Kimbal Musk: The Art of Cooking, Tesla, SpaceX, Zip2, and Family

00:00:00.000 | For me, cooking is an art.

00:00:01.440 | - What's your favorite ingredient to cook with?

00:00:03.480 | - There isn't one.

00:00:04.320 | It's more like when there is one, it really is one.

00:00:07.600 | You know, like there's peaches

00:00:08.560 | on the cover of this cookbook.

00:00:10.680 | Those peaches, those were in August, Colorado peaches.

00:00:14.120 | It just doesn't get any better than that.

00:00:16.040 | - On that day, at that moment, that was the best.

00:00:18.480 | - That was the best, but that only lasts for a week.

00:00:21.080 | And then they don't taste so great.

00:00:22.240 | - Yeah.

00:00:23.080 | (laughing)

00:00:24.480 | - But damn, are they so good in that moment,

00:00:26.360 | and you just can't stop wanting to use that ingredient.

00:00:31.360 | - The following is a conversation with Kimball Musk,

00:00:36.640 | a long-time entrepreneur and chef

00:00:39.080 | and author of a new cookbook called "The Kitchen Cookbook,

00:00:42.760 | Cooking for Your Community."

00:00:44.920 | You should check it out.

00:00:46.480 | It is, in fact, the first cookbook I've ever owned.

00:00:48.920 | I've already made stuff from it, and it's delicious.

00:00:52.320 | This is the Lex Friedman Podcast.

00:00:54.480 | To support it, please check out our sponsors

00:00:56.440 | in the description.

00:00:57.760 | And now, dear friends, here's Kimball Musk.

00:01:01.120 | Growing up in South Africa, you said it was a violent place.

00:01:05.200 | What are some formative moments

00:01:07.120 | that you remember from that time?

00:01:09.160 | - South Africa was, so I grew up in apartheid South Africa,

00:01:13.480 | but more specifically, the fall of apartheid.

00:01:16.840 | So it was, I was a teenager in the '80s,

00:01:20.640 | and our community would,

00:01:24.480 | part of our social life, frankly,

00:01:27.400 | was the anti-apartheid protests

00:01:29.240 | and to go be with white people, black people,

00:01:32.560 | kind of mixing it all together.

00:01:34.160 | The most formative experience is, frankly,

00:01:38.320 | how much I appreciate a place like America

00:01:40.800 | where we have value for human life.

00:01:43.920 | So there was a country where human life was not valued.

00:01:49.920 | It was a weird thing to come from that

00:01:54.520 | to here where we take it so seriously.

00:01:57.880 | If someone dies in a war or something like that,

00:02:00.880 | and we just didn't take it seriously in South Africa.

00:02:05.880 | People died or people were killed.

00:02:10.240 | I saw someone killed in front of me.

00:02:12.760 | It was getting off a train,

00:02:17.160 | and it's a very violent train known for violence.

00:02:20.080 | We were stupid kids.

00:02:21.640 | We didn't really listen to our parents.

00:02:23.200 | We went on this train, and the doors opened,

00:02:26.800 | and I had people trying to get off the train,

00:02:30.240 | and in front of me, two black people,

00:02:33.080 | one black guy just stabbed this knife

00:02:35.400 | in the side of this other black guy's head.

00:02:37.800 | You're like, "What the fuck?"

00:02:40.800 | And you just, "I gotta get off the train."

00:02:44.440 | - How old were you at this time?

00:02:45.680 | - Probably 16 or 17, and I gotta get off the train,

00:02:48.640 | and everyone is trying to get me to get off

00:02:50.720 | because they're all behind me.

00:02:52.880 | So I step off, and I step into the pool of blood,

00:02:56.120 | one foot, and then I just walk for about 100 paces

00:03:00.560 | while the stickiness of the blood,

00:03:03.160 | just kind of from my sneakers, just on one foot,

00:03:06.560 | leaves a footprint behind me, and you just walk on.

00:03:11.020 | You just walk on.

00:03:12.040 | - Did the others walk on as well?

00:03:13.720 | - Everyone walked on.

00:03:15.160 | - That's an interesting point you make.

00:03:16.520 | Underlying the violence is a kind of philosophy

00:03:21.520 | that human life is disposable,

00:03:23.320 | that individual life is disposable.

00:03:25.240 | I mean, that underlies many ideologies.

00:03:28.320 | I grew up in the Soviet Union.

00:03:30.000 | The value of human life was lower there

00:03:32.580 | than in the United States.

00:03:34.400 | The value of the individual in the United States

00:03:36.840 | is really high.

00:03:37.840 | There's probably an index you can put together.

00:03:39.480 | - Yeah, right, exactly.

00:03:41.240 | - So perpurnation, that's a really interesting way

00:03:45.000 | to put it because violence is much easier on a mass scale.

00:03:50.000 | Suffering, causing suffering on a mass scale

00:03:52.960 | is much easier when you don't value the human life.

00:03:56.400 | - I've heard this before, which I think I agree with,

00:03:58.520 | is when someone is killed, someone is taken from our lives,

00:04:03.520 | the vacuum that it creates, the social vacuum,

00:04:06.840 | is extraordinarily painful, and it truly is true.

00:04:10.560 | I mean, if someone in my community passes away,

00:04:14.000 | it's very, very sad for me.

00:04:16.240 | And when you go to a place where,

00:04:19.780 | you live, grow up in a place

00:04:21.720 | where that human life is not valued,

00:04:24.880 | there's something about the,

00:04:26.680 | there's a little bit less of the social vacuum created

00:04:31.120 | because everyone is kind of expecting everyone

00:04:33.760 | to potentially be taken out at any moment.

00:04:36.800 | But then there's also a beauty to it

00:04:39.720 | because there's a much more of a celebratory element.

00:04:44.720 | When my cousin Russ and I, again, we were stupid kids,

00:04:48.960 | we shouldn't be doing this, but we'd go into the townships

00:04:51.400 | where a lot of the violence would be happening,

00:04:53.400 | and we really didn't see most of the violence there.

00:04:55.960 | It was in these more protests and so forth.

00:04:59.160 | But there's a joy that also comes

00:05:03.880 | from lower value of human life.

00:05:08.080 | There's a real joy.

00:05:08.960 | Everyone is like, "Well, I mean, it's beautiful."

00:05:11.840 | We'd have dinner with black friends,

00:05:15.640 | friends with their family, and we were still pretty young.

00:05:18.080 | And there was just a real joy to it.

00:05:21.320 | - When you accept mortality, you can really enjoy life.

00:05:24.760 | - You can really enjoy life.

00:05:25.600 | I mean, I think there's actually quite a nice insight.

00:05:27.840 | I've never really put it that way,

00:05:29.240 | but I think that's right, actually.

00:05:30.320 | I think you just chill out a bit,

00:05:32.760 | take things a little less seriously.

00:05:34.040 | - 'Cause life does end for everybody.

00:05:35.680 | - It does, right.

00:05:37.040 | - And if you just head on, accept that fact,

00:05:40.920 | you can just enjoy every single moment

00:05:42.960 | and let go of this attachment and just enjoy the moment.

00:05:47.560 | - I do love that we all live longer and so forth,

00:05:51.000 | but we should live longer with the goal of joy

00:05:54.040 | and the goal of happiness and peace,

00:05:55.920 | not some form of misery

00:06:00.640 | that you choose to attach yourself to.

00:06:03.160 | - Maximize joy.

00:06:04.680 | - Maximize joy, that's right.

00:06:06.640 | There's a story that Walter Isaacson writes about

00:06:09.040 | where Elon got beat up pretty bad and you were there.

00:06:14.040 | And then you also had to watch your dad

00:06:16.840 | yell at Elon for an hour, calling him worthless,

00:06:20.360 | all those kinds of things.

00:06:22.280 | You said it was the worst memory of your life.

00:06:26.120 | What do you make of such cruelty?

00:06:29.440 | What do you remember from that time?

00:06:31.240 | - I mean, it was horrible.

00:06:35.280 | I think, coming back to the point of low value

00:06:38.200 | of human life, they tried to kill him.

00:06:40.280 | It wasn't, it was no holding back.

00:06:46.500 | So I just watched someone, it wasn't just one,

00:06:49.960 | but there was a main person and then there was a few others

00:06:52.600 | that piled in.

00:06:53.660 | They just, they tried to kill him in front of me.

00:06:59.160 | We were eating sandwiches on a staircase at the school,

00:07:04.840 | in an outdoor staircase.

00:07:06.000 | I just had to, they were not coming after me

00:07:11.400 | and I just had to watch and I couldn't help.

00:07:14.080 | It was one of the saddest, most difficult experiences.

00:07:19.960 | It just was, it was just awful.

00:07:22.880 | - Just like that, life can end.

00:07:24.980 | - Yeah.

00:07:25.820 | - It could have been you.

00:07:27.480 | - Yeah, I think, so I've had a near-death experience

00:07:33.040 | where I almost died.

00:07:35.520 | I was in 2010 and I think that, and I broke my neck

00:07:40.320 | and I can go to that story in a moment,

00:07:41.840 | but this was different.

00:07:43.480 | This was, this comes back to the low value

00:07:47.480 | of human life part where if someone had killed my brother,

00:07:52.280 | if that person had beat him to death,

00:07:53.760 | which he was trying to do, life would have gone on.

00:07:59.900 | In a way, that's like an insane thought in an American,

00:08:03.460 | maybe in some tough neighborhoods,

00:08:04.660 | but for the most part, it's another thing.

00:08:07.660 | - Yeah, the brutality of that,

00:08:10.860 | the mundaneness of that brutality.

00:08:13.700 | - Yeah.

00:08:14.540 | - It makes you think of all the places in the world

00:08:17.220 | that that's happening.

00:08:18.060 | - Exactly, exactly.

00:08:18.880 | - And all the beautiful people that just disappear.

00:08:22.060 | - I always say to people who have an opinion about America

00:08:26.180 | that this is a really bad country or whatever,

00:08:29.900 | and I say, look, please go try another country

00:08:33.220 | before you say that.

00:08:36.020 | Not to say that America can't get better,

00:08:38.180 | but please go try another country

00:08:39.660 | because not having that perspective,

00:08:42.300 | or having a perspective that, I don't know,

00:08:47.500 | they'll catch up on their shoulder

00:08:48.540 | about the country that they're in.

00:08:51.020 | Okay, go try another country and then come back and tell me.

00:08:54.820 | Pick any country.

00:08:55.860 | It doesn't have to be some very violent country.

00:09:00.380 | You can pick any country.

00:09:01.660 | And you just realize that actually the world

00:09:04.420 | doesn't think the same way that America thinks.

00:09:07.140 | And you're gonna just learn a perspective

00:09:10.600 | that I think gives you a better way to critique

00:09:14.660 | where we live in America.

00:09:16.980 | - Yeah, it's humbling.

00:09:18.500 | You said that your dad was a rollercoaster of affection

00:09:21.380 | and then verbal abuse.

00:09:23.300 | Walter Isaacson quotes Barack Obama who said,

00:09:26.340 | "Someone once said that every man is trying

00:09:28.660 | "to live up to his father's expectations

00:09:30.460 | "or make up for his father's mistakes,

00:09:32.420 | "and I suppose that may explain my particular malady."

00:09:36.900 | Is part of that ring true for you?

00:09:39.340 | - What I thought you were gonna say,

00:09:41.140 | we thought you were gonna end the sentence

00:09:42.380 | with live up to my father's expectations.

00:09:45.300 | This is what most people say.

00:09:47.180 | But then you said the second part,

00:09:48.460 | which is make up for his mistakes.

00:09:51.500 | And I think that's actually, that one rings true for me.

00:09:55.680 | He was really, he's still alive but I don't,

00:10:00.740 | I'm not connected to him, but he's very,

00:10:03.060 | he taught me, the phrase I used to have

00:10:08.500 | was he taught me what not to do.

00:10:10.220 | So I still actually learnt a lot.

00:10:12.860 | What kind of human not to be.

00:10:15.980 | What kind of actions not to take.

00:10:18.940 | And so that kind of, closer to living up to his mistakes,

00:10:21.700 | but it's, but my father's such a train wreck

00:10:24.940 | that it's not really mistakes.

00:10:26.660 | It's like intentional actions of what not to do.

00:10:30.940 | Okay, don't do that.

00:10:32.220 | - But there's still the trauma of that.

00:10:36.940 | You know, it has an effect on the human psychology

00:10:40.740 | and can permeate through time.

00:10:42.180 | So it has probably complex indirect effects on who you are.

00:10:48.140 | The good and the bad.

00:10:50.660 | - There's a critique that my friends give me,

00:10:54.660 | which is when they're talking to me,

00:10:57.100 | I kind of just drift away.

00:10:59.100 | That just, I'm still looking at them.

00:11:02.260 | I'm still nodding.

00:11:03.700 | Might even respond to their, to them in their conversation.

00:11:08.620 | But I'm actually not there.

00:11:09.980 | And I've realized that actually I grew up,

00:11:14.220 | 'cause my father would just verbal,

00:11:17.340 | abuse is one way to say it, it is abuse,

00:11:20.580 | but it's more just verbal diarrhea for hours

00:11:24.060 | and constantly saying, do you understand?

00:11:27.900 | He wants to make sure that I'm paying attention.

00:11:29.940 | So I train myself to look like I'm paying attention,

00:11:34.460 | but I'm not.

00:11:35.660 | - To disappear to some place.

00:11:37.060 | - Disappear to some place.

00:11:38.300 | - Wherever that is.

00:11:39.300 | - Yeah, and I do that less and less over time, but I--

00:11:42.780 | - But that path has been paved somewhere

00:11:44.620 | in your mind at childhood,

00:11:45.940 | so it could be easy to walk down it.

00:11:48.820 | You and Elon were close growing up.

00:11:51.540 | You're still close.

00:11:52.660 | What did you learn from each other?

00:11:56.140 | How did you complement each other?

00:11:58.260 | - Yeah, I think we are a good complement.

00:12:00.380 | I'll talk for myself first.

00:12:03.740 | My strength is definitely on the social side.

00:12:07.500 | I love the gathering place.

00:12:10.740 | And I love putting people together in person,

00:12:13.660 | and I love to have vibrant debates and conversations.

00:12:17.580 | I've been doing that forever,

00:12:19.820 | including throwing fun parties and stuff

00:12:21.220 | where I bring people together

00:12:22.940 | and I really kind of want people to have fun,

00:12:25.940 | but be vulnerable in a, not just like silly partying,

00:12:30.180 | but actually let's all connect.

00:12:32.340 | The definition for me of a good party

00:12:33.620 | is people laugh and cry.

00:12:37.460 | I want to have people have an emotional connection.

00:12:41.500 | I go to Burning Man every year,

00:12:42.340 | and that is there's no question,

00:12:43.420 | you will cry at some point during Burning Man.

00:12:45.220 | - No small talk.

00:12:46.220 | - No small talk, yeah, exactly, no small talk.

00:12:49.220 | You're totally right on.

00:12:50.220 | Most parties, not parties, but most events you go to

00:12:53.180 | are like clubs, these sort of nightclubs.

00:12:56.060 | And I never go to those, and my joke is it's,

00:13:00.100 | why would I want to go to a place

00:13:01.940 | where I pay to shout small talk in the dark?

00:13:05.700 | That's a good line.

00:13:07.060 | That's what it feels like.

00:13:09.220 | The only reason I enjoy those places

00:13:11.300 | is the full absurdity of exactly that.

00:13:14.500 | - Right, it's totally absurd.

00:13:16.020 | - What are we doing?

00:13:17.260 | What is this?

00:13:18.100 | What is this life?

00:13:19.540 | - But I have, so my compliment for my brother

00:13:21.780 | was just bringing joy and social connection.

00:13:25.780 | And he's truly, he's an engineering genius.

00:13:29.180 | I've worked with him forever,

00:13:30.380 | and we do compliment each other.

00:13:33.060 | - You just came out with a cookbook.

00:13:35.220 | By the way, thank you for giving me my first cookbook.

00:13:38.660 | I feel legit.

00:13:39.860 | - I love that it's your first cookbook.

00:13:41.500 | - I'm gonna keep it on the counter,

00:13:44.300 | and it's gonna give me legitimacy when anyone comes over.

00:13:48.020 | Hey, listen, I'm basically a chef now.

00:13:49.940 | - That's right, exactly.

00:13:51.940 | - When did you first fall in love with cooking?

00:13:54.500 | - I started cooking when I was 11 years old.

00:13:56.860 | My mom is just, she's wonderful,

00:14:00.820 | but she's self-admittedly a bad cook.

00:14:05.540 | But at the time, it was,

00:14:07.780 | and I think anyone with kids goes through this,

00:14:10.220 | your kids just want like something,

00:14:12.140 | like spaghetti bolognese, or a burger, or something.

00:14:16.100 | And my mom would do brown bread, plain yogurt,

00:14:20.660 | and boiled squash, the absolute most disgusting things

00:14:24.860 | that a child could imagine eating.

00:14:26.780 | And so I said, "Can I cook?"

00:14:28.900 | And she said, "Yeah, if you want to cook, no problem."

