242. - Wyatt Williams

All right, this episode of How Long Gone is brought to you by Stateside with Kai and Carter, a new podcast from The Guardian. And they are using this podcast to slow down the news and wrestle with the questions that we all have about what's happening in the world. And they do it three times a week. Jason, does that sound familiar to you? We don't really talk about, you know, a lot of international global news items and climates and cultures and sports and things like that. We do talk about fashion and wellness, but for everything else, Kai and Carter are a great place. All right, so who couldn't use more news? Listen wherever you get your podcast. or watch on YouTube. Want to make a podcast? Spotify's got a platform that lets you make one super easily, then distribute it everywhere, and even earn money. We like that. All in one place for totally free. It's called Spotify for Podcasters. And here's how it works. Spotify for podcasters lets you record and edit podcasts right from your cellular telephone or your computer. So no matter what your setup is like, you can start creating today. Then you can distribute your podcast to Spotify and everywhere else, those other places that podcasts are heard. Video podcasts are also available on Spotify. And when you want to take conversations with your fans to the next level, Q&As and polls are the best way to get them talking. With Spotify for podcasters, you can earn money in a variety of ways, including ads and... and podcast subscriptions. And best of all, it's totally free. Zero catch. We've been using it ever since we started How Long Gone. And ever since I discovered Spotify for Podcasters, I feel like having the option of turning off the Q&As and the polls on the user dashboard has really helped boost my creativity and take it to another level. I highly recommend giving it a try. Download the Spotify for Podcasters app or go to www.spotify.com slash podcasters to get started.

Big, big TJ, how are you feeling today? Not great, but a little bit better. I feel like that your battle with your tum-tum is leading me to believe that you're a little more bitch-made than I once realized. My systems are down. My immunity was not functioning very highly at all. so you know the shields were damaged and it allowed yeah you know bacterial penetration to come in bacterial penetration is one of the worst kinds of penetration bro say as far as that stuff goes yeah but but i'm feeling much better than it was yesterday which i mean we are recording this podcast a week in a week early just to let you guys know that's why we might be talking about things that seem old nothing seems old when it's through the how long gone lens In case you're wondering why, like, oh, my God, is TJ still have FP? It's called long FP. It's a new disease that you've founded where your stomach just feels bad for weeks because you eat too many greens that are unfortunately filled with disgusting bacteria. Somebody chopped isn't washing their hands properly. I need to watch those guys when they come out of the bathroom because sometimes I see them wear the same rubber gloves to the toilet and back to the salad station. Because I wash my hands before I pee, not after. I'm one of those kinds of guys because I respect the hog. So you're saying that because you have so much respect for your hog, you wash your hands before using the restroom. Absolutely. My hands are filthy compared to my precious penis. That's actually interesting to think about because I know I've never thought that before. And sometimes I wash my hands first too because they're soiled from dining. And I really hate.

You hate getting food all over your dick? I get it, brother, man. I get it. I get it. Well, I mean, to me... American Pie voice. Because I always think about the word dirty. And when you think about what dirt actually is, it's not really any... Dirt is... It's soil. It's earth. So it's not really... It's not really something that's actually done. I'm not done yet. PJ, I feel like your third eye is open. I wasn't done talking yet. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Well, now I lost track, but you know, it kind of, it kind of makes you wonder why, you know, what things, you know, you really do think are putrid or gross. And like, to me, getting a little bit of broccolini on my dick is not a problem because I, that's something that's been washed and clean and it's, it's fine. But you know, it's, it's other things. It's like, You go to the gas station, you got to touch the fucking nozzle and stuff like that. That's the kind of stuff where I can't do anything until I wash my hands. I can't even think until I wash my hands after I do something like that. I get that. So you're just rubbing broccolini on the hog, but no unleaded. That's right. And thank God, the Tesla, once that becomes more popular. Unfortunately, if you go to a supercharger station, you still have to touch the nozzle. But you feel like the clientele there are a little bit cleaner than... than my bros over at Arco. You know what I'm saying? So are you saying that Teslas are for rich people? I haven't heard that line of thinking before. No, no, no. I wasn't saying that at all. Don't take my words out of context. I was saying that rich people are cleaner than poor people, okay? Okay, now we're back on track. Sorry, I was really confused for a second. Thank you for making that important clarification. But yeah, now I'm drinking a half mud, half La Croix spritzer right now. I haven't eaten food in two days other than salty. saltine crackers so oh yeah baby i'm already i'm already below my goal weight I had a big night on the town last night in Hollywood, Jason. Great. So while I was puking into a bucket and editing our podcast, you had a nice night on the town. Tell me about it, Chris. Well, Jason is the face of this podcast. I have to be seen around town at local hotspots and other activations to make sure that How Long Gone stays relevant and part of the discourse. You're not the face of this podcast. You don't even have any selfies on your Instagram, bitch. I posted a picture of us earlier today.

And a listener was like, damn, that's what Chris looks like? Damn, he is fine. I didn't realize. Damn, why did he hide in his pretty little face? But I met a friend of the show, Andrews, for a quick bite at an Aussie eatery. I'm sorry. Obviously goes against my morals and other codes, but a real restaurant finally opened on Larchmont, which I feel like is extremely overdue and interesting that it took this long. There's real restaurants over there. I guess it depends on what your definition of real is. But you know what I mean. It's like the fact that it's a very high net worth neighborhood and there's not a restaurant where you can get a $30 bowl of vegetables is crazy. I mean, that's fucking crazy. Okay, so that's what your definition of a real restaurant is. I understand that. Yeah. So it's called Great White, and there's one in the cursed Venice neighborhood, I guess. Oh, I'm familiar with this cursed restaurant. But I got to say, bro, it was pretty fucking good. I have to admit, it was pretty good. The service was good. I mean, there were too many kids and too many dogs, but that's L.A. in general. Okay. Well, yeah, I think I've been to the one in Venice once for like a... A meeting a long time ago. Was it when you were doing your Them Jeans surf capsule or was this a different meeting? I was probably ideating something with Australian people. I don't know why I agreed to go there. Let me get you a flat white, mate. You've never had one like this before. The golden latte was on them, hopefully. Could I get a large? Did you have a 24-ounce golden latte? The turmeric is heaps good for your immunity. I've read. But overall, the meal was good. But then Andrews and I... uh zipped down uh sunset boulevard to the famed roxy theater jason been a while since i touched down on the roxy they know me there um for my kind of like you know riot hyatt era you know they have your your your normal table reserved for you they have my normal table reserved they did have some they did thankfully have some chicken tenders waiting they were they were cold but you know it's fine i i didn't i didn't really go to eat you know what i mean jason luckily you had eaten before otherwise it would have been an issue it would have been a problem but we went to go see

