherers in Africa, Tanzania. The government there has an amazing program to help them keep living the lifestyle that they're living. There's maybe, I don't know, 3 to 5,000 still living the traditional way out there. They're usually in tribes of, let's say, five to 10. And they are obsessed with hunting. Everything is about hunting. And even when I asked, like, who's the chief here? Why is the chief? The chief? They say, because he's the best hunter. And I'm like, really? Does anybody want to contest that? No. They're like, he's the best hunter. He's the chief. He makes the decisions. But of course, as I've seen with many tribes in Africa, they're very cooperative, and they have ways of eating and working together that ensures that there are no fights or conflicts or reduces the amount that there might be. So when I was with them, I planned to go there for three days. I didn't even bring my crew. We had just shot three different countries back to back. We got Covid in the middle of it, and I told them to leave. I shot it on a phone and a camera, and I basically just shot it by myself. And usually we try to plan our videos out a lot, as much as we can to be efficient with our time, but in this case, I can't say, like, hey, let's go hunting. Then you guys will shoot a baboon with your arrow. I don't know what's going to happen. And when I show up at their camp, it's so far from anything. We were in a tiny town. We drove a couple of hours to the base of a mountain, and we hiked for another hour and a half to get to where they were. I get there, they bring out a vervet monkey. So it's this white monkey. It's the monkey I was talking about earlier that you could shoot for 40 bucks. It's that right there. So this guy.

[B]

And how do they hunt these?

[A]

By bow and arrow.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

And these guys are incredible because their hunting prowess is on a different level. And I joined them for a hunt one day and it kicked my ass. I couldn't keep up. And so on this day, it's tough because I'm trying to. I'm out of my element. I'm in a very new place. I'm trying to figure out how to broadcast my emotions to the camera. I don't want to be judgmental, but I don't. Also, I'm not going to be like, oh, monkey, this is normal and cool. Yeah, so right here, I've just arrived. We've switched hats.

[B]

What are you wearing?

[A]

He handed me his hat. I gave him my hat, and he presented the monkey to me. And then.

[B]

Oh, boy.

[A]

Soon after this, they get to work.

[B]

And is that their primary game species that they hunt?

[A]

No, the pinnacle for them is a baboon. They love baboon, really. And I was hoping to see that. One night they were like, tonight we're going for baboon. And we did the reconnaissance, like, we did the scouting, rather. And that night they all got high and went to sleep.

[B]

What do they get high on?

[A]

Yeah, I think they get weed from different villages. They try to trade with other tribes that are out there.

[B]

Really? They get high over there.

[A]

So I've seen. This is what I love about doing this show is I've seen so many different tribes stories, cultures around the world, and I just want to dig into that really specific food part. And so I've heard. Oh, who's that really cool artist, that David Cho? Yes, David Cho.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

He came here and he talked about the Hitzame and. And I heard about it from someone else, too. A friend of mine, Mike, who has a YouTube channel called Fearless and Far. He went there before me, and I was like, this is incredible. He went there during the pandemic, and I was stuck in Vietnam for a year, and I was like, this is incredible. I want to do what you're doing, but I want to just do it through the food lens. What are you eating from day to night? How are you getting the food? How are you cooking it? The way they prepare it is. It's nothing about flavor. It is insane. So that monkey. Let's break it down. They'll cut his stomach open, gut it, throw the guts in a tree. Then they throw the whole rest of the monkey in the fire, just whole thing. Then they scrape a bit of the hair off, but not really from there. They cut the arms and legs off. They throw that in the fire. Not on a stick or a grill. They just throw it in the fire. The guts, eventually, that gets fed to the dogs. Some of the bones, ribs and stuff like that will get put in a pot and boiled, and that will make kind of a juice that they can soak up the ugali with that kind of cornmeal and water. Yeah, that one right there. And from there, different people are given different parts of the animal. So some people are gonna eat the arms. So I ate basically like a wrist and a hand, and I saw this guy break open the skull, pour out the brain. And I guess this is when I was the most conflicted in a long time, because I was like, right now, I could eat monkey brain, which is so Indiana Jones, which is such a wild thing to do. And I just said, sonny, this moment's not about you. Just. You need to observe. You need to show people what they're doing. And this isn't your experience to have right now.

[B]

So it looks like they're cooking in a bunch of different ways. They took some of the meat and they chopped it up and put it into water. In a bowl?

[A]

Yeah, in a pot. So they have a steel pot. And you'll recognize they do have certain modern things there. You know, the ugali that they get. It comes in big bags. They have. Sometimes they have jeans. And it's because the government gives them some support. You know, there's a.

[B]

That's what you're eating.

[A]

Yeah. So that is the arm and wrist of the monkey. You can see my face. I'm trying to process it. I'm trying to figure it out. And right here, I'm speculating as to whether or not that's what human tastes like, because that's what I was trying to figure out.

[B]

Probably pretty fucking similar. And so were they adding salt to that? Is that what they're doing?

[A]

Yeah. So salt is the only thing that they cook with that would actually give anything flavor, but for them, it's not about flavor at all. It felt like everything with this tribe had to do with hunting and hunting stories you could really tell. Like, these were the original storytellers. What I loved about going here is you hear people say, oh, man, if I had a time machine, it'd be cool to see how people lived thousands of years ago. That's it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Everywhere they walked, they could find food. They would see honey in a tree. They would pick berries. They would see sticks that they liked and cut them off. And when they hang out by the fire in the morning or night, they smoke cigarettes nonstop. And they bend the arrows with their teeth to get them straight because they look so perfect. It looks like. Where'd you buy that from? No, I made it from a piece of wood. I know how to spot the wood. And they have different types of arrows, too. So they have an arrow with poison on it that's meant for piercing a bigger animal. And I saw how they make the poison. They make it from a tree. They have this type of tree they squeeze. They kind of dig into it, get the pulp from the inside and squeeze it, and then cook that down and then that once it pierces an animal will help kill it faster. They put it behind the head of the arrow, but then they also have arrows where it'll look like a wine cork at the end of the arrow. And that's for shooting little birds because you're not going to use the same tool. Then they'll have a little arrow with like a hook at the end. So that would be for some kind of a rodent that likes to go on rocks. So you hook it and now you can pull it out when it tries to get away. So they have a whole arsenal of different arrows in their pack. And this is all these guys are about. It's just hunting, day and night hunting. And they just must get such an incredible rush or dopamine spike from just like conquering the animal. And the second day, so the first day I get there in the afternoon, I eat the vervet monkey with them. The second day, it's time to go out hunting. And I'm at the time, I'm in pretty good shape. It's a bit post Covid, so that maybe affected me, but man, we went for eight miles and I mean, there's no paths, it's just rocks, it's trees. And they know how to dodge. There's so many sticky trees and bushes. And these guys, they move like, like Neo in the Matrix through everything. And they have no issues. They're not wearing shirts and I'm just getting stuck on everything. I'm getting poked, I'm getting stabbed. I made it before we ran out of water and energy. I made it about five, six hours. And they didn't get anything in that time except for one small bird. I had to go back because I lost them. These guys would. There would be a tiny. They're also smaller than me, but there'd be a tiny opening in some shrubs and they would just go in. And at some point I was like, I can't fucking do it. I. They're so fast. I go back to camp, I wait a couple hours. They show up with something called a clip springer. It looks like a little fuzzy, cute mountain goat with two horns that go straight out like this. And what's amazing is they're not like, check it out, look what I did. They're like, here's dinner. There's just. There was no bravado, at least that I could see among the men there. And. And so that's why we had dinner for dinner that night.

[B]

Well, I guess it's because they do it every day. I Mean, that's how they live.

[A]

I guess so. And maybe the bravado would come out if they got a baboon and the baboon.

[B]

So why is the baboon the prized species?

[A]

I think they like the taste.

[B]

Really?

[A]

I think that's literally it. I think they just like the taste of the meat.

[B]

Did they talk about that?

[A]

Oh, they talk about they speak English.

[B]

You had a translator?

[A]

No. So we had a translator. What's interesting is they speak a clicking language. Like, the main guy I spoke to, his name was Abba. And there's another guy called, like, Kufufu, and they speak in this amazing click language. And they do a lot of impersonating. And they'll talk about the arrow, and when they talk about the arrow, they'll go like this with their elbow. Point their elbow out like a bow. And so it's kind of half sign language or just very. There's a lot of gesticulations and speaking going on at the same time. And I had a translator.

[B]

Can I hear what they sound like? And they ambush and they go to hunting.

[A]

Their favorite is a baboon. This is a traditional for them.

[B]

If maybe they go to hunting, they hear sound of the baboon and they ambush. Wow.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Over top, too. So what's that, James? There's two voices. You could hear the translator. Yeah.

[A]

What's funny about the translator is his English felt limited sometimes, so I was like, hey, man, are you better at English or at the click language? Oh, way better at the click language. I was like, really? He's like, yeah. I grew up next to these guys. He didn't say it like that, but.

[B]

So this is their homemade bow and arrow that they have?

[A]

Yes. Yeah. And so obviously, the pots, the steel, that stuff's given to them, but most everything else is homemade or of their own making.

[B]

Wow. How many days were you there with these folks?

[A]

3.

[B]

And how often do they get a baboon?

[A]

So maybe once a week or every couple weeks, which was astonishing to me because it's like, are there really that many baboons out there to get?

[B]

So it seems like their primary food source is primates.

[A]

So it's a number of things. Yeah, it's monkeys, it could be birds, it could be rodents. The Cliff Springer, you can see in a different episode, on the third one on the right, you can see the cliff Springer. And so they can get antelope, small antelope. There's a number of different creatures that they can get. Yeah, that's a cliff springer right there. So, I mean, that's a pretty impressive size. And, you know, they don't have refrigerators. So right there, she's tasting the poison. The poison is bitter, and if she can taste it, she spits it out and cuts that part out. So they've used the poison there and it's her job as kind of the granny of the group to make sure she gets the poison parts taken out.

[B]

And do they form their own arrowheads? I see these homemade arrowhead looking things.

[A]

So my understanding is that there's a tribe next to them who's not Hizabe. The Datoka tribe was near them. That's where the ladies kill and eat the liver. Sorry, the cow and. And eat the liver and blood. And they will trade with that village. I'm not sure exactly what they're trading, but they will trade arrows for something else. Maybe for meat or something else.

[B]

How often do they come in contact with Westerners?

[A]

So that's a good question. It would be hard for me to say.

[B]

They seem super comfortable just letting you hang out and eat with them.

[A]

It's not the first time that they've done this. That's something I revealed in our final episode because I didn't want to make it seem like, oh, I've had this cool experience and no one else has done this before. Of course, it's part of a package that's available in Tanzania so people can pay. I paid about $5,000 for the experience total. And that included having a tent and the guides and stuff like that. You have the option if you want to sleep on the ground with them, you can. I was like, I'll take a tent. I'm good with that. And so I'm guessing they probably have a dozen or maybe a. Maybe a couple dozen a year, but.

[B]

And so the people that are just listening, these people wearing animal skins. I mean, these are skins from animals they've hunted. They really are living like people lived tens of thousands of years ago.

[A]

Yeah, this is no bullshit. And I filmed a lot of stuff in Africa. The thing with shooting in Africa, not to generalize too much, but with some countries, if you're dead set on shooting something, someone's gonna convince you that you can shoot it, and they're gonna tell you that. That you can. And they're gonna try to set something up. Whether it's authentic or not. This is the real fucking deal. And these guys are just incredible. They're badass. And it was.

[B]

Did you ask them how they make their clothes, how they make these animal skin clothes? No, I didn't, because they're all. I mean, this is so wild because they're really wearing like what you would have expected people to live prehistory.

[A]

Right.

[B]

What they would expect it to wear.

