"Deadly Dinners"

[00:00:00] The following podcast contains adult themes, gritty details from true crimes, and naughty language. Listener discretion is advised. There's no time now. I began five years ago, in secret, working all night, every night, right into the dawn. A thousand experiments, a thousand failures, and then, at last, the great, wonderful day.

[00:00:26] Hello, all you spooky nerds! Welcome back, finally, to Human Fckery, the only podcast to breed human psychology, dark history, and true crime into a three-headed dog trained to guard listeners everywhere against looks-maxing content. I am your host, chronically underpaid professional wordsmith and terminal liability to this show's production schedule, Kimberly.

[00:00:56] Broadcasting alongside me today from Satan's sweaty gooch, a.k.a. New Orleans, Louisiana, is your, and my, favorite co-host, smarty pants of clinical psychology, and relentlessly patient producer, Dr. Edward Simon! It's the season opener. It's a genuine goddamn miracle. No, don't give him our credit. We earned this premiere through blood, sweat, semen, and GoFundMe.

[00:01:27] I am so crazy that the superstitious maniac inside me is like, no, don't tempt fate, just record this before something else terrible can happen and delay the season again. I expect nothing less from you than pure, undiluted anxiety, even as something positive is happening. No, no. It is always diluted. Like, I won't speak for you, but I am genuinely so grateful that we are really back.

[00:01:53] There were many months of pain and surgeries and people sticking needles and tubes into my pelvic floor, and I much prefer doing story time in our peaceful little fuckery dungeon to, like, all of that. Uh, having emptied your catheter bag myself, I, I prefer this as well. I'm glad we're on the same page. Welcome back. Welcome back. You want to get weird? We have some literally delicious stories to share.

[00:02:19] Always. But first, do the obligatory explaining for any newcomers on how the show works. It's been a while, so just let me blow this dust off. If you're new to human fuckery, here's how the show works. Kimberly and I throw a bunch of topics into a dusty, mercury-tainted top hat purchased from a haunted shop on Royal Street. We pull one out per episode.

[00:02:48] We each get one week to dig deeply into history's colon to find a true story we feel best fits the assigned theme. We get another week in the studio to record and score our submissions. Then we meet here, in the fuckery dungeon, to present our stories to reluctant judges and have one of us declared the winner.

[00:03:13] In the process, we aspire to learn something alongside our listeners. Assimilate new perspectives that help us all be less shitty to other people. A reminder that our intern-slash-agent-slash-CEO-slash-official dog walker, Gary the Ghoul, kidnaps the show's judges in the dead of night and forces them under threat of creative death to participate. So the judges' rulings are suspect at best, always coerced, and definitely not to be trusted.

[00:03:43] Democracy! Democracy! A slight adjustment to the format for this season. In the past, we've generally had two guest judges per episode. As long-time listeners know, because we tend to have good and just people as guests, they'd usually split their votes evenly between Kimberly and I, meaning the audience constantly had to be the tiebreaker.

[00:04:07] So this season, we're streamlining, cutting down to one judge for most episodes. You, the listeners, definitely still get to vote. You'll just be either confirming or overruling the official judge, which is satisfying regardless. And it should make the episodes a little less chatty, since everyone has ADHD and no one can focus on anything anymore. Joining us this month for our return to Human Fuckery's proper competition format

[00:04:36] is a slinger of fine foods, artist behind literally tens of thousands of meals, and a highly anxious food safety expert. Trained at the former French Culinary Institute in New York City, he began his career in tasty treats as a confectionery maker at Old Monmouth Candies, which still ships its beloved house-made specialties like peanut brittle and chocolate turtles nationwide. Over his half-century in professional cookery, he's worked in iconic Italian restaurants, quaint French bistros,

[00:05:04] and even did a long stretch feeding the literal masses as one of Wegman's executive chefs. He is a battle-tested expert in hospitality and cookery, and about as biased and unreliable a judge as we could book. Correct. This month's special guest judge is my dad, Chef David Kaye. And he is the perfect guest for this episode because... The subject of today's podcast is...

[00:05:33] Deadly dinners! Deadly dinners! Deadly dinners! Deadly dinners! Deadly dinners! Now look, I've been very on board with this booking because welcoming listeners back after an 18-month hiatus with a deranged group meal seasoned with death, it feels perfect for a premiere. And having sat at his table, the man really is an expert in not just exceptional food, but hospitality as a verb.

[00:06:00] But has anything been done to handicap the episode, given Wavy Davey worships the ground his daughters walk on and is genetically primed to prefer your story? I've been aggressively clear with dad that I've had his approval for years. I love him so much, clearly loves me, and that it will be bad for the show and our relationship if he just picks me because I am his spawn.

[00:06:24] And Gary is also coercing his unbiased participation in spectacular fashion. Gary's dressed dad like a little crab. He's got claws, there's some red body paint involved, and dropped him into a life-size recreation of the mad chef scene from The Little Mermaid. There's a giant animatronic cook in a toke terrorizing him with a chef's knife while the song Les Poissons plays over and over on loop. It's been going on for like 14 hours, and I'm receiving a C&D from Disney right now. Cool. Anyway, dad hasn't slept all night.

[00:06:54] He's right on the edge of a nervous breakdown. If there were ever a time he'd be susceptible to your storytelling, it would be now. Hmm. Yeah. Well, great then. And, um, I'm gonna go first before something terrible happens and prevents me from orating. I've been waiting for literal years. The king surveyed his table and was pleased.

[00:07:18] From his central seat on the raised dais, he oversaw the phalanx of platters and bowls as they were marched in and out, laden with Scotland's finest feasting items. Roasted venison and rabbit dripped their juices into pools waiting to be soaked up by dense oat bread. Eel and salmon showcased the bounty of the country's locks and tributaries.

[00:07:42] Thick soup smelling of fragrant onions, carrots, and barley had already warmed the bellies of everyone in the chili hall. Wine and ale's sour aroma mingled with the steaming meat pies stuffed with game birds. At some point, servants would help the army of dishes retreat, replacing them with the king's favorite custards, sugared nuts, and fruit fritters. The whole event was serving medieval times realness.

[00:08:10] The voices of men seated at trestle tables reverberated off massive stone walls. Exposed timber beams and the high ceiling above them were illuminated by fire torchlight. The air inside David's tower that night was thick and heavy with wood smoke. While the menu was solid, King James was especially engaged by the presence of the other boys at his table.

[00:08:34] Just ten years old at the time, his days were punctuated by many meals, at many tables, with many older men. Tonight, however, the meal honored two young nobles of Clan Black Douglas, one of Scotland's most powerful families. William Douglas was roughly 16, closer to manhood than James, but still nearer to childhood than any of the king's guardians or advisors.

[00:09:01] William Douglas was around 12, barely older than the king himself. Sir William Crichton, Chancellor of Scotland and one of the most powerful men in the country, sat on display as well. He sipped his wine and chatted with the other nobles on the dais, occasionally glancing at Sir Alexander Livingston, guardian to the king. They watched the trio of young charges eating with relish.

[00:09:28] King James hardly noticed the door to the hall opening. But he did clock the unnatural silence which quickly overtook the room as another enormous platter was delivered to his table. A macabre tableau landed with a soft thud that was audible in the astonished hall.

[00:09:53] The gleaming metal platter displayed a severed bull's head, jet black and enormous and terrible to behold, ebony eyes cloudy and unseeing. Blood stained the ragged border where it had been cut from its body, coagulating under the stump of neck. The sting of danger shot like lightning through the nervous system of every guest.

[00:10:17] In Scottish tradition, a black bull's head was symbol of death, betrayal and execution. The calloused hands of guards wrapped around the arms of the Douglas brothers, yanking both to their feet. A man's voice announced something over the sudden cacophony in the hall, but only peace is registered amidst the chaos. Something about treason, conspiracy. This was an arrest. There would be a trial.

[00:10:44] The boys flailed and struggled as they were dragged from the tower out into the night. King James II stood frozen on his elevated stage and began to cry. The banquet was still warm on the abandoned plates before him. Ah, Scotland. Home of barley fields, fairy folklore, whiskey, haggis.

[00:11:06] And yet another sobering reminder that killing kids to acquire power is, big sigh, a fucking feature of mankind, not a bug, regardless of the century. It's safe to say that pulling treacherous nonsense over dinner is a dick move in pretty much every culture. But to truly grasp the heinousness of this tale, understand that sharing food in Scotland wasn't about simple manners, but honor, alliance and survival itself.

[00:11:34] Historically speaking, freely giving food and shelter not just to friends, but allies, travelers, even total strangers was regarded as a moral obligation. In the Highlands region in particular, with its unforgiving landscape and even more unpredictable weather, getting lost, injured or ill was routine. Turning people in need away from your table was a great way to get canceled by the community.

[00:12:00] Because everyone in the larger community was likely to need help with nourishment and shelter at some point, statistically speaking. So making sure everyone not only understood, but actively practiced hospitality was critical to collective survival. If you're looking for historic examples of how serious hosting was culturally, Shakespeare's Macbeth has been screeding for centuries about how monstrous and disruptive to the natural order killing a guest is. This is not me being hyperbolic.

[00:12:30] After the body of the murdered King Duncan is found in Macbeth's hizzy, Macduff literally calls it, quote, sacrilegious and says to even look upon the corpse is, quote, to destroy your sight with a gorgon, end quote, a.k.a. turn you to stone.

[00:12:47] So to invite two noble children into one's castle under the guise of diplomacy, feed them, humiliate them with an exceptionally creepy dinner theater prop, and attack them at the dinner table is Shakespearean tragedy level conduct. Now that that's clear, the Black Douglas clan was truly the stuff of Scottish legend. If you're millennial enough to have watched Braveheart every time it was on cable, you already know who King Robert the Bruce was.

[00:13:17] And while he didn't make it into that particular screenplay, Sir James Douglas was the real-life dude helping Robert pull off savagely effective guerrilla warfare against the English during the Wars of Scottish Independence. He was dubbed the Black Douglas by petrified Brits because of his wild dark hair and penchant for bringing unsubtle death upon his enemies. The Bruce and the Black executed a number of successful and bloody campaigns against the colonizers and were rewarded handsomely for it.

[00:13:47] Once the English had been dispatched and a peace treaty signed, Douglas was gifted huge tracts of land along Scotland's southern border and named Guardian of the Realm, which is a seriously badass moniker. Black Douglas even ended up wearing the heart of the deceased King Robert the Bruce in a custom silver coffin around his neck on a crusade to Jerusalem. But that's a whole separate story and spoilers. He died.

[00:14:16] Point is, Black Douglas clan roots ran deep in Scotland. And Sir James the Black's heroics, plus the land he accrued massacring English strongholds, began compounding interest over the next century. His family accumulated more lands in multiple regions, developed its own military force, and did the strategic marriage thing for generations.

[00:14:39] By the time we hit the 15th century, the Black Douglases very nearly rivaled the Scottish monarchy in power, assets, soldiers, and resources. Very impressive for any clan, but also very threatening to any sitting royal family, which is the Stuart monarchy in this case. All of this is a long way of explaining shit was tense, and had been tense, between Scotland's noblemen when our story picks up near the very end of the 1430s.

[00:15:09] This is when King James the First was assassinated at Blackfriars Monastery by a group of conspirators, a move which totally destabilized the crown. James the First had royally pissed off his country's richest clans by attempting to punish powerful nobles for various crimes while reforming the country's government. Tale as old this time. His son and heir, King James II, was just six at the time of the murder.

[00:15:35] This little child brain was like 20 solid years from gelling into capable adult thinking. So a series of regents and power-fixated adult advisors began doing the work of ruling while the king grew up. This is known as a weak king scenario, and the noble families of Scotland predictably began the chess match to see which, if any, might be able to dethrone and replace the Stuarts.

[00:16:00] The Black Douglases, with their sizable military and decades of diplomatic experience, were seen by most to be the biggest threat to King James Part Deux. Though just a teenager himself, William Douglas was comically wealthy for a Scotsman, and held the title of Earl of Douglas, Earl of Avondale, and Lord of Galloway. He had more warriors in his jurisdiction than the boy king, and came from a family perfectly comfortable with shanking a motherfucker if the situation called for it.