uh fellow elite podcasters uh lara and carrie uh sexy unique podcast had a live show last night so i thought it'd be good to go kind of scope out the competition take some notes see what's up see what's down see see how live podcasting is going down in we ho exactly and it was honestly i laughed good i hope so i mean those guys are very funny we've had both of them on the show they're very funny and it was good to see it was good to to be in that environment and they brought out a special guest uh from uh vanderpump rules who looked like she had been um you know kind of inflated i would say almost like a balloon almost like a balloon are you are you just speaking purely on weight gain well i'm speaking on i'm speaking on i think what happens with a lot of these you go i'm well talking about the id no i think that a lot of these a lot of these these like reality people they get started pretty young so they're still hot like most of us okay and then They get a little money, and they get some weird fillers and plastic surgery, and they continue to drink at a clip that you cannot drink at 20. When you're 35, you can't drink like you're 22. Chris, I don't know what you're talking about. Yeah, I mean, you look great, thank God, because you've been throwing up for the last two days. But before that, your fillers have not even settled yet. Okay, so interesting. I see what you're saying. I see what you're saying. But it was very funny. And then during the show, Andrews and I are laughing at something. And then he shows me his phone and Nicole Richie's hair is on fire. Yes. So it was a big night just all around for not only the Madden Richie family, but also for me and Andrews. Fellow Virgo, Nicole Richie, those beautiful locks went up as she was blowing out the candles of her 40th birthday cake. Doesn't that make you feel old that Nicole Richie's 40? Well, no, she's the same age as us and she looks hot. So I like it. I know, I know, I know. Nicole Richie, never forget Nicole Richie drove her. Range Rover the wrong way on the highway when she was gone off the perks. That's legendary shit. On the two freeway in Glendale. That's right. I think we've talked about this before, but that's Hall of Fame hang your jersey behavior. No, she was kind of the original Khloe Kardashian for me in terms of me always wanting to pick kind of the odd man out in terms of the whole selection. So you're saying if there's no Asians available, you'll pick the odd man out?

You get it. You get it. But when The Simple Life was going and Paris and Nicole were in full swing, everyone was kind of like, oh, Paris Hilton's so hot and Nicole's kind of like the frumpy, dumpier one. Even though she wasn't frumpy or dumpy, but she kind of had a little bit more of a glazed over look in her eyes and she kind of had her little... party party pouch popping off you know what i mean and i always i always just liked i always just had a weird little creepy crush on nicole richie so it's good to see her getting her life straight on in order and getting her ducks in a row and i'm luckily narrowly narrowly escaping her uh her whole head getting on fire because that's that looked like a kind of a serious accident well luckily she i think because she's so small she could slide out of the sunroof and it was no problem Luckily, being pocket-sized pays off when you get into an accident. That's right. I've seen restaurant and bar-related fires like that happen, and I've seen them go south, for sure. I'm worried about her. We'll call her later and check in. I'm sure she wouldn't have posted that video if she... I don't know. I don't know. She's pretty. She's funny. That's what I love about her. She's down to clown. She's D2C. Who's she partnered up with? She's still with Madden, right? They got kids. The Madden brothers are the most successful pop punk graduates. They got Cameron Diaz and Nicole Richie holding them down in Studio City. That's a win. I have no idea how they pulled it off still. Keeps me up at night. Money, bro. They're rich. They're rich. And those maid shoes that you have in a size 17 lead me to believe that you do know the difference in how they... Those chicks don't need money, though. Those chicks don't need money. Yeah, but chicks that have money want dudes with money. Sure, sure, sure. Those aren't the only guys with money. I'm saying there's something else going on there. Yeah, you don't have any money. I agree. I agree. We do have a guest today. Old friend of mine, an Atlanta, Georgia graduate. He was the restaurant critic at the Atlanta Journal of Constitution. He has written a new book called Springer Mountain, Meditations on Killing and Eating, where he kind of takes an investigative look at why we eat meat.

And it is a wild ride. And I, there was a couple, there's a couple of great essays in here. He goes to Alaska to kill some whales. He uncovers a fake organic farm in Atlanta. He lives with the chickens, you know, which, which is something that I feel like you should do. Jason, he's coming live from the slaughterhouse and I'm ready. No, no Joe, no Joe, no Joe Budden, not slaughterhouse, the rap group, right? And no. Okay. So yeah, we're, We're going to be hunting and trapping some wild game, some bushmeat. Today's episode will consist of a lot of bushmeat talk. Our listeners at home have been asking for this, and we're going to deliver it to them. So let's give Wyatt Williams a Zoomy. This episode of How Long Gone is brought to you by a new podcast from The Guardian, stateside with Kai and Carter. This is covering a lot of our bases, Jason. It's trying to slow down. the news and wrestle with the questions we all have about what's happening in the world and i know you particularly have quite a lot of questions a lot of questions but how often because we do this podcast three times a week and that's a sweet spot how many times do they do three times a week and i i have a feeling just based on the platform and these talking points that they're maybe going to be covering different stuff than we do that's just a guess the guardian is not some billionaire owned They're not afraid to say what they want to say, brother. Yeah, Rupert ain't sniffing around in what journalists Kai Wright and Carter Sherman are up to over there at Stateside. But yeah, listen wherever you get your podcasts. You can watch it on YouTube. It's three times a week. And who couldn't use more news? You know, especially when it's not, you know, from here, let's say. Give it a listen. Give it a listen. All right, this episode of How Long Gone is brought to you by Quince. Jason, the temps are warming up. It's getting hot out there. Summer always changes how I get dressed. I need pieces that feel lighter, more breathable, and that are just easy but still put together. I don't want to look like a slob. That's why I keep coming back to Quince. They focus on high-quality essentials that feel and look amazing. Breathable linen and soft organic cottons. Well-made basics but without the luxury markups. That rare balance where everything feels elevated.

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I was just reading about you guys in the New York Times. That's cool that they found us. We feel like we're beasting in the underground, so it's kind of cool when a newspaper... How did you like the article, Wyatt? Well, you know... I know that it was not about you and more about Chris and I, but you know, just, are you saying that you would have done things differently? Because that's not really what we're trying to hear. You know, dude, no, it's fucking beautiful article and you guys look beautiful and you got the integrity t-shirt in there. So, I mean, I feel like you scored a win there in the times. Yeah. That's Jason's biggest accomplishment. First and last time integrity will ever be mentioned in the New York times, both in the political section and in the styles. Yeah. Hopefully I can get a follow. back from dwid from that but we'll see what happens i got my fingers crossed i wonder definitely thank you thank you i hope i hope dwid's social media manager listens to this and kind of his whole team push push yeah dwid's whole team exactly uh wyatt where are you where are you where are you at right now are you in iowa yeah dude i'm in iowa um and you know like uh i'd like i just rented a house here and uh like my car broke down yesterday And I'm supposed to leave for the airport like on Friday. And like a fire alarm went off in my basement just now. And I was so stressed. I didn't even realize that the alarm was going off. So like that's that's the vibe. Here, just slight stress. Great vibe. Great vibe. So just to inform people, you live in Iowa by choice. I think he might be taking a writing class or something like that, Chris. I don't know if it's a permanent residence. Oh, I thought you were in jail, but I guess if you chose it yourself. So what's going on in the cornfields over there? You want the short story of how I ended up here or the long story? Because the long story is kind of fun. Let's go medium, Wyatt. Medium? Go medium. Let's see, a couple years ago, end of 2019, I was living in a place that people actually choose to live, like in Bali. And honestly, man, having a terrible time, it doesn't make any sense. Is it because you weren't very good at surfing?