[A]

Except for the pants.

[B]

And how do they get the dogs? They have so many dogs, right.

[A]

So that's another big part of their hunting is that they have about 12 different dogs there. And of course the dogs really come in handy because they can help rustle up rodents, they can go after animals, they can try. Oh, warthogs is another thing. They can get, they can get or wild boars out there too. So the dogs, it's interesting because the night before hunting, they don't feed the dogs. The dogs are watching them eat this monkey and they're like, come on dude, how about a little bit of monkey for me? They're like, no, they need to be hungry, they need to be eager for the next day. And then that night they got food and so they get some meat. They usually just get the intestines and they get a lot of that ugali.

[B]

The dogs eat the ugali as well.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so what are they hunting here?

[A]

So right here they just saw some kind of a rodent crawl into the rocks and they're trying to pin it down, but it's escaped at this point.

[B]

Now is there an over hunting problem in these areas? Like do they have a lack of certain game species because people have killed too many of them?

[A]

So that's a great question, I think, and that's what I wondered when I was going there too, because.

[B]

Because that's what David Cho had said about one of the reasons why they hunted primates so much.

[A]

Well, I know that they like primates and I'm not sure if that taste has been shaped by what's available. The, the government has been instrumental in preserving this way of life. And if you went to a thousand years ago, the difference would be, is that they would be nomadic and they would be able to follow the animals. Now they're still nomadic to a point, but they still have a small designated region within which they can hunt. So that is the issue because now there's fences, there's roads, there's all these obstructions within the country. And so when the dry season comes, the animals will naturally move to where there's more water, where there's more grass to graze. And these guys can't follow the animals. They have to stay within a big space. But still it's like it's drought time now and so the government, what they do is they might go shoot a wildebeest, something like that. They'll drop off more grain and they'll say, hey, here's an animal. Here's some food to hold you over until the rainy season or until the animals come back again. And so I think part of that deal is like, you guys hang out with tourists with their bandanas once in a while, and then we'll help you out. We'll give you some food and some game meat when times are tough. So it seems like that's the deal that's been struck between the. Between the two.

[B]

And so that's why they take Westerners on these little adventures.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, it could be anybody.

[B]

So it seems. But it seems like they're accustomed to having people around them, certainly that are from other countries.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Hunt with them. And so when you around them, how many different things did you eat? You ate the monkey. You had some of that mountain goat.

[A]

Yeah, the cliff springer. I had some of that. There wasn't. Let's see, they had a little bit of a. They had a tiny bird and they had a. Some kind of a rodent. I forgot what it was called.

[B]

It's tough living.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It's touch and go. Like, they don't always seem like they get enough food.

[A]

Yeah. And to preserve it. So the cliff springer lasted a couple days. Like, it was good and bad. It's like, I'm glad we had something big and I'm glad they had food. Something big for the video. But then, like, the next day is like, day off. They just throw. They throw half of the cliff springer in the tree, and they'll eat it the next day. My first night sleeping there in the tent, I heard these crazy sounds. It's like, oh. And the next day I was like, hey, what the fuck was that last night? And they said that was a hyena. A hyena came to camp. Have you seen a hyena in person?

[B]

No.

[A]

They're. Yeah, they're like big, ripped, nasty, gnarly beasts. And I've seen them because I did in Tanzania. I also went on safari, and I just. You wouldn't want to be face to face with one. They look disgusting and brutal and intense and strong and brutish.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And the dogs will chase them away. But you can see also the dogs have scars from. From hyenas, from. From baboons, from the different animals there that they come in contact with. What's funny, you know, it's just such a different way of life. I remember when I first moved to Korea and I came back to Little Minnesota, and my friend's mom was like, hey, Bill. My real name's Bill. Don't tell anyone. Hey, Bill. Do you find when you go around the world that, you know, we're just a lot more alike than we are different, and we're all just kind of the same? I was like, absolutely not. No. And, of course, there's. We have similarities as humans, but that's what I like about visiting these different people, is just seeing what's so different about them. And so my guide there, who wasn't hijabe, he said, hey, you should ask them, what do they do if somebody dies in the tribe? What do they do? It's a dark thing. He knows it's going to be a dark answer. And so I ask and they go, yeah, just like, throw the body on the cliff or something.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

Just like, throw them to the side, like, all right, farewell.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

Yeah. Different way of life.

[B]

What do they do if there's an injury?

[A]

So my. My guess is that they. They. They know which medicines to use.

[B]

What about naturally broken bones or anything like that?

[A]

Yeah, I didn't think to ask, but I'm not sure.

[B]

I mean, these people are in this really difficult terrain and they're chasing after animals. I gotta imagine there's some injuries. Yeah, they look very athletic, though. They look like these people are in great shape.

[A]

Oh, yeah, No, I was. I was dying. I had my. My apple watch on to track my steps. My heart rate said, charge it out through the roof. Yeah, we brought batteries and stuff out there. And these guys, they're not breaking the sweat. They're not breathing heavy. They just know the land. They know how to move, they know how to walk.

[B]

And so when they talk about baboon, that's the big thing. That's the number one thing that they like. And they talk about it because of the taste.

[A]

I think it's about the taste. So that's one of the crazier things that I got to see this year.

[B]

Was, didn't you want to try baboon?

[A]

I did want to try it, and I would have tried it and. But. But they didn't get it, and I can't really influence what they're doing.

[B]

That might be the only primate that I would be interested in eating, because it seems like it's partly a primate and partly a dog. Like, hyenas are weird or. Excuse me, baboons are weird.

[A]

Yeah. They got crazy teeth.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like fangs.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

And so they either hang out in the baobab trees or in these cliffs where there's a lot of little cave, like, kind of places they can hide. And so we scouted the area and we saw, like, baboon shit there. And so, like, they were. Again, we were hoping they would go back that night, but they didn't.

[B]

So the baboons must be aware also that they're being hunted by the people.

[A]

That's something they also have to be careful for because they said if they over hunt, then the baboons will move their camp completely. So they can't. They are aware of that and they won't take too much.

[B]

Interesting. Mm. Wow. So was that, like, the most intense, intensely foreign. It gets probably the best word experience that you've had, like eating.

[A]

Maybe. Although it's still not the worst food I've ever had. I've had worse than that.

[B]

What's the worst?

[A]

The worst? Well, it doesn't sound that remarkable, but stingray liver is disgusting.

[B]

Where'd you have that in Vietnam?

[A]

They have a. There's a place in Vietnam on the coast called Vung Tau. So I live in Ho Chi Minh City or Saigon. And two hours from there, you can go to this coastal city and you can get stingray. And we were doing. Oh, this is like mid pandemic. I was so lucky during the pandemic that we had about a year where there was no, like, when everything was going to crap here in the usa. We had like a whole year where no one was even wearing masks because they locked it down early and it didn't spread, fortunately. And so during that time, I didn't stop shooting. I have no reason to stop shooting. We can still move around. And. And so we did a whole series just about eating different animal organs. Okay, today we're going to eat four different types of animal hearts and then eventually four different types of animal livers. And one of the livers was the stingray liver. It is. It's kind of like the bile. It's just like it has a minerality of the ocean. Like you. Yeah, there it is. You're so good with the cliffs.

[B]

Jeremy's the best.

[A]

And it is so bile y and bitter.

[B]

And that dude looks very pleased, though. Yeah, he looks like, oh, we got the good stuff. And so this is something that's prized by them.

[A]

I wouldn't say this is even commonly eaten in Vietnam. It's just.

[B]

What the is that thing?

[A]

Oh, that was a. Whoa. Yeah. Monkfish. That's right.

[B]

Look at that thing. Back up a little Bit.

[A]

In contrast, the monkfish is famous for its liver. They have one of the best livers in the world. And it tastes like foie gras. It's a foie gras of the sea.

[B]

Really?

[A]

Yes. It's incredible. And that's something that I tried in Japan.

[B]

And so this is the stingray liver. And how are they preparing the stingray liver?

[A]

They put it in a hot pot and then whatever this is, I think maybe they braised it or boiled it for a while.

[B]

Yeah, the dude you're eating with, he doesn't even look excited.

[A]

So that's my buddy Calvin, and he seemed to like it a lot more than I did. I could say that.

[B]

And so what's with that? Capers. What is that with it?

[A]

Yeah, yeah, that's right.

[B]

And so what does it taste like?

[A]

Or is it caper? Or maybe it's pepper? I don't know. I can't tell from here. So it's just mushy and bile y and it's squishy in a way where you can feel like, am I eating pieces of the ocean floor right now? I just really didn't enjoy it and I didn't feel bad. Usually I might feel bad, but it's like, this is not the chef's fault. This has nothing to do with the cooking, the style, the country or the culture. I just don't like that body part of that animal.

[B]

And is this on the menu there normally or did you have to.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, this is a stingray restaurant. Stingray is delicious. And you wouldn't think so.

[B]

I've had stingray before.

[A]

Oh, you have?

[B]

Yeah, I had it in an Italian restaurant before. Skate. It's basically the same thing.

[A]

Yeah, right.

[B]

Yeah, it was very good, Very interesting fish.

[A]

At some point, we should talk about the mad honey. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. Well, that's how you and I got in touch recently, right? Yeah. You saw us talking about mad honey on the show and you reached out and said, I'm actually right now harvesting mad honey.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

You sent me a photo of you actually doing it right there.

[A]

I'm gonna grab some from my bag right now.

[B]

And this mad honey, you were in Tibet. Is that where you get it from?

[A]

This was in Nepal.

[B]

Nepal.

[A]

Very close to Tibet. This is it. Now, this looks like store bought honey because there's a label on there. What that truly is is I transferred the honey to this grocery store bottle, so if I went through customs, I wouldn't have any issues.

[B]

Good move.

[A]

But that is. That is the same Honey I showed you in the video. So if you, if you look at it, you can open it up. You'll see a couple things. You'll see it's a little bit more liquidy than typical honey. Typical golden, you know, in the bottle, shaped like a bear honey.

[B]

And this is supposed to be the honey that makes you trip balls.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Does it?

[A]

So I think we should try it. In a moment.

[B]

In a moment.

[A]

Are you willing to try it?

[B]

Yeah, I'll try it right now.

[A]

Don't try it right now. Okay, okay, hold on. A little bit of build up, a little bit of backstory. Sorry. I'm very controlling.

[B]

It's okay.

[A]

So you see, you see it's soupy. You see it's red.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

I went to Nepal. Some people know how this works already. These, the honey. I think, I just think we should explain where the honey comes from. Right? The honey comes from these cliffs. There's different places around the world.

[B]

Do you have a video of you doing it yet or is it not released yet?

[A]

Not really.

[B]

We can find a video of them harvesting mad honey because it's really fascinating how they have to do it.

[A]

Yes. So it was about maybe a 12 hour drive from the capital of Kathmandu that we went to this village of maybe 500 people and we joined these, these guys as they collected the honey. And they don't have like honey boxes. The honey is on the mountain sides. And they basically risk their lives taking these ladders. They have these ladders, these rope ladders. And the reason they need rope ladders is because they need to be able to hike sometimes up to several hours to go to where the honey is. The honey's not conveniently located. It's located wherever the hell the bees put it.

[B]

Keep playing it, Jim.

[A]

And so they, they take these rolled up ladders and they, they string it on the cliff. They climb the ladders or descend from the ladders. And then they have to carefully use these long sticks to cut the honeycomb off of the mountainside. Before doing that, they put some pegs into the honeycomb. So this is like a big flat protruding honeycomb coming from the mountainside. And then eventually they cut it off and they lower it down the people on the bottom, then collect the honey and they can start to process it. So there's a couple things that are interesting here. One is like the collection process, which is dangerous and just kind of unbelievable. I mean, one of the scariest. You see all these bees here. I had to wear the bee hat. Everyone, nobody messes around. Everyone wears the bee hat. As soon as they get the smoke going, these bees go insane. And you see thousands of bees stinging the shit out of everything and everyone trying to get through people's clothing. And you know when bees sting, their stinger comes out.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So it's all just a kamikaze mission for all these different bees.