00:14:32.220 | So I went to the grocery store,

00:14:33.700 | and back in those days, a butcher,

00:14:36.540 | separate to the grocery store.

00:14:37.380 | And I went to the butcher, and I said, "What can I cook?"

00:14:40.460 | And he pulled out a chicken,

00:14:43.260 | and he said, "This is the easiest recipe for you.

00:14:46.140 | "Just put it on a pan in an oven, a hot oven."

00:14:49.540 | 'Cause back then, the ovens weren't necessarily

00:14:52.540 | like 400 degrees, or 450, or whatever.

00:14:55.420 | And put it in a hot oven for one hour,

00:14:58.180 | and enjoy, that was it.

00:15:00.660 | And so I went home, and actually,

00:15:04.140 | I also brought some French fries.

00:15:05.860 | I'll tell you that as well.

00:15:06.700 | So I was like, "I'm a kid, of course I want French fries."

00:15:09.820 | So I did roast chicken with French fries.

00:15:12.020 | And the chicken came out, and it was just fantastic.

00:15:16.040 | - It was.

00:15:16.880 | - Absolutely fantastic.

00:15:18.060 | - That's incredible, by the way.

00:15:19.540 | - Yeah, yeah.

00:15:20.380 | - You didn't screw it up the first time.

00:15:21.220 | - First of all, I think that also kicks off the magic.

00:15:24.220 | If you screw it up, and you're like,

00:15:25.420 | "Oh, maybe this is not for me."

00:15:27.220 | So for me, it really did kick it off.

00:15:29.940 | - You started out on a high note.

00:15:32.020 | - Yeah, right, exactly.

00:15:33.180 | But I tell the French fry part, which was a disaster.

00:15:36.060 | So I cooked the French fries,

00:15:37.500 | but I didn't heat the oil first.

00:15:39.140 | So I just put the potatoes in the oil,

00:15:41.060 | and I waited for it to heat up.

00:15:43.340 | And I just was throwing up later that night.

00:15:47.020 | Your body can't ingest that much,

00:15:48.980 | 'cause it sucks the oil in.

00:15:50.020 | - Oh, oh, wow.

00:15:50.860 | - And so that was a disaster.

00:15:52.180 | But at the time, it tasted good.

00:15:53.660 | The real magic, which I also found was wonderful,

00:15:58.660 | was when I cooked, my brother, my sister, my mom,

00:16:03.420 | all very, very busy, very intense people,

00:16:06.700 | would sit down, and we would have a meal together.

00:16:10.540 | And I was like, "Wow, this is a powerful,

00:16:13.180 | "it's a very powerful thing that I've now got,

00:16:15.860 | "where in no other way could I have that connection

00:16:19.660 | "with my family."

00:16:20.700 | I mean, obviously, we stay connected,

00:16:21.780 | we're very close, et cetera.

00:16:23.260 | But in no other way could we sit down

00:16:24.900 | and just talk about things,

00:16:26.740 | or talk about whatever's on our mind,

00:16:27.940 | or just to just, not even talk,

00:16:29.500 | just to be at the table together.

00:16:33.660 | And I've done that now through my whole life,

00:16:36.900 | my kids, still for my family.

00:16:40.860 | And we'll do gratitudes at the beginning of our meal.

00:16:43.500 | I think what kept me cooking,

00:16:47.980 | what made my love of cooking so great,

00:16:50.340 | was actually the fact that we would sit down--

00:16:53.300 | - Together.

00:16:54.140 | - And be present with each other.

00:16:56.220 | And I'm also just also hard with that, too,

00:16:57.900 | so I also get to be present.

00:17:00.100 | - What is that about food that brings people together,

00:17:05.020 | and not just together, but really together,

00:17:07.940 | where you're paying attention?

00:17:09.980 | - Right.

00:17:10.820 | - What is that?

00:17:12.140 | Why is it food?

00:17:13.300 | What else does that?

00:17:14.780 | Sometimes maybe alcohol can do that,

00:17:17.060 | which is a kind of food, I guess.

00:17:18.380 | - Yeah, but I think alcohol is different,

00:17:19.740 | because you use the standing when you're doing alcohol,

00:17:22.500 | so you're socializing,

00:17:24.100 | but it's kind of,

00:17:24.940 | you're just gonna stay more in the small talk zone.

00:17:26.620 | - Yeah.

00:17:27.460 | - Right, whereas if you sit down,

00:17:28.940 | and I see this in my restaurant in the kitchen in Boulder,

00:17:32.580 | where we have every viewpoint.

00:17:35.340 | Or we go to Denver, every viewpoint.

00:17:37.460 | When we went to one in Chicago, every viewpoint.

00:17:40.100 | And the physical presence of someone being right there,

00:17:46.420 | is people are just, they're just very different,

00:17:49.860 | absolutely different to what they are online.

00:17:52.500 | I think we all know the difference between,

00:17:54.660 | you know, you send an email to someone,

00:17:56.020 | and they misunderstand the email.

00:17:59.020 | - Mm-hmm.

00:17:59.860 | - Right?

00:18:00.700 | And you're, oh, if I just had talked to the person,

00:18:01.780 | it would have been fine.

00:18:02.900 | Well, this is now happening at scale,

00:18:04.660 | you know, with all of these,

00:18:06.060 | what do you call it, trolling, or whatever.

00:18:10.700 | And I have, I've sat at the bar,

00:18:14.460 | and I've had a hardcore Trump supporter,

00:18:19.420 | and I'm just curious.

00:18:21.060 | Just like, tell me what, I'm not a Trump supporter,

00:18:23.500 | but like, tell me more.

00:18:25.580 | And it actually draws the conversation out,

00:18:27.980 | because you're there for an hour or longer.

00:18:30.220 | So there's no rush to get the answer.

00:18:33.420 | And I think that's a big difference.

00:18:35.380 | I've had one time where, just a couple months ago,

00:18:40.400 | I had someone, I was sitting at the community table,

00:18:43.340 | we have a community table in the restaurant,

00:18:45.580 | and he was, I didn't know him too well,

00:18:48.260 | but he asked me, did I know that 9/11 was a conspiracy,

00:18:52.900 | and it didn't really happen?

00:18:54.840 | - It didn't happen, yeah.

00:18:56.380 | - And I was like, huh.

00:18:58.160 | So actually, I was at 9/11.

00:18:59.500 | I was, I mean, I was there, physically there.

00:19:03.540 | So it's like--

00:19:04.380 | - Allegedly.

00:19:05.200 | - There's no doubt in my mind.

00:19:06.040 | - Okay.

00:19:06.880 | - But I didn't wanna interrupt his, what he had to say.

00:19:12.120 | What he had to say.

00:19:13.360 | So I let him talk for five minutes, six minutes,

00:19:17.040 | seven minutes, and again, you're there for a while,

00:19:18.500 | so you're not in a rush to jump in and argue.

00:19:22.520 | And then I shared that I was there.

00:19:25.120 | And I think because I had been willing to listen to him,

00:19:29.180 | he was willing to listen to me.

00:19:32.300 | And he, I don't know if he changed his mind,

00:19:37.280 | certainly didn't change my mind,

00:19:38.380 | but it was actually a pretty cool conversation

00:19:41.160 | to kind of get into each other's mind.

00:19:43.440 | - Well, I think you connect on a different level,

00:19:46.640 | not on the level of like the conspiracy,

00:19:49.880 | but on the level of basic humanity.

00:19:51.560 | - Yes.

00:19:52.400 | - Like that's what you really connect on.

00:19:53.560 | And then it's almost becomes interesting and fun

00:19:57.680 | that you can exchange ideas, even crazy ideas,

00:20:00.160 | out there ideas, and kind of play with them.

00:20:02.400 | - Yeah.

00:20:03.240 | - We humans are good at that.

00:20:04.340 | - Yeah, exactly.

00:20:05.180 | I like the term play with them,

00:20:06.560 | because what you're not trying to do

00:20:10.400 | is shut the conversation down.

00:20:13.200 | You're also not trying to--

00:20:14.640 | - Talk down on me.

00:20:15.480 | - Yeah, exactly.

00:20:16.380 | Like, let me just be nice

00:20:19.880 | while I totally disagree with this person.

00:20:22.220 | You can do that for a few minutes,

00:20:24.280 | you can't do that for two hours.

00:20:25.480 | - And there's something about food that completely,

00:20:30.080 | I don't know, it must be evolutionary.

00:20:34.460 | It makes us vulnerable in a way

00:20:39.080 | that even just standing there

00:20:40.280 | for a prolonged period of time doesn't.

00:20:42.000 | There's something about,

00:20:43.200 | you know like when the animals gather to the water

00:20:46.200 | or whatever?

00:20:47.040 | - Yeah, right.

00:20:47.860 | - Like this kind of experience where you're just like,

00:20:49.280 | all right, let's just acknowledge together

00:20:53.080 | that we need sustenance.

00:20:55.120 | - Yeah.

00:20:55.960 | - And somehow that kind of grounds us to like,

00:20:59.640 | we're just a bunch of descendants of apes here,

00:21:03.360 | just kind of like grateful to be alive, frankly,

00:21:08.000 | and grateful to be consuming this thing

00:21:10.160 | which keeps us alive.

00:21:12.080 | And in that context,

00:21:13.840 | you can talk about all kinds of stuff.

00:21:16.200 | You can discuss flat Earth and enjoy it.

00:21:17.960 | - Absolutely.

00:21:19.040 | In fact, one of my favorite things to do

00:21:22.400 | is you do like a Jeffersonian style dinner.

00:21:26.520 | Like, let's say five or six people.

00:21:28.120 | Sometimes people will break off

00:21:29.600 | into individual conversations.

00:21:30.760 | That's actually when things break down.

00:21:32.800 | So that's when you kind of go back to small talk.

00:21:34.600 | Like, oh, I'm stuck next to this guy,

00:21:35.800 | I'm just gonna do a little small talk.

00:21:37.320 | What you need to do to really create a great conversation

00:21:40.240 | is one conversation at the table.

00:21:43.000 | And that's where, you know,

00:21:45.200 | there'll be some simple questions that I'll say.

00:21:48.760 | I'll say, you know, what's your middle name?

00:21:51.000 | And you'll be amazed at the stories you get from that.

00:21:53.280 | But it's about creating vulnerability.

00:21:55.560 | - Yeah.

00:21:56.400 | - So they're like, oh, no one's ever asked me that before.

00:21:57.760 | So then they become vulnerable.

00:22:00.000 | And then something as simple as

00:22:01.880 | what's the most fun thing you've done recently

00:22:04.440 | and what is the most fun thing you're looking forward to?

00:22:06.960 | - Mm-hmm.

00:22:08.040 | - And I have gotten into, with those prompts,

00:22:11.680 | I've gotten into hours-long discussions on God.

00:22:15.880 | I've gotten into hours-long discussions on love.

00:22:18.920 | I've gotten into hours-long discussions on anger.

00:22:24.320 | It's actually amazing when people are just asked a question,

00:22:30.120 | like, what's the most fun thing you've done lately?

00:22:31.360 | Well, why would anger come up?

00:22:32.520 | Well, actually, they're in a vulnerable place,

00:22:35.560 | so it'll just kind of come out of them.

00:22:37.600 | - So you get to see this.

00:22:38.640 | You get to see this at the kitchen,

00:22:39.880 | and you said Boulder, Denver, Chicago.

00:22:42.480 | - Yeah, and we're gonna open in Austin.

00:22:43.840 | - In Austin, that's what I saw.

00:22:45.200 | When, when?

00:22:46.040 | - In October is the goal.

00:22:47.160 | - In October is the goal.

00:22:48.440 | Well, I mean, speaking of characters and human beings,

00:22:51.600 | Austin is fascinating.

00:22:52.760 | I forget how long ago, a couple months ago,

00:22:57.280 | I was just sitting at a bar,

00:22:58.840 | and the two people were talking,

00:23:01.680 | and they were talking about Marxism.

00:23:03.480 | And it turns out that they're anarcho-communists,

00:23:07.520 | which is a thing.

00:23:08.360 | And I got into this conversation.

00:23:09.560 | - Are communists the likes of drugs?

00:23:11.200 | (both laughing)

00:23:12.760 | - That's a good question to answer.

00:23:15.240 | - I think I know some of those.

00:23:16.440 | (both laughing)

00:23:18.120 | - Anyway, they were beautiful people.

00:23:19.320 | I think they're local from Austin.

00:23:20.760 | I don't, you know, I don't know the depth

00:23:23.560 | of their personal experience

00:23:25.800 | of the different kinds of communist-like systems,

00:23:27.920 | but it was fascinating to listen to them

00:23:29.600 | and get to know them and the humanity, the weirdness,

00:23:33.160 | like the characters.

00:23:34.080 | It's just, I mean, I love it.

00:23:35.480 | One of the reasons I really love Austin,

00:23:37.600 | I decided to be here,

00:23:40.480 | is just the cliche thing of keep Austin weird.

00:23:44.640 | I mean, there's a lot of weird characters.

00:23:45.880 | - I love it.

00:23:46.800 | I think that, I've spoken to a lot of,

00:23:49.920 | Austin and I have been here forever,

00:23:51.160 | and I'm like, "Man, you gotta hold us accountable.

00:23:53.480 | "We gotta keep this place weird."

00:23:54.720 | (both laughing)

00:23:55.560 | - 100%, which makes the restaurant scene great,

00:23:57.720 | because you have all these characters come in.

00:24:00.080 | It's great, so I look forward to that.

00:24:01.880 | But you were saying, like,

00:24:03.520 | you get to see humans in real life interact.

00:24:06.160 | That's one of the beautiful things over food.

00:24:09.120 | In the book you write,

00:24:10.920 | Picasso once said, "The meaning of life

00:24:12.920 | "is to find your gift.

00:24:14.360 | "The purpose of life is to give it away."

00:24:17.120 | Then you wrote that you believe food is a gift

00:24:19.880 | we give ourselves three times a day.

00:24:22.080 | Can you explain that?

00:24:23.440 | The gift nature of it? - Yeah, it's actually,

00:24:25.160 | I think it's one of my most powerful life lessons,

00:24:27.880 | is we have to eat.

00:24:31.300 | So it's not like you have a choice.

00:24:34.040 | You have to eat.

00:24:34.920 | So what I choose to do is I choose to make it a gift

00:24:39.040 | to myself for each meal.

00:24:41.840 | And most of the time, the best gift is with friends,

00:24:44.960 | with family.

00:24:46.120 | So we'll have to cook some scrambled eggs in the morning

00:24:48.440 | with my daughter, or we'll have dinner with our family.

00:24:52.120 | To me, it's a gift we give ourselves three times a day,

00:24:56.240 | at least, but for the most part, three times a day.

00:24:59.120 | Let's make it a good one.

00:25:00.400 | - What makes it a good one to you?

00:25:01.660 | Like what aspect of it makes it a good one?

00:25:03.580 | - Well, first, definitely eating with people.

00:25:06.740 | So that makes it a good one.

00:25:08.480 | So eating in a restaurant,

00:25:11.620 | or it doesn't have to be my restaurant,

00:25:13.900 | where you have the energy of people around you,

00:25:17.180 | energy of the town, people you don't know,

00:25:18.760 | creates a little bit of a vibe.

00:25:21.580 | You mentioned the watering hole analogy,

00:25:24.220 | that animals like sipping at the water,

00:25:26.600 | but there's an energy to that

00:25:28.580 | because they're also like looking around going,

00:25:31.640 | is, am I just about to be eaten?

00:25:33.580 | (both laughing)

00:25:35.860 | So there's, they're all in it together,

00:25:37.860 | but we need to have water,

00:25:39.660 | but there's also a little bit of tension as well

00:25:41.460 | in the background.

00:25:42.440 | And I think that's what restaurants do,

00:25:43.860 | is a very, very subtle version of that.

00:25:46.420 | You're in a room with strangers,

00:25:48.760 | and you're, yeah, you're a little cluster.

00:25:50.260 | Okay, fine, you guys are connected, isn't it?

00:25:53.020 | But you're in a room with strangers,

00:25:54.260 | and it's just something that adds that energy to the meal.

00:25:57.800 | - Yeah, you're a little bit wondering,

00:25:59.060 | like, what does everyone else think about our little cluster?

00:26:02.420 | - Right, like, are we too loud, or just,

00:26:05.420 | you also just, people are random,

00:26:07.020 | so something random could happen.

00:26:08.300 | - And also, depending on your personality,

00:26:10.100 | if you're an extrovert,

00:26:10.940 | maybe you want to show off to the other clusters.

00:26:12.820 | - Exactly, yeah, absolutely, totally right.

00:26:14.540 | I mean, you know, look at the cowboy hat.

00:26:16.340 | (both laughing)

00:26:17.780 | I mean, actually, I'll take my hat off

00:26:19.280 | when I want to have a quiet meal,

00:26:20.940 | and I can leave my hat on when I'm--

00:26:22.580 | - Oh, so you're aware of the laugh.

00:26:23.700 | - I'm aware of the effect it has, yeah, absolutely.

00:26:26.160 | - Yeah, everyone turns, and it's like.