Yeah, dude. A, I'm a terrible surfer completely. I'm kind of blind. So when I take my glasses off, it's no good in the water. It's just not happening. Too many Australians over there in Bali as well, huh? You know, I got a lot of Australians that I love in my life and a lot of respect to them. But I got to say the Australians that show up in Bali are maybe not doing the best global PR for the other Australians. It's a weird vibe. It can be a weird vibe there. But it's a good place to do drugs if you are Australian. Killer. Yeah. Absolutely. Killer place to do some drugs. It's tough to get them. So you're in Bali. You're not very good at surfing. I'm sure the restaurant scene is lacking, to say the least. No, I mean, look, I love avocados as much as the next guy, but I don't know what the season is like over there. How are the avocados? Avocados are not good. The fruit is extraordinary, man. I got to say, Southeast Asia is absolutely killing the fruit game. Mangos all the time, papaya. They have these... really large sort of grapefruit, like extra large grapefruit type fruits called pomelo. And man, if you can get, I feel like the Japanese pay like $50 of fruit for these things, but they're just like falling off the trees. And Bali, man. Pamela is the best thing in the world. I'm a fan. I'm a fan of them as well. Where can you get that, Jason? In Glendale? I don't believe it. You can see them at the farmer's market every once in a while. They're not super rare in LA, actually. Don't make me go to the farmer's market. You know how I feel about that. You can go to Bezos Farms. Certain locations of Bezos Farms will have it. If I can hit Bezos Farms and they'll have it, that's a little more my speed. Were you picking these fruits yourself? Like shirtless? chopping them up or was the vibe a little more buttoned up for you no no dude definitely i was i was shirtless the whole time i was in bali just picking fruit for sure i had like a machete that i would open uh coconuts with oh yeah and um damn and then you know every once in a while i'll like spend an afternoon on a motorcycle that's pretty much what i was doing what what kind of were you taking like solo motorcycle trips into the deep wilderness i will i was on some eat pray love shit man yeah i was explain what that means to you please wyatt well i

So I'd been like a restaurant critic in Atlanta for like a number of years. Right. And I had just, I'd completely burned out. I like hated my job. I was not happy. I was like, and I had this like book that I hadn't finished. And I was like, I had some friends that had moved to Bali, me and my partner, mutual friends. And they were like, just come over to Bali for a few months. Our neighbor's house just opened up. You can like sublet it. You hang out, you'll finish your book. Everything will be like fine and easy. And like all of that was like a lie, you know, like couldn't finish the book. Like, like it was like completely lost without my job. You know, it was just like, like really fucking floundering, man. And like, you know, I'd like finally like started talking to a therapist for the first time in my life, man, you know, telling him like all the troubles, you know, they, they add up. Right. When you get in your late thirties and you haven't done any of the work and you're just like, Oh, like I can't hear this with like a 50 bag and a couple more drinks or whatever. Like I need to like actually, you know, do some work on myself. And he was like, you know what, dude, you can't. you can't keep writing this book anymore. It's driving me crazy. Like, like you have to like just stop. And I was like, okay, you know, like maybe, maybe you're right. Like I've been down this path for, you know, a long time. And so anyway, like I'm doing that thing and I'm like, so, so what do I do? Like I just throw away this thing that I've spent like years of my life on. What do you do? Like if you're a writer and you don't do like know what to do next. I was just like, I don't know, go to fucking Iowa. And so, you know, we have this nonfiction writing program. Let's not downplay the Irish Writers Workshop, which has given us... I told you, Chris. I told you he was there for a reason. It's crazy because Jason is weird because Jason's not a strong reader. So I don't really know how he knew about this. I learned about it from an episode of the TV show Girls featuring Lena Dunham. Okay, okay. Friend of the show, Lena Dunham, told you about it. That makes a little more sense. Check it out. It's on HBO. This is a prestigious program that has given us many...

classic novelles let's not let's not downplay it like you're at the community college nothing wrong with that yeah no totally so so i wrote this letter like which is sort of felt like throwing a football into the ocean you know what i mean like sure let's see how this turns out or whatever and then strangely you know they wrote back in march of 2020 like hey we want to give you this fellowship come you know study here learn how to be a better writer i mean the letter i wrote them was basically I've been writing about food for the past decade. I hate every single word that I've ever written. I think I'm a shit writer. I'm embarrassed. Please show me a different way of doing what I've been doing because clearly it's not working, right? So you were a sub looking for a dom is what it sounds like. Yeah, so you asked the Iowa Writers Workshop to step on your balls with their Manolas and they agreed. so so it was amazing right like they wrote back again like this is march 2020 they're like we want to give you this fellowship that's great that'll give you a bunch of time to write like you know all this stuff where you're like oh man this is killer but also at the same time you know i'm like okay what's what's going on in the world this is like when people are just starting to get sick right so my friends that had like convinced us to move to bali they're like oh like let's just get everybody in a big huddle like let's come over come over to the house and and we'll we'll sort this thing out right and so it's like a dozen like of us expats like sitting around going like okay so um well they're saying we need to like quarantine so like maybe we could all like move into sarah and ken's house it's like a big house i'm like I could be in charge of cooking. Somebody would be in charge of getting the water. Somebody in charge of the diesel or something like that. We'll ride it out for six, eight weeks, whatever this thing is. And then they're like, oh, let's talk to this doctor. He's a friend of ours. Never talk to the doctors. Never talk to them. That's the word. The biggest mistake we ever made is asking Dr. Fauci what he thought. Look where we're at now. Now we're in a court. We had a pandemic. Everybody's had to get the shots or whatever. It's crazy. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