[B]

And so all these people are getting stung.

[A]

So they had the appropriate clothing, put their hands. The guy, my guide, who wasn't used to being there, got about four bees inside the hat and that's never what you want. And so their solution was that to that was to reach to his hat inside the net and pinch the bees inside. Rather than trying to get them out, they just killed him inside. And so they got the honey. For example, you could see here, they're dumping it out of the basket. There's going to be tons of bees and honey mixed together. When I flew my drone there, I landed the drone and it was wet with bee body parts. I must have shredded a thousand bees just with my drone.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

So they are on the defense. And before you go there, before you put the smoke, the honeycomb is black because it's completely covered by the bees. But after the smoke comes up, it reveals the actual yellow honeycomb underneath. So that's one interesting aspect to this.

[B]

So the smoke is to try to calm down these bees. Right.

[A]

To repel them, to make them leave.

[B]

So how do they do that? They start fires at the base of the cliff.

[A]

Yes. And these guys are so badass. They know how to start a fire and basically put it into a makeshift backpack and then carry it up.

[B]

Oh boy.

[A]

So they're carrying smoke on their back and then dumping it. Dumping it at the base of the cliff and. And then the smoke goes up and then the bees go insane from there.

[B]

Is it because the bees know. Are they accustomed to people trying to steal their honey?

[A]

I do think it puts them in a defensive mode. But also just like a lot of insects don't like smoke. So it's like they know they have to leave because there's smoke, but they want to protect the hives at all costs. So. So that's one aspect. The other aspect is the hallucinogenic light headed effects that are purported to come from eating the honey. So how does that happen? The bees collect, I forget if it's nectar or pollen from certain types of flowers that grow there locally. And these flowers have some kind of chemicals inside it creates a neurotoxic effect in your brain when you eat it. So I interviewed a Villager. This is why I want to build up a little bit so you can see how gung ho about trying the honey you still are. But I think we should still absolutely do it together. I went to a villager there. I was thinking, everyone's just going to be jacked up on honey all the time. And it's a great time. And so I talked to this guy, he was the one who owned the cliff where the honey is. And I said, how often do you do it? He goes, I did it 20 years ago. That's the last time. I said, can you walk me through the experience? He said, I took a lot and I couldn't walk for 24 hours. Oh, you couldn't walk. Okay, that's pretty extreme. I've heard similar stories from people while I was there and it seemed interesting because at least in the village I went to, I know it's different in different parts of Nepal, but at least where I went, people seemed like, I've done it and I'm good. And they didn't really want to do it much more. So why are they collecting it? Well, there's a big market in places like Japan and especially Korea, they said, where people want to buy the honey and eat the honey, which is interesting because I looked it up and it's actually illegal in Korea, it said. So this brings me to that day. I tried a bit. I tried about a spoon. And I got scared about trying too much because we still had to hike an hour out of there. Then a three hour drive. I'm like, I need to use my legs. But my brother, My brother joined me. My brother Scott joined me at a hotel in St. Cloud recently, about a week and a half ago. And he knew I had the honey because I talked about bringing it here. And he's like, I want to try the honey. And he's a bit of a hater. And he's like, it's fucking honey. What's going to happen? And I got to go to bed because I got work to do the next day. And so I'm in his room across from mine in the hotel and I give him a couple spoons and I'm like, you should just do a couple spoons. Wait 30 minutes and see how you feel. He goes, yeah, no, just give me more. You're going to sleep soon. Just give me more. If I want more, I'll take it. So while I'm still there, he takes more. Maybe five, six spoons. Then I go, all right, I gotta go to bed. Have a good time. Let me know. Actually, I said, why don't you text me the effects during the evening and I'll know what to expect when I do it. So here's what he said. I've got his text right here. Feels good. Warm, warm breath. He goes on. Totally legit. All right. Hater. Vibes gone. My body's on fire in a very positive way. It's weird. My scalp feels hot. My muscles tingle. So far, good. Might get nauseous. Take less. I can't tell. Not good. Regret very bad. Just don't. Stupid. I keep hoping I'm done. I'm so sick at 5:40am I should maybe eat a banana. So that's my brother.

[B]

So how much in total did he take?

[A]

Six spoons. Six of this spoon. I brought this spoon because I want. I needed like a measurement system that was accurate. I'm like, I need to know exactly which spoon you use.

[B]

Plastic ice cream spoon.

[A]

Yeah. And so this is not a deep, big spoon. This is not a tablespoon.

[B]

You took six of those?

[A]

Yeah, about six. So I think we should try it out and maybe.

[B]

Sounds like shit's terrible.

[A]

No, but if you do too much, it's shit.

[B]

Are you sure?

[A]

We gotta find out, Joe.

[B]

But do we have to find out here? How long does it take? I think we'll be over before we really feel it.

[A]

How much time do we have left?

[B]

As long as you want.

[A]

Really? Why not? Try a little bit.

[B]

Okay, let's try a little bit.

[A]

Try a little bit. I. I don't know if you want to share this plastic spoon. I also brought these. These are a little bit deeper. Okay. This is what I think I should.

[B]

Use a regular spoon. It doesn't matter. I was gonna use the spoon that was used.

[A]

Okay, you can. So you gotta mix it up first.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Mix it up real good. I mixed it up before coming here, but it separates. I'm not sure what's separating.

[B]

It's very liquidy. It's very different than honey. Like regular honey. I'm just gonna have a little bit. Smell like honey. Yeah, it tastes like honey too.

[A]

Do a whole spoon.

[B]

No, I'm gonna do a half spoon.

[A]

Okay. You got plans tonight?

[B]

Yeah, I got a show I gotta do. I can't have fake legs. My legs aren't moving.

[A]

Fake legs.

[B]

Wow. It feels weird.

[A]

Yeah. So don't drink any water. I'll take a little bit too.

[B]

It definitely feels different than regular honey.

[A]

I think I took too much.

[B]

Yeah, let's find out. So you want to put the lid on it?

[A]

Sure. I'll leave this one here for you. Thank you. You can try it on your own time. The first thing I experience.

[B]

You don't want to leave me alone to try things on my own time. I've gone down dark roads.

[A]

Do you feel anything? Because right away, I feel it in the back of my throat.

[B]

Yeah, I feel the back of my throat itchy.

[A]

Like, I want to cough. I want to clear my throat.

[B]

Yeah, it's. It's almost got like a. It's not hot. Like hot peppers, but it's got, like, that feeling, like you're reacting to it. Almost like a hot pepper, a little bit like a Who? Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. Like I want to cough when I have it. Sorry. So I'm told, at least by this guy in the mountain in Nepal, don't drink any water. He's like, you're just gonna want to drink more and more water. And look, I don't know what this is. Like, a redneck. Like, mountain bro speak, bro science. But he said, if you. Sorry. Yeah, I'm feeling it. At least here in my throat, I'm feeling it.

[B]

How did your brother feel after it was all over? He.

[A]

So this guy said, if you drink water, you're just gonna want to keep drinking more and more water, and you'll never stop drinking water, and you'll make you more sick. I don't know. So my brother felt hungover the next day. He felt stiff. He said that. So what happens is it can lower your blood pressure, and I think that's what makes it difficult to move and to walk. So your next question might be, why the fuck do people want to take this?

[B]

Right.

[A]

I don't know. I couldn't figure it out. And so I think maybe in the right dose, like, too much of anything is bad. A little bit of cough syrup. Great. The whole bottle. I did that one time. Huge mistake.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know when you watch the news and they're like, hey, kids are doing this and they shouldn't be? And you're like, fuck, you can get high from cough syrup. I was like, I'm gonna do that. And I did it. And it was like, the worst 24 hours of my life. I think a little bit of honey in your tea at night might calm you down. It might be soothing. I'm not sure. But to me, it's unclear why people are into it. Folks in Korea seem to like it a lot. At least that's what I learned in Nepal.

[B]

So they. What's the recommended dose?

[A]

Yeah, that's the tricky part.

[B]

There's not one.

[A]

There's not one. And then there's no. There's no way of figuring out, like, how potent, you know. It's not like when you buy marijuana edibles, you can figure out how many milligrams are.

[B]

Can you really?

[A]

Well, at least it's a rough estimate.

[B]

Right here it says Mad Honey has been commonly used as an aphrodisiac, sexual stimulant, and alternative therapy for gastrointestinal disorders, peptic ulcer disease, dyspepsia and gastritis, and for hypertension for a long time. See what the recommended dose of Mad honey is. So they're selling a bunch of mad honey online. But is that real or is a lot of it phony baloney?

[A]

It's hard to say. And, you know, that's the trouble I had even when I was there. And luckily I had a fixer, a local producer who I could really trust. And he said, it's a real deal and I trust him. As soon as I tried it, I felt something like, you know, I felt it in my throat. I felt. Did you feel your face get a little bit warm or flush? No. Maybe you didn't take enough.

[B]

Maybe. Hopefully.

[A]

But. Hopefully. I don't know if this is the place, but.

[B]

Madhoney.net says 1 to 3 tablespoons, but. And then. Please read carefully. Each of us is unique. Our body chemistry, genetics, tolerance, lifestyle and environment makes us all very different for every person. Finding the appropriate mad Honey amount is a personal, individual process. And as such, there is no one size fits all dose. Yeah, like edibles. Jamie can eat edibles all day long. I could probably have the whole jar.

[A]

Yeah, you should try it.

[B]

I don't think so.

[A]

I'm gonna leave it here. I have two jars. I have one in my suitcase. I don't know what I'm gonna do with it. Maybe I'll find this perfect ratio and it'll be the perfect sleeping aid. But I do think there's probably a lot of bullshit online. Cause how hard would it be to take this, mix it with 10 gallons of honey and be like, yeah, it's mad honey, Whatever. Put a little red dye in there.

[B]

Yeah. Our friend the beekeeper, Erica. What's her last name? Sorry. No worries. We had a local beekeeper on recently. It was really fascinating, very interesting conversation, and she was saying that a lot of honey that you buy, particularly honey from overseas, is not really honey. It's like partly honey, but they mix it in with corn syrup. And it's just to make it Most.

[A]

Just like maple syrup. I think most of the honey in the US Is that like corn syrup?

[B]

Most of it. Really?

[A]

I think so. But I'm basing that's based on nothing. That's just my intuition.

[B]

She said you have to buy local honey. Buy local honey from local beekeepers.

[A]

I totally agree.

[B]

Do it.

[A]

Yeah. Yep. So that's it. But you feel good now, right?

[B]

Yeah, I feel fine.

[A]

Is there a time where you would try more to see what it did?

[B]

Yeah, I'll try more. If this, you know, if I get out of this. Okay.

[A]

Oh, I think you'll be fine. I think you just kind of taste.

[B]

It a little bit. Yeah. So, you know, I'll try a full tablespoon for me.

[A]

When I had it in the mountain, I didn't hallucinate, but I lights seemed a bit more vivid and like if I looked at lights, like the lights behind you and looked away, they were still kind of in my vision.

[B]

It's just fascinating that the locals are like, yeah, I did it 20 years ago. I'm good.

[A]

Yeah, well, right. And that's what made me even more apprehensive about trying it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So.

[B]

But there's a big market for.

[A]

Seems to be a big market. What's interesting about the market is you cannot increase supply. Supply is supply. So demand can go up, price can go up, but they can't really get more bees to make more honey.

[B]

Right. And it's probably something you can't really farm.

[A]

Yeah, exactly.