[00:16:29] In the eyes of the crown, letting he or his younger brother grow into manhood would be like watching a tumor grow. And when we say the crown, we mean the sirs Crichton and Livingston, Chancellor of Scotland and the king's formal guardian, respectively. Because 10-year-olds rarely waste time fantasizing about who might try to usurp them in the future. Now, some historians assert these elder ghouls were just being pragmatic.

[00:16:57] To protect the boy king, the potential rival teen king had to be killed. Others lean more towards paranoia, with Crichton and Livingston plotting to murder kids who may have wanted fuck all to do at the stupid throne given they legitimately lived like kings already. The exact motive has been lost to history, but experts generally agree poor James II knew nothing about the scheme developed in his name and executed under his roof.

[00:17:22] Regardless, we know the black Douglases were invited to Edinburgh Castle in 1440 for what they believed would be a normal, welcoming, diplomatic dinner between powerful ruling forces. We know the Douglas boys were served a formal dinner shared by the king and his men. And we know that meal was destroyed by the big reveal of the bull's head, which is yet another piece of proof that men are 1000% more dramatic than the women they accuse of being dramatic. Record-keeping in throwback Scotland was not great.

[00:17:52] But primary sources say the Douglas boys were dragged from the dinner table and into a courtyard for immediate, treacherous adult behavior. Some accounts, like John Major's History of Great Britain, says they were simply seized, condemned, and executed. Hector Boyce's History of Scotland is more detailed, describing an outrageous mock trial for treason outside the castle. Some accounts say the boy king begged for the lives of the Douglases.

[00:18:19] And at this point, no one knows with certainty which version of events happened. An abbot and historian named Walter Bauer wrote in the 1440s that there was a very brief sham trial for the boys on site outside the dinner before both were beheaded on Castle Hill. This seems as plausible as it is unforgivable. The site of the children's murder is now part of Edinburgh's Royal Mile, the famous elevated stretch of road leading up to the castle.

[00:18:47] Afterward, the decapitated bodies were returned to the family for burial. The only thing all accounts agree on is that the killings were grotesque and the boys hadn't actually committed any crimes other than being future Douglas Klan leaders. Even for medieval warlords, the Black Dinner went too far. Killing kids and political rivals was one thing. But breaking the sacred ritual of hospitality over dinner, no less?

[00:19:15] There are lines even war criminals won't cross. But in news that will surprise no one alive today, there were no consequences at all for the powerful men who orchestrated child murders. Crichton and Livingston essentially controlled the government and its laws and weren't about to prosecute themselves. Most of the noble families were horrified by the killings, but the reaction was more muted than you'd hope.

[00:19:39] Some Klan leaders were nervous about the Douglas' power and didn't see weakening the family as a negative outcome. Medieval politics often involved violence, so open rebellion in response to yet another strategic murder didn't seem widely reasonable. The new Earl of Douglas, the dead boys' great-uncle, was also older and politically experienced.

[00:20:03] He pragmatically assessed that sending Klan Douglas' soldiers to avenge the deaths would only weaken an already reeling family further, costing them vital resources. Instead, he used public sympathy about the crime to strengthen the family's alliances and then build up their position at court. In the end, the Black Dinner plan became the tactical equivalent of hurling a stone into a hornet's nest to prevent being stung by a bee.

[00:20:30] The remaining Black Douglases, and there were plenty of them, maintained all the titles, money, lands, and soldiers they'd had at the time of the dinner. Only now they had a fresh, napalm-hot hatred of the king, plus the support of many allies who felt inviting kids to dinner to murder them is an embarrassingly indecent way to rule. The legitimacy of the Regency government filling in for King James II was permanently damaged, even if none of the dickheads involved faced real consequences.

[00:21:00] If any of this historic tale sounds vaguely familiar, it's because it was one of two real historical inspirations for the famous Game of Thrones Red Wedding. This is not conjecture. George R.R. Martin is candid that he drew from the Black Dinner of 1440 and the Massacre of Glencoe in 1692, both Scottish dinnertime events, for his epic betrayal plotline.

[00:21:23] Though the TV series depicts the Red Wedding's main victim and murdered political rival, Robb Stark, as a 20-something-year-old hottie played by Richard Madden in the books, he's around 16 and frequently referred to as just a boy, much like the real William Douglas. The good news is that international law and diplomatic standards have changed profoundly since the 15th century. So we don't really get as many political dinners turned craven assassinations anymore.

[00:21:50] The bad news is that in recent years, withholding food not just from allies or strangers, but members of our own local communities has become part of a certain American ethos. What was once seen as a moral imperative to protect the souls and survival of mankind has been inverted.

[00:22:08] With politicians asserting feeding anyone, quote, creates dependency, end quote, while voting to kick millions of children off free meal programs and cut over 600 million from different programs which supplied schools with local produce. Good God. So yeah, that's bleak. Anyway, enjoy your dinner. And think about what your moral obligation is. We clearly can't expect men in power to do the right thing in any century.

[00:22:39] But maybe we can choose to be more evolved in what we're serving. So, um, Clan Black Douglas. Yeah, what made you pick this one? Um... I mean, like, when you think about a deadly meal, a lot of times somebody imagines someone being poisoned with a pufferfish or something like that. I thought that that was too obvious, so... Okay.

[00:23:08] And I did look at that and look, like, dangerous dinners, there were so many directions we could go. So, yes, like, I think the Simpsons implanted in the mind of every millennial that, like, fugu, like, the poison pufferfish episode. Like, anytime you say dangerous dinner or, like, dangerous food, like, I think for our age bracket, that's, like, us and Gen X. That's immediately what we think of. But there was other... I did research. Like, there was other... Uh, there's other seriously deadly...

[00:23:33] Like, you know, um, a specific state within Italy has a type of Romano cheese that is aged with maggots inside. And, like, the maggots wiggle through the cheese. Why? And it makes it, like, really, really creamy and, like, gooey. And they say that it smells, like, for a cheese file, it's like... It's a... Anyway. Why would anyone eat that? Uh, if you're, like, a super cheese nerd, like, it is an exquisite delicacy that people go chasing after.

[00:24:01] But if you do that wrong, that cheese can kill you. There's a litany of different types of, like, chemical compounds within certain types of plants that can kill you if you're not careful or if you don't prepare it correctly. Especially cassava flour, like, which is in all of our gluten-free goodies. If you don't cook cassava correctly, you can poison your whole family. Like, you have to pressure cook that bitch or boil it until it is falling apart and you have completely dissolved the compound. What? So, like, yes, cassava. That's, like, in our little snacky snacks downstairs. If you don't cook that right, that shit can kill your family.

[00:24:29] So, like, there are a lot of deadly foods. But for me, it felt like that was low-hanging fruit. I wanted to, to me, the idea of violating the sanctity of what a meal is, it was more interesting than, oops, I fed this person the wrong stuff. Yeah. I guess, you know, to some extent, a meal, a dinner, it's more than just what we consume. Yeah.

[00:24:49] And so there was that story that you and I talked about, about there was, like, a bake-off at a delightful little church where everybody had an angel food cake bake-off competition. And everybody brought their angel food cakes and then the whole fucking congregation got poisoned by arsenic because it was in the flour that was at the local general store. And everybody used the same flour. So everybody ate too much arsenic. And, like, that's a great story. But it doesn't quite hit human fuckery. Like.

[00:25:17] Oh, that, that hits it. But I understand you wanted to go a little further with it. I don't think, that's just a mistake. Like, that's just, hey, way back when we didn't have great food safety. Sometimes our ignorance, sometimes our negligence is a byproduct of the fuckery of what it means to be human. You know? Well, then I failed. I should have told the story of the church bake-off. No, you didn't fail. No, don't take it there. But that's why I picked this story, I thought. I think the story was great. I'm not saying that you needed to pick the other story. No, no, I just.

[00:25:47] So thoughts, feelings about the Black Douglases, the violation of the things done to them, our weird penchant for just, like, killing kids so much. Yeah, I mean, I got a lot of questions, you know. Go for it. What are your questions? Okay, so in the story, you mentioned that the bull's head was a known symbol of death in the Scottish tradition. Yes. Was it known to the Douglas boys? Definitely. Would they have recognized this and been like, oh shit, there's the bull's head? Who else would it have been? I don't know.

[00:26:16] They were the guests of honor and everybody else. I mean, I don't. As a kid, you know, on my booster seat getting served nuggies at a friend's house, I wouldn't anticipate that I was about to be murdered. But what if at age, you know, like 10 or 16, you were actually like closer to middle age than, you know. That's just wild. Being six in the 80s is very different than being six, you know, in medieval Scotland. Jesus.

[00:26:40] But yes, it is likely that at least the teenager knew because it was such a common, you know, it's like everybody knows what the cross means, you know, the crucifix means. Whether they're Catholic or not, they know what it means. So like if something is culturally a very important symbol to you, you're likely to know what it means. Okay. James II. I mean, he's the witness to all this, right? Like it's all done in his name to protect the power, to protect the lineage, the throne, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:27:11] I mean, he had no choice in this. He wasn't aware of it. The kid was obviously scarred by it. How do you think it shaped his psychology in the years going forward? Look, to be fair, there is not a lot of good record keeping from this period in time. So as far as like diaries from Jamie about how he felt about everything, we do not have that content. But we do know that at the time he was horrified.

[00:27:33] And we definitely know that things escalate between the Douglases and James and his posse over the course of like the next two decades. Yeah. So, you know, I don't know how he felt about it in the immediate aftermath, but I guess like the sort of back and forth between the Douglases and the people who are now like more of their allies at court, like poked James in such a way that even though he originally empathized with them, you know, I don't know. Somebody did a number on the inside of his head in the years that passed.

[00:28:02] But anyway, ultimately cuts to James watches the boys get betrayed and murdered at his own dinner table as a 10 year old. But then he grows up and personally stabs William Douglas, the eighth Earl in the mid 1400s under a guaranteed safe conduct letter. So he basically did the same. If you if you want to get into psychology of kids just replicating the shit that they see adults around them doing it, it do it do fit that.

[00:28:29] Do you think this is a testament to the fact that kids don't do what you tell them? They do what you show them. I think it could be an example of that, you know, but yeah, he ends up stabbing poor Willie and then Willie's thrown out of a window. So it reminds me of the Braveheart scene so much. Yes. Where Longshank's son's gay lover is thrown out of the window. I don't know why. I knew where your head went immediately. I know you well enough. Of course you do. Yeah.

[00:28:58] Now, I think bringing this into the modern day, I think one of the more fascinating aspects of your tale was the was the fact that this was used as source material for George R.R. Martin's depiction of the Red Wedding, the big dinner massacre for anybody who's not seen Game of Thrones in the last 15 years. Spoilers. Yes. I'm so sorry. Like, just get HBO, whatever. It's fine. Now, how do you feel like these events differ?

[00:29:27] How do you feel like they're similar? Which one do you actually think was worse? Oh, oh, well, in the Red Wedding, it's definitely worse because they stab an unborn child inside its mother in front of its still alive father and the mother-in-law. Like that it's so much more. At least they didn't kill kids at that one, but I totally forgot she was pregnant. Oh, yeah, no. She was super pregnant. So, but, but also like there, how do you create a hierarchy out of like the murder of children and innocence? I guess you don't.

[00:29:57] You know, like I can't do the which one is worse, but they do. And there's another echo of this in the Game of Thrones season as well. Do you remember there? I can't remember if it's the same season, but they, they kill those two young Lannister kids. The like Lannister cousins that are quite young that are supposed to be like prisoners that are in their protection. And, you know, they do like, so there's like George R.R. Martin pulled from medieval history a lot in those books. So did a lot of other people. Like he's not the only author who's done this.

[00:30:25] The, there's nothing new under the sun. And it's worth mentioning that, you know, I said in the story, hey, you know, fortunately because of, you know, the Geneva Convention and, you know, NATO and all of these things, or at least suggested that like, hey, we've evolved past murdering people at the dinner table. But that doesn't mean that we still don't have issues in recent history, the last 20 or 30 years of violations of you're supposed to be my protection.