No, but I mean, seriously, right? It was this huge mistake where we get him on the speakerphone and he's like explaining like how quarantine works and like how like set up the island is for like handling something of this. And basically it comes down to like, you know, I think there's about eight beds. that could meet like the qualifications to treat something like this difficult you know on the island and there's like four million people here um not looking great but you do you guys do get a lot of vitamin d over there so that should be okay yeah absolutely there's a lot of faith healers um there's also people who like i mean and i'm i'm not joking like at this meeting with like my friends like somebody's like well we can make antibiotics out of roots and stuff you know and then like another person's like oh no we could build like you know uh ventilator tanks out of the scuba tanks i'm sure of it like we just reverse it and i'm like sitting here going like what kind of fucking dumb science fiction movie am i in it sounds like a polyshore biodome energy to it so far i think polyshore would probably play me in the movie maybe brendan fraser i don't know i'd like brendan fraser personally he's hotter but yeah definitely uh so anyway at some at a certain point like we were like oh fuck it like we gotta go like the day we get to the airport is the day that like singapore says like you can't even have a flight like a layover land there like we're not even accepting that they tell like their gate agents to like stand up and walk away out of the airport the airport's filled with like hundreds of people with their bags just like Where do I go? I have a ticket, but my plane's not leaving now. It's Jason in Vegas after the Life is Beautiful Festival when he can't figure out how to get back to LA. I get the picture. We just happened to be conducting through Qatar. and cutter had decided like if you have like a passport from the eastern hemisphere you can't get on the plane and you have a passport from the western hemisphere you can get on the plane it's easy though i like i like how clear cut that is that's kind of it was it's a weird decision man so makes a lot of sense i mean so basically we got back to the states and you know my thought is it's like

well, like the one thing you need in the world is like some kind of stability like this. And these people, nice, nice people in Iowa are giving you a lifeline right now. And, you know, the other thing that happens is I was just absolutely lying to my therapist through this whole thing and being like, nah, like I'm not working on that book anymore. That's bad for my head. Definitely not doing that. And the way that I had gone through that lie was I told myself I was going to write this magazine article. about this book that didn't work out that i tried to write you thought you're gonna scam you thought you're gonna scam your therapist by saying it was a magazine article about the book you think you're slick chief i mean do you guys come up with ways to lie to yourself like this i do this all the time apparently yeah it seems like a great little band-aid and i like it i've heard worse i don't need to write the whole book like that's that's a fool's errand i will write a great magazine piece about the problems of writing a book And then people are going to say, you're so brave for doing this. Yeah, man. But then the pandemic hit. And so I spent the next six months of my life basically sitting in a bathtub being like, what the fuck am I doing? And finally finished the book that I've been trying to write for the past 10 years. And now I live in Iowa. So it was all worth it. I mean, look, you didn't get COVID. You ate some good fruit, and now you live in the middle of nowhere. It sounds like it worked out really well to me. He may have gotten COVID. We don't know that for sure, Chris. Well, you know, actually, we had a member of the household got COVID, and I don't think I ever got it, but I started doing a lot of mushroom foraging during the pandemic, and I got some sort of terrible poison ivy. staph infection rash around the same time so that was my great medical trial where were you where were you foraging uh the woods in mississippi did you find any good shit oh dude chanterelles in mississippi absolutely killer unbelievable and no competition at all man like like you can just you could be like

stock an Italian restaurant with chanterelles for months with what you can get out of the woods. I had no idea they had those in Mississippi. Also, Mississippi chanterelles sounds like a band that's opening for Lenny Kravitz. I mean, I would be there. I would go to basically anything right now. I love a chanterelle. I mean, who doesn't? But what were you doing with the... I mean, it sounds like you had a load of these things. What were you doing? So, you know, it was this weird thing. My buddy Tate... At the beginning of the pandemic, he's been living out there like, you know, for a while now. And he just told like a bunch of us, like, get out here and like, let's have like this, you know, pandemic pod. Again, it was like kind of the thing that we thought it was going to be like eight weeks, you know, 12 weeks max or something like that. And we ended up just having like a dozen of us, you know, making dinner for one another. Big dinner parties out in the middle of the woods for months. This sounds pretty idyllic, Jason. What do you think? Don't you wish you would have spent your pandemic with Wyatt and his mushrooms instead of me and a microphone? Yeah, I think you should have hired a Netflix camera crew to cover this because this sounds like some great content, my friend. Let me tell you this. This is the thing that I found out about it. For so much of my lifetime, I've been thinking, man, if I wasn't so busy or if I was around my close friends more, what I'd really want to have is more dinner. Isn't that like the... The grown-up thing where you're like, oh, we could all just hang out around the house. We can make food. We can really enjoy each other and not be rest. It's the number one social activity for people who are 35 and up, I would say. You wash boring losers. I go to restaurants like a fun person. They have music. Well, I can put rye on Sonos at my house. But you get to enjoy all the things of partying, excessive drinking. You're serving yourself however much you want to drink. You can do shots. You can do whatever you want. You can have a hearty conversation. And the best part about it all, you're sitting down the whole time. Exactly. All of it's killer, right? The thing that I found out.

After dinner party 30 with the same dozen very culturally interesting, fascinating people that you've had dinner parties with the past too much, you were fucking tired of it, man. No one has anything to say to anyone. And, you know, it just got to the point where you're like, yeah, sure, we'll fucking make, you know, 15 pounds of meatballs and fresh spaghetti again tonight. Yeah, that's fucking fine. Yeah, great. You got a case of Chianti fantastic flow. Whatever, you know. Chanterelle problems, as they say. But were you the most skilled chef in this group? Or was there somebody coming for the crown of head chef and you were more of a Sioux vibe? Oh, wow. That's good, Chris. I don't want to say that I lose the most. The answer is yes. I mean, Wyatt, you've dedicated your life to the culinary arts. Yeah, but also if he's dedicated his life to the culinary arts, then he's probably rubbing elbows with like-minded folks who might actually be a professional chef. Especially, you know, I love cooking. I've been doing it for a long time. I love cooking for a two top, not a 12 top every night. You know what I mean? You know, I listen, I'm, I'm really like, I'm worried about Tate hearing this and him thinking like, wait a second. You actually, Tate doesn't listen to this. Tate's too rich to listen to this podcast. Don't worry about that. I think that, I think that you, if you put him on the, you put him on the salad station and that's fine. We traded off. He was chef one night. I'd be sous chef. I would be chef one night. He would be sous. It was a good dynamic. You're sweet for doing that. That's really nice. I didn't know that this COVID pod was also like a Make-A-Wish Foundation situation. I throw the amateurs a bone every once in a while in the kitchen. That's something I learned with my age. It's like when Jason lets me take something out of the oven and tells me that I cooked. It's a similar... It feels like charity, but everybody So good. You didn't even burn yourself at all, did you, Chris? Exactly. Yeah, exactly. That's my little chef. Yeah, exactly. It's nice. But that sounds like something that would be fun for a little while. And I don't know. The labor of cooking is something that I don't understand how you guys get past that. Because as a dish doer, neither option looks good for me. The only option that looks good is putting down that American Express at a fine dining establishment.