[B]

Right. Seems like Turkey is another place where a lot comes from. Correct. Gathered by beekeepers braving forests full of bears in the Kakar Mountains above the Black Sea. In Turkey, their native species of rhododendron flowers produce a potent neurotoxin called grayan toxin, which can affect the nerves, heart and respiratory system. If bees feed on enough rhododendron nectar, the mud red honey they produce is said to have a sharp scent, bitter taste and a trippy high.

[A]

Yeah. Or it can just make you completely sick. At a Kelly Inn and St. Cloud.

[B]

So your brother felt it seems like your brother had a good beginning of his trip.

[A]

Yeah. So he had a sweet spot for about 22 minutes where he's like, this feels pretty good. And hours of he was dry heaving, vomiting. He tried. He was sleeping on the floor next to a bucket. He was in rough shape.

[B]

This is what the guy says for first time users. The high lifts you up and throws you down.

[A]

Oh, boy. Yeah. So I think, I think a little bit, I think a little bit is the trick.

[B]

Maybe we'll find out. Maybe a little bit sucks too. Maybe it's just one of those things like, what are people doing?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Why are they taking people out there huffing paint? You know?

[A]

Can I. I would like to ask you something unrelated.

[B]

Please.

[A]

At the risk of sounding like I'm looking for validation, I'm curious what you find appealing about the show.

[B]

Well, I'm. I'm a huge fan of no Reservations and Anthony Bourdain and. And I love Andrew Zimmerman too. I love looking at different cultures and how they eat and what they eat and why they eat it. And I love different ethnic foods. Like, I love Indian food and I love Thai food. I love a lot of Asian food and sharp flavors. And I just love the fact that people that live in different parts of the world will find local ingredients and create their own very unique cuisine that's from their area. You know, I was watching a video yesterday of these people that killed a camel and they were hunting this. They. They were butchering this camel and. And then cooking it. And I was like, that is absolutely fascinating. Such a unique animal. And they were cutting into the hump. I don't know if you've ever seen. Have you been around in the butcher camel.

[A]

We butchered a double humped camel. Double humped camel in Mongolia.

[B]

Oh, go to that.

[A]

It's just made out of pure fat.

[B]

Yes. It's a giant fat mound. Like a dummy. I always thought it was like, that's.

[A]

Where they keep their water, right? Like a big reservoir. Yes, like a canteen. But no, it's dense. It's big and dense and thick. Yeah. And so we tried that in Mongolia. It's basically pure fat and people like it there. It's rich and it has a lot of calories.

[B]

Yeah. And the meat. Bourdain said the meat was delicious. He ate the meat. I forget what state, what country he was in when he did. I think he was in Egypt. And they killed a camel and butchered it and they all sat around together in the. They laid it out on this giant, like, tapestry and they all sat down and ate camel together.

[A]

Camel's delicious. I think it might be even better than beef.

[B]

Really?

[A]

Yeah, it's really good. And it has just a very clean, neutral taste. I think sometimes it depends on what kind of beef you're getting. Sometimes beef could take a little bit of work to make it not so beefy. But camel just had a really beef.

[B]

You could. It takes work to make beef not beefy.

[A]

How do I explain this better so it doesn't have.

[B]

Because beef can.

[A]

Can have some strong flavor to it.

[B]

Like, that's so fascinating, all this shit you've eaten and you're like, beef.

[A]

Well, maybe I'm too beef in some weird places. But what I mean is, okay, you come here, you get brisket.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Is that. That's nowhere near the initial form of that beef. That's, of course, it's been treated and seasoned, and it's been handled for hours and cooked for hours.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And what I mean is beef, that is. I think beef takes some skill to make delicious. Like pork. I think pork is more easy to cook. Around the world, I see people just throw a whole pig over fire. It's got tons of fat, it's got that thick skin to seal all the juices in. It's just. It's hard to up a pig. But if you don't know what you're doing with beef, it's easier to fuck up.

[B]

That's an interesting perspective that I don't share. I feel like beef is pretty easy to cook.

[A]

How do you cook it?

[B]

Well, mostly I, you know, I'm on this carnivore diet for the entire month of January where I just eat meat. All I've been eating all month is meat and eggs.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And one time I had sushi. I cheated one day going to dinner with my daughter, and she likes sushi. But for the most part, I think, I mean, I guess if you ate tough cuts, you know, then you have to stew it or things along those lines. But domestic cattle, pretty. Pretty easy to cook.

[A]

But how do you prepare it?

[B]

Most of the time I use what's called the reverse sear method. So, you know, I have a Traeger grill, you know, those pellet grills. And I'll set the Traeger to 265 degrees, which is fairly low. I put a meat thermometer in it, and then I'll slowly get it up to about 110 degrees. And then I use a cast iron skillet, and I get that cast iron skillet very hot, and I put beef tallow in the skillet. And then I sear it like very, you know, very hot pan for about two minutes per side, depending on the thickness of the steak. And then I let it rest for about 10 minutes. Then I slice it, and then I'll put, like, kosher salt on it.

[A]

So to me, that doesn't sound simple at all. And I think it's simple for you because you've done it many times and it's a routine. You're accustomed to.

[B]

But it's pretty simple.

[A]

I think if you gave the average person a steak, they would just like either throw it on a grill and maybe cook it too much, or they throw it in a skillet and they wouldn't have that. The delicious sear that you have.

[B]

But it's simple if you just follow instructions. It's like that. I do it so often, it's just like, take the meat probe, stick it in the steak. I salt the steak usually generally with kosher salt or a little garlic salt as well. And then I just wait.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

It's pretty simple.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

I got it down to science though, though. And I eat, I eat a lot of wild game too, which is more difficult to cook. Like wild game. I'll. I'll slow it down even more and get it to like 225. And I'll put it on 225 degrees and I'll get that up to about 100, a little lower temperature. And then I do the same method where I just sear it. Cast iron with beef tallow.

[A]

That sounds nice.

[B]

It's nice.

[A]

I'd like to try that.

[B]

It's very good.

[A]

I, you know, in Vietnam, I rarely cook. I'm so dumb. I bought $1,000 grill and I never use it because food is so incredibly cheap. There you can go, you know, we could drive five minutes and get high quality wagyu steak. Steak better than the American Wagyu, which isn't real Wagyu. It's not American Wagyu. So the real Japanese Wagyu like that DNA is never going to be in the usa. So they have some DNA that they've crossed with American breeds. And it's, it's a version of Wagyu that what the Japanese have done expertly over time is create a brand around wagyu beef. And I've been there. I went to Kobe, Japan, and I got to see the farms. And they're not, they're not feeding a beer or playing classical music or any of that bullshit. No, it's just, it's all about DNA and food too. So they feed it good food and.

[B]

But if they're feeding it good food, is it good food for the cow? Because one of the things that always disturbed me about that is that seems like you're eating an obese person, right? Like you're eating someone who's. You're eating an animal that's basically been fed something that's slowly killing it.

[A]

It's food that's good for the result that they're going after, Right? Yeah, for sure. It's. Yeah, it's a good question because it's like. Is that marbling? That's what makes the wagyu so expensive and so renowned is this intramuscular fat, this web of fat throughout the protein that's kind of evenly dispersed. It's very rich, Rich, Very delicious. And you just need. You don't need a big steak to feel satisfied because it's so much fat.

[B]

Content, so many calories.

[A]

Right. So it's hard to say. If they had a completely different diet, would that fat not be there? I wonder about that. I think they're doing everything in their power to make it as valuable as possible, but I don't think that. Sorry. The. Honey, I think I'm high now.

[B]

You all right?

[A]

No, I think I'm okay.

[B]

Did it get you?

[A]

No. I think that it's all about the DNA. And I think the real secret there is years and years of breeding. I went to one of the shops, one of the auction houses where they grade. It's amazing. Japan's an incredible and unusual place. So you go to an auction house in Japan and they have to judge all the meat. And so they're not, at this point, it's just. It's a half of a cow. And they have a kind of a computer system, like a big piece of hardware that they put up to the tissue. It does some kind of a reading, and it weighs into what they grade it. So you're familiar, I'm sure, with a 5, a 5 is the top of the top. But there might be A, B, C, just all these different ratings that the beef can get at that point. So I think they're doing whatever they can to get the highest rating possible. I don't think the beer does much, or the classical music or the massages.

[B]

Do they sometimes use beer?

[A]

I don't think so. I think all that stuff is really good for, like, thrillist articles and marketing and I mean, just, like, so much stuff in media these days. It's just. How do we have a clever selling point? Yeah, this machine right here.

[B]

Oh. Whoa. Oh. It's like a CAT scan or something. This is wild. That's wild.

[A]

Yeah. Super cool.

[B]

Oh, so look how fat that is. Oh, my God, that's so fat. There's so much fat in those animals. That just seems to me like I'm so used to wild game, like wild elk, which is like a lot of what I eat.

[A]

Very lean, right?

[B]

Very lean and rich. Dark red. That looks pale and Sickly, you know, like the. The nutrient content of, like, a steak from an elk is so superior.

[A]

Yeah, it's like a dessert steak. It's not something you want to eat every day as part of your normal diet, but it's super delicious. Especially in Kobe. They have the che right in front of you there. They. They light it on fire. It's a show. It's an experience.

[B]

We go to Sushi by Scratch, which is a restaurant my friend Philip Franklin Lee opened up out here that he serves Kobe and they. They lightly sear it. And then it's. There's a whole process, you know, that he does and puts it on a piece of. Of rice, you know, like. Like sushi. And it's. You see, watch him cut this Kobe. And it's just. The whole thing's fat. It's just like a little bit of meat, a little bit of fat, a little bit of meat, a little bit of fat. Like, the whole thing is like. It's a pink.

[A]

It's buttery.

[B]

Yeah, buttery. It's just all, like. It melts in your mouth. When you put it in your mouth, it coats the inside of your throat. You feel it.

[A]

And it has so much flavor. And you just. You just need a little bit. Yeah, if you. Yeah, if you eat too much, you just get. You're gonna feel sick. Yeah, because it's so fatty.

[B]

You'll feel very full. That's for sure.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. But American wagyu. So that's just. What is that? It's a inbreed.

[A]

Excuse me?

[B]

A crossbreed.

[A]

Yeah. My understanding is that it's a crossbreed between some. Whatever DNA that they were. Okay. I spoke to. Gosh, where were we? Alabama or somewhere in the South. This guy had wagyu, and that was his big selling point for his restaurant. But when I saw it, I was like, it was nothing like that Wagyu.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And I was like, how is this wagyu? And he's like, well, it's American Wagyu. And I just remember him saying, in the usa, you're never gonna find the same stuff you get in Japan. And they're never gonna let those genetics leave that country, because how would that be in their favor to have someone here mass producing that delicious, sought after, coveted meat around the world?

[B]

Yeah, it makes sense they would want to covet that.

[A]

They've got the market pinned on it.

[B]

Have you gone to Italy and had Bisteca Florentine?

[A]

No, I've not been to Italy yet.

[B]

Really?

[A]

And I've not Done Europe very much at all. Just this year, I went to France and Spain and Portugal and the Faroe Islands for the first time.

[B]

That's interesting. I would think Italy is a place I would want. If I was, like, reviewing food, you.

[A]

Know, my heart is in Asia. I love Asian food so much. I lived since age 24. I'm 38 now. I lived in Korea eight years. I moved to Vietnam about seven years ago. So I've lived there a long time. I love Asian food, and I find Asian food to be the most interesting to film and to eat in general. And then now we're trying to do a better job of getting around the world. We plan to go to South America this year, and like I said, we just started in Europe, and I want to go to those places in the future and try to film what people haven't filmed a thousand times before. I think that's the main challenge in Europe is, okay, pizza, the classic foods. How do we cover this place and not just film what everyone's filmed a million times before?