00:26:28.820 | And then it's back to the watering hole,

00:26:30.300 | 'cause when you wear a cowboy hat,

00:26:31.740 | you just might actually, not--

00:26:33.620 | - Yeah, yeah, I'm like, they're gonna get me first.

00:26:36.220 | (both laughing)

00:26:37.660 | - At noon, I love it.

00:26:39.180 | - I gotta tell the story.

00:26:40.060 | So, just to talk to the craziness

00:26:44.220 | of being in the restaurant world,

00:26:46.060 | where, you know, you're sitting at a table,

00:26:47.940 | and anything can happen in a restaurant.

00:26:50.100 | So, there's one time, it was like 15 years ago,

00:26:52.500 | the, this guy comes up to us and says,

00:26:54.980 | he would like to propose to his wife, his girlfriend.

00:26:58.400 | And so, we said, "Okay, cool, we've done this before.

00:27:02.400 | "We'll make sure it's all set up."

00:27:04.800 | 6 p.m. kind of reservation.

00:27:06.840 | So, she shows up, and we give her a glass of champagne,

00:27:11.480 | and it's just, we didn't, obviously,

00:27:13.520 | didn't want to spoil the surprise,

00:27:14.720 | so we're just doing everything we can.

00:27:16.320 | But then he doesn't, then he doesn't arrive.

00:27:18.720 | And then we're like, "Oh, man."

00:27:20.360 | Now we're like, "Don't leave.

00:27:21.640 | "Can we get you another glass of champagne?"

00:27:23.240 | We're doing everything we can.

00:27:24.820 | The guy was obviously earnest earlier,

00:27:26.420 | but just 'cause he stuck in traffic or whatever.

00:27:29.480 | And out coming through the back door of the restaurant,

00:27:32.300 | which is, you're not allowed to come

00:27:33.240 | through the back door of the restaurant,

00:27:34.860 | a marching band from the school, the university,

00:27:38.520 | like comes through the restaurant,

00:27:40.720 | you know, full-on brass band and the whole thing.

00:27:43.320 | And, you know, he gets down, and he proposes.

00:27:46.000 | And it's beautiful, sure, but it's also like--

00:27:50.680 | - Chaos. - Man, this is chaos.

00:27:51.800 | This is insane. (laughing)

00:27:53.520 | And we would never have said yes to this

00:27:55.000 | if he'd actually told us what he was gonna do.

00:27:56.560 | - Well, sometimes in life, you have to do it and apologize.

00:27:59.320 | - You do it and apologize.

00:28:00.440 | But that toast to that kind of,

00:28:01.760 | what's the crazy thing that could happen?

00:28:03.800 | It's subtle, but it's still there.

00:28:07.480 | - So in 2004, you opened The Kitchen.

00:28:09.760 | It's an American bistro restaurant.

00:28:12.000 | What was it like?

00:28:12.840 | What's it like running a restaurant,

00:28:14.640 | the good, the bad, and the ugly?

00:28:16.400 | What's the easy, what's the fun, and what's the hard?

00:28:19.760 | - I think the thing that I absolutely love

00:28:22.120 | about running the restaurant, not eating it,

00:28:23.520 | but running the restaurant,

00:28:24.760 | is the tangible reaction from people.

00:28:29.760 | And you also kind of know when you screwed it up.

00:28:35.360 | And you also know when you got it right.

00:28:38.920 | So even, it's kind of a weird way to say this,

00:28:41.800 | but even if the customer's unhappy,

00:28:44.340 | you know whether you got it right or wrong.

00:28:48.200 | It's not just about the food you're making,

00:28:50.600 | but it's about the person's psychological state.

00:28:54.120 | And you'll do something that you're like,

00:28:57.240 | "You know that that was not well."

00:28:59.800 | And their psychological state is,

00:29:01.400 | they're just in a very happy place and they love it.

00:29:04.240 | And you're like, "Huh, interesting."

00:29:06.480 | That's not how I would have reacted to that dish.

00:29:09.080 | And then the other way around, you're like,

00:29:10.280 | "No, I got that right."

00:29:11.120 | And that person's just really unhappy today.

00:29:14.400 | - Yeah, and it's so hard to read humans

00:29:17.040 | 'cause you have to, if you got it right,

00:29:20.320 | that can look a million different ways

00:29:24.920 | depending on the emotional rollercoaster

00:29:27.640 | that human is living through.

00:29:29.200 | Like I've been some very low points

00:29:30.960 | and I've gone to like a restaurant alone

00:29:33.640 | and just sitting there and be truly happy

00:29:36.840 | was just the Zen aspect of it.

00:29:39.440 | And it was just a great steak or something like this.

00:29:42.480 | And maybe to other people around me

00:29:46.760 | would look like I'm very unhappy

00:29:48.920 | just because I'm within myself.

00:29:51.880 | - Struggling with your day.

00:29:53.360 | - Yeah, within myself.

00:29:54.560 | But I'm truly happy within that struggle.

00:29:56.720 | So yeah, it's interesting, but you can kind of tell.

00:29:59.800 | - Yeah, you can tell.

00:30:00.720 | And you mentioned being at the bar,

00:30:03.080 | one of the most gifts that bartenders really understand that

00:30:08.080 | you know, it goes beyond,

00:30:11.720 | but what's also great about a restaurant

00:30:12.640 | is it goes beyond the one-time experience

00:30:15.160 | that you walk in and you have that experience

00:30:17.440 | is the good bartenders, they remember you.

00:30:19.920 | Oh, you were in a few months ago

00:30:21.160 | and this is kind of your thing.

00:30:23.120 | You might need a little time.

00:30:25.120 | And other people will come and they want a conversation

00:30:29.240 | or other people will come in

00:30:30.080 | and they're going through a divorce

00:30:31.480 | and they just want to be sad for a moment, have a scotch.

00:30:34.880 | And it's like, it's amazing what you learn

00:30:37.680 | in the restaurant world to just be connected to humanity.

00:30:41.960 | - Yeah.

00:30:42.840 | What is that about bars?

00:30:44.360 | That's a different experience.

00:30:45.880 | You said the table, the communal.

00:30:48.720 | - The table is when you connect with people,

00:30:50.860 | learn about each other.

00:30:52.680 | Bars, you can sometimes do that.

00:30:54.080 | You can talk left and right,

00:30:55.200 | but you have the freedom to always break free.

00:30:57.960 | Like you can say, "Oh, okay, great.

00:30:58.800 | I'm gonna go back to my meal."

00:31:00.680 | It's kind of like, it's like a friend you can turn on

00:31:04.380 | and off at any time because the bartender knows that.

00:31:08.380 | They're trained.

00:31:09.220 | Like, if you want attention, I'm gonna give it to you.

00:31:10.820 | If you don't, I'm gonna stay away.

00:31:13.860 | If you want to be chatty, I'm gonna be chatty.

00:31:15.980 | If you want to be completely in your head,

00:31:17.880 | I'll leave you in your head.

00:31:18.720 | - But there's also strangers kind of next to you

00:31:20.560 | that you kind of, there's a feeling with a bar

00:31:23.500 | that you're kind of alone together.

00:31:25.980 | - Yeah.

00:31:26.820 | And you can reach out.

00:31:27.660 | You can add some conversation or you can choose not to.

00:31:30.820 | - And you can exit quickly.

00:31:31.700 | - You can exit.

00:31:32.540 | You can, exactly.

00:31:33.360 | You can have a really good exit.

00:31:34.460 | So, bars are wonderful.

00:31:35.860 | And I love going to a bar by myself after work.

00:31:40.860 | I might have a scotch.

00:31:43.340 | Might not even have alcohol, just have something.

00:31:46.260 | And I'll just, maybe have a snack or something

00:31:48.300 | before dinner 'cause I'm gonna go home

00:31:49.500 | and have dinner with the family.

00:31:51.100 | And that 20 minutes is just an amazing state change

00:31:56.100 | from daytime to nighttime.

00:31:58.940 | If I went straight home, I'm like still in my head

00:32:02.740 | and I'm just trying to get grounded.

00:32:06.260 | And I'm just, I'm not as pleasant of a person.

00:32:08.920 | So, that's another powerful use of a bar.

00:32:12.300 | It's just like a transition time.

00:32:13.940 | - Well, I mean, it would be remiss not to mention

00:32:16.500 | the other use of the bar, which is like

00:32:18.560 | when you go on through some shit in life and you just go.

00:32:23.100 | I mean, that's sort of the, it's the cliche thing.

00:32:25.260 | I've been, some of my--

00:32:26.940 | - Running a store?

00:32:27.780 | - Exactly.

00:32:28.600 | - It's a real thing.

00:32:29.440 | (laughing)

00:32:30.260 | - The bar makes the melancholy somehow rich and beautiful

00:32:35.260 | and you feel heard in the silence.

00:32:39.580 | (laughing)

00:32:40.420 | - Yes, you feel heard.

00:32:42.260 | Like I said earlier, the people going through a divorce,

00:32:46.320 | they don't know where else to go.

00:32:47.980 | - Yeah.

00:32:49.080 | - These are mostly men.

00:32:49.920 | Sometimes women will do it, but mostly men will do this

00:32:52.140 | and women have other ways of processing it.

00:32:54.920 | But they just, they want a place to be sad.

00:32:58.580 | They want a place where they could feel

00:33:01.300 | comfortable talking about it if,

00:33:03.580 | they're certainly not gonna go into too much detail,

00:33:05.780 | but they just wanna say something.

00:33:08.320 | - Yeah.

00:33:09.160 | - And the bartender is there for them.

00:33:10.580 | - Yeah, you don't know where to go.

00:33:12.460 | - You don't know where to go, exactly.

00:33:13.700 | - The bar, yeah, you're right.

00:33:16.060 | For men especially, it's a place to just go

00:33:20.140 | and just, I don't know, what is that?

00:33:22.340 | What is that?

00:33:23.180 | - I mean, I'll be honest, I still do it myself

00:33:24.420 | where if I'm at home and I don't have a work thing

00:33:29.420 | that I gotta deal with and I don't have kids

00:33:31.580 | and I don't have my wife or family around,

00:33:34.800 | I don't often cook for myself.

00:33:39.540 | I actually love going to a bar by myself.

00:33:43.740 | I have a glass of red wine and I have,

00:33:46.300 | I usually don't have a starter, appetizer,

00:33:48.340 | I just have like a main meal.

00:33:51.300 | And I just take in the energy of the space.

00:33:55.580 | If it's my restaurant or someone else's restaurant,

00:33:56.980 | I just take in the energy.

00:33:59.060 | And it's so much better than being home

00:34:01.340 | and what, turn the TV on?

00:34:02.780 | No, no, no, no, I wanna be out in the restaurant.

00:34:05.300 | I wanna feel the energy of the town.

00:34:07.860 | The other thing that restaurants teach me

00:34:10.780 | is they're the front lines of the economy

00:34:14.700 | or what's a better word for it?

00:34:18.020 | It's like the front lines of the energy

00:34:21.100 | of how things are going.

00:34:23.740 | - Or like of a people's in general.

00:34:25.980 | Like it doesn't necessarily mean this part of town

00:34:28.300 | but it could be the entire society.

00:34:30.100 | - Exactly, so you can go into a restaurant

00:34:33.100 | and I'll use a simple example.

00:34:34.860 | And why is the restaurant empty?

00:34:37.260 | Ah, there's a football game going on

00:34:40.220 | and there's such a large number of people

00:34:42.940 | wanna watch that game that the restaurant is quiet

00:34:46.260 | or it might be like another like World Series or something.

00:34:49.620 | And you're like, wow, that's so interesting.

00:34:51.020 | And you can actually watch in America,

00:34:53.460 | of course, American humanity,

00:34:54.980 | you can watch them move in their patterns

00:34:57.980 | just by being in the restaurant.

00:34:59.780 | - Yeah, yeah.

00:35:00.700 | - And then another time you might be in a restaurant

00:35:02.220 | and it's just jamming and it's a Monday night.

00:35:05.140 | And you're like, what is the energy

00:35:09.300 | that created this on a Monday night

00:35:11.380 | and maybe even on a cold February Monday night?

00:35:13.460 | What is it?

00:35:14.700 | And sometimes you can't find out

00:35:15.860 | but you can feel it.

00:35:17.820 | And it's my front lines of humanity

00:35:20.660 | that I also just really love about the restaurants.

00:35:24.020 | - Yeah, it could be empty, it could be full.

00:35:25.860 | Empty bars, there's a magic to those too.

00:35:29.540 | - Yeah.

00:35:30.380 | - You could still feel that energy, I don't know.

00:35:32.260 | - I actually prefer empty bars than full ones.

00:35:34.820 | - It's just you and the bartender.

00:35:35.860 | I mean, some of my greatest experience

00:35:37.500 | is just the quiet bar with just me and the bartender

00:35:40.420 | and they're doing their thing.

00:35:42.100 | And they've seen so many,

00:35:43.420 | I've almost like through osmosis somehow

00:35:46.340 | feel the stories that that bartender has seen,

00:35:49.180 | has felt, has heard.

00:35:50.500 | - Yeah.

00:35:51.320 | - And all that kind of stuff.

00:35:52.160 | I mean, that it's not to be sort of like spiritual about it

00:35:57.160 | but it seems like it's in the walls or something.

00:35:59.140 | Like there's the history is felt.

00:36:01.100 | - And then some of these bars are actually very old

00:36:03.020 | and it's wonderful.

00:36:03.860 | Like there are many in Europe like this

00:36:06.020 | but there's a couple in New York City,

00:36:07.700 | a few hundred years old

00:36:08.540 | and they're still operating nonstop for that long.

00:36:11.900 | And man, you feel it.

00:36:13.980 | - Yeah.

00:36:15.500 | Let me ask you some questions about ingredients.

00:36:18.620 | What's your favorite ingredient to cook with?

00:36:20.660 | - For me, cooking is an art, right?

00:36:22.300 | So it'd be like asking me

00:36:23.660 | what's my favorite paint color to use?

00:36:25.660 | It doesn't, it's not that it isn't like there isn't one.

00:36:30.340 | It's more like when there is one, it really is one.

00:36:33.740 | You know, like there's peaches

00:36:34.700 | on the cover of this cookbook.

00:36:36.820 | Those peaches, those were in August, Colorado peaches.

00:36:41.980 | It just doesn't get any better than that.

00:36:44.460 | - On that day, at that moment, that was the best.

00:36:46.860 | - That was the best, but that only lasts for a week.

00:36:49.540 | And then they don't taste so great.

00:36:50.700 | - Yeah.

00:36:51.540 | - But damn, are they so good in that moment

00:36:54.820 | and you just can't stop wanting to use that ingredient.

00:36:59.820 | - They look really good.

00:37:01.540 | - They're so good.

00:37:02.620 | - What's your favorite fruit?

00:37:04.780 | I love veggies and fruit.

00:37:05.980 | What's your favorite fruit?

00:37:07.300 | - I love a smoothie bowl.

00:37:08.140 | So I do sort of berries, raspberries,

00:37:11.340 | but I use fruit more in the form of a smoothie bowl

00:37:16.340 | than I eat fruit that often.

00:37:18.660 | I like an apple or a banana,

00:37:19.820 | but for the most part, I prefer like the blended.

00:37:22.180 | - Not me.

00:37:23.020 | I love the way you casually said it, like an apple.

00:37:25.900 | - A good apple is pretty great.

00:37:28.180 | - For me, it's a problem, I think.

00:37:29.900 | Probably cherries, number one.

00:37:32.460 | Probably, what are they called?

00:37:35.820 | Granny smoothie apples, number two.

00:37:37.140 | - Oh yeah, those are great.

00:37:37.980 | - But try it when, sometime, come to Colorado in August

00:37:41.020 | and when you try those peaches,

00:37:42.900 | it is like heaven has arrived in your mouth.

00:37:47.900 | It is so ridiculously good.

00:37:52.140 | - But just for a week in August.

00:37:53.500 | - Just for a week, you can't have it all year long.

00:37:56.060 | - What about veggies?

00:37:58.860 | You wrote that Chef Hugo that you worked with,

00:38:01.420 | the co-founder of The Kitchen with,

00:38:03.060 | taught you the power of a good vegetable.

00:38:05.820 | What's the power of a good vegetable?

00:38:07.260 | - So, I've trained in New York as a French chef,

00:38:10.060 | but it wasn't very much ingredients focused,

00:38:12.180 | it wasn't very much sourcing focused.

00:38:14.500 | He came from the River Cafe in London,

00:38:16.780 | which is one of the OGs of the Farm to Table,

00:38:20.180 | and still going strong today.

00:38:22.620 | And he taught me the value of getting to know farmers

00:38:26.740 | and getting to know vegetables from that farm

00:38:31.740 | versus vegetables from that farm.

00:38:33.660 | And they're actually different.

00:38:35.380 | The soil's a little different,

00:38:37.260 | the way they grow it, a little different.

00:38:38.380 | It's the opposite of the industrial machine

00:38:40.060 | where everything needs to look exactly the same.

00:38:42.620 | And sometimes you'll get carrots

00:38:44.380 | that are kind of ugly and deformed,

00:38:46.620 | but there's much sweeter than the carrots you'd get

00:38:49.500 | for other purposes.