[00:30:51] So human rights violations and murder of journalists is a really great example. For sure. That whole thing is very, very recent in human history. So we don't have, you know, people being murdered at the White House state dinner yet. It feels like it could, if there was any season of America that that could happen on it, it would be this one.

[00:31:13] But we do still have culturally an issue with saying that things are important to us, saying that there's a way you need to do things and then breaking the rules as soon as it's convenient for us. Interesting. Do you think there was ever really a threat? I mean, do you feel like this was, was necessary? Like that they were at risk of having the throne overthrown? It's a good question. You would have to ask somebody who's more embedded in Scottish history than I am. I am Scots-Irish.

[00:31:42] I do read a lot about this stuff. But like there's argument about whether the two guys in this narrative who, you know, like the chancellor and the main chaperone for Lil' Jamesy. There's argument about whether they actually were the guys who did it. There is a historian who is, you know, one of the guys in Scots, British and Celtic history who has sort of said, I actually think it was a third guy who had nothing to do with these two.

[00:32:08] And their, you know, creepy older dude super plan to be in charge of everything. I think he orchestrated the murder to undermine them and sow division amongst the other powerful clans so that they would rise up against the king and overthrow him. And so there is a good question. It's a good question. It's just an inside job. It's entirely – it is possible that it was an inside job. The answer is, again, documents from this time are not great.

[00:32:35] There's not a ton of, you know, revealing journal entries from people sort of explaining their logic or confessing to this. But it was a period of time where, you know, back hallway politics, you know, and inter-clan strife was going on. Like how did James' daddy die? More of that stuff. He fucking got stabbed in a sewer in a monastery because people were just like, nah. Sure.

[00:33:05] So it's not like a super artful answer, but I'm not an expert in Scottish history in a way that makes me feel like competent to answer that. You're an expert in fuckery. I am an expert in fuckery. It's true. Now, you pivoted, you know, towards the end of the story, I guess, at least from my observation, to really underscore the social and moral violation that took place by emphasizing the importance of feeding people.

[00:33:31] Do you feel like outside of the mockery of the trial? Like, do you think that doing this at this dinner was a bit of a fuck you? Like it was meant to be a message delivered? Part A. And B, do you ever fear that the listeners will think you're too much of a libtard? I, I, B first.

[00:34:01] You go right for the second one. I do not give a fuck. That's no offense to the listeners. It's just my worldview on this particular. You believe what you believe. Yeah, I am very comfortable with, with the belief as you're going to hear, as you talk to my father, like we were very much raised with the idea that like you feed people, you make them happy, you take care of them. And that is a moral obligation and part of being a community. Community is a verb. You do these things.

[00:34:30] Here's why you do these things. And it's not woke or liberal to do them. It is baseline neutral, good human behavior. So you think kids should have free school lunch? Yes. I, I think that fed individuals. Who's going to pay for this? Oh boy. Okay. So getting back to part, getting back to part A. No, getting back to part A. Getting back to part A. Again, I don't feel I'm a good enough Celtic and Scottish historian to answer that question accurately.

[00:34:58] But my sense was reading about it, that it wasn't a pointed fuck you. It seemed to me just from like a human fuckery psychology perspective, like a poorly thought out, emotionally reactive. Like the sort of thing that a bunch of fucking straight men in a room in their 30s and 40s come up with. Even with the bull's head, like you didn't think that they kind of sat around getting each other hyped up being like, oh, this is going to be sick, bro. Oh, I think they did do. And I think they were like, oh, it's going to be sick. We're going to murder these kids and everybody. But I don't think they were like, oh, let's use this to undermine the social mores of our culture.

[00:35:27] Like, I don't think they got that far. I don't, I, again, this was not a super well thought out plan. It didn't accomplish, it didn't cut the head off of the snake of the Black Douglas clan. All it did was murder some kids and then give the exact same resources to more Black Douglases. Yeah, it arguably made them much stronger. Yeah, like you, you, you fucking morons. This was pointless, so. Fair enough. I want to know about your story. All right. Cool. Here we go.

[00:35:57] It is February 12th, 1771. Stockholm. And somewhere inside the Royal Palace, a man is eating lobster. Not just any lobster. Royal lobster. This lobster was plucked from the coldest, most indifferent stretch of the Baltic Sea.

[00:36:24] It was the only thing, transported on ice, handed to someone whose only job in life was to make seafood taste better than nature intended, and then placed reverently in front of a king. And what about the king? The king already has his eyes on the next course. because for King Adolf Frederick of Sweden,

[00:36:48] the meal is the only thing on his schedule that truly requires his presence. Adolf Frederick is not a man that history remembers for his brilliance. If history were a high school yearbook, he'd be the guy whose photo was missing because he was in the bathroom during picture time. He wasn't a conqueror. He wasn't a tyrant. He was, to put it bluntly, more of a decorative object.

[00:37:18] The Swedish parliament, the Riksdag, had spent most of his reign treating him like a particularly expensive piece of wallpaper. They made the laws, they ran the wars, and they managed the money. When Adolf Frederick tried to assert his royal authority by refusing to sign the documents he disagreed with, well, they didn't argue with him. They didn't even get angry.

[00:37:44] They simply made a rubber stamp of his signature and kept going. Imagine that for a second. You're the king. You were the sovereign. And you've been replaced by a piece of wood and some ink. So by the time we find him on this cold February night, our buddy Adolf has spent 20 years as a figurehead. He has waved from enough balconies to last three lifetimes.

[00:38:12] He has quite literally been stamped into total irrelevance. And so, he turns to the one thing that the parliament can't pull from his hands. He turns to the table. The feast on the evening of February 12th, 1771 began, well, as all proper royal catastrophes do, with complete and total reasonableness.

[00:38:39] There was the aforementioned lobster, fine. There was caviar, small, briny, served on something thin and expensive. Perfectly standard fuel for a man in his 50s who runs a country that mostly runs itself. But then, there was the sauerkraut, which is maybe the most psychologically interesting detail of this entire story.

[00:39:06] Because sauerkraut is not prestige food. Sauerkraut was peasant food. It's fermented cabbage. It's what you eat when you're cold and you need something that will last the winter. And you have pretty much just accepted the very limited circumstances of your life. And yet, there it was. On a king's table. Alongside the caviar. And the lobster. And the champagne. I guess one just likes what they like.

[00:39:35] I digress. There was smoked herring. Multiple courses moving in the way great feasts move. Gradually and with ceremony. Each plate arriving like a small, edible active theater. The table glittered. The candles flickered. The servants stood at attention in that particular way servants are trained to stand. Present but invisible.

[00:40:04] Like expensive furniture that occasionally brings you things. And Adolf Frederick ate. Now before we get to where this is going, and you probably know where this is going, I want you to hold something in your mind. By the time a human being reaches the point of feeling full, they've already eaten too much. This is not a character flaw. This is neuroscience.

[00:40:34] The satiety signal. The message from your gut to the brain that says, Hey buddy, we're good. Close the hatch. Well, it travels on a delay. About 20 minutes behind the reality of your stomach actually. Which means that the experience of feeling satisfied and the experience of being full are two completely different moments in time. And by the time you feel one, you've already blown past the other.

[00:41:03] The human brain, when it is eating something pleasurable, is also marinating in dopamine. That warm, electric tide of reward that coats the inside of your skull and says, More. Again. This was good. Do it again. The prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain responsible for long-term thinking and impulse control,

[00:41:30] is fighting a battle against a system that is ancient, powerful, and deeply uninterested in the concept of moderation. We, as a species, golden corral be damned, are not built for the buffet. But Adolf Frederick, he might as well been on a carnival fucking cruise. Let us briefly talk about what it actually means to be a powerless king.

[00:41:59] Because Adolf Frederick's situation was psychologically a very specific kind of hell. He wore the crown. He sat in the throne room. He carried the scepter. But he had the trappings of power in the same way that a movie set has the trappings of a real building, right? Convincing from the right angle. Completely hollow. If you actually try to live in it.

[00:42:24] The Swedish riksdag had been waging a slow, polite, very thorough war against royal power for decades. By the time Adolf Frederick took the throne in 1751, the monarchy's authority had been trimmed back so extensively that he famously refused to sign official documents for a period, which ultimately gave birth to the aforementioned rubber stamp. He was a paper king.

[00:42:51] And here is where the psychology gets genuinely, uncomfortably interesting. When a person exists in a state of chronic, inescapable loss of control. When the levers they are supposed to pull do nothing. When the authority they are supposed to hold is largely theatrical. The brain goes looking for something it can control. Anything. Something real.

[00:43:20] Something that responds. Something where cause and effect are still intact. Now for some people, it's exercise. For some people, it's compulsively organizing. For some people, it's spending. For others, it's their children's lives, right? Their employees' schedules. Their partners' choices. But for some people, throughout human history, in patterns so consistent, they show up across cultures and centuries.

[00:43:49] It's food. Eating is one of the most basic acts of agency a body has. You decide what goes in. You decide when. You decide how much. It's very pretty woman, right? It's immediate, physical, and real. The dopamine hit is guaranteed in a way that almost nothing else is in life. And for a man who had spent 20 years wearing a crown that meant increasingly little.

[00:44:18] Who had watched his own signature be replaced by an approximation who had been made, in the most fundamental sense, optional. The table may have been the one place where he's still unambiguously the king. Hetveg. If you're not familiar, Hetveg are traditional Swedish simla buns.

[00:44:43] Soft wheat rolls, lightly flavored with cardamom, sliced open, filled with almond paste and whipped cream, and served in a deep bowl of warm, creamy milk. Hot cream. The whole thing. You eat it with a spoon. It's, by all accounts, extraordinary. It's the kind of dessert that sits at the intersection of comfort food

[00:45:11] and a serious disregard for your future. It's fantastic. Simla, the buns themselves, well, they have a long history in Sweden. They were traditionally eaten on Shrove Tuesday, the day before Lent began. It's Fat Tuesday here in New Orleans. It's a last indulgence before the long fast. One serving. A seasonal treat, right? One.

[00:45:37] A contained, culturally appropriate act of pleasure with a built-in ending. Now, Adolf Frederick, that night, having eaten his way through the lobster, the caviar, the fucking sauerkraut, the smoked herring and the champagne, looked at that Hetveg, and he made a decision. He had 14 fucking servings. 14. 14. Just sit with that number.

[00:46:05] Not 13, at which point you might assume someone miscounted, right? No, not 15 either, at which point we are clearly in the territory of absolute myth-making. 14. Specific. Documented. 14 individual bowls of warm cream, cardamom bun, almond paste, and whipped cream, consumed in sequence by one man at the end of a meal that had already been going on for hours.

[00:46:34] And for further context, 1771 Semla wasn't one of these delicate bitch-ass pastries you'd find in a boutique window today. It was dense and often the size of a man's fist, hollowed out and packed with caloric sludge. Imagine 14 of those submerged in a bowl of milk boiled with sugar and cinnamon until it was thick as fuck.

[00:47:03] We are talking about pounds of dough and liters of sweetened dairy, all landing on top of the lobster, the caviar, and the fermented cabbage. Oh my God. And he wasn't just wolfing this down in a sad, empty room, right? No, he wasn't just by himself. His wife, Queen Louisa, was there. A woman known for her sharpness, her dominance, and her deep involvement in court politics. She watched him. The servants watched him.

[00:47:32] The physician probably watched him. No one said a word. This is the bystander effect in royal livery. Each courtier looks at the next, waiting for a signal that never comes. Because the cost of speaking up, of telling a rubber-stamped king of Sweden to his face and his own table that he's being a glutton and perhaps should put the spoon down, it's simply higher than the cost of watching him die slowly in a bowl of hot cream.

[00:48:02] So each person in that room performs the same silent calculation, reaches the same conclusion, and keeps their mouth shut. The bowls, however, kept arriving. Now this is not unique to the 18th century. This is not a feature of the monarchy we have evolved past. Organizations do this. Families do this. Board of directors do this. The person at the top makes increasingly questionable choices, and the people around them,

[00:48:32] the ones who can see exactly what is happening, well, they perform a very sophisticated and often unconscious calculation. The cost of speaking up versus the cost of staying quiet. And in the presence of real or perceived power, staying quiet tends to win. We have given this phenomenon many names over the years. Groupthink, sycophancy, the emperor's new clothes.