[B]

I understand. Yeah, that makes sense. Well, as far as exotic foods, I would imagine Asia would be the place to go.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So Bizteca Florentine is apparently from a very old cow. It's like, it's a cow, not a bull. It's not a steer. Like, a lot of the steak that we get here in America, and they have a very specific way of cooking, like a porterhouse steak, a very thick steak. Like, it's always over wood. They always cook it over wood. They like to cook it over different kinds of wood. Like, there's a bunch of people that have, like, different theories. Like, olive wood is one of them. They really like. And they add leaves to it to make it smoky. But I went down a rabbit hole of watching all these different people. What's that guy's name? Stanley Tucci, that guy. He goes to it.

[A]

Oh, right, yeah. On Netflix.

[B]

Maybe it's made from a youngster. Is it? That's what is aged. Oh, it's aged. But didn't someone say that it was from an old beef cow who was here recently that was talking to us about that? I remember hearing about it recently. But, yeah, it was who was here that was talking to us about food recently. The spinal cord into the band. I talked to too many people. My hard drives overflowed. But this particular type of steak, like, they cook it fairly rare, and they. They do it, you know, like. Like I said, it's always over embers. And, you know, they have those grills like an Argentine style grill raises up and lowers so they just get the perfect amount of temperature on the steak and, and sear it. But it's, it's a tradition.

[A]

So you tried it in Italy?

[B]

I have tried steak in Italy and I've. I've tried bizteca Florentine in Italy, but I don't know if it's from the correct cow and the like. There was a place we went in Florence that was like a legendary steakhouse that was pretty amazing. And it's the, the meat is different because it's all grass fed. They do not have American corn fed fatty beef over there. Their beef is essentially like the way a cow would normally be if that cow was just free ranging and, you know, grazing on grass. But it's very tender and they cook it very rare. It's like kind of seared on the outside, but the, the inside is pretty red.

[A]

Yeah, I like that. I like. There's a lot of stuff you can eat raw that you might not expect. You find out really when you go to Japan and. Yeah. So steak, I mean, obviously steak tartare is everywhere now, but even when I was in Japan, they served raw horse over rice. So. Raw horse nigiri.

[B]

And, and when you have raw horse, is it just very thinly sliced? Do they brine it? Do they do anything to it?

[A]

Nothing, Nothing, nothing. And that's, that's what they do with so much different food. We did a whole raw food episode there. And I mean, you're familiar with all the typical sushi stuff, but we even had raw shark hearts.

[B]

Whoa.

[A]

As well. Which they have to wash it for hours because it has a really strong, potent ammonia smell to it. But the horse was delicious. But it's small again. Everything's like a little bite size you just put in your hand, give it a little bit of a dip in the soy sauce and then. Delicious.

[B]

Bourdain said the most disgusting thing that he had ever eaten was fermented shark meat in Iceland.

[A]

So I've not had that yet and I'd love to go to Iceland. There's something similar in Korea called fermented skate. So it, you know, the skate already and this thing, it was, it would make you cry. Just the ammonia smell. It's like being like a sports stadium toilet that's not been cleaned for 10 years. The intense smell would make your eyes water and, and even, I swear to God, it could make the skin of your mouth, mouth peel off if you kept it in your mouth too long. It is so intense and so it's maybe something similar to that, but this is, like, more old dude drinking food. All the greatest exotic stuff from around the world. It's just old drunk guys eating it.

[B]

Interesting. Why do you think that is? Because they're just, like, more brave because they're drunk.

[A]

I think there's, like, bravado that goes with it. I'm trying to think of some good examples, so that's certainly one. I think it's also wanting powerful flavors while you're drinking. So there's. I mean, there's so many foods like this in Vietnam. I mean, even testicles. An assortment of testicles. I think I've had them all now. But, like, chicken testicles, it's like, yeah, guys will get a hot cast iron steaming plate. Like, instead of fajitas, they got chicken testicles on there, and they pair that with beer, and they just. They love that contrast.

[B]

And so this shark heart that you ate.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

What was that? What was it like?

[A]

So eventually, after they got the ammonia out of it, it was good. It was cold, dense. I like heart meat in general because it has a peculiar type of density to the meat that you don't find in other meats where it's dense but not tough and chewy, like chicken heart, beef heart, pork heart. I love.

[B]

Yeah, I do, too.

[A]

So it had a certain, like, density to it that I enjoyed. And, you know, everything is taste fresh. After they got the ammonia out of it, it tastes fresh, but you just mix it with either Ponzi sauce or soy sauce, and it's delicious. And a lot of sake.

[B]

How did you wind up in Vietnam?

[A]

So, yes, I know. I was telling my story earlier, and I got. We got off track a little bit. The main point was in Korea, I transitioned finally into filmmaking, and I was starting to make content for myself. And I started with the show, and I was making the international food. I transitioned to trying to do something more like Andrew Zimmern. And then I just really went all in on trying to make these shows about exotic and bizarre and interesting food. And in the course of doing that, I got the opportunity to go to Vietnam to film for a few days. I had a friend come with me to come film with me. And when I went to Vietnam, I met a company there, a tour company who was interested in hiring me. And so at this point, in Korea, I finally started to make a decent living. I'm not teaching now for years, and I'm a filmmaker, like a commercial filmmaker for. For corporations and stuff, doing music videos. I did a Music video for bts, Actually for Rap Monster from bts. I'm sure you're a big K pop fan.

[B]

Huge.

[A]

If you're a young girl, you'd be like, oh, my God. This was before. He was super huge. And so I got out of. I wanted to get out of that world. I'd saved enough money, and I was just ready to see if I could go all in on making a YouTube channel actually work. And so this was kind of, you know, moving to Korea in the first place was like my way of burning the boats. I knew a lot of people who moved to Korea who got homesick or lonely or whatever, and they quit their contract, teaching contract, halfway through, and then they just went home. For me, when I went to Korea, I had $2,000 in my pocket in my bank account. I had nowhere to go back to. I sold my car. My lease was up. My dad had some dilapidated piece of shit trailer house. I wasn't going back to that. And so when times got tough in Korea, it was like, you got to make this work. You got to be resourceful. You got to find solutions. After I figured out how to make money as a videographer, as a director in Korea, I was looking for the next challenge. And it's a funny story, because sometimes success can make people depressed. Sometimes achieving something can make you feel depressed. And so in Korea, I remember I got a $15,000 contract to shoot a bunch of content for a liquor company. And my feeling was just, is this it? Like, I cracked the code. I know how to do this now. Is that. Is this all that. That I put all this effort? I put all this effort?

[B]

That's a very bizarre reaction. You think that that's common, that people achieve success and get depressed?

[A]

I think there's a lot of people who focus on a goal so strongly, and they think that achieving that goal is going to give them some sort of fulfillment. And then they get there and they go, this is it. You don't know. I mean, you know, lots of successful people, you've never heard somebody express that.

[B]

I think when people are trying to become happy through their work and they think that there's an end point, well, finally they'll become a different person and be happy. And then when they reach that end point, they realize they're the same person. Yeah, but I think when people are focused on doing good work and that's the goal, and they become more successful at that, but if they can continue just focusing on doing good work, I think they can avoid that.

[A]

100% agree. And at this point, I think I was more focused on the money because I was just scrapping for so long and that getting the money didn't make me feel, well, it's 15,000 bucks, but maybe a million bucks. I'd probably feel better. But joking. 15,000 bucks didn't do it for me. And I've had a journey, a transformation in the last few years of doing what you're saying. It's not about getting to a particular destination. You know, with the channel, this is all still getting back to why I moved to Vietnam. But, you know, with the channel, When I got 100,000 subscribers, when I got a million subscribers, you can get a plaque on YouTube. I didn't want the plaque. I just wanted to keep plowing forward and moving ahead. And that's how I see the mission for the channel now. It's like I'm really happy with where we're at. I love my team. Obviously I'm the face of the team, but we have an incredible team of 20 people. I think some of world class people, I think some of the best in the world at documentary filmmaking. And I want to just keep doing, keep iterating, doing what we're doing and trying to get incrementally better video by video. In Korea, I went to Vietnam. I met a company there who said, and so at this point, I just, I have some money in my bank account and I have a YouTube channel that's not making any money. And I've made like 20 videos. And they said, hey, if you move here, they were a tour company, a travel company. They said, if you come here, if you make videos for us once a week, we will give you a thousand bucks a month, we'll give you a place to live, and we'll supply you with one of our camera guys to shoot your stuff, stuff. And I said, all right, I'm all in. So this is like round two, burning the boats. I'm moving to Vietnam, and I'm going there for the purpose of making this channel actually work and come to fruition. Vietnam is an affordable place. I'm next to Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, a close plane ride to the Philippines. Southeast Asia is rich with really interesting food and culture, and overall it's inexpensive enough that I can afford to shoot for a long time without needing to make money. And so. So that's what brought me to Vietnam initially. And from there it was just a slog. It was just week after week of trying to figure out how can we tell better stories, how can we make the videos better and more appealing. I think I was too corny and silly and irreverent in the beginning. And eventually we got some traction. More people started watching the videos. Eventually we started making money so I could hire staff. But that was probably about two years starting in Korea and then going into Vietnam that I was able to actually start making money and build out a team there. And what's incredible now is most of my team is Vietnamese. If you told me years ago that I would have a team of Vietnamese editors who speak English as a second language and edit videos that are on par with or I think better than much of the shit that you see on network television now, I would not have believed you. But somehow that's what's come to fruition. And so we. We have an incredible team there now. And. And we've been able to just focus on raising our standards every. Every month, every year to. To get to this point. And then hopefully we get somewhere, you know, beyond this in the future.

[B]

And so in moving there, like, what was that transition like? Is it difficult? Did you have to learn Vietnamese? Did you. Do you know how to speak it?

[A]

Oh, a little bit. So my wife is Vietnamese and she. What's amazing about speaking Vietnamese in Vietnam is you will be ridiculed immediately. I speak much better Korean than Vietnamese. Vietnamese is really difficult. And the reason is.

[B]

Say something to me in Vietnamese like, say, it's nice to be on this show.

[A]

Oh, I can't say that.

[B]

No.

[A]

What can I say?

[B]

I'm very hungry.

[A]

Oh. So I would say so this is a whole thing. I have to think about it. Because you're older than me. So I have to change my pronoun. Not like how people change pronouns here. It's a different type of pronoun change. So I need to say. I can't say an. If I was talking to my wife, I'm used to saying on means like older guy. So I'm speaking to you. I need to say younger person. I need to say em. And then what was the sentence again?

[B]

I'm very hungry.

[A]

Yeah. So mdoi or mdoi. Why? So even that pronunciation is probably wrong. But I'm saying me a younger parson. Hungry. Very.

[B]

And what is the younger person part? Where are you saying that? M. M. Yeah. So if you were talking to like a 20 year old, how would you say it?

[A]

How would I refer to them?

[B]

You wouldn't say M Doy.

[A]

Then I would be un.

[B]

Un, Un, like on top of something.

[A]

So on. Yeah, like on top. So, yes, if I was speaking to Someone younger, I would say un. Like, I'm an older man. So un is going to do this, which is wild because they do phone calls with people, and at some. They've not seen each other. They just hear each other's voice. And at some point, they figured out like, okay, I'm gonna be the older one, you're gonna be the younger one. Oh, beyond that. Beyond that, they have the tones, and so you could say like, gah or gah or gah or gah. And that's four different words. And that's all same, like one consonant, one vowel. But since it's different tones, it's different words. And so that's what's challenging, is I will go into a coffee shop where they sell one damn thing on the menu, and I'll say, mopsuda, and they'll be like, cafe Sudha. So can I have one milk coffee, please? And they will look at me like, what the fuck's this guy saying? I have no idea. And I've created a term. I've lived in Asia so long, I've created a term called language anticipation anxiety, where they probably think I'm speaking English. And they're like, I don't know these fucking English words at all. What do you say?