The amount of work that goes into it, are you getting pleasure out of this in a sick way or are you looking at it as more of like a painting, like this is your art? What do you think about it, Jason? How do you feel about it? I'm curious. I think that you're so excited to impress those around you or one-up yourself from the last time or correct a mistake that you made the last time you were cooking a dinner party. try out a new recipe or a new method or a new technique you've been trying to learn, that the high of that outweighs the dread of the laborious chopping and the dish doing. And then when you're done, then it finally kind of all sinks in. And then you're like, oh, right, this fucking sucks. I have to do dishes for a dinner of 12 every fucking night. I mean, that could be a bummer. But yeah, I mean, if you really love cooking and the art of it and you have a severe need to... get adoration from other people, then that flame never goes out. You always want to make the best meal you can and have a bunch of people who you respect congratulate you for doing a job well done. You know what, man? I'm 100% on board with you because the thing that I've noticed when I cook for myself... My skills go like down like 75% immediately. I'm just like, Oh, you're just, you're just cooking for yourself. Who fucking cares? I don't know, man. It's, it's fine. Talk to your therapist about that. I probably said, I will add it to the list. But yeah, no, like the thing that you really get. To me, with food, it's like, yeah, being able to share it or make it for somebody, impress them. I don't know. For whatever reason, that's such a motivator to me. I like to impress people by paying for the meal. If it's under a certain amount of money, of course. That's why Chris and I get along so well. In the food world, there's two kinds of – we'll call them panty droppers. There's dropping the Amex, and then there's the chef movie where I'm making you a fresh pasta at 2 a.m. after a long, hard day. And then you're like, oh, wow, you're bae. I think it's more like when I wake up at your house, I'm a little hungover, and you're just in the kitchen in your Ethica boxer briefs making me a nice French-style omelet as the sun rises. You're wearing one of my J.Crew Oxfords as you wipe the sleep out of your eyes. Exactly, yeah. But I think what are the three...

Because this is something that we've discussed before, but there's certain dishes that if someone can make well, you know they can really cook. So one's an omelet. For me, with a pizza restaurant, it's obviously the classic margarita. But are there other – is like a roast chicken fall into that category? Are there things I'm missing to be looking for in some up-and-coming chefs? Yeah, man. Listen, if somebody can deliver a roast chicken that actually impresses and distinguishes itself from other roast chickens, I spent years on this, man. I really went down the rabbit hole of what are the incremental – improvements one can make to like a roast chicken that actually pays off that's like you know it's it's like i mean it's similar to the omelet thing right where it's all about technique it's all about like doing the things ahead of time that makes it you know better food what's your what's your uh chicken game like well you know the whole game with chicken is that there's too much water in it And I'm serious. I'm totally serious. I've been saying this for years. The whole game with chicken, right? Hey, stay with me. The whole thing with chicken, right? Too much water. You know what? You know what doesn't have a whole lot of flavor, Chris? H2O. Damn. When you think about it that way. But don't you have to stuff it? You know what does have flavor? The blood and flesh of chickens. Don't you have to stuff a bunch of shit inside of them, though? No. Nah. it's a crutch oh so that's pussy shit so if you put vegetables inside your chicken you're a bitch like that ain't real cooking yeah stuffing the bird is a little antiquated i agree i agree i mean i think so the whole game to me with chicken is is aging it man drying it out if you can hang that thing and get some air circulating around it and then give it like a couple days to like sort of break down outside of like any kind of covering you're getting like a way way better chicken than uh if you just take it out yeah you salt that bitch Two, three days in the fridge, uncovered. Hang it if you can. I can't hang it in the Sub-Zero. There's no hooks. It's tough. But I'll get a little wire rack under there. You can just see the salt.

you know on the skin you can see the skin kind of tighten it up all that water leaving it this sounds like this sounds like you're describing yourself in the equinox sauna and it's turning me off it's it's not making my tummy rumble i'll say that no no that's a wet brian i'm talking about a dry brian chris oh i see i i see i see i mean as of i mean i do feel like there's something so appealing about a roast chicken to me as a guy who doesn't eat meat but it's just there's it's something it's so nancy myers and like chic to me I don't know. It seems like the perfect meal. I agree with that. Remember the episode where I was at the lake house in the cabin and it was super freezing, Chris? Yes. I was dying of frostbite. I remember that day I had made a roast chicken and it really kind of brought us back to life. And I remember it was so cold. For the backstory, why we were staying at a lake house cabin and the heater had gone out. And it was like really, really, really cold. And it was actually more cold outside of the refrigerator than inside. And I did a dry brine of it just sitting out on the counter for two days and then roasted it and then put some like pieces of bread underneath it. They soaked up all the chicken and made some really good chicken toast. But it was like one of those things where I was like so bored and I was like so I had nothing else to do and I could just devote the whole day to making this perfect meal. And it really was just like. You know, some potatoes and some bread and a chicken with salt on it. Nothing else. You know, that could have been the best meal of my life. What is it? Transcendent? Is that what you're saying? The bite was transcendent? I would argue it could be beyond transcendent. Oh, I don't even have the words for that. I don't even know what that means. I didn't know chicken could be, you know, all we hear about these days is hot chicken. You know what I mean? Lame shit. I think we're forgetting the roast. That's another crush. I think we're forgetting. Yeah, yeah. You got me in the mood to pick up a nice. Mary's air chilled organic bird, or maybe even a Springer mountain chicken, you know, something good. The good, the good stuff. Yeah. I mean, I didn't mean, I didn't even bring up chicken because you're the foremost expert on the birds, Wyatt, but it is, it does. I mean, you've, you've killed a chicken with your bare hands. Is that correct? Yeah. Too many.

Too many, man. Did you feel power or guilt or a mixture of both? Yeah, definitely the mixture of both. It depends on how many times you do it. You get a little worn out over it at a certain time. The first time you do something like that, you're probably pretty terrified of the situation. I had people who sort of taught me what they thought the best practices were. I spent a lot of time in bad places too. Because basically you're saying there's an ethical way to do this and there's people that do it differently. Yeah, I think so. I think so. I think there's a possibility that if you did it yourself, you sat down with it, Chris, you could come to terms with it and you could say, okay, I get this. I feel comfortable with it. That's interesting because I don't have any ethical or morals when it comes to most things, especially not meat. But I do think that it's just a – that would be like a big bridge to cross. Like I can't imagine doing that. But you're saying if I spent enough time with it and kind of understood the process and listened to the right people that it would be something I could even do. Well, I do want to be clear here. I'm not somebody who's saying – someone should think this way or someone should think another way. Sure. This is a big part of what's happened with me is that, you know, the big companies decided the best thing to do is hide this from people, make sure they don't see anything. Cause when people see this stuff, they don't want to have anything to do with it. And so we're going to hide it. And so the only time like we encounter, you know, like a slaughterhouse or something like that is usually like a video where something like has gone terribly wrong. Right. where the worst kind of things are coming together in this bad moment. But what I'm saying is if you do have the interest in looking this stuff directly in the eye rather than avoiding what might be good or might be bad about it, I think there's something that you really learn about yourself from slaughtering a chicken or shooting a deer or something like this. Whether it's worth your time to do something like that or whether you would want to do something like that, that's...