[00:48:58] The specific royal variant from the evening of February 12th, 1771, involved 14 bowls of warm cream and a digestive system that was about to file a formal fucking complaint. Now Adolf Frederick retired to his chambers that night. The timeline here moves quickly, which is, it's a mercy for both him and us.

[00:49:25] There is a limit to the elasticity of the human stomach. When you exceed it as violently as Adolf Frederick did, you aren't just full. You are in a state of internal mechanical failure. Now as he lay there in the dark of his royal bedchamber, his body was attempting a metabolic miracle it could not perform. His blood sugar wasn't just spiking, it was a tidal wave.

[00:49:51] His heart, already strained by decades of sedentary royal life, was being forced to pump blood into a digestive system that was screaming for resources it did not have. Now historians call his death digestive failure, But that's just a polite way of saying his body revolted. The stomach convulsions mentioned in the record suggest a violent, agonizing struggle

[00:50:17] as his muscles tried to process a mass that had become effectively toxic. He didn't drift away. He was brought down by the very thing that was supposed to provide him comfort. The king of Sweden, checkmated by a bowl of hot milk. He was 61 years old. He had reigned for two decades. He had signed documents or had them signed for him,

[00:50:44] worn the crown with as much dignity as a crown can confer on a man whose crown means progressively less with every passing year. And then, on the last night of his life, he sat at the head of a table and exercised the one kind of sovereignty that no one could take away from him. He ate exactly as much as he wanted, and it killed him. Now here's what I keep turning over about our boy Adolf Frederick.

[00:51:12] He is presented usually as a punchline. And he is a punchline. I mean, 14 servings of cream buns. There is no sense in pretending that it's not objectively, cosmically funny. There's just something about the specificity of it, the sheer committed follow-through that feels like a... It just feels like a bit. God looked down at this man, this ornamental figurehead king with his rubber stamp and his meaningless crown, and decided the story deserved a conclusion that was both

[00:51:42] completely absurd and perfectly grimly appropriate. The king who couldn't control his country, killed by a failure of self-control. There is a neatness to this that real life just almost never provides. And yet, when I sit with it, the way you do with things that are funny and also just quietly awful, I find something under the joke. Something sadder. A man who was given power and had it dismantled.

[00:52:11] Who wore the costume of authority every day for 20 years. Who sat at tables he hadn't arranged. In rooms he didn't really run. And as the ceremonial face of a country that had largely moved on from needing him. And one night, at one table, with one bowl after another, he... He just didn't stop. Maybe because he didn't want to. Or maybe because he became conditioned to believe it just didn't matter one way or the other.

[00:52:39] The tragedy of Adolf Frederick isn't that he liked dessert. But that he was a man who heard no in every other setting. No power. No agency. No signature. That meant anything. And he finally found the one place where the answer was always yes. Even when he was hurting himself. He just didn't realize that yes can be a death sentence if you say it enough times in a row. We like to think we've evolved past this.

[00:53:08] It's easy to look at Adolf and just see a caricature of an era that maybe didn't know better. But the mechanism hasn't changed. We've just engineered the stopping points out of our lives. Infinite scrolling. Autoplay. The next episode loading before you've even decided you want it. Food delivery that arrives before the hunger has fully registered as hunger.

[00:53:33] A world designed by very smart people with very specific financial incentives to make sure the butler never takes the bowl away. The decision not to stop is one of the hardest decisions a human being makes. Especially when the thing you can't stop consuming is the only thing in your life that still says yes to you.

[00:53:54] And I find myself against the part of my brain that is very reasonably pointing out that this man had every advantage a human being can possess and still managed to die of a fucking dessert. I find myself just a little not unsympathetic. Because I know what it feels like to want the thing you can control. To reach for the thing that asks nothing of you except your presence.

[00:54:22] To keep going past the point of fullness because stopping requires a kind of discipline that the present moment simply does not have available. We all have our head fake. We all have the bowl we come back to. Most of us mercifully survive it. Adolph Frederick did not. And we're back. And we are back. Who's hungry? Who's hungry?

[00:54:52] Death by deconstructed ice cream sandwich. Like... That's what they think. Oh my god. That's what they think. So, you know, as someone who was previously diagnosed and treated with digestive failure, this was a visceral experience to listen to. Yeah. Did you feel a rumbly in your tumbly? No, I did not feel a rumbly in my tumbly. But I just felt for him because digestive failure is excruciating. And whether or not it actually was digestive failure, digestive failure is like very vague.

[00:55:21] There's a lot of things that can fall under that. Yeah, I mean, they did not have sophisticated autopsies back then, but they think it was digestive complication that either contributed to heart failure or caused a stroke. That's what my question was, was because like digestive failure kind of, it tends to kill you slowly. I think it overwhelmed his system. Yeah, it sounded more to me like he had a fucking heart attack or... Yeah. Yeah, like you're saying or a stroke. One or the other. Oh my god, what a horrible way to die. Agonizing. Absolutely.

[00:55:50] But it does sound like, you know, for about 20 minutes there, he was having a great time. So... I don't know, but maybe... You're right. He may have just been emotional agony the entire time. Just stress eating, just emoting at the table. I don't know. He might have been singing songs. He might have been having a gay old time. I know that I am just, maybe I'm a good partner, maybe I'm a bad partner, but I cannot imagine being anyone's wife

[00:56:17] and sitting there watching him eat 14 bowls of hot cream and dough and not being like, absolutely not. Like someone needs to... If I love somebody, I'm going to stop them. Even if he was like, woman, you don't tell me what to do. Oh, well then, please do eat yourself to death. No. Enjoy that. No, go ahead. Go ahead. Do whatever you want. That's fine. I don't think you're that much of a sweeping absolutist. My goodness.

[00:56:43] I'm just saying if somebody said, woman, don't tell me what to do, I think I would just be like, okay, I won't. I tell you that all the time. You still do. Good God. So I really liked the part of your story, though, where you talked about the sort of bystander effect. Like it just felt so prescient. Yeah.

[00:57:04] I feel like there's a moment in time where we're watching people in positions of power be surrounded by people who should be saying to them, sir, what are you doing? Or, sir, I don't know that this is the best. Sir, I don't think that we should be doing this this way. And, yep, it is an evergreen human thing that we just don't say a thing if it means we might get voted out of the in-group.

[00:57:28] Yeah, and I got to tell you, folks, not making accusations that we're all bystanders unwilling to speak up. But if there's anyone out there who's going through a situation in their life or maybe they're wanting to get more involved in politics or protest or be an activist or whatever, like, A, you're responsible for your words. I'm not telling you to just pop off like a powder keg. But as far as this story is concerned, this is just one example.

[00:57:54] It didn't work out for everybody because as soon as Adolf Frederick died, his son took the throne by military force and fucked parliament in the ass. It was a coup. Everything got worse. This paper king that Adolf Frederick was like, even though they kind of treated him somewhat like a like a paper king, like a puppet, like a puppet king. Yeah, he was the best thing that they had going for them at the time.

[00:58:22] Somebody should have said something because it created a perfect scenario. People were already primed to not say something while somebody just decided to do something that everyone knew was a bad idea. And that was essentially his son turning the monarchy back into an authoritarian regime. Cool. Cool. So, yeah. Yeah.

[00:58:48] So, from a psychological point of view, as you were reading, I know that like, again, there's not always the best documents. But did you find any evidence that he was like acting out, overeating, overdrinking? Like, was there any other evidence that this man was self-medicating before this in a way that would have indicated we are leading to this person publicly eating themselves to death? Or was this like a standalone one-off where somebody just temporarily was like, fuck it?

[00:59:14] Look, you have to draw a lot of inferences based off of the lack of historical record. Especially from a personal point of view. Especially from a personal point of view. You might have government records, parliament records of things that were happening at the time. But like you said earlier, like, as far as somebody writing a diary, emoting and expressing their articulated thoughts in great detail about their personal disposition, no. That wasn't out there. I do know that Adolf Frederick was well-liked.

[00:59:43] And despite the fact that he kind of, I don't know, he didn't, he was a rubber-stamped king, as we've called him multiple times. It's quite possible that he was just such an agreeable guy, but was stuffing and ultimately leading his emotions to fester. And he did what a lot of us do. We self-medicate. What do you self-medicate with? It's a good question. It depends on the time in my life, you know? Well, you don't drink alcohol and you don't do drugs. Mm-hmm.

[01:00:13] So that really limits your options to like food, sugar, online porn. No, no. I don't, I don't. Intense. I don't do the porn. Intense human relationships. Not that anyone's curious, but it, I mean, no judgment. Do whatever you want. But I guess it would probably be sugar. Yeah. Carbs. Yeah. I like spaghetti a lot. I like ice cream a lot. I like chocolate-coated almonds a lot. You do like chocolate. You know?

[01:00:42] So that I can gorge myself on. I'd always been a slim guy for most of my life. And then I woke up one day and I was just like, what is this thing around me? What is this giant tube of fat? I'm working on it. Was Adolf a big guy or was he, you know, do we have any depictions of him? All right. We're going, we're going to the archives on Google. And again, people did have a little, a little filter, a little filtering done on their portraits, but he looks slim in this one.

[01:01:12] He looks a little paunchy in this other, but slim. Oh, and then there's a picture of him surrounded by profiteroles that somebody has, uh, cats. Oh, wow. That's just cruel. They probably shaved a few pounds off. That was just like, you know, the painters of the time were the Photoshop. I'm not here to body shame a dead king. My question was again, like, was he was that slim? It is a marvel. His stomach stretched that much truly.

[01:01:35] Or if he was that slim, it is not at all shocking that he died from eating 14 bowls of, of fucking cream. True. True. Closest thing I've ever come to it is after I was recovering from mono when I was 16. Um, my, my mom said, where do you want to go? Where do you want to eat? You know, cause I couldn't eat for a whole month. Ugh. Yeah. I was like, I want to go to ponchos. Ponchos. It sounds like tacos. It sounds like a Mexican restaurant. Yes, indeed. Cause we're elegant here in the South. Yeah.

[01:02:05] And I ate 13 tacos. Oh my God. That's too many tacos. But it was great though. It was fantastic. Um. Were you sick after? I don't think I could do it again, but no, I wasn't. Okay. No, I don't know. I was just so excited to eat food. Come on, you know, right? Like what were the, do you remember the first meal? You had, after you were taken off the feeding tube where you just got to just house something? No.

[01:02:32] Cause it was like a year to two years before I could eat normally again. But I do remember like the first time that I sat down and ate an entire pizza after coming off of. What size? Well, it was just like a personal. No, it was like, it was like a, it was like a standard 12 inch pizza. But you gotta remember like. I've eaten extra larges all by myself. There was a place when I. It's disgusting. There's a place in New Jersey. There's a place in New Jersey called Pete and Elders where if you could eat a double XL pizza by yourself. Oh wow. You would get a t-shirt.

[01:03:02] And it was a. That's it? It was a thing that they did that was incredibly popular amongst teenagers. And so I, I have done the XL pizza, but I had to cheat. Oh, so you did. You attempted it, but you didn't. I attempted it. I couldn't, I could not do it. Um, so I, I would fill my mouth with chewed up pizza, go to the bathroom, spit it out and come back and repeat that. I was like 16. Nobody was watching you. It takes, it takes a while to eat a double XL. You just wanted that shirt.

[01:03:28] I just wanted, again, who's going to sit there and watch a bunch of 16 year olds to see if they successfully finish their pizza according to the rules? I would. No. So I have eaten too much and eaten to the point where I've been like, I'm going to make myself sick or I'm going to be sick. I've done that before. But after the digestive failure, no, it takes you a very long time.

[01:03:45] But I do remember like the joy and glee and like the, the, the dopamine rush in my body of like hot cheese and like really chewing and like feeling myself be full after literally years of not, um, of not being able to eat or be full or. I get cheese. And that was, um, you know, it was a euphoric feeling, but I then didn't continue and have like 14 more pizzas and then have a heart attack. So I don't. Do you have a vice now?