[B]

And you're trying to speak Vietnamese.

[A]

I'm trying to speak their language, and they're like, I don't get it. And I'm just like, coffee. Just one coffee. Like the picture, like the only thing on the menu. So it's so challenging. I'm going to put more time into it, into the future. I have no excuse, but. Well, I travel a lot, but that.

[B]

My Korean seemly difficult. Just the different. The four different ways of saying the same word.

[A]

Yeah. And they have about maybe five or six different tones in the language.

[B]

Wow. Yeah.

[A]

Can you read it? Yes. Well, so I think possibly because of the French occupation there, or the French colonized Vietnam for a long period of time. And so it's actually like the Roman Alphabet, the same Alphabet we use, but then they have little symbols on top of the words. So even the word. You know. Have you had the Vietnamese beef noodle soup?

[B]

Pho.

[A]

Right. Oh, that's pretty good.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because most people, you know, it's like there's three levels. Level one Phoenix. Level one is you say pho, and then you get ridiculed. Level two is fa. But the actual way to say it is fa.

[B]

Fa.

[A]

Like that. Yeah, that's good. Like, you dip and come back up.

[B]

I thought it was F. Yeah, it's F F. So almost like question, like what?

[A]

Right. So that we intrinsically, in English, we want to change our intonation to create questions. So like in Korean, I can say ISO. Oh, iseo. You have that. Oh, you have that. But if you change your intonation in Vietnamese, you've just changed the meaning of what you're saying. That's why it's so difficult.

[B]

Oh, my God. Is there a Rosetta stone for Vietnamese?

[A]

Yeah. You know, they have a lot of them for like French and Spanish, but it's harder to find stuff like that. I used to have a tutor. I need to get back into it. And you know, my. I want to be able to speak to my parents in law more effectively. So I do need to study more in the future. But it is. I mean, maybe Chinese is similarly difficult, but it's a. And maybe that click language.

[B]

But that seems like a tough one.

[A]

But they're both. They're both real tough.

[B]

The click language to me is the most fascinating.

[A]

Oh, yeah. And they taught me some words when I was there, but not every word has a click. Like just koko is friend. So they call you Coco.

[B]

Did they teach you any click words?

[A]

Some of their names had clicks, and I just. Some of them can do the clicks so well. I just couldn't pull it out. Yeah, like, it's percussive. It has. Yeah. Even that's pretty good. But it's hard to emulate. It's hard to copy that.

[B]

Do you have a place that you really look forward to going that you really prefer going to?

[A]

Oh, so this is interesting. Just kind of going back to mission, me saying like, oh, I hit that benchmark. And then I got kind of depressed. And recently I had this revelation this last year, which was we, my wife and I. It's gonna be a long, meandering answer. But my wife and I left Vietnam because of the pandemic. And finally the virus got in. They were locking things down. They were closing down restaurants. You couldn't order food. The military for some time was helping to deliver food. And so we left and we couldn't come back for 10 months. She could have. I couldn't. The borders were closed for 10 months. And so I had a long period of time being just in hotels, traveling. I think we did 12 different countries in a row. Sounds awesome. It was exhausting. And so by the time we got back, we did this noodle tour in Vietnam. And the idea was like, do something easy. Go to Hanoi. Go throughout the country. Go down to the Mekong Delta in the south shoot noodles. I love Vietnamese food more than anything. I love noodles. The series wasn't challenging in any way. And by the end of each shooting day, I felt a. Well, I'm fucking tired anyways. Why am I shooting this? And not something more satisfying, something where I could feel more accomplished at the end? And so after that, I plotted out every country I wanted to go to for the next year. And in the past, we'd always focused on a country maybe within the next month or two, and little by little, and thought about, okay, maybe we could go here next or go here next. So now I have the whole next year plotted out. And so for me, my mission is to go. Go to places that people have heard of but don't know anything about. That's one mission. So we. In the past, we've gone to places like Madagascar. People know Madagascar from the movie, but they don't know anything about the country. And so we went there and they had, you know, really interesting, unique food. And my. But my other mission is just to go to places that are difficult to go to. I mean, recently we went to Northeast India. It's completely different from mainland India. Everything you know about Indian people and cuisine, it's different in the northeast. So there's a place called Nagaland. Nagaland doesn't even want to be part of India. These people eat anything, anything that walks. They have the joke, like, if it has four legs and it's not a table, it's okay to eat. And they have no qualms about that.

[B]

They eat beef.

[A]

Beef? Oh, yes. Oh, yeah, they eat beef. They eat rats. They eat guinea pigs. They eat dogs. They eat cats. Our. Our guide there said that his friend the day previous had backed over a cat, threw it in a box, took it home, cooked it. Fascinating. Not an easy place to go to. And that's maybe another thing that turned me off of going to some places in Europe. I don't. It's like, I can't say that I love the challenge. I'm not like this, Mr. Positivity. I don't go there. And I'm like, this is so hard. It's in this grace. But I love being able to get it done and to accomplish something and then to look back on, hey, we got through that really difficult situation this last year. You wrote me when I was in Egypt for the first time. This was the worst production we'd ever had. The government took away our cameras. Do you hear about this at all?

[B]

No.

[A]

Oh, Egypt. Egypt is. This place is so fucked. So we flew To Egypt in the beginning of the year, you know, last year, the year before it was the pandemic year. We'd done all these. We went to Bahamas and Jamaica and Mexico and it's fine, it's interesting. And I was like, I want to do something. I want to go back to our roots. I want to shoot something that's difficult. I want to get out of this pandemic mindset, the safety mindset. Let's go shoot. Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Egypt. So we did Zimbabwe first. Awesome. Lovely people. Then we landed in Egypt. As soon as we landed there, the airport is a mess. So I have a drone. I have a drone. Because we're flying with the drone. I didn't leave from home. I know you can't have a drone there already, but it was like a two hour process for them to go between 12 different people and have me give my drone to somebody who would put it in a locker. Fine. It's like 1am we're getting to our hotel. Finally. We're gonna get some rest, and then we have the next day to do a little scouting before we start shooting. Now, you know you're not in the best place if your hotel has as much security as an airport. So we pull up at this hotel and they are like, you need to scan the bags. I'm like, nah, no thanks. Don't worry about that. Yeah, we're scanning all the bags in, in big, giant scanners outside the hotel. So every time you walk into this hotel, it's like you're going through airport security.

[B]

Are all hotels in Egypt not?

[A]

It's the expensive ones. And so we were in a decent hotel.

[B]

Are you in Cairo?

[A]

Yeah, in Cairo. And so they scan our bag, they see a bunch of wires inside because we have all of our chargers. And they open the bag and then this is where the shit hit the fan. So they open it up, the first thing they see is four walkie talkies. So it turns out walkie talkies are illegal to have in Egypt. For me, I couldn't understand this. It's like, But I have WhatsApp, I have the Internet, I have messenger. What's the big deal? Well, the big deal is there's been two revolutions in the last 11 years. The government can turn off the Internet, they can't turn off your walkie talkies. And so they're scared of journalists, and they're scared of more uprisings in the future. And so the police, the government, everyone there is very, very controlling. And so for the next six hours, from about 2am to 10am My team had to sit outside the hotel in the cold, and we were questioned nonstop about, why are you here? Why do you have this gear? All these questions. Meanwhile, we said, we have. We're gonna have a permit. It's. We're getting it tomorrow.

[B]

Can you just show them your YouTube channel and your bandana?

[A]

Oh, my God, the bandana. The bandana would have sold it. So, I mean, like, look, it's me, this guy. Oh, my God. And the night. The night manager of this hotel, I hope to one day find him and choke him out. This guy was. Had no business questioning us. And he said, well, you all four travel together, right? So it's two camera guys and my producer, Liz and myself. And he's saying, well, show me all your passports in a country that you've been to. And all the dates need to line up in every country. It's like, even if we all met today for the first time, what we're doing still isn't illegal. And we showed him the channel, everything. I said, I'm here to review food. I'm not doing anything else. We'll have our permit tomorrow. In the end, they took all of our cameras, they took some of our lights, they took some hard drives, and the police kept it. And the police said, hey, don't worry about this. It's not a big deal. Show us a permit tomorrow, we'll give it back. It's like, all right. Frustrating, exhausting. Go to sleep. The next day, we got the permit. I go to the airport. We spend about four hours, five hours there. They won't give it back.

[B]

What are they saying?

[A]

Egypt is a country of intense bureaucracy. Layers and layers of people. People and people who don't want to stick their neck out for anybody else and who don't want to make decisions. And at least that was my experience there. And so it took maybe two or three hours just to get access to customs. When we finally got. I mean, we had to go. It was just. It seems all so pointless. It's like government jobs created so people have something to do. We spent an hour just to make a name badge that said we had permission to be in customs just for that one day. A plastic badge with my face on it. Cool. Super efficient. So then we get in there and they said, no, you can take this gear when you leave the country. That's when you can have it back when you leave the country. Like, are you fucking kidding me? They have all my stuff. And so at this point, we go, you know, we have one option Left, which is that we can shoot on this. We have the iPhone. I can go buy another iPhone. And we still had some microphones that they didn't take. And. And lights. It's amazing. They took my lights, right? I just went to the store and bought more lights. I don't know what the point of taking my lights was. So it seems like everything's going to be okay. In my head, I'm still stuck on this idea of, like, I still want to make a positive series about Egypt. The people overall were friendly. Not the officials, but the people. The food's really interesting and delicious. The next day, halfway through shooting day one, the police stop us. It's always some guy in plain clothes. He whips out a wallet with a dirty ID on it. Hey, please come over here. Come. Bring the whole van. Bring everyone over here. Like, what the fuck is going on? We have our permit at this point. We have a permit. It has my picture on it. We have all the credentials that we're legally required to have. We go to the police station. In the meantime, I have a dummy phone. I've transferred some of the footage onto an extra phone so that I don't. So if he asks me to delete something, I'll delete the dummy footage. And exactly that happens. The police officer says, sorry, you have to delete all this stuff.

[B]

What does he want you to delete?

[A]

Yeah, great question. Food. So we went to a restaurant. We went to a restaurant. We shot food. And on the street, too. We shot some. Some bread that they were making on the streets. And that's it. And he just was like, these pictures aren't beautiful. This isn't good. Suddenly this guy is like a documentary critic, and he's just saying so.

[B]

He's acting as like, a spokesperson for the country, like, for pr. Like, he doesn't think that your footage is good enough.

[A]

It's confusing to understand the motives sometimes, especially because we had a permit that said we had permission to shoot on the sidewalks and to do exactly what we were doing. And it's not like, you know, a lot of people watch my video talking about this, and they're like, well, idiot, you can't just show up. Yeah, okay, We've been doing this for a while. We didn't just fucking show up. We had a plan. We had a fixer there. We had permits. We went through all this tedious process before even landing. And so with the permit, it's funny, because I asked our fixer, I said, we have the permit. What's the permit doing? Obviously he's telling me to delete the footage. What's the purpose of the permit? He just goes, well, we're not in jail, we're not in jail. So it was a complete fucking debacle.

[B]

So you could have been in jail. That's what filming bad footage, what they considered not beautiful footage of food.

[A]

Well, and if you look it up, there are people who they accused of being journalists who are in jail even now in Egypt. And maybe they're journalists, maybe they were tourists, it's hard to say. What's confusing about Egypt is that it's not like I went to the Congo. This is a country that brands themselves as a tourist destination. Right? We've got the pyramids, we have take a ride on the camels. There's all these incredible things you can do over.

[B]

I want to go there, really.