up to you know up to you but i think you know it's something that we've been doing for as long as we've been a species you know and i think we like get in touch with part of who we are by learning like how we do that jason do you think you could do it yeah i think so i think so i mean i've i've i think i've done it with a duck before but no i haven't done like the head i don't think i've done just like knife to the neck murder um i've definitely like killed fish and stuff that way but fish are you know why are why are fish different somehow to us why why are fish different that's a good question they can't scream well yeah we have different communications for sure like i'll say this as far as the animals go we've got it down with cows we're like 99 of the time A cow doesn't know it's going to die. I would say with trout, man, I got to say like you go to a good trout farm and all they're doing is taking the trout out of a pond and putting it into an ice bath. And, and, and that's it. You know, like there's not a lot of drama there. Chickens on the other hand, man, chickens know they're going to fucking die every single time they get anywhere near it. They have like this extra sensory thing and they get scared. And like that, no one's figured out the way around that. Chickens are very aware that they're going to die. Is that a thing that people are actively trying to figure out a solution for? Or it's like, if we can get it, then great. If not, then whatever. You know, I think the general idea with all this stuff is you want to make it go as quickly and painlessly as possible, right? You know, and I think there are people, you know, there's one version of your big industrial farming where they're... creating up chickens, they're putting them on the back of a semi truck, and then driving them hours down the freeway, and then backing that into like a gigantic slaughterhouse that's, you know, pumping 200,000 chickens a day. And this is a long and exhausting and like really stressful process, which is really different than I would say, like, you know, a small farmer who has like a slaughter exemption, who can create up the chickens in the field.

bring them over to a shed and then it's done in a few minutes right what do you what do you think about the the like the kind of the theories behind that stress being inside the animal when it's killed affecting the flavor or the quality of the meat 100 man it's there there's no question in my mind that that's real absolutely yeah yeah you have I mean, it's a hormonal reaction that happens in animals where you have, you know, a cow that's, you know, been trucked for forever to get to the slaughterhouse. They're building up stuff with within their muscles that whole time. You have a relaxed animal that, you know, has been walked in from a pasture to the, you know, the side of the place that they're getting into the slaughterhouse. Completely different. I mean, you see it with game animals, too. It's one of the reasons that like game tends to have like a. You know, a flavor that some people don't like is that oftentimes in that process, like, you know, a buck will be stressed out or fighting, you know, for its life for a while near the end of that process. So, yeah, that's 100% real. Are you familiar with the Ikejime for the fish as well? Fill me in on that one, Jason. I'm not quite sure if I heard you correctly. Yeah, I'm not sure either. It sounds like a word you made up. basically putting it like a thin steel wire, kind of like a coat hanger type of thing, straight into the main nerve on the spinal cord to kind of kill them. Similar to the way, you know, like the bolt in the head for the cow, where it's like an instantaneous death. Like the way that you kind of put this wire down into the head of the fish and you kind of jam it around and it sort of... disables all the nervous system so it doesn't allow, you know, kind of that fear and blood and, you know, those energy pulses to get into the muscle meat. I mean, it sounds like a good system. It does. You know, I mean, I feel like, you know, the Bolt is a really being, you know, having been in a slaughterhouse where we use the Bolt, I think it's a good system. Yeah. I mean, like, to me, you know what the thing that kills me, man? No pun intended, I hope.

So here's the thing. I feel like when we talk about animal welfare, we talk about that kind of thing. People often have some memory of a clip they saw on YouTube or on the news of some guy kicking an animal or something like that or something going really wrong in a slaughterhouse. But there isn't a person that I've ever met that worked in a slaughterhouse that didn't want to make that process be as quick. and as simple and straightforward as it possibly could right like that's to no one's benefit to like drag that out to make that harder for the animal the reason that stuff happens man is because companies hire these people pay them you know like awful wages give them no breaks and then make them participate at a speed that's way too fast right i mean the the deal is is that it's straight up like abuse of the people that are working in the slaughterhouses and and this is one of the things that just kills me man like i think people who are like concerned about animal welfare you know the number one thing they should be concerned about is the labor rights of people who work in slaughterhouses to me like that's a direct one-to-one line you take care of those people that's like where it actually that's where the issue 100 um so i mean you know that's and that's not really you know what i'm trying to like This isn't like a polemical book or whatever, but you come across this stuff when you're working and you go like, man, people's understanding of that situation versus what's actually happening in those situations are just huge. It's a huge gulf. Do you think that meat consumption will actually not go away, but truly decrease in our lifetime? There's that movement happening now. And as a person who's been... vegetarian or vegan or pescatarian or whatever for 20, 25 years, it seems like this is the biggest it's ever been. That swell and that discussion and it's bad for the environment. It's not just about animals anymore. They've made it a bigger story. Do you think that's actually realistic or do you think that people don't really give a fuck? There's a lot of things here. I think people have made some compelling arguments. I think when you talk about the climate, there's a real compelling argument there.

I think part of the question that people haven't fully thought through there is that if we were to replace, let's say, all of the calories that we get from animal protein across the world, and then we were... Now we're talking. So you're saying if I don't get these animal proteins, my titty is going to be sagging? Is that what you're saying? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Not saying that at all. I'm saying from an agricultural perspective, the amount that you would have to change of... shifting into row crop production to do all of the things that you're replacing those calories with would create another but different set of agricultural calamities i see there so it's the dominoes start falling and we got all kinds of fucking problems like we are we're at square one you know listen yeah this is part of the deal is just feeding you know several billion people on the planet is going to be challenging and probably disastrous no matter which way you cut it. That's why we have this man-made pandemic. I was compelled for a minute by the idea of the lab-grown meat. The way that one person presented it to me was... meat without slaughter, right? It's the same thing, but you don't have the slaughter process. The slow rollout of that technology, I'm just saying if there's anybody who works at a company like that who wants to show me that it works and that it doesn't require as much or more energy input to create that, I'm all ears. I'd love to see that. I haven't seen that yet. The part of the deal with this whole question, man, is that we're always looking at farms being like this huge problem. Right. And like, sure. Like, I mean, that's maybe, maybe part of the deal. Like, you know, we have created all of this, all of these problems on our planet through agriculture, but like the, there's no solution that I've seen where you're so, Oh, we're going to get rid of farms. Like you're going to replace one farm that has X problem with maybe another farm, which has a different problem. Yeah. You know, and I don't want to be a naysayer. I think there's a lot of people who like,