[01:04:11] I mean, and I don't mean like a salacious vice, but something just like Frederick, something that just doesn't say no to you. This was the bowl. What's yours? Do you have something? Oh yeah. I mean like, uh, what? Brownies. Brownies. Uh, high on the list, but not, no, I would say like cheesecake, ice cream, um, certain types of like chocolate goodies. That's Snickers cheesecake. Oh my God. That's Snickers cheesecake. My dad's peanut butter pie. Um, the, yeah, those, those I will, I'll make myself a little queasy eating too much of.

[01:04:41] Good for you though. Speaking of my dad. Yeah. I think we should, I think we should let him in. Gary, did you waddle that crab in here? Welcome chef David K. You look adorable as a crab. How have the last 14 hours been running around? Oh, chili. Got a chef trying to stab you to death. My goodness. Well, I can't wait for that. That's going to be better.

[01:05:08] It's been normal, normal, uh, thought processing for a lot of chefs. Now, Kimberly and I, we know your story, but the listeners are just getting to know you. How did your love of cooking begin? Uh, you guys have heard it a couple hundred times, but it's always been because of my mother. Yeah. And that was because of being just simply the youngest of five boys.

[01:05:32] So even though she worked when she, when she was home, somebody had to keep babysitting. So I was in the kitchen with her doing things because I could, you know, move the food mill handle and I could pick up stuff and I could do this and that. And not to mention, I guess she probably figured I'd get into some kind of skullduggery if she didn't keep me close anyway. So what did you love about it though? Was it just the time spent with mom or did you love something about the creation process? Did it feel like science?

[01:05:59] Yeah, I probably, I probably would have never thought it was like science. I probably was just, first of all, you know, I mean, I gotta be honest that probably my most primal feeling is that it had to do with food. Yeah. And food is always that positive thing and it's always that comforting thing. And so that probably was what really drove me and probably because it allowed me to eat a little something too while she was doing it. Sure.

[01:06:25] And part of it probably was just fun because I mean, you know what, like I brought up the food mill. I mean, so now all of a sudden you're thinking I might've been working a food mill, but I was probably working the siren on a fire truck because I was a daydreamer. Yeah. You know, too. Right. And I was, you know, that's where my brain would have gone, I'm sure. And so what kind of cook was, was grandma? Was this like homestyle 1950s cookbook?

[01:06:48] Was there a lot of like, you know, Frankfurters and Aspic or was she, you know, how were things going in grandma's kitchen back then? We missed that one. No, no, she was, but you know, you, you know, I mean, the fact that she was a farm girl, she was used to cooking a lot because she had, you know, what, seven brothers and sisters. There's nine. There were nine of them, right? I think there was nine. Well, because yeah, cause some had passed away on her, but no, she was always a pretty good cook. And she always, I always thought she was a great cook.

[01:07:16] And I enjoyed just about everything she made unless my food was touching other food on a plate. Cause if I ever said, mom, well don't, don't let that touch that. She'd make sure that that food touched it when it went on the plate. Not one neurotypical member of this family. Not one, not one. No, but she made pretty much standard stuff, especially probably stuff for boys because with five boys, you made meatloaves and meatballs and spaghetti and stuff like that.

[01:07:44] So, you know, that was the kind of stuff that we ate a lot of. I mean, it was fried fish a lot, but she made good standard things. But none of that, like fifties, uh, she used Betty Crocker. That was my earliest remembrance of any kind of cookbook. Um, but yeah, we, we avoided the aspect thing. Congratulations. I think that's super important. Growing up Irish Catholic, how big of a deal was food in your house? And like, what was a, what's a food that looking back felt like home in your memory?

[01:08:13] Well, I'll probably fall back on some things, but you know, food to me, especially in the family was, um, it was almost like a time where there was some stability, you know, and there was a calming effect because with all the chaos that might've been going on in the house, but brothers in and brothers out and us doing stuff and always seemed to me like, to me, like there was always somebody on the go.

[01:08:37] Um, that would allow some kind of time for some kind of calm, you know, because you all would be sitting then, you know, had one of those, what I call it the boomerang, you know, for Micah tables, big one, but you had that boomerang design on it, you know? So, and, um, and that's where everybody gathered. It was always right off of the kitchen. And, um, we very rarely ever ate what somebody might've considered the dining room, which was probably the room just off to the side, which that was just not done. We always lived in the kitchen.

[01:09:06] That was for like funerals and like family events. Yeah. Well, I think it became a TV room in time, but, but we wound up basically, it was just time for just sitting down and having life be a little less hectic. And because of that, that's probably why I enjoyed those things like the meatloaves and the spaghetti and meatballs and, and things like that, because that's the kind of stuff she made. I mean, chicken, roasted chickens and things like that. You know, she was pretty standard that way.

[01:09:32] There wasn't anything that she, there was no chance of her doing anything way beyond that. Things had to be fairly quickly. I mean, she did a lot of canning and she did a lot of baking, as you know. Yes. She was a pickling queen. She canned things like a good farm girl did. She preserved scraps. She used, you know, everything that she could. She had five boys. And for a lot of your life, she was a single mom, right? You know, so there was like, well, she was a single mom. There was a, there was a husband there, but she was still a single mom. Yeah. That's what I mean. Yeah.

[01:10:02] Okay. So, you know, what are your personal favorite culinary projects now? Like you talk about her being very, you know, sort of traditional and it's got to be fast. And I got all these boys and I got to stretch all this meat to all of these people. You now get to have control over your kitchen. So what is, what are the areas you feel justified in bragging about your skills? Cause you've honed them so much. Well, originally I always thought I was going to be a baker. And that's what I wanted to do until I started to do it.

[01:10:31] And I enjoyed the, the baking part of it and doing it. What I didn't enjoy was the hours. Yes. The lifestyle of the baker. Could you explain what the lifestyle of the baker is? Well, you were at work when I did do it for that time that I worked in that place up in Cranberry Junction. It was like, you were, you were at work at four o'clock in the morning and, and you, you thought you were going home at three o'clock in the afternoon until the boss walked up and

[01:10:59] said, I need another cake when you thought your day was already done. And so there was that type of stuff. And then of course you would go home and you would have to say, well, I had to be at work at four o'clock in the morning. So I'm in bed at seven o'clock at night. And that wasn't working, you know, because I was, cause I'm laying in bed. First of all, I'm wired. Secondly, I can smell all the cookouts from every neighborhood yard wafting through the windows. I can hear kids outside playing. It just wasn't working.

[01:11:29] So I decided, no, I'll just stick with regular kitchen stuff. So, I mean, but baking was where I thought I was going to be. That would, and that's, I still take a big pleasure out of that. You know, that I send you pictures all the time of, oh, look what I've made for coffee hour this week at church. They really are. They're some of the highlights of my week. Some of the only consistently great text messages I get are my dad bragging humbly, like, look at this awesome thing that I made. I understand why. Yeah. Um, I mean, cause I know the people that I'm making it for, they enjoy it.

[01:11:58] So that's, that's really, I guess the bragging right comes from simply the simple fact that I think that, uh, despite my neurotic obsessions with doing things correctly, as I, um, I think I'm pretty good at doing things correctly. I think that kind of brings us into our next question. It's a wonderful segue. One of our stories really touches on the history and culture around hospitality, right? You, you get so much joy out of feeding the people in your church who in your life taught

[01:12:25] you most about hospitality and food as community service. As, as for community, I mean, I guess if you were going to say if it was just for a social thing, hospitality wise, it would have been mom again, you know, always back to her because that's what you did. Sure. Mom is also the reason why I told you, I, I got tired of cheesecake because she always made a cheesecake for some, but you got everything. And then I was like, I hate cheesecake. But, um, as far as it goes for community, it did start in church and it didn't start at

[01:12:54] the Catholic church when I grew up. And it started when I started going to the Protestant church with one of my, uh, friends who lived next door. How was food different in the Catholic church versus the, the Protestant churches that, that we, well, there wasn't those types of gatherings, you know, if there was anything, you know, what I remember from, and also I was the youngest boy, but what I mostly remember is that if you went to a Catholic family's house, you know, friends, you just went there as friends.

[01:13:22] That was, again, that's that home social thing, but stuff that went on at church, I mean, at, at church and at, in St. Rosa Lima school that went with it, there were not things going on there. There was the, the church fair and stuff like that. Well, the only food there was whatever the vendors were selling. Right. When I started going to the Protestant church, uh, it was covered dish suckers. Right. And it was during Lenten season and it was during Christmas and it was during things like that.

[01:13:46] And the gatherings were more, they were, they were a community, uh, but it wasn't, it was, but it was a church family, but it wasn't, uh, anything other than that kind of a social gathering for hospitality. And they were very good at it. And I loved covered dish suckers because I could choose between 25 things or 22 versions of aspect and hot dogs. No, it's true though. I, I, because we were raised Protestant.

[01:14:15] So folks at home, my, my dad was raised in a Catholic school when he's talking about St. Rose of Lima. He's talking about the famous Catholic school in Freehold, New Jersey. Um, but, uh, and then because he was raised Catholic, he decided he, he didn't want his kids to go through that. So, so my sister and I, we were raised, uh, Protestant. And to me, it was not until I was much older that I learned that other people weren't being fed after church services at fellowship hour or that they didn't have like these constant

[01:14:43] events where like, like I didn't know that, you know, like Catholics kind of get the Eucharist and a sip of wine is like, fuck out. That's the whole thing. Whereas the Protestants really, there is. You just got the host. Yeah. At least the Protestants had some wine. Right. Right. That's true. So, you know, I, uh, I really thought that that was fascinating, uh, as I got older about that, that there are these sort of religious traditions that get integrated in about like, Hey, you feed people. Hey, you feed people.

[01:15:10] Edward, getting back to a question you asked me earlier in the show about like, you know, do you think you're real woke, you know, because the way you told your story and you think about food and hospitality, like, no, like this was very much how we were raised. Like when you gather with people, you're sharing food and you know, like that is part of being around people is using the food to get together. Yeah. The fellowship. It's a form of fellowship. I mean, we all have that. I mean, we do it on our smaller scale version when we're at home and we, and, you

[01:15:40] know, when I think about it, almost every social event that, that we still do, you do it as, as well. It's because you're pulling in your friends, you're pulling in family members, you're pulling in. That's, that's the way I think the majority of Americans still really celebrate except the billionaires. And I won't get into that because it'll ruin the whole podcast. Well, I mean, this, this is the delightful side of food, but there's a darker side. One of our stories touches on food.

[01:16:09] It's kind of a drug. Now, have you ever caught yourself medicating with food? And if so, what is your drug of choice? Oh yeah, absolutely. I'm a, uh, I'm definitely an emotional eater as much as I like to bake. I only really like two cookies, two cakes and pies. That's it for me. You know, you know, I limit myself to that because that's what I like, you know, but, uh, I'm a savory person. But my, my, I get more satisfaction out of eating something that's salty or fatty or cheesy.

[01:16:39] And it's always cheeses, which will be, will forever be my, my downfall. I think, I mean, I'm buying cheeses, uh, in the store when I'm shopping, uh, when I've already got two or three different types of cheese at home. So Kim just taught me about a special type of cheese in Italy that is essentially fostered, uh, using maggots. And the maggots crawl through it. And so it makes it like super creamy and oozy, but it also apparently stinks like a type of gorgonzola.

[01:17:09] But like, if you eat one of the maggots or like it doesn't ferment or, you know, whatever properly, there can be bacteria in it and then you can get really sick and die from it. But it's like considered an extreme cheese special. Are you familiar with the maggot cheese, dad? Yeah, I'm a hard pass. How do you feel? Are you trying the maggot cheese? Would you, would you reach for it in a time of stress? Probably not. You know, I, I, there's so many other cheeses that are funkified. Yeah. I can go with, I don't really need, you know, excrement of maggot. Maggot cheeses.