[A]

I mean, make sure you have a good guide or someone with you.

[B]

25 journalists detained. Egypt's third worst jailer of media workers globally. Whoa.

[A]

What's interesting is so many YouTubers had similar experiences to me and they didn't talk about it. And I'm so happy that police officer talked to us on that day and made me delete that footage because it just flipped it for me. It's like I got punched in the face 10 times and now I'm ready to finally fight back after trying to be peaceful. And now I'm like, I'm just going to show everybody the reality of what it's like to shoot here. And when we posted the videos, of course there's a little bit of concern like, am I going to get hanged? Is there going to be backlash? We got thousands and thousands of comments of people talking about their awful experiences that they had while in Egypt. Just regular tourists, regular tourists, regular people. People who maybe they had a GoPro or they're really anti camera. They're really just afraid of.

[B]

But they're okay with iPhones.

[A]

That's what's confusing, right? It's like the world's changing so much. It's like you could say, okay, no microphones, no cameras. It's like, whoa, what do you think this is right here?

[B]

Right?

[A]

The iPhone is just that. And our series looks incredible. You showed some shots already from show some of the shots before and it's all shot on iPhone. It looks incredible. And nobody could, you know, necessarily tell the difference.

[B]

So, yeah, I mean, isn't it amazing how good cell phones are? I mean, this is fucking great. This really looks like high end photography.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I mean it's fucking amazing.

[A]

And credit, credit to my team for, you know, shooting it well and for working with what they had and for coloring it well too.

[B]

Yeah, they did an amazing job. What is it like to see the pyramids? That's where I want to go.

[A]

Oh, so the pyramids were awesome. And I wish I got to spend more time there.

[B]

How many days were you there?

[A]

I wish I got to spend more time at the pyramids. We just spent about three or four days. I don't. I do not wish I spent more time in Egypt. And actually our trip was much elongated because we all got Covid, but I wish we spent maybe two hours at the pyramids. I could have spent the whole day. What's awesome about it is the time we went was like, still. It was right at the beginning of 2022, so everyone's freaked out still about traveling. I mean, there must have been just like a hundred people just in this huge area where there's usually thousands. And so it's remarkable. It's like awe inspiring. You look up and these structures are gigantic. And you can go up into the big pyramid. You can walk up inside to the main tomb. I think there's nothing in there now, but. But just being able to see it for yourself and imagining all the work that went into making that place. The guides are very quick to dispel the notions of like aliens or even slavery. They're like, oh, this wasn't slavery. And it was a fascinating place, but.

[B]

It doesn't sound like you recommend it.

[A]

So one good thing that came out of all this, and I can't say whether or not my team is responsible for this consequences or this result, but a few months after we posted the videos about Egypt, the laws changed in Egypt. And now tourists and locals are not required to have a permit to shoot on the sidewalk. And there's a, there's an article now.

[B]

How one US street food blogger exposed CC's authoritarian rule. Is that you?

[A]

I don't know. That's me. That'd be sweet. It is you. Oh, I didn't see that one yet.

[B]

Congratulations. Oh yeah, look at you. Egypt food tour. Worst place to shoot in Africa.

[A]

Look at you.

[B]

Worst country.

[A]

I know. See, this is what you know with.

[B]

So you change the rules.

[A]

Bored ain't. Didn't have to do all these fucking thumbnails. Like with all the titles with the exclamation points.

[B]

You have to.

[A]

Oh, you kind of. That's part of the game. So I sure it seems to help. I mean I've been doing. We've done over 500 videos. It seems to help when we don't do that.

[B]

But some people do that with our stuff. Like, I've seen clips of our. Because our stuff is. We only have 15 minute clips from each episode that goes on YouTube.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Everything, the full episode's entirety goes on Spotify. But if you go onto YouTube, there's a bunch of people that have like, cut our clips from Spotify and they put these like really, you know, salacious click bait headlines. And I'm like, that, that sucks because that's not how we do it.

[A]

Well, so I agree. You never want to misrepresent your content.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And you, you, you don't want to mislead. You want to create intrigue, to create or create curiosity. So people want to click and want to learn.

[B]

The worst country will get you clicking.

[A]

I gotta say, it's probably the worst country to shoot in Africa.

[B]

How many views I don't think that video get.

[A]

I don't think that's a misleading. I mean, the whole series and all probably got around 15 or 20 million.

[B]

That's pretty fucking amazing. Yeah, isn't it kind of amazing?

[A]

What's. What's amazing is that it's our best performing series ever. And I was like, team, we're going back. Just kidding. We're not, we're not going.

[B]

Probably shouldn't go back now.

[A]

We. Oh my God, could you imagine?

[B]

Now they probably would arrest you.

[A]

They'd be like, hey, oh, look at my passport. Yeah, right this way. We have a special room for you filled with rats. Hole in the ground.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, fuck that. But do you recommend it for tourists?

[A]

No.

[B]

Really?

[A]

No, I can't. I. It's tough. It's like we were, it's like we were shooting and people like, yeah, but you're shooting. We were shooting with iPhones. And look, hopefully culture takes time to change and they've changed the law and that's, I think, a very positive step in the right direction.

[B]

And so that had to be devastating to their tourism industry. If someone makes some. A very popular guy like you makes a video like that and it gets millions and millions of views and it says it's the worst country to film. And you detail all the. That you had to go through.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Maybe you help change things.

[A]

And of course we would hope for that. And I hope they're moving in the right direction.

[B]

I mean, all the people that I know that have gone over there have just gone over there to study the ancient structures and they've had nothing but amazing Stories.

[A]

Is that right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, I would challenge you to, in the future, just say, how was it working with the officials there? Was it?

[B]

No, they definitely, like, Graham Hancock has nightmares, I think. Isn't Graham Hancock banned from Egypt now? I believe he's banned. He literally can't get into the country now. And Graham Hancock has been one of the. I mean, if anybody has made people excited to go to Egypt on a grand scale, I would say Graham Hancock is one of the very top of that list.

[A]

He had the show about pyramids and structures around the world on Netflix. Is that right?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Okay. Yeah, I watched it.

[B]

Ancient Catastrophe.

[A]

Yeah, that's fantastic. Yeah.

[B]

Excuse me. Ancient Apocalypse.

[A]

He made me want to go see a bunch of that stuff. We're going to Peru. We're going to Mexico soon. I'm like, oh, I want to see this stuff too. There is many redeeming qualities in Egypt, of course. The history and the food was incredible. I love the food there. It's different from food I've had in any other country. I hope they can just figure out the tourism part. And my gripe is like, it's not like I just go to every country and say, like, oh, this needs to be changed. This needs. This is the first and only time I've ever made a video kind of criticizing a country in this way. And it felt like it needed to be done. And I felt. I felt like I'd made the right decision when I saw the hundreds or thousands of comments of people sharing their similarly bad stories.

[B]

Well, that was probably also very good to change that law because I'm sure they read those comments as well.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Like, hey, we've got a fucking problem.

[A]

Right?

[B]

Yeah. I mean, well, with an economy that must depend on large part for tourism.

[A]

Yeah. I think it's at least 9, 10%.

[B]

Oh, wow.

[A]

Which is substantial.

[B]

Yeah. Well, I mean, they have some of the most amazing structures human beings have ever created.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I have many friends that have gone there and said it changed the way they look at the world. It changed the way they look at humans.

[A]

Really?

[B]

Yeah. Because you just, like, you think of people who knows how many thousands of years ago, 4,500 plus years ago, who created these things? Like, what was life like back then? What did they do? How do they do this? How they get these stones from hundreds of miles away and perfectly cut them and make these insane structures.

[A]

What would you want to get out of a trip?

[B]

Just want to see it. I mean, I was baffled by Chichen Itza. I went to see the Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza and just that alone you're like, holy. Like, what were you guys doing? Like, how did you do this?

[A]

Like, yeah.

[B]

What was, what was the culture like back then and what happened? And now what they think happened is European diseases that just wiped out the Mayans because we know that it also wiped out 90% of all North American people when they came over here. Just smallpox.

[A]

It's a great reason to go. It gives you perspective on humanity and it's just this, I think. Is it Graham Hancock? Yes. I think one of the big takeaways from his message is that there's a certain arrogance to modern man and, and no one could be smarter than we are right now.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And it's just simply not true.

[B]

Well, you know, the whole theory behind what he's promoting, it's, it's actually based on this thing called the Younger Dryas Impact theory. And this has been substantiated by Science that somewhere around 11000 plus years ago, Earth was hit by comet debris. And this is substantiated by levels of iridium that is very common in space, but very rare on Earth. A sheet of it across the world at that certain time period when they do core samples of the Earth and nanodiamonds that also indicate impacts that are all throughout Europe. The immediate melting of the polar ice caps, or the ice caps rather on North America and all the ensuing destruction that came from that. The extinction of 65% of all megafauna almost instantaneously. It's really, really fascinating stuff. But what he believes is that there was a massive natural catastrophe due to Earth getting hit. And this is all backed up by legitimate researchers and scientists and a man named Randall Carlson who's absolutely fantastic and really fascinating in depth understanding of this impact theory and that human beings were essentially knocked back into the Stone Age.

[A]

Right. So does he think we would have gotten to the Industrial Age that much sooner if that wouldn't have happened?

[B]

They don't know what they were doing back then. That's what's interesting because like everything was wiped out to the point where all we have left is these immense stone structures which we have no understanding of the construction methods at all to this day.

[A]

Right.

[B]

There's some half assed theories of how they did it and no one really knows. There's 2,300,000 stones in the Great Pyramid of Giza. And some of them again were cut from a quarry that was 500 miles away. And they don't know how the they did that.

[A]

It'll be interesting if you go. If you get the right guide and I can recommend a guy. There's one guy I really liked.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Later on. But everyone's gonna have an answer for you. And it's interesting.

[B]

No, though, the thing is, like, I've heard all the answers.

[A]

Oh, sure.

[B]

I've heard everything. I've been reading about this for years.

[A]

And years and years.

[B]

They really don't know. And that's what's amazing about it. What's amazing is you have evidence that human beings who lived in Egypt thousands and thousands and thousands of years ago did things that we really can't do today. We really don't have the equipment. We really don't have the understanding. I mean, if you're off by a little bit with each individual stone, by the time you get to the top, it doesn't meet up.

[A]

Right, right.

[B]

And they just nailed it. They nailed it. The point where they have these immense stones, you can't even get a razor blade in between them. I mean, incredible construction. Back when people had just come out of hunter and gathering, I mean, it was like 5,000 plus years ago. They were doing this.

[A]

Like, how, Right.

[B]

How long did it take? Who was in charge? How'd you figure it out? They don't know. They really don't know. And then due to the burning of the Library of Alexandria, there's like so much missing information in history.

[A]

Yeah, that's what. Maybe it'll seem unrelated, but this idea like, oh, if we ever meet aliens or see alien technology, will we be able to figure it out or understand it? It's like there's so much we don't understand about what's already here right now.