00:38:50.340 | So, you'd make a carrot puree out of that,

00:38:52.500 | and then you'd take carrots that are more typical

00:38:55.500 | in shape and size, you might roast them for dinner.

00:38:58.740 | So, it's the appreciation for vegetables in general.

00:39:04.460 | I probably would say carrots is my favorite

00:39:06.420 | just 'cause that was an example of one

00:39:08.620 | where I've really had to learn how to use

00:39:11.140 | the different types of carrots that come from around,

00:39:14.860 | from all of our farms.

00:39:16.620 | And it's fun, it's a fun ingredient.

00:39:19.020 | If you just went to the Whole Foods

00:39:20.500 | or just went to a grocery store

00:39:21.340 | and you just got exactly the same carrot every time,

00:39:23.900 | less fun.

00:39:24.980 | But go to a farmer's market and see what you get,

00:39:27.220 | and you'll see they're quite different.

00:39:28.900 | - Yeah, carrot for me is probably number one.

00:39:30.940 | I have rigorous, detailed rankings for fruit and veggies.

00:39:34.900 | - That's amazing.

00:39:35.740 | - We'll get into it, I'm just kidding.

00:39:37.500 | Well, I am the kind of person that would have

00:39:38.980 | like a spreadsheet for that.

00:39:40.180 | - That's true, that's true.

00:39:42.460 | - But I'm mostly just making fun of myself.

00:39:44.100 | But I do love carrots.

00:39:45.860 | I wish they weren't so full of carbs, but.

00:39:52.240 | - Yeah, I'm just not anti-carbs.

00:39:53.860 | You know, I think the-

00:39:54.700 | - Anti-carbs, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:39:56.100 | - Yeah, I think they play a role.

00:39:57.340 | You know, like I have a great friend

00:39:59.620 | who's an amazing doctor,

00:40:00.740 | and he did some tests for me and everything,

00:40:04.620 | and it turns out I have a gluten allergy.

00:40:07.500 | And I was like, okay.

00:40:09.180 | So what that means is I shouldn't eat gluten.

00:40:11.980 | It's like, yeah, it's like, okay.

00:40:13.300 | But I also have hay fever,

00:40:15.960 | and that means I should not go out into nature.

00:40:19.620 | So I was like, nah, I think I'm gonna go out into nature.

00:40:24.620 | And maybe what I'll do on bread and pasta,

00:40:28.740 | I like the true carbs.

00:40:30.300 | I'll just have it when it's really good,

00:40:33.980 | because when it's really good, it's really good,

00:40:37.660 | and you don't wanna miss that.

00:40:39.120 | Most of the time, okay,

00:40:40.340 | find some crummy bread, whatever, I can skip that part.

00:40:43.940 | But I find all of these diets that are like,

00:40:45.620 | no, none of this, or super this, super that.

00:40:48.700 | I wonder if they're just like a,

00:40:51.460 | people are just looking for something to hang on to.

00:40:54.340 | But these diets have been around forever,

00:40:56.260 | and if they work, then we would know that.

00:40:58.660 | - I think one of the biggest problems with diets

00:41:01.620 | is it adds stress when you do have

00:41:04.980 | that perfect bowl of pasta.

00:41:07.180 | If you have categorized yourself

00:41:09.980 | as a low-carb eating person,

00:41:11.940 | you might be very stressed about enjoying this thing

00:41:15.300 | when you should just let go.

00:41:16.620 | - Let go, this is your cheat day or whatever.

00:41:18.940 | And I've heard that.

00:41:19.780 | And actually, I have friends who do that, their cheat day,

00:41:22.940 | and I say to them,

00:41:23.780 | I'm only gonna hang out with you on your cheat day,

00:41:25.320 | because that's when you're actually fun.

00:41:26.760 | (laughing)

00:41:28.360 | - Yeah, I mean, I would say, for me,

00:41:30.500 | there's things that make me feel really good,

00:41:33.420 | but they're not rules, they're not,

00:41:35.420 | they're like go-to favorites,

00:41:40.000 | in terms of diet and so on.

00:41:42.980 | For example, I've mostly been eating once a day.

00:41:46.100 | - Oh, wow.

00:41:46.940 | - For the longest time, but that's not a rule.

00:41:49.180 | Like, it's completely flexible,

00:41:51.500 | and I've mostly been eating very low-carb.

00:41:54.020 | - Yeah, but you must be eating a lot of food

00:41:55.420 | in that one meal.

00:41:56.440 | - Yeah, it's not, you know,

00:41:57.520 | because it's usually a very sort of meat-heavy,

00:42:00.280 | it's not, like, portions are not that big.

00:42:02.960 | - Your body needs food.

00:42:04.160 | - Yeah, body needs food.

00:42:05.000 | So, you're talking about, like, 2,000 calories.

00:42:07.280 | What you find out is, like,

00:42:08.920 | that dinner is, like, the most social time of the day.

00:42:13.280 | - Yeah, I mean, I have kids in the morning,

00:42:14.760 | so if you have kids, it's for sure a morning experience,

00:42:17.560 | but if you don't, then you're right.

00:42:18.920 | - Yeah, but like you said, I deviate.

00:42:22.680 | You know, I'm more afraid of missing the perfect dessert,

00:42:27.680 | the perfect breakfast, the perfect bowl of pasta,

00:42:31.820 | pizza, all that kind of stuff.

00:42:33.780 | I don't think of it as a cheat day.

00:42:35.260 | I think it's a--

00:42:36.340 | - Well, if you're eating one meal a day,

00:42:37.380 | you can eat whatever you like.

00:42:38.820 | - Well, like, I wanna make clear

00:42:41.660 | that it's not one meal a day always,

00:42:43.480 | and I'm, like, this very strict thing.

00:42:45.380 | You always have to be open to the experience,

00:42:50.260 | to the new experience. - I love that, yeah.

00:42:51.940 | - Otherwise, you do miss out.

00:42:53.280 | Just like you said, hay fever.

00:42:55.240 | I think if you wanna be really safe,

00:42:57.000 | you should never leave your home.

00:42:59.000 | - Yes, we learned during COVID,

00:43:01.660 | if you wrap yourself in cotton wool in your basement,

00:43:04.820 | you're not going to die from COVID.

00:43:07.160 | You might die from a lot of other things, pure misery.

00:43:10.040 | - Yeah, well, you might live forever.

00:43:12.840 | - Right, we don't know.

00:43:15.640 | - But it certainly doesn't maximize the joy.

00:43:18.180 | Of whatever makes life worth living,

00:43:20.480 | it doesn't maximize that.

00:43:21.980 | - Yeah, exactly.

00:43:23.480 | - You wrote in the book that Anthony Bourdain

00:43:26.060 | was one of your heroes.

00:43:27.380 | Can you speak to what inspired you about him?

00:43:33.100 | - Yeah, he wrote a book called

00:43:34.420 | "Kitchen Confidential" in the '90s.

00:43:37.260 | I was in cooking school at the time.

00:43:39.160 | It was so, he romanticized the kitchen,

00:43:44.160 | cooking in the restaurant so well.

00:43:46.540 | His writing is great.

00:43:48.300 | He kind of got me into, like, oh, that's cool.

00:43:51.120 | I wanna do that, it was cool.

00:43:55.200 | So I got into cooking school, got more engaged in it.

00:43:59.280 | And I had this FOMO feeling of,

00:44:01.880 | I wanted to experience what it's like

00:44:03.840 | to be in the back, when you're in cooking school,

00:44:06.280 | you are in the back.

00:44:08.160 | They had a restaurant, we would serve people,

00:44:09.440 | but it's not the same thing as actually being in a,

00:44:12.000 | like a real restaurant, it's like you're in a submarine

00:44:14.380 | with your teammates, and you gotta win tonight.

00:44:18.300 | Like, it's a real energy.

00:44:20.420 | And so that was a big inspiration.

00:44:23.020 | I followed him over there, so sad that he chose

00:44:25.900 | to end his life.

00:44:27.820 | But I also had met with him a few times,

00:44:30.660 | not like one-on-one over dinner or anything,

00:44:32.420 | but just met with him, and I just felt his love for food,

00:44:37.420 | and truly, just love for food.

00:44:41.380 | - He gave the advice of don't be afraid, get excited,

00:44:43.940 | and cook with love.

00:44:45.600 | - Yeah, I've used that phrase,

00:44:48.240 | especially the cook with love one.

00:44:50.680 | I mean, you know, one of the things about,

00:44:52.520 | which we talked about this earlier,

00:44:53.520 | where you get quick, tangible feedback from a customer

00:44:56.360 | when you're in the restaurant.

00:44:57.840 | I know when I didn't put love into that dish.

00:45:02.900 | I know when one of my line cooks did not put love

00:45:06.360 | into that part of the dish.

00:45:08.000 | I know when that expert person did not put love into,

00:45:11.240 | look, you know, double-checking the dish

00:45:12.880 | before putting it on the table, you just know.

00:45:15.740 | And cook with love is, when you do it for your family,

00:45:20.260 | oh, actually, especially when you do it for your family,

00:45:23.740 | the food doesn't have to be perfect,

00:45:26.440 | but you're cooking with love.

00:45:27.780 | - That's why you love scrambled eggs.

00:45:29.540 | - I do that, it's--

00:45:30.900 | - That's in the book, "Kimball's Scrambled Eggs."

00:45:32.500 | - Yes.

00:45:33.340 | - You promised to make me scramble eggs,

00:45:34.580 | and I'm gonna hold you to it.

00:45:35.540 | - That's great.

00:45:36.380 | (both laugh)

00:45:38.820 | - Cooking school, you mentioned,

00:45:40.700 | the French Culinary Institute.

00:45:42.380 | I heard it was a bit of a rough experience, in parts.

00:45:46.920 | - I would call it, it's not a rough experience in that--

00:45:50.040 | - In a beautiful way.

00:45:51.160 | - Yeah, it's exactly, it's not like I'm a victim of it.

00:45:53.300 | It's rough in that they intentionally make it rough.

00:45:58.300 | So the school costs the same price as Harvard to go to.

00:46:03.040 | You show up, you have to, it's an 18-month program.

00:46:08.360 | You are allowed to drop out at any time,

00:46:10.040 | you don't get your money back.

00:46:12.240 | 25 people started, six people graduated.

00:46:16.220 | And the people who graduated, I graduated,

00:46:20.200 | but man, there were times where I'm like,

00:46:22.000 | I can't handle this.

00:46:23.520 | I would literally say to my friends,

00:46:25.960 | oh, I gotta go to cooking school,

00:46:26.960 | I'm gonna go get screamed at for the next six or seven hours.

00:46:30.400 | - Yeah.

00:46:31.240 | - And I had this little French chef who was my nemesis.

00:46:35.880 | - Does he still live in your head somewhere?

00:46:37.480 | - He still lives in my head, exactly, he totally does.

00:46:40.640 | He's like five foot two or something.

00:46:43.120 | And I remember him screaming so much at me

00:46:47.480 | that he's like the short guy, I'm 6'5".

00:46:50.400 | The spittle would land on my face.

00:46:52.760 | - Nice.

00:46:53.880 | - And I would just have to sit there,

00:46:55.680 | or stand there, and take it.

00:46:58.600 | It was a very humbling experience.

00:47:02.440 | I did learn, though, that it's intentionally rough,

00:47:06.120 | so it took a little bit of the edge of it one day

00:47:10.080 | when that same chef had come over to me

00:47:13.480 | and said, "Move over a little bit."

00:47:15.080 | And I moved over, and he took my carrots, whatever,

00:47:18.320 | and started just chopping everything perfectly.

00:47:22.160 | And then he said, "You can come back."

00:47:23.720 | And then he went over to someone else

00:47:25.840 | and started screaming at them, saying that,

00:47:28.320 | "Look, even Kimball can do this, and you can't do this."

00:47:32.840 | And I was like, this whole thing's like a psycho game.

00:47:36.880 | So it did take the edge off when I realized

00:47:39.400 | that the guy was intentionally trying to break you down.

00:47:43.680 | And they do this, apparently, in the Army,

00:47:44.920 | and I've not been in the Army,

00:47:46.120 | but they need to break you down.

00:47:49.920 | Everything you know is worthless,

00:47:52.080 | so that then we can teach you,

00:47:54.440 | and you can come out of it

00:47:55.280 | with what actually we want you to know.

00:47:57.880 | - Are there specific technical lessons you remember

00:48:00.840 | you learned from that, sort of how to cut carrots,

00:48:05.120 | or how to approach food, how to prepare food,

00:48:10.120 | how to think about food,

00:48:12.200 | how to carry yourself in the kitchen?

00:48:15.120 | - All of those things.

00:48:16.340 | I think that one of the most beautiful lessons

00:48:20.280 | was actually scrambled eggs.

00:48:22.200 | So there's different layers of chefs.

00:48:24.120 | So they're all master chefs,

00:48:25.120 | they're all very well-known people and everything,

00:48:26.760 | but Alain Saltner was one of the chief, main, main guys.

00:48:32.300 | And he just passed away, he was a master chef.

00:48:35.500 | And everything kind of stopped

00:48:38.020 | when he would show up in the kitchen.

00:48:40.140 | And he would teach very few things.

00:48:42.380 | And all of the other chefs who would,

00:48:44.380 | the same ones that were screaming at us,

00:48:45.660 | just like, it was like the Red Sea partying.

00:48:48.580 | They have total respect for this human,

00:48:51.640 | and he can do it every once.

00:48:54.100 | And one of the things he wanted to teach

00:48:56.180 | was how do you make an omelet, a French omelet.

00:48:59.240 | And it's really fundamentally the same thing.

00:49:01.220 | It's a soft scrambled egg that you fold.

00:49:03.900 | And the love that he put into the time with us,

00:49:08.120 | and of course he's a legend.

00:49:10.040 | There were moments like that where I'm like, wow, okay.

00:49:12.980 | He also, just like the other chefs,

00:49:16.060 | didn't have any concern berating anyone.

00:49:18.180 | So he berated our master chefs.

00:49:20.780 | - Nice.

00:49:21.620 | - Saying, I don't trust these people

00:49:23.260 | to teach you how to make scrambled eggs.

00:49:26.900 | So I'm gonna do it instead.

00:49:28.820 | (laughing)

00:49:31.060 | - What, I mean, can you speak to that?

00:49:32.660 | 'Cause a lot of people hearing this

00:49:34.300 | would be like, scrambled eggs?

00:49:35.840 | Like, why do you need to be a master chef

00:49:37.740 | to really make scrambled eggs?

00:49:39.180 | - Yeah, it's a, well, first of all,

00:49:41.460 | for me, it's a learning journey forever.

00:49:47.100 | So I make scrambled eggs,

00:49:49.420 | I mean, I must have made it 10,000 times or more, whatever.

00:49:52.460 | - So it's like Gerald dreams of sushi,

00:49:54.020 | Kimball dreams of scrambled eggs?

00:49:55.940 | - Pretty much.

00:49:57.020 | So I will wake up and be held accountable

00:50:02.020 | by my kids to make scrambled eggs.

00:50:04.140 | So this happens every morning.

00:50:06.140 | And it's, I know all the steps,

00:50:11.140 | muscle memory level kind of steps.

00:50:14.180 | I don't know how much, well, I know it.

00:50:15.820 | And then I'll cook it and it's very meditative for me

00:50:19.340 | because you have to focus.

00:50:21.180 | So most scrambled eggs, soft scrambled eggs recipes

00:50:23.560 | are 10, 15 minutes to get them to that perfect softness.

00:50:28.520 | And the recipe that I got from Chef Alain

00:50:32.880 | was something that you do it in 90 seconds.

00:50:37.640 | But it requires total focus.

00:50:40.480 | Like if you look up for a second,

00:50:43.520 | you're gonna miss, you're going to miss the perfect moment

00:50:47.100 | where you have to stop and get those eggs out of the pan.

00:50:50.520 | Because once, 'cause the eggs will keep cooking.

00:50:53.240 | And so it's this meditation.

00:50:55.000 | And it's sometimes you hit it like perfectly.

00:50:59.440 | But most times, it could have been a little softer,

00:51:03.760 | could have been a little firmer,

00:51:05.440 | could have been a little bit more salt,

00:51:06.600 | could have been a little bit more pepper.

00:51:08.520 | And so what's really fun about the morning

00:51:12.400 | is my kids are kind of into it.

00:51:14.240 | So they're sort of like, we critique the eggs.

00:51:17.680 | - Yeah.

00:51:18.520 | - Every morning.

00:51:19.340 | - Do they have a rating system?

00:51:20.600 | We're back to this question.

00:51:21.480 | - It's more like, and again,

00:51:23.680 | it also comes back to how do people feel, right?

00:51:25.000 | So my kids can be in a bad mood and they can be grumpy.

00:51:26.920 | - Or it's like a Michelin star system, like wait.

00:51:28.720 | - No, no, it's more like, oh yeah,

00:51:30.920 | I like my eggs a little more gooey-er.

00:51:33.680 | Or yesterday it was this way,

00:51:35.480 | a little bit more salt, a little less salt.