[01:17:39] Or the maggot itself. Yeah. And the thing is, you would never probably even know you ate the maggot, but, but you would if you got sick. So I think I personally would pass on the maggot. So what are you going to have instead of the maggot cheese? You mean the types that I like? Yeah. What's your Uber cheese? Yeah. I mean, I like breeze and triple creams, you know, things that have a rind and I can take the funk just so far. I mean, there's a, there's a, there's a, can I give you a little story about funky cheese? Of course.

[01:18:06] Well, I mean, there's a, there's a great episode and I think it's on parts unknown. And, and, you know, Bourdain is like, he's my North star. And the thing is that there was an episode when he was in Spain and it was a two-parter and he was with Jose Andres, my second North star. And, but the thing is that they're both getting toasted there and they were up. The whole story was that they were up in the mountains in Spain and they're eating these, these cheeses that are so funky that even Bourdain is like, you know, he's made, he's

[01:18:35] like, I mean, but Andre is, I mean, Jose Andres is doing what he's always doing. And he's holding a piece of this green cheese, like emerald green cheese. You should really try to find this episode. And then they're, they're drinking just huge tankards of beer and they're eating his cheese. And Jose does his usual thing. He starts to analyze the cheese, you know, now Bourdain is just sitting there right next to him, but Jose's in and he's telling Bourdain about this cheese and he's looking at it. He's talking about, look at the lits and look at this and look at that.

[01:19:04] And he goes, he goes, and it's just so full of penicillin and, and, and Bourdain, you could just, Bourdain just immediately, you know, it was a one, two count coming up. And he just waited for Jose to be drinking his beer when he goes, yeah, I can feel my syphilis getting better by the minute, you know? And of course, Jose loses it, blows most of his beer out through his nose and is laughing uncontrollably. So that's that, I watched these two guys eating those funky cheese that I like a funky cheese,

[01:19:34] but not the emerald cheese. No, not what? Not the emerald cheese. Not so much for you. Cause I do try them every once in a while. I go for something and I talk to the cheese mongers in these stores and they go, let's just try this. And I go home and I go, that one worked or wait or whoa, that one really did not work. If it's overly, if it's beyond my funk meter, I can't, I can't do it. No, I said, I guess, I guess if I was sitting at the same table with Bourdain and Jose, I probably would have gone, oh yeah, it's great. You know? Yeah.

[01:20:04] I wouldn't want to be left out of the boys club. Well, it's a fellowship. You got it. You got it. There it is. Food is a fellowship. Exactly. And so we were going to ask you, you know, do you have any role models as far as like food and hospitality go? I think you've just mentioned like two of them, but why, why are these guys kind of, you know, your, your North star plural and what, you know, if people are not familiar with their work, why should they go look them up? Well, I mean, Bourdain just simply because of the fact that I just like his style. Uh, we were only a couple of years apart.

[01:20:32] You know, it's funny when, when your grandmother wanted me to go to culinary school, I mean, Bourdain and I probably would have, and if I had gone to the CIA, we might've even been almost close in, in just one in meaning just there at the exact same time. Sure. Um, but I was too smart when I was 18. So I didn't do that. Um, so, um, but I mean, I like his, I like his, how irreverent he is. That's one of the things that draws me to him because what I learned about being a chef

[01:20:58] was that chef, uh, chefs are fairly outlying group of personalities. And I also found that sort of fun. I mean, it was different. Um, it was, and yet you were still working together as a team. You were still working, uh, to an end goal and the results. And you took a lot of pride in it. But again, them being so pirated, I guess is a good way of putting them because they really, cause sometimes they are outliers. They're, they're also self very self-destructive. Sure.

[01:21:28] Not every chef I ever met was like that, but, but, but I, I met some people. I'm like, well, I like working with you, but I'm not hanging out with you. Yeah. That type of thing. Now, Jose is a different type of a personality in me because he, I think of him as the humanitarian that he is. I think of him about the things that he does, uh, compared to what some people who think they are humanitarians do. Um, but I also like his mindset too, like where, where Anthony Bourdain could have been just in your face about something.

[01:21:56] And then we sort of like that as New Jerseyans, you know, okay, yeah, we're going to say whatever we think we can say without getting punched in the face. And even then that was his, his stick and he enjoyed it. And that was the way he kind of communicated with people, but he also had that side of him where he really cared for people. When I've, I've read some things from Jose Andreas over the years that have really been really excellent. And actually, but he just, um, he walks the walk.

[01:22:24] He talks the talk even after he's said what he said. And he, and he does stuff for people that has an impact. Yeah. And I think as far as a human being is, he's probably one of the best of the so-called celebrity chefs, because some celebrity chefs, Guy Fieri, you know, he, um, well, I mean that mockingly. Um, it's about making money and it's about doing what you do.

[01:22:49] But that guy happens to live a lifestyle and has a mindset that's far above a lot of people who are just celebrities. Sure. For people who aren't familiar, Jose Andreas is, uh, the world kitchen. Whenever you see that world, world central kitchen, world central kitchen, these folks who go into war torn areas and disaster zones. And some of the most challenging places on planet earth to make sure that people in crisis have good food and nutritious food cooked well for them.

[01:23:15] Um, they put their lives very much on the line, uh, often to, to cook for people, which, you know, kind of dovetails nicely into some of these stories that we're going to talk about. Why don't we talk about story a, which is people who, you know, said, Hey, you, you, you should come to dinner with us and then maybe we're going to murder you, which, uh, I don't think Jose would have approved of that at all. Probably not. Um, no, no, no. So what did, what did you, what were your impressions of story? You know, um, the black Douglas clan, uh, what did you think of that story?

[01:23:43] As I was listening to the story, I was actually sitting there going, and this is a kudos to you both for how you told your stories, but I could feel how cold it was sitting in that castle. Right. I could tell that the fireplace was still 20 yards away from it. Definitely. You know, uh, uh, and, and, and I kept thinking to myself, you know, you know, you know, Scotsmans, you know, you know, if any story is going to get shitty quick, it's going to be through the Scots. Mostly because they're gonna, cause they're, because they're not, they're just going to stick somebody. That's just the way it's going to be.

[01:24:12] Right. You know? Yeah. And, and, and so I kept getting a feeling that, you know, this was not going to end well, you know, overall because of who you were dealing with and it did. And it was a much darker story. Uh, and it was the, the black Douglas thing at the word black seemed perfect because it sort of set the, the, the, the tone of what was slowly kind of like descending on the situation.

[01:24:37] And, and my strongest feeling is that, that your story to me really was sort of like a form or a story about delayed infanticide. Oh yeah. Yes. And, and I was like, and that, and that, and that to me is just so dark that, and so disturbing that that's what, that's, that was, that was the part of the thing that actually made it repellent, more repulsive. You know? Yeah. Proudly repelling my father for years. Well, no, no. I mean, well, I mean, okay. Well, okay.

[01:25:07] But it wasn't Disney. Story B. How did you end up feeling there? People are dying, of course, in, in, in both stories, but the King of Sweden there, you know, he just, he just basically proved Darwin's theory, you know, we thinned the herd down finally. And it didn't really matter because it had to do with gluttony. So that was the difference because even though there was, there was an end result of, of people dying, the one was done out of just a power play and the other one was done just out of

[01:25:37] stupidity. Yeah. So, you know, that, that, that was how I looked at both stories. I kind of tried to put them both into their own little, you know, little box. For sure. You know? Yes. There were, there were, there were plenty of dickheads in both of the stories, you know, but in, in, in Edward's story, it was just one major dickhead. So how do you feel about, uh, King Frederick's choice of food for his demise? Uh, how do you feel about the menu?

[01:26:04] Well, originally I, I, I made the, I kept thinking the sauerkraut was going to be, was going to kill him. I mean, you know, who knows? Maybe it did. I know. No, really? Well, yeah. Well, I think it was the layers. Yeah. Yeah. So it was the terrine in his stomach. But, um, yeah, exactly. The, that sound, uh, the lobster, good.

[01:26:29] Um, uh, you know, there was lobster, there was lobster, caviar, kraut, and then caviar, uh, I had a sauerkraut, you know, those are things that really stood out. Yeah. Um, but of course, but that ending with that, that Swedish basic cream puff and to eat 14 of them was just like the most ridiculous thing I ever heard. I didn't think it was possible. So basically that's when I realized, eh, he's getting what he deserves. And I, and I thought about the guys working in the kitchen and like, like one more, one

[01:26:59] more, you know, one more. And I'm thinking, and I know how chefs react to that stuff. Go. Oh, that son of a bitch ought to just die. Oh, wow. Son of a gun. It happened. Yeah. Um, so of the two menus, uh, so if you had to pick, you know, I'm going to eat a, a Scottish medieval feast or, uh, you know, this death by Bavarian, uh, cream, which, which one are you personally going to go for? Well, I would have, I, that's a tough one.

[01:27:28] Cause I've had haggis and I didn't think it was bad. Um, uh, but I would have picked probably the Swedish king bee, but I would have done it in moderation because I liked those things, especially the lobster, you know, um, you know, the, what happened, what was happening in your, in your meal was like, I think everything was just basically working up in your story to bringing out the bull's head. Yeah. So, and then, so all the other stuff was like, okay, yeah, they're, carving their meats and they're doing this and they're doing that.

[01:27:58] And they're just sticking it with their knives and eating it off the knife or whatever. So that was the Scottish eye of looking at, I'm thinking at least the guys who were in Sweden were at least trying to present a meal that was more than just something cooked in some huge hearth. Well, look, I will say that the, the Scotsmen, uh, they did have a flair for the dramatic. They, they may not have presented things as artful as caviar, although who knows, but they, they did the dinner theater aspect of what they did. Truly horrible.

[01:28:27] But also like, again, this, this to me was just like, I don't want to hear anymore that women are too dramatic, that women are the dramatic ones. Like this is the most dramatic, like just, if you're going to kill the kids, like just, just do the, why? Why the song and dance? Like now this bull had to die so you guys can do, it's just complete madness. But that's the psychotic part of it. Oh yeah.

[01:28:53] That's what made it, that's what basically made your story slightly more psychotic because this was just a group of evil shits who were getting together, who were going to do what they were ultimately going to do. Right. Edwards, it was just one dumb shit who just did it to himself. You had a whole lot of people that just stood by and watched. Yeah. Right. I think there was a lot of enabling in both stories, unfortunately. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Dad, if you were going to gorge yourself to death on any one food, what would it be and why?

[01:29:21] Well, gee, I guess it would have to be cheese again, you know. I mean, would there be a cheese dish though that you would go for? Like an amazing deep dish pizza or something? Yeah, there would be like some of that, some of that your French stuff, which has got, you know, layers of potatoes. Deschamel. Three kinds of cheese, where I'm actually going to be going to a raclette event in a couple of weeks at a friend's house. Explain what that is. Raclette is a cheese and it's French.

[01:29:50] It's very popular up in French Canada and places like that, but the French have it in it. It's the type of cheese that has a funky smell to it, but it takes on a totally different flavor once it gets cooked. And what they do, they have this neat thing they do up in Quebec and they have these heaters, like almost like when you're, you're going to get a can, you know, but they put these wheels of these raclette cheese on there and they, they're very firm cheese and they put it up

[01:30:16] there, but they just keep the heat source very close and it starts oozing a little runny. So what they do with it, then they take boiled potatoes or they take cornichons and pickled vegetables and they just scrape the knife down and it runs down and drips onto the cheeses or the potatoes or they sometimes they use cured meats like the juttos and things like that. And they just eat it that way or a nice piece of ham. So yeah, that would be the kind of stuff I would like to do because they say it takes

[01:30:44] on a totally different flavor once it's been eaten. Interesting. You know that there's a reason that you're into the cheese so much that so many people are into the cheese, that cheese works on your opioid receptors, that it has like a mild medicative effect in like a very real way. Like we're not imagining it. But now then that only solidifies my belief that if I was at the CIA with Bourdain at the same time, I would have been a heroin addict.