[B]

I think human beings used to have a very, very advanced civilization. I think we. And when I say we humans that were living in Africa 5,000 plus years ago, 10,000 years ago, whatever it was, they had an incredibly advanced civilization. And that they. You know, if you think of how long modern anatomical human beings existed, they used to think we went back like 50,000 years, and then they pushed that to like 150, and now some believe it's 300,000 even more. That's people that look essentially like you and I. If you gave those people time. If you look at like go back from the Romans, go back 2,000 years ago to today. What an insane amount of progress has taken place in 2000 years. In 2000 years, they've gone from slaughtering people with swords and bows and arrows and catapults to making incredible videos like you made with a iPhone, little tiny thing that slides into your pocket easily. You, you could travel around the world in metal tubes that fly through the air. You can send video from your phone all the way to United States within seconds. I mean, it's amazing just in 2000 years, right? So if these anatomical human beings existed 200,000 years ago and, and they had enough time and enough agriculture and enough food and resources to develop incredibly complex, really advanced technology that's dissimilar from the advanced technology that we have today. We like to think of advanced technology as only involving internal combustion engines and silicon chips. But what if they developed something on a totally different path? Just developed it to this, the level that we can't possibly comprehend. What if they had 10, 20,000 years to do that? That's likely what we're looking at. When we look at the structures in Egypt, we're likely looking at what at one point in time. Look, we know all human beings came from Africa. That's the, the birthplace of humanity itself. And then the most complex structures that have ever been created also are in Africa. So if you would imagine that those people had been given enough time, whether it's 20,000, 30,000 years, to evolve these technologies and then boom. Hit by giant rocks from the sky and millions of people are killed. The people that are left live a barbaric existence for thousands of years and then relearn civilization and starts from scratch. That's what Graham Hancock is talking about. Yeah, that's what Randall Carlson is talking about. That's what John Anthony west was talking about while he was alive, who has an amazing series called Magical Egypt. It's a multi part DVD series that details like the incredible complexities of the structures and how they related to the cosmos and magic stuff, just amazing, amazing stuff. That's what I think probably happened, happened. Obviously I'm not an expert, but when I'm talking to these people, that makes the most sense. When you look at the immense amount of data that points to this younger, driest impact theory. And it's not like some loony theory, it's a theory that's embraced by cosmologists and they know exactly the, the meteor storm that we, the, the, the comet storm that we pass through every November and I believe it's every June as well, and that, you know, you could see the, the meteor showers in the, in the sky. Well, occasionally you, you go through a bad spot and you run into like some serious chunks of debris and those slam into the earth. Whether it's every 10,000 years every 20,000 years. And it just everything up and knocks. Whatever we. Whatever progress we've enacted knocks it back to the Stone Age.

[A]

Right?

[B]

And whatever people live are barbarians for the longest time.

[A]

It's certainly not my area of expertise, but it seems plausible to me in a sense, to me. I know for some people it's a controversial. I'm not sure how controversial the idea is. I've not looked into it enough. For me, seeing enough cultures and being to enough countries around the world, I can see that there's just. There are so many different ways of living. And sadly, cultures as they exist now, traditions and customs are slowly being eroded. And soon we're just gonna have this kind of like Eurocentric, like Metropolis. Cities look like this, they should have a grid pattern. Street look like this, stoplights look like this. And then that's just gonna be replicated throughout the world. And that's really fucking boring. And that's tragic. And I wanna go to all the unique places I can before that happens, globally, which it will.

[B]

I think one of the things that you're doing that's really amazing is you're giving people to travel. You're giving people a window into these cultures. That's what I always said about Bourdain and all these different travel shows where, you know, most people don't have the time or the resources to go to all these different places, but you're going there and you're getting involved and you're. You're hunting with these hunter gatherers and you're eating this food in these strange places. You're eating rats and all kinds of wild shit.

[A]

Yeah, rats. Pretty good.

[B]

Is it?

[A]

You ever tried rat? No. It's kind of sweet.

[B]

That's a funny question. Have I ever tried rat? What do you think?

[A]

Yeah, I guess. Well, so where have you traveled to? I know you went to Thailand. Where else have you been?

[B]

I've been. I've been to Italy many times. I love Mexico. I love going to Mexico. I've been to, you know, Dublin. I've been to Northern Ireland. I've been to England a bunch of times. I've been to Japan, I've been to Costa Rica. I've been to a bunch of, you know, island countries and stuff like that. On vacation?

[A]

Sure, sure. But more like vacation, less like traveling.

[B]

I have a family, so when I travel, I have to make it fun for everybody.

[A]

Totally.

[B]

Because it was for me, I'd be like, we're going on safari. And they'd be like, you, dad.

[A]

Right. All the safari, like who doesn't like looking at big animals?

[B]

Well, they get separated from their friends and, you know, they want to do stuff and I'm missing out on parties and, you know.

[A]

Fair enough. Yeah, understood.

[B]

It's so I have to make it exciting for them too, you know, but if from the time my kids were little, I've been taking them to other countries.

[A]

But. So what compelled you to go to Thailand? Because that's far from here.

[B]

Well, I trained Muay Thai. I've always loved the art of Muay Thai, martial art. And I just think it's amazing place, it's interesting. And I have friends that have gone over there to train and they always come back with these amazing stories of how friendly the people are and about how beautiful the country is and. And we went over there and hung out with elephants and did the whole deal. We rode elephants and it was amazing. It was beautiful. And the people are so nice. They're so friendly.

[A]

Yeah, it's a culture that. I think some cultures are better at hospitality than others. Just naturally. And they're very soft spoken, sweet, hospitable people.

[B]

Yes, they really are. Which is really wild because they developed one of the best fighting styles ever. Yeah, it's really incredible when you think about the nicest, friendliest people have the most brutal, striking style.

[A]

We. Yeah, I went last time I was there, maybe six months ago, I went and watched some of the matches. This is funny. As I was watching this, I was like, oh, I'll ask Joe Rogan this one day when they fight, I forgot how many rounds they do. Maybe three or five. And it feels like they don't, they don't go for it until the last couple rounds.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

What's that about?

[B]

Well, the first rounds, they get the bets in.

[A]

In.

[B]

So the first round is like a gambling round and they like to warm up and so they, they move. First of all, they do the Y crew, which is the dance that they do before they, they start, you know, if you've ever seen it live, you know, they play the music and they go through this. It's like a combination of stretching and then loosening up. And they have a bunch of different things that they do. And part of that is a warm up exercise and part of it is just a tradition to sort of honor what they're about to do. And then they start the first round and Muay Thai, a lot of it is about gambling. So there's people in the audience and they're making bets and placing bets. And that all takes place during the first round, and then the second round and third round determine how the fight goes. Then oftentimes, when a fighter's ahead, they'll coast in the last round. They. They don't fight hard at all in the last round because they might have to fight again in a week.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

They fight so much like some of the elite Muay Thai fighters, like Sanchai, who is probably, if not the greatest, one of the greatest of all time. He's got hundreds of fights. I mean, hundreds and hundreds of fights. He fights constantly.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And to this day, and I think he's 37. Like, go to Sanchai Muay Thai record. Let's. Let's find out his Muay Thai record, because he's a fascinating guy, too, because he has a very different style than a lot of the Muay Thai fighters, where he's not like. Like a plodding stiff guy. He bounces around, he moves very fast, and he's. He's known for his footwork and his clever maneuvers. And, I mean, these guys oftentimes start fighting when they're six, seven years old, and they, you know, they amass this incredible record of a 315 wins, 41 losses, 5 draws. And by the way, the guy seems fine, and that's remarkable. You look at all those fucking wins, too. He's got an occasional loss every now and then, which is just. I mean, he's. Most people think that he's the greatest of all time. Go do Sanchai Muay Thai highlight reel deal. He's. It's very different than a lot of the ways a lot of these other guys fight. He almost has, like, his own completely unique style that people are trying to emulate now, but he seems to have developed it on his own. He's a very playful, silly guy. That's Sanchai here in the pink shorts, right? He's. He's like a very playful guy. Like, he's always smiling and laughing. Even inside the fights, he does it. But. But his Instagram is hilarious. His Instagram. Sometimes he puts on little comedy sketches. He's dancing. Sometimes he's dancing with a girl, and his wife comes in and he has to run away. It's really funny, but, I mean, the guy is just like, look at that. Like, that specific type of movement that he has is very unique to him. I mean, he does traditional Muay Thai stuff, but the way he moves is very unique to him. And he's very fast.

[A]

So the other thing I witnessed while I was there. So the first was. Yeah. Them kind of mailing it in for the first few rounds. And then if they got smoked at the end of the round, they would get up and act like, yeah, I just rocked that round. Like, I crushed that. Is that something you've seen too? Is that like, about judges or is that something you've not seen before?

[B]

Do you think they're trying to game the judges?

[A]

You mean, like, pretend they're like, didn't hurt. Didn't hurt. I'm good. Yeah, probably.

[B]

They are. Fighters do that all the time. They get hit, they shake their heads, they smile. But generally that's because you got hit hard. You don't really do that if you barely got touched.

[A]

Right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay. Yeah. I didn't know that about them.

[B]

It's gambling.

[A]

The gambling.

[B]

Yeah. Gambling is a big part of it. It's a huge part of it. Yeah. And the fighters all assume the name of the camp, you know, like the. Whatever camp they're from, you know, whether. You know which. Whichever group of Muay Thai group, they assume that name.

[A]

And so when you were there, did you go see a lot of Muay Thai?

[B]

I didn't see much because I was with my family, but I actually had a trainer work with my daughter, which was kind of cool. And, you know, they. They trained her. So we went to a gym and did that. It was. It was fun. But we were there for the full family experience.

[A]

Right.

[B]

We did all kinds of other stuff there.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

We actually did this experience where you go and harvest rice with them. So they take you and they take you through all the traditional steps that they used to do to. To. To get rice. And you realize what a labor intensive.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

Thing it is to just get rice.

[A]

Because you had to beat the husk off of each individual grain. It's insane.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. And we did it. You know, the traditional methods. It's like we did a lot of cool stuff, but the food there was amazing. Yeah, really incredible. We actually took cooking lessons there while we were there too, which was fun.

[A]

Thai food is fantastic. And I think when you go to. When you do something like going to Thailand, you realize how different Asian food is in Asia versus here, at least to me. I mean, I tried Vietnamese food for the first time in Vietnam, and I had it for years. And then I came here and tried it, and I was like, what is this? It's completely different.

[B]

Well, that's the same with Italian food.

[A]

Oh, yeah, I believe it.

[B]

Yeah. If you get Italian food in Italy, it's so different than Italian food on the east coast, which is Italian immigrant food.

[A]

And I guess the other. The funny thing that always strikes me as funny here is they'll have, like, Asian restaurant. It's like Indian, Japanese, and Thai food. It's like, those aren't even similar whatsoever.

[B]

How do you get all that together?

[A]

But you'll see it and like. Well, I do like Japanese and Thai. I'll do it. I'll give it a shot. But it's interesting how just Asia is just this massive, incredibly diverse place, and in the usa, it just gets boiled down to just Asia, Asian, the Asian community. Right, right.

[B]

Which includes India, which most people don't even think of as Asian.

[A]

Right. That's. That's South Asia. But being there, you just realize it's so different actually being there than whatever representation you get here generally. Of course, you can still find really good Asian food, especially in California and in New York, too.

[B]

Yeah. Wherever Asian immigrants come and ask for authentic food.

[A]

So not so much in Minnesota. We try. Oh, my God. When we were here during the pandemic, when we kind of escaped Vietnam during the. The bad times over there, we went to a sushi place in Minneapolis. It was such a mistake. They had some kind of, like, peanut butter and jelly sushi. And I was like, of course you would.

[B]

Oh, no.

[A]

Yeah, it wasn't good. Yeah, I'm just kidding. I didn't order it.

[B]

I'm sure it wasn't good. Anyway, well, listen, man, thank you very much for coming here, and thanks for your show. It's a really fun show and continued success, and best of luck to you.

[A]

Yeah, thank you. I hope to collect some more stories before I see you next time.

[B]

Yeah, for sure. Let's do it again and tell people the name of your YouTube channel and your social media so they could find you.

[A]

Sure. Best Ever Food Review Show. We're on YouTube and you can look up to see any of our social media. Best Ever Food Review Show. It's a silly name.

[B]

9.54 million subscribers. Congratulations, man. That's amazing.

[A]

Thanks a lot. Really appreciate it.

[B]

All right, my pleasure. Bye, everybody.