00:51:38.360 | Salt is usually the one that is,

00:51:41.800 | because not all salts are equal.

00:51:46.520 | So if you are used to working with a certain kind of salt

00:51:49.600 | and then you just are forced, for some reason,

00:51:51.560 | you ran out of salt, so you use some other salt,

00:51:53.960 | you actually don't know how to use it.

00:51:55.280 | You really want to have the same salt all the time.

00:51:58.040 | - Yeah, you have a page on salt in the book,

00:52:00.680 | which is fascinating.

00:52:01.560 | - Salt is, you got to get to know your salt,

00:52:03.960 | you got to love your salt,

00:52:05.640 | and you got to use it over and over and over again.

00:52:07.960 | And it will teach you how to use that salt.

00:52:11.560 | Your own palate will tell you how salty you like things.

00:52:14.000 | But if you change it up

00:52:14.920 | and you mix up a whole bunch of salts,

00:52:16.760 | you've now multiplied your learning path.

00:52:19.480 | So for me, my favorite salt is kosher salt,

00:52:23.840 | and I like to use that all the time.

00:52:26.960 | And if I ever change it,

00:52:28.840 | I might sprinkle a little bit of molten salt,

00:52:30.760 | just a crunchy, sort of a flaky salt.

00:52:34.640 | But it's more for that, when you're actually eating.

00:52:36.880 | - For the texture.

00:52:37.720 | - It gives you texture as well as salt, exactly.

00:52:39.760 | You wouldn't use it on scrambled eggs,

00:52:40.880 | but if you switch out your salts, it's a different weapon.

00:52:45.880 | - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:52:47.600 | - You need to learn it.

00:52:48.840 | - I like how, you know, usually there's wine connoisseurs.

00:52:53.840 | You're saying, going back to sort of farm to table,

00:52:58.240 | when you're talking about carrots,

00:53:00.280 | in that same rigor and nuance,

00:53:02.960 | you have to consider the different farms involved

00:53:06.560 | for the carrots.

00:53:07.640 | In that same way,

00:53:08.480 | you have to consider the different salts.

00:53:11.080 | - Yeah.

00:53:11.920 | - With like-

00:53:12.880 | - And also not even, well, kosher salt's the same.

00:53:14.640 | It's the particular salt that you like, get to know it.

00:53:19.640 | Get in a relationship with it.

00:53:21.440 | It's like great.

00:53:22.720 | You will learn so much.

00:53:24.600 | - In terms of the measurement, the proportion,

00:53:27.360 | the amount of salt you put in,

00:53:29.800 | are you doing that like exactly,

00:53:32.640 | or are you doing it by feel?

00:53:34.000 | - So it's by feel,

00:53:34.920 | and that's where you get the relationship.

00:53:36.160 | So in fact, I have a, in the cookbook,

00:53:38.840 | I have QR codes that people can scan,

00:53:41.500 | because what I struggle with recipes

00:53:43.320 | is they don't teach technique, right?

00:53:45.920 | They can describe the technique,

00:53:47.520 | but they don't teach the technique,

00:53:48.640 | 'cause it's a technique, it's not a recipe.

00:53:51.200 | And so one of the lessons is how do you salt a steak?

00:53:55.140 | And the answer is not here's a teaspoon

00:53:59.000 | and you do it this way.

00:54:00.720 | The answer is use kosher salt

00:54:04.280 | so you can see with your eyes,

00:54:07.000 | 'cause they're little flakes,

00:54:07.920 | how much salt is on your steak,

00:54:10.600 | and then taste it, cook it, and then taste it.

00:54:13.880 | You know, do you think you didn't need more

00:54:15.200 | or you needed less?

00:54:16.440 | Okay, now next time, put a little more on

00:54:18.880 | because you can see it.

00:54:20.680 | And it's about learning the fact

00:54:22.920 | that you wanna be able to see how much salt is on the steak

00:54:26.200 | so that you can then train yourself for the future

00:54:28.080 | of how much salt you want on your steak.

00:54:29.680 | - Yeah, but then the steak

00:54:30.520 | and the salt kind of dance together.

00:54:31.880 | It depends on where the steak came from.

00:54:33.640 | - That's true, that's true,

00:54:34.560 | or the thickness of the steak, that'll make a difference.

00:54:36.720 | But for the most part, if you learn,

00:54:39.160 | if you're able to see it versus table salt, for example,

00:54:42.720 | this just disappears.

00:54:44.840 | You just can't see what you're putting on your steak.

00:54:46.920 | You can't really learn as a result.

00:54:48.520 | - I think you talk about roast chickens

00:54:49.840 | where your love of food began.

00:54:52.360 | Well, what about steak?

00:54:53.800 | - I mean, I love a good steak, it's so great.

00:54:56.320 | - So in the French school,

00:54:59.720 | you add sauces and all this kind of stuff,

00:55:02.160 | and in boulders when you realize

00:55:03.840 | like there's a beauty to the basic ingredient.

00:55:06.880 | - Yeah, like a good New York strip

00:55:11.240 | from a good rancher.

00:55:12.660 | There's a lot of discussion, controversy

00:55:18.920 | on how cattle should be raised,

00:55:21.800 | and we have a very different approach,

00:55:26.080 | which is we know how our cattle are raised.

00:55:28.800 | We go to the farm.

00:55:30.640 | We get to know the rancher,

00:55:32.760 | and sometimes you do wanna have them be finished on,

00:55:36.920 | like they'll be grass-fed for the most part,

00:55:38.360 | but then there's some sort of cool recipe

00:55:41.680 | of food you're giving them

00:55:42.740 | that will then make them taste better,

00:55:44.640 | and sometimes it is actually pretty good

00:55:47.420 | to have 100% grass-fed.

00:55:49.120 | I've had some amazing ranchers

00:55:50.960 | that show me that the flavor is all there.

00:55:54.440 | For the average person that might go

00:55:56.200 | to Whole Foods or a grocery store,

00:55:58.400 | I think the simplicity of a good steak,

00:56:02.480 | it is important to get good sourcing,

00:56:05.160 | but also it's just good.

00:56:07.180 | - What's your favorite cut of meat?

00:56:08.680 | It's New York strip, probably New York strip for me.

00:56:10.720 | - Yeah, New York strip, yeah.

00:56:12.080 | I like the fact that it's lean,

00:56:14.480 | but if you want the fat,

00:56:15.560 | you can dive into that little strip of fat,

00:56:18.200 | or you can leave it alone

00:56:19.240 | 'cause you don't want it that light,

00:56:21.040 | and it's also a great steak for adding something,

00:56:26.960 | like if you wanna, you could either do a pepper sauce

00:56:30.040 | or you could do a lot of ground pepper,

00:56:32.000 | which gives it a peppery,

00:56:33.920 | it's not sauce, but it's a peppery steak.

00:56:35.980 | It's a really good steak for a canvas for other things.

00:56:40.980 | - But the basic ingredients you're playing with

00:56:43.680 | is salt and pepper.

00:56:45.200 | - Yeah, pretty much.

00:56:47.240 | Actually, I will say there's another one, garlic.

00:56:50.260 | When you can, this is my favorite recipe for a steak,

00:56:56.080 | is you season it, both sides, salt and pepper,

00:56:59.820 | you saute it in a little olive oil, barely anything,

00:57:04.680 | and you're getting a nice, crisp,

00:57:07.240 | like a dark golden brown on both sides.

00:57:10.120 | The other trick with cooking a steak is don't touch it.

00:57:12.520 | You just put one side.

00:57:14.300 | When you're ready to turn it, turn it around,

00:57:16.600 | don't touch it any other time,

00:57:18.800 | but at the end, you take a dab of butter

00:57:22.480 | and you crush a clove of garlic.

00:57:25.560 | You don't even chop it, you just crush the clove,

00:57:27.280 | and you put the two of them in the pan

00:57:30.160 | and you just roll the steak around in the garlic butter.

00:57:33.360 | I think that's the one.

00:57:36.080 | - Bold move, Kimball, bold move.

00:57:38.760 | What do you, since you're in Austin quite a bit,

00:57:42.280 | opening a restaurant here,

00:57:45.120 | what do you think about barbecue?

00:57:47.160 | It's kind of the Texas way.

00:57:52.160 | - Well, I would say there's an Austin way,

00:57:53.840 | which is, and actually even Austin would say

00:57:56.560 | there's a suburb of Austin way.

00:57:58.120 | I think that actually the adventure of food is wonderful.

00:58:03.660 | I would absolutely say that Austin

00:58:06.600 | is one of the great food cities of America

00:58:11.280 | and barbecue is one of its gifts that it gives the city.

00:58:15.880 | But you go to one and the other

00:58:17.480 | and you'll have a different approach.

00:58:18.920 | And that's the part I love,

00:58:21.120 | is where there's a real celebration of the artisan.

00:58:24.560 | So you might go to one and they have a style that they love

00:58:29.560 | and they've been doing it for years.

00:58:31.280 | And then you'll go to another and they have a style

00:58:32.800 | that they love and they've been doing it for years.

00:58:34.200 | And it's not, they're still barbecue,

00:58:37.320 | but they're actually different.

00:58:38.400 | And it's really beautiful to see that.

00:58:40.400 | And that's, I think that's what food culture is.

00:58:44.000 | Like it just builds up over time

00:58:46.560 | by people who love this style of cooking.

00:58:49.440 | - Well, I especially love the communal,

00:58:51.660 | like how they structure restaurants usually,

00:58:54.120 | or I don't even want to call it a restaurant

00:58:56.760 | 'cause it doesn't feel like a restaurant.

00:58:59.760 | It feels like a tavern of some sort,

00:59:01.280 | like Terry Black's is like that.

00:59:03.200 | - Yeah, they also have like paper towels.

00:59:05.400 | Get as messy as you like.

00:59:06.840 | And it's a whole roll of paper towel.

00:59:08.200 | They don't even give you a napkin.

00:59:09.600 | They know what you're getting into.

00:59:10.720 | - Yeah, and there's just wood everywhere

00:59:13.600 | and it's kind of has this feel

00:59:15.360 | like this place has been around forever.

00:59:17.080 | It's not changing.

00:59:18.040 | I know it's the 21st century with the internet

00:59:19.960 | and all this kind of nonsense that you people are building,

00:59:23.080 | but really this is all about the same.

00:59:25.600 | It's been the same for generations.

00:59:27.280 | We're doing it the same.

00:59:28.220 | That kind of feel like if you want to escape the world

00:59:31.160 | in that way and then truly connect with people.

00:59:33.880 | - One of the other things that'll happen

00:59:34.960 | in a town like Austin is there'll be a barbecue joint

00:59:37.840 | that is just legendary, right?

00:59:39.480 | And then out of that will come someone

00:59:42.400 | who wants to do their own barbecue joint

00:59:44.640 | and they'll take a learning from that barbecue joint.

00:59:48.480 | They'll open up a new one,

00:59:49.640 | but it won't be the same as the other barbecue joint.

00:59:52.160 | Part of it is like, dude, don't just do the same thing.

00:59:55.040 | Do something.

00:59:56.080 | What do you have to say?

00:59:58.440 | But also part of it is if you're in the world of food

01:00:02.000 | as an art form and you want to go open up

01:00:05.400 | another barbecue joint, you kind of want to prove yourself.

01:00:09.160 | Like I deserve to have a barbecue joint in this town.

01:00:12.760 | I know this is one of the holy grails of barbecue

01:00:15.760 | and people will follow you like they were following

01:00:19.200 | a musician or they're following an artist

01:00:21.880 | and they are excited to see what your version is

01:00:26.200 | and how well you can pull it off.

01:00:27.400 | It's like, it's actually, that's what I love,

01:00:30.120 | that's what I mean by like a city with a food culture.

01:00:33.200 | Austin has that.

01:00:34.280 | - There's also like a legend to certain places.

01:00:37.200 | Certain places are more than just the food they create.

01:00:40.040 | It's like, that could be a burden.

01:00:43.320 | They have to like live up to the legendary nature

01:00:46.240 | of the name.

01:00:47.360 | - Our restaurant in Boulder, the kitchen is 20 years old.

01:00:51.600 | We're very well known, we're very well respected

01:00:54.440 | and we do have to live up to the name.

01:00:56.300 | I think that our restaurant lives up to its name

01:01:01.300 | in not just the food.

01:01:03.040 | It's like you walk in and you feel the restaurant

01:01:05.760 | and that is also something we've just done naturally.

01:01:10.760 | The space is a 120-year-old building.

01:01:15.280 | Used to be a brothel and it was a bookstore.

01:01:18.640 | Like storied history.

01:01:19.960 | - This was a, literally, this was a mining town, right?

01:01:23.880 | So back in the 1800s, this was built late 1800s.

01:01:27.740 | That sort of brothel, that was a thing.

01:01:31.720 | And so there's an actual tunnel in the basement

01:01:35.280 | that goes to the local hotel

01:01:37.760 | that would be used for going back and forth

01:01:41.060 | between the hotel and the brothel without people knowing.

01:01:45.000 | And the tunnel is now concreted up.

01:01:47.800 | But you can go about 20, 30 feet into the tunnel.

01:01:50.720 | But you go into the space and it's actually an old space

01:01:54.940 | so you feel like it's been there forever.

01:01:57.520 | - Yeah.

01:01:58.400 | In 2010, you had a life-threatening accident

01:02:02.840 | that changed the way you see life, the world,

01:02:06.600 | also the way you see food and cooking.

01:02:09.880 | Can you tell me the story of it?

01:02:12.080 | - Yeah, so 2010, I was 37.

01:02:16.200 | I had opened the restaurant in 2004

01:02:20.920 | and I had loved the restaurant world, loved it.

01:02:24.620 | But I didn't really wanna grow a restaurant company.

01:02:27.420 | That wasn't my goal.

01:02:29.680 | And so I went back into technology

01:02:32.640 | and I had gone from something that I love

01:02:37.640 | to something that I like.

01:02:40.880 | For me, it was like chewing sawdust every day.

01:02:45.640 | I just couldn't believe that I had gone from,

01:02:48.800 | that had changed my life, I had gone back into technology.

01:02:52.040 | And now I do work in technology and I do love it

01:02:54.600 | but I found a better relationship with it.

01:02:55.880 | But I was really unhappy.

01:02:58.600 | From the outside, I was a sort of CEO of a hot startup

01:03:02.400 | but from the inside, I was just very unhappy.

01:03:05.600 | And I was in Jackson Hole

01:03:08.020 | and I was doing these very aggressive snowboard runs

01:03:10.640 | and I'm, at the time, a pretty good aggressive snowboarder.

01:03:14.200 | And I remember saying to myself,

01:03:15.200 | "Look, I've got kids, I need to chill on this."

01:03:19.320 | The next day was Valentine's Day.

01:03:20.300 | It's the next day, tomorrow's Valentine's Day.

01:03:21.640 | I'm just gonna have a nice day

01:03:22.640 | with the family and my wife at the time.

01:03:25.640 | And we went to a children's run.

01:03:27.920 | You do the inner tube run.

01:03:30.160 | And the tubes are small but everyone uses the same tube.

01:03:33.460 | So I'm six foot five and my kids are four years old

01:03:37.320 | and everyone uses the same size tube.

01:03:39.280 | It should have been a message to me not to get on this thing

01:03:42.720 | but I went and got on it

01:03:44.240 | and on the first run, and I went down,

01:03:47.860 | you're going super fast, 35 miles an hour,

01:03:50.440 | and the tube hit the braking mats and it stopped.

01:03:55.120 | The little tube just stopped where it was,

01:03:57.200 | it just threw me.

01:03:58.480 | My head was facing downhill

01:04:03.080 | so that's created the wrong center of gravity

01:04:05.280 | so instead of braking, it just threw me.

01:04:07.960 | I landed on my head.

01:04:09.800 | My head went into my chest, like compression into my chest.

01:04:13.760 | Like down like that.

01:04:15.520 | I ruptured my spine at C6 and C7.

01:04:19.320 | And in like the blink of a second, I was paralyzed.

01:04:25.360 | I was like, like what?

01:04:29.400 | You know, just like impossible to,

01:04:32.820 | impossible to comprehend.

01:04:35.600 | And they take me, they put this big thing on my,

01:04:39.680 | like halo on my head and they take me to the hospital

01:04:42.000 | which was more of a medical clinic.

01:04:44.120 | And I'm just like, what is going on here?

01:04:47.120 | - Do you remember your thoughts from the moment it happened

01:04:49.360 | to like the way to get to, got to the hospital?

01:04:52.120 | - I remember being, so this is one of the things

01:04:55.080 | that actually the doctor said caused the most damage

01:04:58.040 | was I was thrown from the tube

01:05:01.880 | and I heard this big crunch sound in my body.

01:05:05.440 | And I knew that I was hurt but I didn't feel any pain.

01:05:11.280 | Which is, that's also, why wouldn't you feel pain?

01:05:14.840 | 'Cause you don't, paralyzed, you don't feel pain.

01:05:17.560 | And I'm face down on the snow

01:05:20.920 | and the snow is burning my face.

01:05:22.680 | 'Cause you know, you can't do that, you need something.