[01:31:10] So then maybe it's good that you took a break before. Yeah, I think it's good. I think it's good that I went to Wagner College. Now, if you were going to pick your last meal, would your last meal be different from the thing that you gorged yourself to death? Or if you could like plan, you know, this is going to be my meal, like it's going to be three courses, like would it all be cheeses or would you like? Yeah, no, I would. Well, actually, I guess in some regards, I wasn't even thinking of anything along that

[01:31:39] line, but it brings me back to what I think of what I know about Jose saying about his last meal and what I would consider a place that I would want to have my, you know, one of my most spectacular meals. And I would, I love sushi and I would, and I would definitely, and I like the raw stuff. You know, I like all forms of sushi, but I like the raw stuff. But I would always pick maybe for my last meal.

[01:32:08] I mean, I would be happy with something as simple as, again, back to the comfort foods. I don't want to beat them to death, but you know, give me some mashed potatoes. Yeah. You know, give me some mac and cheese. And if it's with lobster, even better. Yeah. And yet I believe in that whole thing about a really incredible baguette or a really good bread and some good Irish butter. And I could be just as happy ending my last meal with that, you know, just to, and just

[01:32:35] noshing on that kind of simplicity and that kind of flavor, because it brings back those kind of emotional feelings that you have about some food that is just a comforting zone for you. Right. But if I wanted to really gorge on something, I'd say, eh, let me go to Japan and just sushi my face off over there. Because if you're going to go on a food pilgrimage, you might as well go to Mecca, you know, and if you're going to do sushi, then Japan, Tokyo or wherever in Japan would be where you would go.

[01:33:04] So that would be the type of stuff I think that I would pick. If I had to pick and choose like that. Now, would I like to do the sushi thing? Sure. That'd be great. But again, I'd be just happy with a bowl of hot steaming mashed potatoes because I know how much butter, how much sour cream, how much salt and pepper I put in there. Okay. Because that's, that's, I can get just as much comfort out of that as something else. Now, Jose Andres was once asked, I remember I read this, this was pretty cool.

[01:33:30] And when you had talked about last meals and they had asked him a couple of series of questions much like this in itself. And it was, you know, well, would there be music? Who would you have there? Who do you want to have do this? Who do you want to have do that? What would you pick? And the things that stood out for me when I read his comments was he said there wouldn't be any music because he felt as if the conversation and the laughter would be enough to take care of that.

[01:33:57] And I thought, okay, pumping heart thing. That was great. I love that thing. But what I really liked was at one point he said, and I can really get into this. And I think it shows a lot also about the man. They said, well, who would you want? What chef or who would you want to have cook for you for your last meal? And he said, well, I love to cook for people. So I'd like to do the majority of the cooking and cook for others.

[01:34:26] And I might ask a friend to come in and help me. And that almost brought tears to me when I read that because I said that says more about him as a human and a person because he wants to do that. He wants to do that kind of a thing. You know, I cook because I like to cook and I get enjoyment out of it. And sometimes you're like, I know it's a lot of work and you know you're doing this, but you're doing it because you're trying to make other people happy. For sure.

[01:34:53] Cooking is one of the few endeavors in life where you get, other than the music, you know, that you get instant feedback. Yeah. You know, you know exactly whether you've done it right or wrong. And quite frankly, I think there's very little difference between musicians and chefs because most of the time we critique ourselves to death and we ruin the moment for us to begin with. Yeah, no, that is definitely commonality.

[01:35:19] And again, it's also one of the few art forms that you can do solo or you can do in a group, you know, where there's the cooking or the music that you make with yourself, but also you come together with the band and you do the thing. So there's a whole community aspect of that. Yeah. Another brigade, you know, basically that's what it is. What about you, Kim? Have you ever thought about the last mouthfeel you ever want to have on this earth? I mean, as somebody who like couldn't eat and was eating through a tube in her chest for

[01:35:48] way too long, I thought about last meals all the time. Yeah. Like marshmallows. No, no. I know. I thought about last meals a lot. And I think it, I think it changes, you know, like with, it's been 10 years since that happened and like what my vision of my last meal would be has sort of changed. And I think it will continue to change, but I do think the dad's onto something like a big bowl of like lobster mac and cheese. Like it sounds comforting. It sounds oozy. It sounds gooey. It sounds like, you know, kind of like my mouth is salivating, just sort of thinking about that.

[01:36:18] Um, but I, I also, um, I can't eat gluten. So if it's really going to be my last meal, I'm about to go into the electric chair. Like I'm going to fuck some gluten up. Like I, uh, yeah, I want bread. I want real pizza with the, with the stretchy, with the gluten doing the gluten things. Um, I, I probably want to finish it with like a slice of dad's, you know, peanut butter pie or, uh, you know, one of the things that he bakes. Apple cake or carrot cake.

[01:36:47] Like, that's what you want. That's what you want. What I want is the thing that's nostalgic and delicious. And, you know, you know, is, is what my palate and, and heart. No, that's true. That's a good point. Yeah. So my comfort foods that I was fed as a child that, you know, imprinted on me, I think those are the things that I crave, but I could also see, you know, uh, I think there's value to like an absolutely incredible, like, you know, a beautifully done piece of meat

[01:37:13] with bone marrow and perfectly roasted vegetables that are like all caramelized into like, I'm really torn between like a bowl of comfort food and like a high end thing that, you know, like honestly a whole entire lobster, like entire lobster with withdrawn butter as your last meal. I think all of these things, um, I'd be fine with all of those. When you asked about like the whole last meal thing and I was keeping it very simple because

[01:37:38] of, of things like, like I say, comfort food and that, and that's a mindset as much as it is a, is an emotional heart or, or, or, or an emotional memory that you like. But the thing is, I could be just as happy with a hot pastrami sandwich from Katz's or even a really well done pot roast. Yeah. I mean, a properly done pot roast where it still has structure and yet just falls apart when it touches your tongue. Okay. Edward, what's it for you?

[01:38:08] It's so many of these things are, are just, you know, to echo what you're saying, it's like our relationship to food, whether we even know it or not is emotional. Even if we're not compulsive eaters, we're all kind of emotional eaters. The things that we fall in love with just have something to do with a moment in time. I don't know. And I think about my dad's last week on this planet and like what the highlights for him were. And, you know, he was a, he was a kid who grew up in an orphanage and some of the more

[01:38:37] common meals that he would describe eating was like a can of spam and things like that. And so as he got older, fancy meals for him were very different from what a fancy meal would be for, for somebody else. And so the last week of his life, like the big highlights for him was a po' boy from mothers, a box of Popeye's fried chicken. I kid you not. And a snowball and a milkshake. Yeah.

[01:39:05] You know, like just totally simple. Was that a blizz ball? One of those? Snow blizz. I don't remember where we got it from, but it, you know, he just, yeah. Yeah. But it, but those, but you, you, but you said it correctly. I mean, it's, it's, and you're in your spot on. It's, it's emotional, but because it's emotional because it's not just the food, it's the people. Yeah. It's the incident. And then that's, and that's that, and that's the power of food. Yeah. You know, to be able to create those memories.

[01:39:35] And so your dad may as well as it, as any other person or any of us who have some kind of a memory about surrounded around food. It's not just what we're, what we're eating. It's also what we're remembering. Yeah. Yeah. And that, that's, that's going to tie into what my answer is. Like my favorite thing that he would ever make for us was spaghetti and I became spaghetti Eddie. Like I loved it so much. And still to this day, my, my favorite meal is spaghetti.

[01:40:04] So it would be spaghetti with some really well-made bread and some olive oil. Now for you, are you more of like a focaccia? Like I like focaccia, but I, but you, you want like a, you know, like a baguette that you're pulling apart. Hot bread. Yeah. I get that. A standard Italian loaf. Yes. Yes, exactly that. And of course, dessert, you know, and that's always going to be cheesecake. I'm sorry. I know it's not your favorite anymore, but it's going to be cheesecake with ice cream

[01:40:34] and strawberries. So dad, we, we talked, you know, our stories are about dinners that are horrible for reasons that kind of take you by surprise as a chef with so many years in kitchens and feeding people. What's one of the most disastrous dinners you were ever present for? Either as a chef or as a guest. Okay. I like to think that I haven't been a part at a disastrous dinner where I was a chef, but I do know that I, and I thought about this.

[01:41:02] I do know that most of my bad meals have always been commercially based. Mm-hmm. And, but it, but it was interesting when I started to try and keep track of them and it was hard to rethink things because if I was responsible for a bad meal, I probably managed to pull in enough of my ex-Catholic doctrine to be able to push that out of my mind so much that they'd have to hypnotize me to be able to figure out what meal that was. You just say you're sorry and move on. It's the Catholic way.

[01:41:30] Well, look, it's like, disaster doesn't also have to mean like you did a bad job when I was working, when I was working in a restaurant, there was a night where we had a full restaurant. It was peak summer and the power went out in the middle of the dinner rush. Yeah. And there were just, we were pulling extra candles out of everywhere and the chefs were tying shirts around their heads and everything. Because they're sweating a bit. Because they're sweating. But like, we were still getting those meals out and the waiters were all out.

[01:41:58] Like we were, you know, essentially tap dancing, you know, as a group to entertain like the many people who, you know, it was like 110 degrees inside the restaurant, but we got every table fed, but it was a total disaster. Like it can be a story like that too. Yeah, it could be across as a tour guide. Like I've had nights where people threatened to kill me. I've had people collapse in the tour. People projectile vomit who weren't drunk, random things like that. Anything at all. When I was working at Hooters, there was a guy who had a heart attack in the middle of a restaurant. That's a disaster.

[01:42:27] That was a disaster, but it was nobody's fault, you know? Well, I mean, my, my commercial complaints were, you know, that I thought about that were things like, and each one of them was totally different. I mean, I had one of the worst seafood meals I ever had in my life in Point Pleasant, New Jersey, which was a seafood town, which I'm not going to mention the name. Oh, come on. All right. Maybe I will. Maybe I will. But I mean, told by, and this is why I don't even like to say, people say, oh, can you make

[01:42:56] a suggestion as to where we should go? I'm like, well, I can't make a suggestion, but it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to like it, you know, because someone had been going on and on and people in the county when we were living in New Jersey still, uh, where it's like, you have to go to the shrimp box. You have to go to the shrimp box in Point Pleasant. It's the best meal I've ever had. Well, that's when I learned that if you're drunk enough and they have boat access, people will think anything is good to eat. Yeah. And I know prison. I know, I know prison canned soup when I have it.

[01:43:25] I know a salad that has rust on the lettuce when I have it. And it was an awful meal. And so that was my worst seafood meal ever, probably ever. Uh, and then, and, but I, I went out for fried chicken once and I went to the, to the, you know, where do you think I went? Well, they didn't have Popeye's when I was going in for fried chicken and I don't eat much fried food anyway, but I can tell you that the fried chicken I had from KFC, the one time

[01:43:50] I had KFC chicken that not only was it the worst fried chicken I ever had, I'm not even sure it was actually chicken. So it might've been some kind of a protein animal, but I don't think it was chicken because I had chicken most of my life up until that point, not fried, but not from KFC. And yet the worst Italian meal, which you happen to have been at Kimberly, uh, that I've ever had was in New York city. Oh God. Bobo? No. Yeah. Lydia's place. Yeah.

[01:44:20] Yes. I know the one you're, yes. Continue. When, when, and, and first of all, it was as mediocre as anything I've ever had. And I had high expectations. I mean, my nipples were hard with excitement knowing that I was going to be at Lydia's place and yet, and it wasn't Lydia's fault. It was the obnoxious waiter who was trying to pad the bill, pad the bill, pad the bill. And was almost in, in, in so incentive, incentivized. Is that the word? Yes. To do so that he kind of ruined almost the entire thing. Yes.

[01:44:49] I remember that we, we had like driven into New York, you know, as a family that didn't have the kind of income to do that regularly. And we were going to eat at Lydia's and we were going to like, you know, be, and just the most, it's an example of how poor hospitality can completely destroy an experience for people that it really, hospitality, like, it's not just about good food, making people feel welcome, making people feel heard, making people feel considered is so much a part of a great meal,

[01:45:18] whether you're having it in your house, whether you're a guest in someone's home or whether you're at a restaurant, like how you treat people, how you make them feel is a part of that. And you have to get that right. And yeah, the food was good and the experience was appalling. Yeah. And all three of those things I mentioned were just all poorly executed. Yeah. Somebody bungled that. So pretend you're not a good Christian man for five minutes. If you could invite any dinner guest to a meal with the express purpose of killing them, who would you pick? Well, I did. Yeah. Okay.