They see some real promise. I'm not a solutions guy. I like that. I like that. Look, I'm not a solutions guy, Chris. Don't ask me more questions on this podcast. Well, I hope to be dead before any of this stuff is really a problem. That's kind of where my head's at. You know what I mean? As long as I'm dead before it's really a problem, it's tough for me to be that concerned at this stage. I think that's what kind of every generation thinks about. their previous you know they're the future generation and it just keeps getting worse and worse but you know maybe technology will save us who knows it saved me so far um i would like to ask you why it as well so jason My co-host, he's kind of moved into this real post-restaurant, I hate every restaurant phase of his life, and it's pretty annoying for me, but it's great for the show. So anywhere we go, he shits on it, and it's annoying in the moment, but then when we're able to talk about it on the pod, everything is content, so I basically have no choice. So I'm wondering, as a former restaurant critic and obviously amateur chef, Can you go to a restaurant and enjoy it, or are you a fucking hater like Jason? Man, you know, it's been weird. I haven't gone out to a restaurant in a while. I guess the culinary scene in Iowa is not probably the best. Which Panera has the most chef-driven one? You know, I'll say this. I do think the glamour, the thing that I fell in love with 10 years ago in Atlanta, where I was first writing about restaurants and all of that was new and really interesting to me. Whatever that period of time was has changed to a great deal to me. I don't get the same kick out of it. I don't know if I really ever want to live a lifestyle where I spend that much time in restaurants again. But I'm kind of curious when this shit... You know, like, like what is the next area of restaurants? I don't know. Jason, do you have thoughts on this? Like, like, is there like a ghost kitchens? I've read about them a lot. It seems cool. It seems pretty cool. And I, I've had some sushi from one of them and it wasn't bad, you know? And then, and I think, I think Wiz Khalifa has some as well, which is also promising. Cause you know, guys that smoke that much weed, they know about food.

They kind of know about food. Chris, you have a lot of good points on this. I hope the future of restaurants is never hearing rap music at dinner again and better bread service. Now that I'm having carbs again, I want a really curated bread basket. Shit, Chris. You're back on bread? Well, not full time, but I stopped eating dessert, so I need the carbohydrates for energy, for lifting. Well, fuck yeah, man. But Jason, please, please give us your thoughts on the future of restaurants. I can't wait to hear what you've come up with. You can't just say sweet green. That's not the future of restaurants. I think that we're going to move towards a place where there's consistency more than innovation. you know, places like corporate steakhouses and cheesecake factories and places like that where the food is not awful, but it's not, you know, nothing new is happening, but you're always going to get something that's good enough and the service is always going to be good. I think those places are going to kind of thrive and take off more because, you know, people are just going to get, or maybe not people, but just myself personally. It's too much of a gamble to go to a new fly-by-night restaurant where there's so many things that can go wrong and it costs so much money where you're just like, well, that was a disappointment. I could have just gone to Cheesecake Factory. So you're saying we're going to be hitting Houston's three nights a week. Yeah, I think Houston's will continue to thrive. And places like that where... Thank God. Now that we're going to be cooking more at home with our designer cookware and we're going to be ordering our Uber Eats and we're going to do our meal kits and all these things, when we go out to eat, it has to be a real experience. And then the service itself has to be a huge part of that. And right now, that's the biggest issue. Nobody can hire quality servers or even bad quality servers right now because of the quarantine. Nobody wants to work anymore in that industry.

the way they can't pay people enough to do it anymore. I think that's going to be the battleground of what the future of restaurants are because those places like Houston's or Cheesecake or whatever, despite their faults, you're always going to get good service there. You're always going to get a team of people where they put that as a priority. If that gets taken away, then there's going to truly be no reason to go out to restaurants anymore. I'm all for a future that involves eating at Houston. Just to be clear. I miss that spinach dip so much. Since I moved away from Atlanta, I haven't had it. I love that place. To me, I'm going back to Atlanta this weekend. The number one thing that I'm thinking about going back to restaurants is, who can I see? You know what I mean? Like, like the people like, like, is Jesse going to be behind the bar at Kimball House? You know, like, I'd like to see Jesse, I'd like to see Brian, you know, or like, is Alan going to be at eight arm, you know, and like, and to me, like, that's, that's what makes sense, you know, to what you're saying, like, I think the thing about restaurants just has to be people in the end, man, it has to be, the people have to be want to be in that place. And they have to be in a situation where they, they can take care of you directly as well. like kind of everything else is noise. Like that's what restaurants should be about. You make a great point. And I, that's why I will continue to go to places like the wonderful tower bar at the sunset tower where I can enjoy a $65 piece of fish with some spinach. And this, the, the server is hot and everything makes sense. There's a live, there's a jazz band playing. You got, you know, this, I'm just glad though. And I do, I make fun of Jason all the time, but I do think the era of like the, This stupid novelty pop-up that's in a faraway place is over. I think that is finally done, which is, along with the speakeasy trend, I'm happy to see buried six feet underground. I think young people are still okay with that, of like, hey, order my pickle thingy on Monday, and then you can pick it up on Friday from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. from...

my cousin's house and everyone's like, yeah, that sounds like an awesome thing. I'll build my, I'll build my life around this. Like, I don't think anyone's going to want to do that anymore once you hit a certain age. But yeah, I think, I think the era of all that stuff is, is kind of going away. And, but we, I make fun of you a lot, Chris, about like the, what you value in a restaurant of all those things. But I think it's starting to come to become true. Like that, that is what is going to be valued more above anything. And like, Yeah, I'm going to a restaurant. Yeah, it's going to be a waste of money. Yeah, the food's not going to be that good. But, you know, there's a jazz band playing. There's a beautiful scene. The person serving me the food is hot. The clientele is good. And you're going there for the experience. You're taking a photo of the napkin. It's a status symbol. Don't talk about Bar Pity like that, bro. Don't come at Bar Pity on my podcast. Yeah, I mean, Bar Pity is a great place to get a drink. Don't get any food, but yeah. Jason just literally shits on everything. I don't know where to go anymore, Wyatt. That's the problem. I don't know where to go with my friend to have a meal that's going to be up to his standard unless it's... I'm lost. That's the problem, Chris. I don't know either. That's why I eat a bodega sandwich and let's just get martinis wherever you go eat food. Wherever you're... bowl of vegetables is that i will get it i will get a martini there i just i mean i guess that would help with weight loss which maybe isn't a bad program to run but i do think that the i i don't know i mean it's tough i i i haven't heard jason talk even after his italian journey he didn't talk positively about the food so it's it's it's I'm sure your partner Wyatt is fed up with you complaining about every restaurant too, so we can probably relate. Yeah, yeah. I definitely got a bad reputation near the end where it was impossible to make me happy. Again, this is probably something I spent too many hours talking to my therapist about. I think the key is if you're that disappointed about going out and spending $200 on dinner.