01:05:25.800 | And I found a way to turn myself around

01:05:29.840 | so that my face wouldn't be on the ground

01:05:32.480 | but I knew I couldn't move.

01:05:34.560 | And that they said actually caused more damage than,

01:05:39.680 | well, obviously the accident created the opening

01:05:41.800 | but once you move your body,

01:05:44.240 | the blood goes into the spinal column at a faster rate

01:05:46.920 | and that is what caused my paralysis.

01:05:49.840 | But I remember that and I remember getting

01:05:54.840 | into the ambulance.

01:05:59.000 | - Did you think you were gonna die?

01:06:02.080 | At that, like in those seconds, minutes?

01:06:04.940 | - It was a different feeling of death.

01:06:07.480 | It was more, it was more of a, what is going on here?

01:06:12.480 | Like it just was, it was more,

01:06:15.280 | like I can't make sense of what's going on.

01:06:17.680 | It was, it was a moment when I got to the hospital

01:06:23.600 | and they did this MRI and the doctor comes up to me

01:06:29.560 | and says, look, we've done this MRI

01:06:33.840 | and so I'm now, now I'm in the hospital

01:06:38.080 | and I'm like, I can't move.

01:06:39.320 | But I also don't feel any pain.

01:06:40.600 | So I'm like, it's very confusing.

01:06:42.480 | Your body looks like you can move it.

01:06:44.960 | Like, see how I'm moving my hand?

01:06:46.840 | Like, it looks like you can do that

01:06:49.200 | and then it just doesn't move.

01:06:50.760 | It doesn't, there's no, there's no feedback loop

01:06:54.560 | that it's not moving.

01:06:55.400 | Your brain even thinks it's moving, but it's not moving.

01:06:58.600 | It's like the worst, like the most terrifying thing.

01:07:02.720 | So the doctor says, look, the way you broke your necks

01:07:06.520 | really, that zero degree angle, that is so rare.

01:07:10.840 | But as a result, there is no twisting of the spine.

01:07:14.240 | We think that we can get the blood out of your spinal column

01:07:17.760 | and you should get some or maybe all of your movement back.

01:07:21.320 | And I was like, oh, okay, I think I'm gonna be fine.

01:07:26.800 | I guess I'm gonna be fine.

01:07:28.440 | And then I realized I had tears

01:07:31.400 | just streaming down the side of my face.

01:07:33.600 | And I was like, whoa, man, I have no idea what's going on.

01:07:38.600 | - So this kind of intense state of confusion,

01:07:43.320 | I wonder if it's a weird psychological defense mechanism

01:07:47.040 | of like taking you away

01:07:48.680 | from the obvious possibility of death.

01:07:52.000 | - Yeah, it was a, for sure, all the defense,

01:07:54.200 | all of the defenses were up.

01:07:55.720 | I don't know how else to describe it,

01:07:58.000 | but there was, there was denial.

01:08:00.320 | - Yeah.

01:08:01.160 | - There was this curiosity of like, why is there no pain?

01:08:06.160 | Like that's, when they did actually repair me and fix me,

01:08:13.720 | that was three days later.

01:08:15.200 | The pain was indescribable how much pain I was in.

01:08:20.200 | But there was no pain for three days.

01:08:22.600 | - (laughs) The human body is fascinating.

01:08:25.960 | - Man.

01:08:27.400 | - Wow.

01:08:29.120 | - So they were able--

01:08:31.080 | - Yeah, so they did the surgery,

01:08:32.160 | but I had this very clear voice in my head

01:08:35.840 | that kind of determined that it's God.

01:08:38.960 | I'm not religious,

01:08:39.800 | but I don't know how else to describe the voice.

01:08:42.760 | And this voice was very clear.

01:08:44.320 | You're gonna work with kids and food.

01:08:48.360 | I'm like, okay, where did that come from?

01:08:50.520 | I'm like tech CEO, I have a restaurant.

01:08:53.680 | And then we were working with some kids in schools

01:08:56.400 | with like some, you know, helping a local non-profit.

01:08:59.600 | And he's like, no, you're just gonna work on kids and food.

01:09:02.560 | And my good friend Antonio and my brother

01:09:07.320 | were in the hospital and I was like,

01:09:09.480 | I'm gonna work on kids and food.

01:09:12.800 | 'Cause they're like, he's crazy, he lost his mind.

01:09:15.760 | But not that they were, no one was arguing with me,

01:09:18.760 | but I was like, I'm just going to do that,

01:09:21.200 | I need to say it out loud.

01:09:23.160 | And I remember resigning from my job

01:09:26.800 | as the CEO from the hospital.

01:09:29.160 | And that was it.

01:09:35.080 | It was just clear, it was a clear voice.

01:09:37.840 | Wasn't for a moment, wasn't like a flash of light

01:09:40.000 | or anything, it was probably two weeks of clear voice.

01:09:43.520 | - Of clarity. - Clarity.

01:09:45.160 | Exactly, clarity and no monkey brain, nothing.

01:09:47.760 | No monkey brain, just clarity.

01:09:50.600 | - So you're not a religious person,

01:09:52.000 | but you do call it the voice of God.

01:09:55.840 | Who is that God, do you think?

01:09:58.120 | Like, who is that?

01:10:00.120 | Where did that come from?

01:10:01.440 | - Well, I've done ayahuasca and I've spoken

01:10:06.880 | to what they call Mother Aya,

01:10:08.880 | which is another version of God.

01:10:13.080 | It's a divine presence.

01:10:18.560 | It's maybe, I think it's a better way to say it.

01:10:21.560 | I've also had this debate in my head.

01:10:23.960 | Maybe it's just me, I'm talking to me.

01:10:26.760 | And it's my peaceful, more kinder,

01:10:31.760 | less caught up in the emotion of the day version of me.

01:10:36.880 | Maybe it's me.

01:10:38.260 | Okay, maybe it is, but it's there.

01:10:40.880 | - But who are you?

01:10:42.240 | How deep does it go?

01:10:43.440 | What does you mean?

01:10:45.320 | You could be, first of all,

01:10:48.320 | the depth of what the human mind even is,

01:10:51.940 | is a gigantic mystery.

01:10:53.600 | Consciousness, all of it.

01:10:55.440 | Who are you?

01:10:56.280 | So like, yeah, maybe it is you,

01:10:57.760 | but then maybe in order to build you,

01:10:59.780 | we need to build the universe.

01:11:01.360 | - Yeah.

01:11:02.200 | - You are actually a fundamentally a part

01:11:06.440 | of this whole human society.

01:11:09.400 | So the pieces of humans that you've interacted with

01:11:13.800 | are all within you.

01:11:15.160 | And then maybe the history of the humans

01:11:16.640 | that came before are also in there.

01:11:18.320 | And maybe the entirety of life on Earth is also in there.

01:11:21.080 | And whatever brought life about on Earth

01:11:25.440 | is in there somewhere.

01:11:26.480 | So that's all you.

01:11:27.320 | - Yeah, all of the, which is really true.

01:11:29.560 | Evolution literally is true,

01:11:31.200 | that we all are, the photons from the sun came in.

01:11:36.080 | - You're part fish.

01:11:37.160 | - We all came from that.

01:11:39.600 | I think there's one,

01:11:40.600 | so one of the things I do is meditate.

01:11:45.760 | And this was, I've been meditating for many, many years.

01:11:49.440 | And the way I meditate is I sit

01:11:51.600 | and I listen to my thoughts.

01:11:54.320 | And I simply just do that for 15 to 20 minutes.

01:11:56.880 | And it just calms the nervous system.

01:11:59.320 | And I might breathe and just be,

01:12:01.960 | breathe through, because it's been a stressful day.

01:12:03.980 | And it's just a beautiful way to, I kind of do it around.

01:12:06.520 | I remember I said I used to do a scotch at the bar

01:12:09.520 | after work, now I go meditate for instance.

01:12:11.480 | A little less, a little bit better for my health.

01:12:16.360 | But meditation I was taught was,

01:12:21.200 | Sam Harris actually taught me this,

01:12:23.400 | was not so much just about watching your thoughts,

01:12:27.520 | but realizing that you're a watcher.

01:12:30.900 | You're actually a watcher.

01:12:34.160 | You're not just, who is the person watching that?

01:12:38.300 | That's you, actually.

01:12:39.600 | Your thoughts are floating through your mind,

01:12:42.840 | but you are the watcher.

01:12:44.260 | And I was like, ah, that's really interesting.

01:12:46.880 | Okay, so I'm gonna learn that, I'm gonna be the watcher.

01:12:50.040 | And what I learned was, I'm watching these thoughts go by,

01:12:54.540 | and there's a consistent other presence.

01:12:58.840 | And I'm like, what is that consistent other presence?

01:13:03.920 | It's not a thought.

01:13:05.360 | That is not a, it's not a,

01:13:08.320 | not something I can kind of let it float away,

01:13:10.160 | and it doesn't even want to float away.

01:13:11.360 | It isn't, it's just a consistent other presence

01:13:14.880 | that I can watch and feel.

01:13:16.920 | - So you are the watcher watching the feelings and thoughts,

01:13:21.880 | but there's also an other presence next to you almost.

01:13:24.520 | - Yes, yeah, that's how I feel.

01:13:26.960 | And it's a beautiful presence.

01:13:28.320 | It's not a presence that is trying to intervene.

01:13:32.640 | It's not a presence that is trying to tell you what to do.

01:13:36.200 | It's just a beautiful presence.

01:13:37.840 | And that might be the thing, part of the thing you met

01:13:41.840 | when you took ayahuasca.

01:13:45.640 | - I learned about Mother Aya where you have this experience

01:13:48.360 | of talking to, actually, I would say the closest thing

01:13:51.360 | to breaking my neck, that feeling, was ayahuasca.

01:13:53.760 | - Can you go through that experience?

01:13:54.840 | 'Cause I'm actually traveling to the Amazon jungle

01:13:57.400 | in a month, I'll probably do ayahuasca for the first time.

01:14:01.200 | - Okay. - So I need a preview.

01:14:02.880 | Unofficial instruction manual.

01:14:04.160 | - Yeah, sure.

01:14:05.040 | So first of all, I think there are many different ways

01:14:07.880 | to do it, right?

01:14:08.720 | And I've done many, many different ways.

01:14:10.760 | There's a very Western medicine approach

01:14:14.840 | where you have doctors that look after you during the day.

01:14:19.840 | You put an eye mask on, you're on a futon,

01:14:23.440 | and you really are in a Western medicine setting.

01:14:27.280 | And it's, frankly, for me,

01:14:29.200 | has been the most powerful experience.

01:14:31.800 | I feel the most comfortable 'cause I'm part

01:14:34.080 | of Western medicine in my upbringing.

01:14:36.480 | The other extreme, but they're kind of in between,

01:14:40.060 | would be very, probably a Peruvian ceremonies

01:14:42.840 | where you're probably gonna go.

01:14:44.320 | Very much about, you do it in a community,

01:14:49.320 | you do it with others, and you feel people go

01:14:52.160 | through their pain and their processing.

01:14:54.220 | So I know the whole gamut, but the thing

01:14:58.480 | that I found most powerful about it,

01:15:00.840 | and profoundly powerful, I would say.

01:15:03.120 | But first of all, it's non-recreational,

01:15:04.720 | so no one should do this for a good time.

01:15:08.360 | This is not a good time.

01:15:10.180 | This is a very--

01:15:13.360 | - Almost traumatic, but in, again, a beautiful way.

01:15:16.280 | - I was actually gonna say that word,

01:15:17.120 | but it's not traumatic, it's profound.

01:15:20.360 | So it's more like you don't have,

01:15:23.900 | you really leave who you were before behind.

01:15:31.800 | And then you become the person you will be afterwards.

01:15:36.800 | (laughing)

01:15:40.800 | - That's never an easy thing.

01:15:42.400 | - Yes, exactly.

01:15:43.240 | And sometimes what I recall was arguing with Brother Aya

01:15:48.240 | and saying, no, I'm fine, what are you talking about?

01:15:52.440 | Like, leave me alone.

01:15:53.520 | (laughing)

01:15:55.320 | And yeah, that--

01:15:56.560 | - How did that work out?

01:15:57.640 | (laughing)

01:16:00.880 | - Um, but before 2010, the accident,

01:16:05.880 | the two transformational experiences you had,

01:16:09.880 | you were a very successful tech CEO.

01:16:14.480 | Maybe go back to the early days with Zip2.

01:16:19.720 | In 1994, you and Elon started Zip2.

01:16:22.480 | Tell me a story of that.

01:16:24.160 | - Yeah, so '94, we actually did a road trip

01:16:25.760 | around the U.S. to brainstorm about what we wanted to do

01:16:29.480 | after college.

01:16:30.580 | - What was the road trip like?

01:16:31.560 | - That was awesome.

01:16:32.400 | So we went from Silicon Valley to Philadelphia.

01:16:36.160 | - Nice.

01:16:37.000 | - My brother's old, like a really cool,

01:16:40.840 | it's one of those very old BMWs,

01:16:42.360 | not ones from the '60s or '70s,

01:16:44.840 | but the car didn't work, it would break down all the time.

01:16:48.440 | But we had a blast, you know, we just,

01:16:51.840 | I remember going through Needles

01:16:53.960 | on the border of California and Arizona,

01:16:56.360 | it's a town called Needles.

01:16:57.640 | It's the hottest place in America.

01:16:59.480 | And the engine was not cooling,

01:17:02.880 | so we had to put the heat on.

01:17:04.960 | So we did the heat blasting to keep the engine cool

01:17:08.520 | and keep the windows down

01:17:10.520 | because you can't stand the heat in the car.

01:17:12.400 | But actually, the outside heat is hotter

01:17:14.000 | than the inside heat, so you're just in a furnace.

01:17:18.440 | - Yeah.

01:17:19.280 | - You're driving through.

01:17:20.100 | - Just sweating.

01:17:20.940 | - It was at night even, I can't imagine doing that.

01:17:21.960 | - Oh, wow.

01:17:22.800 | - In the day.

01:17:23.620 | - Yeah, it was a wonderful, it took us a few weeks,

01:17:27.540 | I think three weeks, maybe.

01:17:29.260 | - First time across America?

01:17:30.700 | - First, like a road trip like that, yeah, for sure.

01:17:33.740 | But it was really not a road trip for tourist sites.

01:17:36.700 | We went to the weirdest places.

01:17:39.420 | And actually, I would say we didn't go to them,

01:17:41.460 | we broke down in the weirdest places.

01:17:44.340 | Because that's when we stopped.

01:17:45.900 | - Yeah, did you meet any interesting people?

01:17:49.000 | - I remember we broke down in the badlands of South Dakota,

01:17:53.180 | about an hour from Rapid City, and that road is empty.

01:17:58.180 | And so, we actually slept in the car,

01:18:01.100 | because there was just no one around,

01:18:03.500 | there were no cell phones in those days.

01:18:05.620 | And eventually, a trucker picked us up.

01:18:08.140 | I was just like, man, you guys are the dumbest kids

01:18:11.660 | on the planet, I was like 21, he was maybe 22.

01:18:14.940 | But he was so nice to us, and so kind to us,

01:18:18.580 | and found us a mechanic in Rapid City,

01:18:21.340 | and then found us a tow truck.

01:18:23.140 | And yeah, you find the most wonderful people.

01:18:25.580 | When you're in a place of distress,

01:18:29.140 | people do wanna take care of other people.

01:18:32.940 | - They help you.

01:18:33.760 | - Yeah, they wanna help.

01:18:34.600 | - And especially when you're on a road trip.

01:18:36.460 | 'Cause I've taken a road trip across the United States,

01:18:40.420 | and there's a part of people where they really love that.

01:18:45.420 | I think part of them wants to do that also,

01:18:50.340 | wants to escape whatever the local, the struggles,

01:18:53.660 | just whatever the mundaneness, the struggle of life are.

01:18:58.580 | A road trip is a kind of thing where you're like,

01:19:00.900 | you know what, I'm going to get away from it all,

01:19:03.420 | and I'm going to experience life in the full,

01:19:06.100 | the epic sort of Jack Kerouac way of seeing America.

01:19:10.060 | The people, not the tourist sites, just the humans.

01:19:12.340 | - Yeah, exactly, this was not tourist related.

01:19:14.940 | We did, of course, when we stopped at Mount Rushmore

01:19:18.060 | at night, which you can see nothing.

01:19:20.180 | - Yeah, yeah.

01:19:21.100 | - We thought that was hilarious.

01:19:23.080 | We couldn't see Mount Rushmore.

01:19:24.420 | - That's great.

01:19:25.260 | - It was like, well, we physically were here.

01:19:29.540 | We took a photo of us not seeing Mount Rushmore.

01:19:31.140 | - In the dark.

01:19:31.980 | You could just say you went to the Grand Canyon too,

01:19:35.820 | just at night, and just visit different places

01:19:39.980 | when the car broke down, I love it.

01:19:41.940 | So yes, you took the road trip before finding Zip2.

01:19:45.740 | - Yeah, so I had an experience in college

01:19:48.500 | running a house painting business

01:19:50.380 | that, for me, was my first experience with success.