[01:45:48] Yeah. I did think about this and I kept coming back to the same thing. I mean, including anyone from present day contemporary political office. Okay. Very well. Now I'll be surprised. No, no, no. Okay. No, I think it, I think it's good. I think it's an easy pull. I think, and I even figured out about how. Go for it. Or it would be Hitler. It would be Hitler. Yeah. Absolutely Hitler. Deserving. How are you murdering Hitler at dinner? I'm serving fugu.

[01:46:17] Especially the liver. Especially the liver because it's so toxic and almost the absolute easy killing mechanism that it, and what I would do ultimately because of the damage that he did as a human being, I would just look at his face while he was expiring. Oh, nice. I would just let him know that I'm the person who put that in there. Tell Cersei. I want her to know it was me. Now, for unsophisticated folks such as myself, what is fugu?

[01:46:46] Well, fugu is the most, well, I guess I think they still consider it the, I can't tell you what the genus is of the fish's real name, but fugu is the blowfish. Oh, okay. Gotcha. That they have to train, and the Japanese love it. That's fascinating. And they train for a year. You have to be certified to be able to take that fish apart and not kill people. And I'm like, well, why would you even try it? But anyway. Interesting.

[01:47:13] You know, but that's the wild side of Japanese people that we don't see. We think they're so reserved. And then there's that one guy, he's, he's bombed, and he's, I'm going to have the fugu. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Interesting. If you, if you could take somebody out via dinner, who are you taking them out and, and how? Somebody like John Wayne Gacy. Oh my God, he was on my list. Who murdered all those children and stuffed them under his house. I would love to serve him some fugu. Okay. That's a good answer.

[01:47:43] Yeah. I'm going to, I have to, I have to do this. I have to, I have to look through something that I wrote here. You do, don't mind I have notes, right? Not at all. Of course not. We have notes. Okay, here, okay, here it is. I'm going to, I'm going to actually show it to you. And I actually highlighted it. And I don't know if you can actually see it, but Hitler is in here. So is Pol Pot. Pol Pot. And the very last person is John Wayne Gacy. I like that. That's fantastic. Because he didn't just do what he did. Yeah.

[01:48:11] He, he tortured people. Yeah. And he reveled in it. Yeah. Yeah. And he reveled in it. Kids too. So, yeah. So, that was the hardest question of all this. Sure. Sure. This entire thing. Yeah. Of course. Kimbo, you got to have somebody locked and loaded. I do, but I do. Think about murdering people every day. Come on. I mean, like the Jersey and me, definitely. Like, you're just raised around people who are like the Sopranos. You know, those were those great stress strategy masters. Yeah.

[01:48:37] You know, you're just, no, I'm not as great as you guys as being like, oh, you know, I'm going to go back in time. I'm like, I think it's important to stay away from another political rant on this podcast. But I do think that maybe some Aqua Tuscana for Peter Thiel would benefit mankind. Really? Yeah. Peter Thiel? I think fascinating.

[01:49:03] I think that if you go after the politicians themselves, you are not being strategic enough. I think that slowly poisoning the billionaires who are in charge of hoarding wealth, exploiting people's labor, and then funneling their ill-gotten lucre into the hands of the worst possible people. I think that we can.

[01:49:27] So Aqua Tuscana was this incredible woman derived poison that was very popular in Italy because it was traceless. So it's tasteless, scentless, and women who were in very unfortunate, we can't go back on these, I can't get out of them, nightmare, domestic violence marriages. We're a big fan of this because you could just slip it into something. Fascinating. And it didn't work so fast.

[01:49:54] It wasn't like Joffrey in King of Thrones where it happens at the dinner table. It's like you feed it to your husband and then he goes off and dies somewhere else. And so you never get caught. I think if we just like carefully poisoned a few billionaires, we might see some stuff get done. To make this just a little socially complex, why not? It's human fuckery. Yeah. Like as a queer person, is Peter Thiel more offensive to you because he's gay? 100%. Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, you fucking traitor.

[01:50:24] You know, like, yeah. But Peter Thiel is also an example of, you know, you got to be real careful just because someone might be marginalized in one way. But that's still a white man. And it's still a white man with money. Peter hasn't seen the margins in a while. And so you just, yeah, you know, you got to be careful. You know, people are like, I'm marginalized. I'm like, I don't think you are enough. I think we all did pretty good. Yeah. No, no. Yeah.

[01:50:51] That said, if anybody's listening, I did not poison Peter Thiel. Like, it's not me. If it finally happens, I lack the resources to get that. Full disclaimer. I don't have that kind of money. Like, we need one more martyr, you know, for that. And truly, Peter really strikes me as the type of guy who has somebody taste his food and waits

[01:51:14] to see if they die first, like that he staffs a food tester because he knows, because that guy knows. Like, yeah. Okay. Okay. So we've been doing this for an hour. I'll send him my recipe for banana moose. We can put the Aqua Toscana in the banana moose. I like where this is going. So let's ask a few more questions and then wrap it up so that we're not here all night. Okay.

[01:51:38] So, Dad, speaking of crimes against humanity, what is a food crime in your kitchen that you feel deserves a metaphorical death penalty? Is it like margarine instead of butter? Leaving your dirty knives in a soapy sink so when somebody puts their hands in there. You know, and I had that. I've had that happen to me.

[01:52:01] And even just a year or so ago, while I was still over at CSU cooking in those homes over there, somebody put a broken glass in there and I did indeed cut myself because you couldn't see it. You just went in there to do what you were going to do. And so, and of course, there was resulting Lannister moments that came after that. Right. Because, you know, because they deserved to be beaten up on that. So that's the meta.

[01:52:29] That's my full-throated hatred of things in a kitchen that was just a crime. Things that hurt other people. Oh, for sure. Things that hurt other people. Okay. Edward, do you have any kitchen crimes? Yeah. So I was the sacrilegious person in the kitchen. I guess that's me. That's my answer. Okay. So getting me, kitchen crimes? Yeah. I mean, you were a waitress. Like, do you have any crimes as far as like how you communicate with the line or whatever?

[01:52:57] Like in which way they treated you or didn't treat you? I mean, sexually harassing. Mixing up tickets or whatever. Yeah. You know, I would say that sexually harassing anybody at your job is just not good kitchen behavior. But like as a person who cooks a lot, like and takes cooking seriously. Dirty dishes in the sink, not cleaning up as you go. Like those, like they vibrate my brain.

[01:53:22] Like, you know, even though I live alone, I cannot leave things on my counter. Sure. Like I am my dad's child. I was, you know, trained to see this. You know, like that's a whole thing. Being sloppy about cross-contamination. That's another thing that like people who like, you know, stick their knife in a raw chicken and then use it to cut. So I'm just like, hey, like that. That really sucks. Their hands, you know, they use their hands. And then I will say I watched Jacques Pepin on all his stuff.

[01:53:50] And he's like a guy to me. He was one of our deans at culinary school. But I watch him. And nowadays, and he's 90 years old or whatever. But I watch some of the stuff that he does. And then this is nothing against him because you guys will get a rash of shit if I say anything bad about Jacques. But I noticed that he, when he's working with like raw stuff, particularly chicken, while he's showing people. And he is teaching them how to do it. What he's not showing them is how to clean your hands well. He just wipes them after.

[01:54:20] And then he's holding some other stuff. And he's using it. And he's picking up his knife. And he's touching his phone. And I'm like, blah. Like you are. But you just do that better. Right. I'm like, what is happening here? This is like, you know, you either have, you either have, you know, you yourself, you make a decision as a chef or a cook or just someone who's cooking for friends. You have to follow certain rules. Right.

[01:54:47] And you can't deviate from them because you will, A, make them sick or maybe one of them could be in bigger trouble because of something that you've done. And if you have to have good food practices. Yeah. And a big thing for me, people who don't season their food. I think that that is a crime. Obviously, if you have a certain dietary restrictions, there's things that you can't have. No problem. But like the sort of terminal inability and disinterest in learning about seasoning that some people have in their kitchens.

[01:55:17] I do feel that's a crime. If you're seeking to feed people, you should you should learn how to do it in a way that is flavorful and impactful. And we have more resources now than ever be. So it's kind of like there's no excuse for you to not know how to season food. Okay. It's going to be that time, Dad. Dad, we need you to pick which story is the winner for this episode. Now we're turning the screws. You can't. It's okay not to pick me. I'm going to be okay.

[01:55:45] Well, I think that basically what I had alluded to literally when we almost started is that one story was completely heavier than the other story. One story even had some kind of, even in its death, had some humor to it. So, and of course, and then like I said, there was the Muppets coming in and then there was the tapping of the musicals. I don't know where you guys find this stuff, but it blows my mind. And it's part of most of this fun of listening to your podcast to begin with.

[01:56:12] But I hate to say it. I went with, I went with Edwards. I love this. I love this. So explain why you've picked Story B. Well, just simply because of the simple fact that I felt as if it was, it wasn't that, that dark, dark, dark. And I thought like, okay, this guy's kind of getting it. He did it to himself. You know, here's the thing.

[01:56:36] You know, when I'm, when I'm driving on one of these crazy highways anywhere, whether it be New Jersey or even out here in Colorado, there's always that guy in that Dodge Ram or there's always that kid on his, on his, on his motorcycle who's weaving in and out, in and out, in and out. And just going, and you're already going 80 and he's going 95. Okay. And I, and when they go past you or they do what they do, I say, well, they're going to get themselves killed.

[01:57:04] And if they kill themselves, it honestly doesn't bother me. If they cause something that kills somebody else, it bothers me. Yeah. Sure. And so, so here we are and we have these two stories and we have one guy who decides to kill himself. And then a group of guys who decide to kill kids. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty easy to give a thumbs up. I understand that. I understand that. That's fair. That's fair. Now, if it had been the other way around, Kim would have been the winner.

[01:57:32] Well, we appreciate your candor and your participation. Well, I mean, is that a decent enough explanation? It sure is. If someone is stupid enough to do what they're going to do for themselves, fine. Again, back to Darwin. Again, back to you did this to yourself. But if anything you do affects somebody else, you know, well, and then that can be applied across so many boards right now in this world. That's where we're at. And that's what makes us who we are.

[01:57:59] Did you feel any kind of, can you feel any kind of empathy for the deceased king? This man who was so impotent in his life that all he could do is just eat himself to death? Yeah. Well, no, that was the part that was sad because they had marginalized him. Sure. And taken away any kind of, I don't want to use stupid words like his masculinity, but I mean, they had just pushed him off to the side. Right. And basically, but I'm not like, yeah, you really are a figurehead.

[01:58:29] Yeah. And I guess, and I guess that was more of his way of handling it. But that was sort of like a dumb way. See, he would have done better if he started killing people. And I really thought that's where that story was going to go. I thought when you brought up the sauerkraut is when I said, yeah, he's going to poison all these other bastards with the sauerkraut. And you didn't go that way. You were like, you were like happy. Just cream cakes. And I was like, oh, okay. Death by profiterole. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you, Chef Dave.

[01:58:57] We will send Gary the ghoul to strip you of your claws and release you from the clutches of the mad chef. And hose all the red paint off you. No, no. He can take the red paint home. That's our gift to you, Dave. Unless you want to get hosed off by Gary. I've heard it's very popular. All right. That's the show. Love you guys. And that's our show for this month. If you agree with Chef Dave's verdict, tell us why.

[01:59:26] And if you disagree, now's the time to make your displeasure known. You can vote either way over on Instagram at Human Fuckery Podcast. It's going to be one of our most recent posts. It'll say vote here. You can't miss it. If you like what you've heard and you want to make sure we can keep making free content for your ear holes, please make sure you are subscribed to this podcast.

[01:59:53] Or leave us a five-star review wherever you're streaming this audio from. It really does matter. And as always, if you hated what you've heard, my name is Clavicular, and you can leave your review over on Uroop. Until next episode, stay safe, keep it kind, and please stay weird.