you shouldn't be going out to fucking dinner. Great point. Great point. Thank you for that. Well, I've actually trained my partner into also being a snobby hater, and I don't know if I did that intentionally or not, or if she actually does agree with my philosophies on things, but she has sort of become a person who also turns her nose up at almost any restaurant setting as well. I don't know if that's a sign that I have chosen the right life partner or if I have polluted her innocent mind. It feels like you're just a bad guy. Or I'm just a bad man in general. It seems like you're a man that's once again forcing the patriarchy on a... I got a question for you, Jason. Here's something that I feel like is completely missing from the food conversation right now. I think you're one of the few people I've seen comment on it. Do you think restaurants could pull you back in if we brought back smoking? Oh, yeah. Great question. Honestly, great question. The answer is yes. Yeah, 100%. Because, you know, smoking in itself is an experience. And, you know, especially once you get older, I've noticed it's just like, like Chris was saying, like, I'm a simple man. Give me a good bread basket. And the server keeps refilling my iced tea or whatever it is, like those little things. If I can go to a place where there's a nice ashtray, the martini's made well and it's cold and I have a nice view to look at, charge me $100 for a fucking cheeseburger that tastes like shit. I don't care. I'm just happy to be there. You know what I mean? Yeah, man. You know, when I read that thing that you wrote about smoking and food, it blew my mind because I've had this thing for a while where it's like, what's missing from food media? I mean, you know, you follow this stuff and it's like... You know, I hate to be like the like hater on like my former profession, but like everybody gets on the same subjects and sort of decides like this is what we're talking about this year. Like this is the important thing to talk about with food or this is like the cool trend. But like we smoked in restaurants for the existence.

of restaurants yeah like the whole time that restaurants have existed people have been smoking in them and it's only like the past what 20 20 something years that we decided that doesn't go anymore and then we all pretend like it doesn't exist and it's not part of the experience like like like why are we like i'm i don't know man i'm just like a cigarette truther why are we pretending cigarettes don't exist they should be part of the conversation yeah they should be part of the food conversation yeah i mean wait till we smoke on planes again whoa i'm okay with not smoking on planes but the restaurant thing yeah i mean okay but you i mean especially during quarantine you know you're watching all these old movies and all these directors you know paul thomas anderson quentin tarantino they're making all these films about the the good old days or you watch madman or whatever it is and everyone goes to a bar and you sit down you order your drink and you light a cigarette and and that's that's an equal part of the whole experience and that is totally gone now and now that has been replaced with I'm going to look at my Instagram instead. Chris, you don't smoke, right? I'll have a cheeky cig every once in a while. I wouldn't go somewhere because they allowed me to smoke like Jason would. I do think smoking is one of the coolest things that exists. It's one of the coolest things you can do. To ban it is unfair. I think having a smoking section... That was a fine compromise. And having one outdoors is good. But when I was in Italy, I was truly spoiled. And I was almost shocked. I'd be in a scenario where there would not be a single person smoking. I'm in this elegant dining room. And everything is all good. I'm like, oh, I'm sorry. Is it okay if I smoke in here? And they're like, oh, yeah. Thank God. Like, please. Like, they wanted somebody to break the seal and start it up. And then as soon as I did that. Everyone else in the restaurant started smoking and then the whole energy became much more relaxed. Yeah, no, I mean, the same thing in Southeast Asia, man. Like, like people didn't stop smoking there, you know, and maybe it was just like where I live. Most places were open air. So that like sort of compensated for it a little bit. But like it's a completely different approach to it. It's just like something that like no one ever thought like, oh, why would we stop doing that?

Cigarette smoking is fantastic. When you put it like that, what was the drug scene in Bali like? Man, I was trying to take care of myself. So I can't say that I was super down into all that sort of stuff. But you had, on the one hand, people who were seeking to make contact through God through lifting the back of the toad. That was definitely a thing that was happening there. And then you sort of had like your standard European slash Australian scene, like, you know, like really stepped on bags of ketamine in the club kind of vibe. And it's sort of somewhere in between, you know, you had a lot of other stuff. But, you know, like I was like getting up early in the morning, you know, like drinking coconut water and shit like that. And, you know, like that's. Wow. You're on the CB wave. We love to see it. When do you finish in Iowa? When do you get to return to society? No comment. We're playing it by the week out here, man. Wow. Okay. So it's going really well out there. Good to know. Good to know. There's like some hard dates. Things are going great. I mean, I love that. But how does it feel? I mean, as we're wrapping up, I mean, how does it feel? 10 years of working on a book is astronomical. I mean, that's truly hard to fathom for anyone. Does it feel? amazing to have it completed or does it feel like there's a void where the book used to be? Yeah. It's the second one, man, for sure. You know, I, you know, I don't want, I don't want to go down on it, but it's like, you know, the thing you learn as a writer is like to like keep working, to keep revising, you know, and to like find like what wasn't working and then improve it and keep going. And when you're pushing this stuff out in the world, man, like I'm a proud, I'm as proud of this thing as like anything I'll ever make in my life. Right. You know, like this is like, I'm so glad I get to share it, but like, The thing that they tell you is – This is your entourage. It's anything that you want to put on that. That's what it is for me. Whatever it is, people might not like it. People might be into it. I don't know. But the thing about it is you just want to keep writing. That's what I want to do, man. I just want to be on the next story. I've had a lot of stuff come out in the past few months, and it's just like –

I'm really stoked to catch up with some friends. I'm going to go to Atlanta and all the people that I complained to about working on this book for years and annoyed, I can finally apologize to and say, here's this thing. You don't have to hear me talk about it anymore, man. Hey, guys. After 10 years of annoying you, Ezra, I got you an autographed copy of my book. Thank you so much for your support. and dedication during this difficult period of my life. Okay, so just to confirm, the book that you're talking about is Springer Mountain, or is this a different book? Springer Mountain, Meditations on Killing and Eating, out on Tuesday. Thanks for having me on to talk about it, man. No, I'm very proud of you, man. I know this has been a long haul, and I think that there's a few tasks in life that are more daunting than writing a book, and I think that completing it must feel... must feel really good and you'll find some other bullshit to do. Don't worry about it. Oh yeah, man. No, I'm, I'm, I'm trying to convince like, uh, you know, any like celebrities that need like puff piece profiles are in about them. Like we could just go like, don't, don't, don't come for us like that. Okay. Like we're not, we're not celebrities. We're just podcasts. And I would say that story had some meat on the fucking bone. Maybe you need to read it again. But there was some meat on that. Jason, you got a little gristle in your teeth after reading that story, I think. Oh, yeah. I have a meat high right now. Not unlike when I go to a Korean barbecue joint. That's how I'm feeling right now, satiated with the flesh. I mean, almost like I was eating horse or something. I could run faster. I love it for you guys. Wait, so when do y'all leave for a tour? When does that happen? Are you going to be in Atlanta on the 1st, October 1st? No, man. I'm out like Monday morning. So I'm going to miss y'all. Okay. No, we leave. We leave. Yeah, we start October 1st. So we leave September 30th from LA. We get to Atlanta. Jason gets to spend more time with my parents. And then we hit the stage, you know.

We've been talking about this for so long, I'm ready to get it over with. All right, Wyatt, the book Springer Mountain is in stores on Tuesday. You can get that wherever you buy books. And where can they find you on Twitter to follow along with the action? Wyatt underscore Williams. Thank you. Nice to hear from you, bro. Please be careful out there. I don't know what happens in Iowa. I feel like something bad could happen, so just be careful. Thank you, CB. Thank you, Jason. Be careful. Don't talk to your neighbors and shit. All right, be careful. I don't fucking know. All right, well, Talk to you soon. Wyatt, thank you. All right. Later, bro.