01:19:54.300 | It was very, very hard.

01:19:56.220 | It was a franchise where they teach students

01:19:58.860 | how to paint houses, but I was good at it.

01:20:02.220 | I built a team of 30 people after about two years,

01:20:07.220 | and so I had a taste of, hey, I'm not unable to do this.

01:20:13.100 | In fact, my most vulnerable place,

01:20:14.740 | I remember as an entrepreneur, was I had,

01:20:19.740 | I just loved the idea of Wall Street and finance.

01:20:23.020 | I was kind of allured by it.

01:20:25.060 | This was in late '80s, I'm in high school,

01:20:27.300 | and there was a lot of these books,

01:20:28.380 | Liar's Poker and others that came out,

01:20:29.860 | and I was like, ah, man, this is awesome.

01:20:31.620 | These people must be amazing.

01:20:33.180 | So I went to business school, and I busted my ass

01:20:36.040 | to get a kick-ass summer job,

01:20:38.140 | and I got a job in one of the main banks,

01:20:39.620 | and it was in Toronto,

01:20:40.460 | but it was like the original Wall Street.

01:20:42.900 | And I was so disappointed with the people that I was around.

01:20:46.780 | I was just like, whoa.

01:20:48.660 | I totally misunderstood what the banking world is.

01:20:54.500 | It was a very large bank.

01:20:56.420 | I'm sure if I had gone to a more aggressive one,

01:20:58.420 | maybe I would have had a better experience.

01:20:59.780 | And I say aggressive, meaning someone was paying attention.

01:21:02.540 | Like, this was just people kind of showing up

01:21:07.260 | and not doing much, you know?

01:21:09.100 | And actually, this is funny.

01:21:12.020 | So this is great.

01:21:13.620 | So 1991, '92, so one of those summers.

01:21:18.380 | But the summer job was literally,

01:21:24.660 | they print out the sales for all brokerage houses

01:21:31.500 | for the whole company, like it's a pile of papers

01:21:34.100 | that's maybe four or five feet tall,

01:21:37.060 | and you have a pencil, and you add things up

01:21:40.820 | using your pencil and a calculator.

01:21:42.780 | And I had known about Lotus 1, 2, 3 forever.

01:21:49.220 | Excel was coming out, and I was like,

01:21:52.780 | hey, guys, you know that there's a different way to do this.

01:21:55.380 | (both laughing)

01:21:57.540 | And they're like, don't talk to us, just do your job.

01:22:01.620 | Go do it. - Yeah, just use the pencil.

01:22:03.060 | - So I went to the head of the data,

01:22:06.140 | I just asked, 'cause in those days,

01:22:08.660 | you had the manila envelope where you can,

01:22:10.880 | you just write the name of the person

01:22:12.940 | that you want this to go to, and it'll go to them.

01:22:15.340 | It's like email, I guess, but there's no filter.

01:22:18.900 | So I sent a note-- - There's no spam filter.

01:22:21.020 | - There's no spam filter.

01:22:22.340 | So I sent a note, I wrote a little nice letter

01:22:24.580 | to the database administrator, who I didn't really know,

01:22:28.220 | and I said, would you be open to me saying hi,

01:22:30.940 | and maybe I can get access to the file

01:22:32.740 | rather than print the damn thing out and use a pencil?

01:22:35.480 | And she responded right away, and we hit it off.

01:22:39.340 | I mean, she was great, and so she's like,

01:22:41.700 | of course you can, I can't believe these guys

01:22:43.340 | are doing what they're doing.

01:22:45.420 | So for the first couple of weeks of the summer,

01:22:48.580 | I wrote code in Lotus 1-2-3 that would,

01:22:53.580 | it's gonna sound crazy, but you type in the date range,

01:22:58.380 | you type in the geography, and you type in the,

01:23:03.100 | you know, which part of the bank you care about,

01:23:05.760 | and it will literally just create a new spreadsheet,

01:23:09.600 | and it will just, the macro would print it out.

01:23:12.760 | It was like a magic trick for these guys.

01:23:15.640 | And-- (laughing)

01:23:17.160 | - Incredible.

01:23:18.000 | - I know, I know, it's like, it's astounding that that,

01:23:19.960 | I mean, for me, I was like, guys, this is so obvious.

01:23:24.560 | (laughing)

01:23:27.060 | And so I got all that done, and this job was supposed

01:23:31.200 | to take three or four months, because it's really,

01:23:33.700 | you're doing this with a pencil.

01:23:35.540 | And now I'd created this macro that you could not just,

01:23:38.540 | not just do it, you could do it, you could tweak it,

01:23:40.580 | and say, oh, I want this area of the world,

01:23:42.540 | or this area of, or this month, or that month

01:23:46.060 | compared to that month, you know, all the normal things

01:23:47.660 | you could do with a spreadsheet.

01:23:49.220 | And the software was on a floppy disk,

01:23:52.100 | and I was like, here's the software,

01:23:53.780 | and just put it into your computer.

01:23:56.860 | All right, now open 1-2-3, and it just pops up

01:24:00.940 | with a little box that type in your dates,

01:24:02.960 | and the whole little, I coded a little thing like that.

01:24:06.060 | And what I was astounded by was,

01:24:11.060 | not so much that it was a magic trick,

01:24:14.440 | it was the lack of appreciation for innovation.

01:24:18.860 | They just looked at it, they were like, huh, that's nice.

01:24:22.080 | And I was like, you just, we're gonna have someone

01:24:25.900 | spend hundreds of hours doing something,

01:24:30.700 | and now it's something you can do in a minute.

01:24:33.220 | - Yeah, if that doesn't fuel you with excitement.

01:24:35.900 | - Yeah, like, if that doesn't move your needle,

01:24:37.620 | what the heck?

01:24:38.540 | And so I was really disappointed with the banking world.

01:24:42.180 | Anyway, so that was, but that was also fun.

01:24:44.060 | - It's such a good example, though, yeah.

01:24:45.560 | And then also see the possibility of where that goes.

01:24:48.340 | - But then, so then I got back to business school,

01:24:51.020 | and I canceled all of my business classes,

01:24:54.420 | like possibly could, but I was actually in business school,

01:24:56.300 | so I couldn't cancel them all.

01:24:57.900 | All finance courses, I was like,

01:24:59.380 | I'm done with that industry, I'm not going back.

01:25:02.100 | So the vulnerable part for me was,

01:25:04.100 | my whole family's full of entrepreneurs,

01:25:06.500 | and there was this franchise to do house painting,

01:25:09.780 | and I genuinely was afraid that I wouldn't be good at it.

01:25:14.020 | And I was like, wow, I really am afraid of failure.

01:25:17.460 | It's very easy to avoid entrepreneurship,

01:25:20.380 | but if your whole family's entrepreneurs,

01:25:22.740 | you go in and you aren't good, I was really afraid.

01:25:28.980 | - You're gonna have to face that failure

01:25:30.720 | every time you meet your family.

01:25:32.220 | - Yes, and it's, our family are wonderful and everything,

01:25:37.220 | but pretty much everyone's an entrepreneur.

01:25:43.000 | And of course, not everyone's perfect,

01:25:45.500 | not everyone's doing it successfully all the time,

01:25:48.420 | but when you're young and you wanna prove yourself,

01:25:51.660 | it really was putting my heart on my sleeve.

01:25:55.780 | I started the business in this part of Toronto,

01:25:59.020 | and for the first, so you paint the houses in the summer,

01:26:02.700 | but you do all your sales pre, before the summer,

01:26:04.740 | and all the way 'til April, I was just not succeeding.

01:26:09.400 | And I was like, oh, I'm like, oh my God,

01:26:11.420 | I'm just gonna fail.

01:26:15.120 | And I remember that, I was like,

01:26:17.920 | my whole nervous system was like, I'm a failure.

01:26:21.760 | And I remember I had this general manager

01:26:25.060 | who, he was like, look, Kimball,

01:26:28.420 | you seem like you know what you're doing,

01:26:30.900 | why are you not making any sales?

01:26:32.420 | And so he actually went with me on a few sales calls,

01:26:34.980 | and I was like, and he was like, oh, you're,

01:26:38.420 | he was great, you're doing this wrong,

01:26:40.260 | you're doing that wrong, you're doing this wrong.

01:26:43.320 | And changed those three things.

01:26:45.340 | And it was like a watershed moment,

01:26:51.460 | just like, all of a sudden,

01:26:53.640 | and I just followed the instructions

01:26:55.260 | of what this guy had told me.

01:26:57.020 | All of a sudden, every single sale I would make,

01:26:59.700 | I was like, I can't believe that I,

01:27:03.860 | it was really my lack of humility

01:27:09.340 | to learn from someone else.

01:27:11.120 | I was like, no, I'm gonna prove

01:27:13.580 | that I can do this without your teachings.

01:27:16.120 | And I was gonna fail.

01:27:20.740 | - So to you, that humility is essential

01:27:23.540 | for the entrepreneur, especially young.

01:27:25.900 | - I would say if we have an openness to learning,

01:27:29.620 | which does require humility,

01:27:31.200 | you course correct,

01:27:35.900 | or you help get other people to help you course correct.

01:27:38.820 | But it does start with humility,

01:27:41.100 | because if you try and pretend you have all the answers,

01:27:44.220 | you don't.

01:27:45.580 | - So you went from that to founding Zip2,

01:27:48.300 | that was an interesting time in the history of tech.

01:27:50.580 | - Yeah.

01:27:51.420 | - I mean, what was it like,

01:27:52.980 | you mentioned the first people to look at a map,

01:27:57.980 | basically directions.

01:28:00.460 | - Yeah, so mapping had been on the internet,

01:28:02.580 | but vector-based mapping had not,

01:28:04.580 | so that's the ability to zoom in or zoom out,

01:28:07.340 | and it's really data versus an image that comes across.

01:28:11.160 | And we went to this company called Navtech,

01:28:13.900 | my brother and I, and we just asked for the data,

01:28:15.940 | and they, this is Silicon Valley,

01:28:18.100 | they wrote us a one-page letter that we had to sign,

01:28:20.700 | and said, "Here's all of our data.

01:28:23.560 | "We own it, you don't own it,

01:28:25.580 | "but you can use it on the internet,

01:28:27.280 | "and if you ever make any money on it,

01:28:28.800 | "you have to call us."

01:28:29.900 | That was it.

01:28:31.900 | And we're like, "Okay, that sounds great."

01:28:33.420 | So we put it up on the internet,

01:28:35.100 | and back in those days it might take 60 to 120 seconds

01:28:38.420 | to actually give you an answer back.

01:28:40.680 | But it was amazing, the door-to-door directions,

01:28:45.540 | the ability to take a map and zoom in and zoom out.

01:28:48.400 | We use these things 10 times a day now.

01:28:52.600 | It was amazing.

01:28:55.180 | We were the first two humans to see it on the internet.

01:28:59.140 | Like, this stuff didn't even exist to the world.

01:29:00.900 | Like, Navtech was building it for Neverlaw,

01:29:03.300 | for Hertz Neverlaws,

01:29:04.140 | which would come out a few years later.

01:29:06.020 | This was not something that people knew existed.

01:29:09.060 | This was something we discovered that it existed.

01:29:11.340 | Everyone was like, "Well, let's put it on the internet

01:29:12.740 | "and share it with the world."

01:29:14.500 | - What did the two of you feel like

01:29:15.820 | to see that magic?

01:29:17.260 | Did you know?

01:29:18.100 | - It was amazing.

01:29:19.100 | It was like, "What?"

01:29:22.740 | - Like, did you, I mean, the amazing,

01:29:25.420 | just that it's cool,

01:29:26.740 | but also that you could see the future,

01:29:29.900 | that this could transform.

01:29:31.980 | - I don't think people understand.

01:29:34.420 | Before this moment,

01:29:38.500 | you could not be told your directions.

01:29:41.700 | You just could not.

01:29:44.100 | Today, we live in this world

01:29:45.140 | where we're told our directions all the time.

01:29:47.020 | Before this moment,

01:29:48.300 | you could not be told your directions,

01:29:50.900 | and all of a sudden, you could.

01:29:53.940 | It wasn't like a little thing.

01:29:56.460 | - Yeah, there's a bunch of things that we,

01:29:59.380 | once we have, we take it for granted,

01:30:01.220 | and that takes like a day for people to transition.

01:30:05.100 | - Totally.

01:30:05.940 | - It's like, boom, oh, okay, cool.

01:30:08.300 | - Exactly, exactly.

01:30:10.300 | - And it's when you see,

01:30:11.740 | maybe when you're one of the first humans

01:30:14.020 | to see that thing, you're like, "Holy shit."

01:30:15.880 | - "Holy shit, this is going to be used

01:30:17.380 | "by everyone all the time forever."

01:30:20.260 | - So, Zip2 was a success.

01:30:22.020 | - I would say it was a success,

01:30:23.260 | but it was also a very hard company to build,

01:30:27.580 | and I mean it because the internet

01:30:30.020 | in those days was a boom time.

01:30:32.440 | We were being funded,

01:30:34.580 | but you couldn't make any money.

01:30:36.400 | And so, it was actually really hard.

01:30:40.700 | The constant outside criticism that we aren't for real,

01:30:45.700 | this is not going to survive, this is not going to,

01:30:47.860 | and it started to feel that way.

01:30:50.860 | We're like, "Wow, man, this is a,

01:30:53.620 | "we are doing something that is great

01:30:55.620 | "that people are using."

01:30:56.700 | And we were a top 100 website.

01:30:58.220 | Most of our work was through folks like the New York Times,

01:31:01.780 | so we were even much, much busier than that.

01:31:04.540 | But there was just no money in it.

01:31:07.540 | And even today, you go to Google Maps,

01:31:09.860 | there's no money in it.

01:31:10.680 | It's just local search that is needed for everyone,

01:31:15.680 | and so it became an add-on to search.

01:31:18.100 | But even remember in those days,

01:31:19.200 | you couldn't make money at search either.

01:31:21.500 | No one had figured out AdWords or anything,

01:31:23.940 | didn't realize how big of a business this was,

01:31:26.260 | but we all knew this was a thing,

01:31:28.480 | and everyone was using it.

01:31:30.340 | - But didn't quite know how to make money.

01:31:31.900 | - Couldn't make money.

01:31:33.260 | When we got acquired, it was a bittersweet moment

01:31:36.060 | because Compaq that owned UltaVista wanted to merge,

01:31:39.540 | so that's sort of regular search,

01:31:40.660 | with the best search engine at the time, pre-Google,

01:31:44.160 | with Zip2, which would be the best local search,

01:31:46.620 | and it would be a Yahoo killer.

01:31:48.280 | And the Compaq just wanted to make money

01:31:53.700 | by taking the company public,

01:31:56.200 | but they wouldn't give us any stock.

01:31:58.220 | They paid us cash return, actually very well for us,

01:32:00.020 | but because the whole internet bubble burst,

01:32:02.060 | and we didn't know that at the time.

01:32:04.420 | And so it was bittersweet

01:32:05.260 | because they essentially wanted our company,

01:32:07.860 | and we were welcome to stay,

01:32:09.620 | but you don't have to.

01:32:14.420 | And that was a pretty rough feeling.

01:32:17.040 | - But in retrospect, it opened the door to--

01:32:22.500 | - It set us up for an incredible platform

01:32:26.700 | to go do beautiful things.

01:32:28.540 | - You invested in X.com that eventually merged with PayPal.

01:32:33.380 | That's a fascinating story there,

01:32:35.380 | also fascinating on many levels,

01:32:37.020 | including the fact that the current social media company,

01:32:41.700 | formerly known as Twitter, is now called X.

01:32:44.100 | There's a, history has a rhyme to it.

01:32:47.600 | Like, it's kind of all hilarious in a certain kind of way.

01:32:50.980 | You invested in and helped sell

01:32:55.620 | a lot of the initial products for Tesla.

01:32:57.720 | - Yeah, I still sit on the board of Tesla.

01:33:00.940 | Tesla is 20 years now, isn't that amazing?

01:33:03.100 | - 20 years. - Yeah.

01:33:04.180 | - From the Roadster, the initial Roadster,

01:33:06.700 | to what-- - I still have

01:33:07.540 | the first business plan.

01:33:09.380 | So I didn't join as a founder,

01:33:10.700 | I joined as a founding board member.

01:33:13.460 | And so I actually, I didn't write the business plan.

01:33:15.460 | I got to read it, and I still have that.

01:33:18.040 | I still have it as a part of history.

01:33:20.180 | - Did you see the future at that time?

01:33:22.140 | Like, the company that Tesla is today,

01:33:23.980 | could you have possibly, could you, Elon, imagine it?

01:33:27.900 | - No, no, I certainly didn't.

01:33:30.460 | What I saw in it was a real, for me personally,

01:33:36.260 | I was really upset that General Motors

01:33:40.620 | had killed their EV car.

01:33:42.660 | There's even a movie called "Who Killed the Electric Car?"

01:33:45.500 | And I knew that the physics of electric

01:33:50.500 | is perfectly fine.

01:33:53.420 | I mean, there's no reason why you couldn't

01:33:55.280 | use an electric car to drive around.

01:33:57.500 | What resonated with me with the business plan

01:34:00.780 | was take an electric motor,

01:34:03.540 | which is really a high-performance motor,

01:34:06.140 | and put it in a sports car,

01:34:08.140 | and sell it at a high price as a way

01:34:10.140 | to enter into the market.

01:34:11.580 | Whereas what others had been doing,

01:34:13.360 | at least General Motors had done,

01:34:14.860 | is you put it into a really crummy car,

01:34:18.180 | and you sell it as a commuter vehicle

01:34:20.180 | that doesn't really work that well,

01:34:22.020 | and looks ugly as well.

01:34:23.180 | They really did everything they could

01:34:24.160 | to make that thing as ugly as sin.

01:34:26.780 | And then I was like, okay, I get it.

01:34:30.020 | We're gonna take an appropriate technology

01:34:32.800 | and put it in an appropriate car so that when you have,

01:34:37.220 | because electric motors, they have constant torque,

01:34:40.500 | you get incredible power.

01:34:43.020 | Put it in a car that looks like a sports car.

01:34:45.420 | The idea was to put it in the Lotus Elise,

01:34:49.500 | redesign it a bit.

01:34:50.520 | And even at that point, I was like,

01:34:54.380 | this is theoretically good,

01:34:56.620 | so I'm gonna join and help build it.

01:34:59.020 | But I was not convinced that it would work,

01:35:01.340 | because General Motors had done such a terrible job

01:35:03.440 | of making everyone think that these things are terrible.

01:35:06.600 | But I was curious.

01:35:08.160 | And the time that I fell in love with the company

01:35:10.620 | and its mission was, I was driving in what's called a mule,

01:35:15.620 | where we take a car and we take the engine out,

01:35:21.480 | and we put in an electric drivetrain.

01:35:24.600 | And I drove it, even the dashboards, there's no dashboard.

01:35:28.160 | It's just like, you got a steering wheel,

01:35:30.040 | and it's just like wires and everything around.

01:35:33.240 | And I remember there's a street we were on

01:35:35.440 | in the Bay Area called Bing Street,

01:35:37.240 | and I was just like, no traffic.

01:35:40.200 | So I'm just gonna drive this, I'm gonna floor it,

01:35:42.680 | see what happens.

01:35:44.400 | And it was a feeling I'd never experienced before.

01:35:48.560 | Gasoline cars have an inertia to them,

01:35:50.600 | so you go (imitates engine revving)

01:35:52.540 | This is just, it was like being shot out of a cannon.

01:35:56.640 | And I was like, okay, this is gonna be real.

01:35:58.120 | - It's a very spaceship-like feeling.

01:36:00.200 | - Yeah, it's like, whoa.

01:36:02.040 | It's like the G-force pulls you back.

01:36:05.940 | So I was like, okay, this is gonna be great.

01:36:10.080 | This is gonna be an interesting,

01:36:12.000 | we're gonna create something interesting here.

01:36:14.440 | I think the real transformative thing for Tesla

01:36:17.480 | was the Model 3, when we were able to get the price down

01:36:21.480 | for the world.

01:36:23.360 | - And that was also one of the most challenging

01:36:26.320 | - Oh my God. - periods for Tesla.

01:36:27.840 | - And you were dying.

01:36:28.680 | I mean, we were borderline bankrupt

01:36:30.600 | like two or three times that year.

01:36:32.080 | I mean, it was just, and everyone was hating on us

01:36:34.720 | about whether we'd get that done.

01:36:36.360 | The Model 3 today is incredibly affordable car,

01:36:41.500 | like 300 bucks a month kind of lease and $3,000 down.

01:36:46.500 | That's where you get the scale.

01:36:49.480 | That's where you get people who,

01:36:51.720 | and by the way, it's a great car.

01:36:52.680 | It's even a better Model 3 now than it was five years ago.

01:36:55.760 | We don't function the way car companies function, right?

01:36:59.360 | We function more like how an iPhone company, how Apple works.

01:37:03.600 | So our Model 3 today is,

01:37:06.120 | this year is better than last year.

01:37:07.520 | It's like way better.

01:37:08.520 | And we just keep getting better.

01:37:10.600 | - And the software is a fundamental part of the car

01:37:13.480 | and the software keeps improving.

01:37:14.880 | - Exactly, and we can upload over the air.

01:37:17.120 | - Which was one of the things

01:37:18.200 | that people don't often acknowledge.

01:37:21.000 | It's the over the air updates.

01:37:23.160 | - Yes. - It's like

01:37:24.000 | a revolutionary thing.

01:37:24.840 | - Yes. - It's not just the autopilot.

01:37:27.200 | To me, it's like the over the air updates

01:37:28.680 | is even bigger thing than autopilot,

01:37:30.800 | in this like moment of history,

01:37:32.760 | because you basically turned a car into the iPhone.

01:37:36.180 | - Exactly, it's an iPhone with wheels,

01:37:38.080 | but actually talking about autopilot,

01:37:41.960 | like right after this interview,

01:37:42.880 | I'm gonna go test out the latest Model 3.

01:37:45.320 | - You're gonna get driven around by a robot.

01:37:46.920 | - I'm gonna get driven around by the car.

01:37:48.540 | I'm gonna say, I wanna go to this barbecue joint.

01:37:52.240 | Take me there and park me there.

01:37:53.860 | And I'm gonna see how it is.

01:37:56.320 | And this is the latest Model 3

01:37:58.900 | that we have out into production.

01:38:00.280 | Anyone can buy it.

01:38:01.640 | And it's super affordable.

01:38:02.840 | And it's like, okay.

01:38:03.840 | Full stop driving is a journey, right?

01:38:09.240 | It's not like there's a destination.

01:38:12.160 | It's a journey forever.

01:38:14.320 | So let's see where we are on the journey today.

01:38:16.840 | - And there's been a bit of a push and pull

01:38:18.320 | between you and Elon in terms of levels of optimism

01:38:20.980 | about deadlines and so on, timelines,

01:38:23.360 | about when we'll arrive at the destination.

01:38:26.100 | I like that you said it's a journey.

01:38:28.180 | For Elon, there's a destination.

01:38:29.560 | - Right, exactly.

01:38:31.000 | - And that destination is tomorrow or yesterday.

01:38:34.880 | - I think that's a really good insight.

01:38:36.720 | I actually live with this concept of a growth mindset

01:38:39.900 | versus a fixed mindset.

01:38:41.440 | And it's a philosophical term

01:38:43.640 | where fixed mindset is about the destination.

01:38:47.600 | And growth mindset is about learning on the journey.

01:38:52.560 | And I think that I'm a happier person

01:38:56.400 | because I take that learning on the journey approach

01:38:59.920 | versus really frustrating if you're always,

01:39:03.840 | it has to be about the destination every time.

01:39:06.040 | - The nice thing about destination,

01:39:07.560 | at least from my personal perspective

01:39:09.920 | as like a programmer, engineer,

01:39:11.760 | is like it puts a little fire under you to get shit done.

01:39:16.080 | Like if there's a clear deadline of a destination,

01:39:19.040 | you feel the anxiety of it.

01:39:20.440 | - I would say that I still do that,

01:39:22.200 | but I call those forcing functions instead of destinations

01:39:25.440 | because you're just forcing people to crank

01:39:29.040 | on some code or cookbook or whatever

01:39:32.400 | because you have a date.

01:39:33.760 | And oftentimes there's a reason.

01:39:36.240 | I mean, it's 20th anniversary,

01:39:37.360 | you want to get the cookbook out.

01:39:38.680 | We have a reason.

01:39:39.760 | We didn't make this up out of thin air.

01:39:42.400 | And so yeah, that does push you.

01:39:45.200 | But just because we have the cookbook

01:39:46.980 | doesn't mean it's a destination.

01:39:49.160 | It means it was a forcing function to get it out there.

01:39:51.740 | Now we're on the journey.

01:39:53.280 | - Speaking of journeys, I have to ask you about SpaceX.

01:39:56.720 | I mean, the journey that all of humanity's on.

01:40:00.600 | - Seriously, that is a book about a journey.

01:40:02.200 | That is incredible.

01:40:03.200 | - It's an interesting moment in the history of humanity

01:40:07.360 | that perhaps hopefully will become

01:40:09.520 | a multi-planetary species.

01:40:11.920 | But SpaceX is also a company.

01:40:14.600 | You invested in SpaceX.

01:40:15.960 | You were side-by-side with Elon

01:40:18.520 | through the highs and the lows,

01:40:21.940 | through the lows and the highs.

01:40:24.180 | So what were some memorable challenges?

01:40:28.060 | What were some low points from the history of SpaceX?

01:40:32.180 | - One of the hardest times in SpaceX was

01:40:37.180 | we were in the mid-Pacific in KwaZulun.

01:40:41.320 | And my brother had sold PayPal.

01:40:43.580 | He'd done well financially, but in the rocket world,

01:40:47.040 | that money goes away really quickly.

01:40:49.060 | And we were in this military base in KwaZulun.

01:40:53.060 | And I think it was the second rocket that blew up.

01:40:57.900 | I'm not sure.

01:40:58.900 | But we didn't have infinite resources.

01:41:02.940 | I certainly didn't have the resources.

01:41:04.140 | I mean, I'm there to support, brotherly support.

01:41:06.740 | So every rocket launch was do or die.

01:41:11.980 | And the first one had blown up.

01:41:14.460 | And so the second one,

01:41:17.860 | I think it was the second one, blew up.

01:41:20.140 | And it was so depressing.

01:41:23.400 | It was just like, ugh.

01:41:24.820 | And there's nowhere to go.

01:41:25.860 | There's no distraction.

01:41:28.340 | You're on this military base.

01:41:30.820 | You don't really socialize.

01:41:31.660 | So it was just, we were all together.

01:41:33.660 | And I had gotten to know,

01:41:36.580 | for me, I'm not part of the team.

01:41:38.140 | I'm just there for emotional support or whatever,

01:41:40.620 | 'cause it's cool.

01:41:41.860 | And so I got to know a couple of people locally,

01:41:44.900 | and got to know this one guy who had a mobile home.

01:41:48.940 | Best view in the world, but it's just a mobile home

01:41:51.900 | with a patch of grass next to it.

01:41:54.780 | And I was just desperate to find food

01:41:57.640 | that wasn't from the cafeteria,

01:41:59.020 | 'cause this is the worst food you can imagine.

01:42:01.980 | And so I met him, and he showed me

01:42:04.780 | this little tiny little grocery store,

01:42:07.260 | which had a few things, like canned tomatoes.

01:42:10.020 | This is, again, you're in the middle of nowhere.

01:42:11.220 | So it's nothing fresh.

01:42:13.620 | And I made this dish that was kind of a version of a,

01:42:18.500 | like an Italian version of chili.

01:42:19.820 | You know, just baked beans, and sweating onions,

01:42:23.700 | and then tomatoes.

01:42:25.100 | And it was a big pot of food,

01:42:27.940 | 'cause it's a group of people.

01:42:30.300 | We didn't even have a table.

01:42:31.620 | And we just put the big pot in the middle,

01:42:34.140 | and we had our little paper plates,

01:42:35.460 | and we took a scoop as we needed it.

01:42:37.780 | And it was really the gathering place of,

01:42:40.060 | like food brings people together in the most difficult times.

01:42:44.420 | And it was one of my favorite memories,

01:42:46.260 | because I was able to bring my gift

01:42:48.980 | to this group of incredible people

01:42:52.180 | that their hearts were broken, you know?

01:42:55.980 | And to sit there and share a meal,

01:42:59.380 | and feel the life kind of come back into us.

01:43:02.340 | And by the end of the night,

01:43:03.180 | we're actually having a good time.

01:43:04.660 | - What a fascinating contrast of rockets

01:43:08.140 | kind of representing the peak accomplishment

01:43:11.540 | of human beings as a society,

01:43:13.560 | and then returning to the thing

01:43:15.780 | that is the foundation of human society,

01:43:18.940 | which is that communal experience.

01:43:19.780 | - That communal vulnerable connection.

01:43:21.980 | Like we mentioned vulnerability earlier.

01:43:23.940 | The most vulnerable place,

01:43:25.500 | actually that's when you have

01:43:26.500 | some of your most beautiful meals.

01:43:28.300 | - Yeah, the descendants of apes

01:43:29.900 | gathering around some baked beans.

01:43:31.940 | - You're right. (laughs)

01:43:33.220 | - After watching a rocket explode.

01:43:35.300 | - Yeah.

01:43:36.740 | - What gives you hope about the future

01:43:39.140 | of this whole thing we've got going on, humanity?

01:43:42.180 | - If you look at how things have changed

01:43:44.380 | over the past, say, 50 years,

01:43:46.080 | you can clearly say, oh wow,

01:43:50.340 | poverty rates have gone down,

01:43:52.300 | infant mortality's gone down dramatically.

01:43:55.460 | All these things have gone down a lot.

01:43:57.340 | So if you look at it on a daily basis,

01:44:01.560 | you can tell that life is very dramatic.

01:44:04.800 | You know, whether it's something's blowing up on X

01:44:08.620 | or on some of the newspapers or whatever,

01:44:11.780 | and you can really get caught up into it.

01:44:14.220 | But if you look back over the past few decades,

01:44:18.340 | things are getting better.

01:44:19.700 | And I mean at the fundamental level.

01:44:21.540 | Like, are less people hungry?

01:44:24.340 | Are more people, are they more,

01:44:29.040 | is there, I mean there is war going on, of course,

01:44:33.260 | but are there less wars? Yes.

01:44:35.000 | And so I think that,

01:44:38.220 | I think if we all just step back a little bit,

01:44:42.540 | it's less about hope, it's more perspective and reflection.

01:44:47.540 | And if I do see a problem,

01:44:52.580 | like in case of the obesity epidemic,

01:44:54.620 | I work really hard to help with that.

01:44:56.180 | I work, our nonprofit's called Big Green,

01:44:58.820 | and we work with 150 nonprofits around the country

01:45:01.900 | to help Americans grow food again,

01:45:03.500 | get connected to their food,

01:45:05.560 | because I really believe growing food changes your life.

01:45:08.100 | And so, okay, let's go do that.

01:45:10.420 | So then, so I'll help out where I think

01:45:13.140 | we really can make a difference.

01:45:15.140 | But if you step back a little,

01:45:16.660 | things are actually getting better.

01:45:18.600 | It's just a bumpy ride.

01:45:20.940 | - Yeah, and for those of us watching all of this,

01:45:24.020 | I think I would love to see more celebrating

01:45:27.300 | of the people that are helping.

01:45:30.180 | The people that have found their way of helping

01:45:32.620 | and just celebrating those people.

01:45:33.680 | - Yeah, well, I would also,

01:45:34.700 | actually, it's a really nice point.

01:45:36.180 | I have learned that you really wanna

01:45:38.540 | celebrate your successes.

01:45:40.620 | Because even in the greater scheme of things,

01:45:43.020 | I've learned this in the startup world,

01:45:44.160 | where you're constantly facing death.

01:45:47.580 | You know, like, why should you even exist?

01:45:50.260 | Do your customers want your product or whatever?

01:45:52.460 | And then something will happen where you're like,

01:45:54.220 | wow, we really nailed that, that's really great.

01:45:56.180 | Or, you know, got a product released

01:45:57.500 | or got some good kudos from something.

01:46:00.380 | All right, everyone, we're gonna go celebrate.

01:46:03.500 | And actually, everyone's still like,

01:46:04.940 | no, no, we've got all these other problems.

01:46:07.460 | Nope, we're gonna go celebrate,

01:46:09.860 | and then we'll go back to the problems.

01:46:11.500 | But if you don't do that,

01:46:12.420 | then it starts building on this kind of,

01:46:14.900 | you never really get to celebrate.

01:46:17.180 | - And be grateful.

01:46:19.460 | Well, I think this is a good time to go celebrate

01:46:22.500 | the very fact that we're alive today.

01:46:24.380 | We get to live and enjoy this incredible life

01:46:27.380 | the two of us, and have this great conversation.

01:46:29.780 | And we'll get to celebrate over some scrambled eggs.

01:46:32.140 | - Beautiful.

01:46:32.980 | - I'm gonna hold you to it.

01:46:33.800 | - Beautiful.

01:46:34.640 | - Kimball, thank you so much for talking today.

01:46:36.100 | - Thank you for having me.

01:46:37.860 | - Thanks for listening to this conversation

01:46:39.300 | with Kimball Musk.

01:46:40.460 | To support this podcast,

01:46:41.540 | please check out our sponsors in the description.

01:46:44.380 | And now, let me leave you with some words

01:46:46.180 | from Anthony Bourdain.

01:46:47.980 | "Your body is not a temple.

01:46:50.920 | "It's an amusement park.

01:46:53.820 | "Enjoy the ride."

01:46:56.220 | Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.

01:46:59.340 | (upbeat music)

01:47:01.920 | (upbeat music)

01:47:04.500 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Kimbal Musk: The Art of Cooking, Tesla, SpaceX, Zip2, and Family | Lex Fridman Podcast #417

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