Michael is one of his generation's great table-makers, underground restaurateurs, food provocateur, and credited with creating the modern underground restaurant movement in the United States.
He's a Partner at RoundGlass, the founder of deathoverdinner.org and The Living Wake, the co-founder of MuslimNeighbor.com, and the author of Let's Talk About Death.
He currently serves as a Board Advisor at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts. He is also the founder of Convivium, a creative agency specializing in the common table's technology and the ability to shift culture through thoughtful food and discourse-based engagements and happenings.
He joins us to discuss founding what many regard as the modern underground food scene in the US and how that work led him to his current focus around death, dying well, and his view that talking about death is medicine for the living.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Art of the Hustle is a production of I Heart Radio.
You're listening to the Art of the Hustle, the show
that breaks down how some of the world's most fascinating
people have hustled and learned their way into achieving great things.
I'm your host Jeff Rosenthal, co founder of Summit, and
(00:23):
today on the show, had the pleasure of chatting with
Michael Hebb. Michael is one of his generations great tablemakers,
underground restaurateurs, food provocateur, and is credited with creating the
modern underground restaurant movement in the United States. He's a
partner at Round Glass and the founder of Death over
Dinner dot org, The Living Wake, and the co founder
of Muslim neighbor dot com, and the author of Let's
(00:44):
Talk About Death. He currently serves as a board advisor
at the Freedman School of Nutrition, Science and Policy at Tufts.
He's also the founder of Convivium One Pot, a creative
agency specializing in the common tables, technology and the ability
to shift culture through thoughtful food, discourse based engagements and happenings.
He joins us to discuss founding what many regardless the
(01:05):
modern underground food scene in the us and how that
work lad him to his current focus around death dying
well in his view that talking about death is great
medicine for the living. Please enjoy my conversation with Michael
Hen Michael, thank you for being on the podcast. Jeffrey,
it's Michael. Not only are you a dear friend, but
(01:27):
you were for a time a mentor. I still consider
you a mentor, Jeff don't pretend my first reverse mentor.
M m Well, uh, Michael. The theme of much of
this podcast is going to be on Michael's work on death,
but Michael also had a storied career as a tablemaker
and a chef. True or false true, very talented woodworker.
(01:51):
That's a good correction because you can't assume that people
know what I mean by that. Michael had a specialty
of really gathering people around the dimmer the table. He
once told me that the greatest piece of technology ever
created was actually the dinner table, because that's where people
came together to break bread and collaborate, and that was
the thing that ended up changing the outcomes of civilizations.
(02:14):
And so he did this work both as a restaurant
tour formerly of Portland and now in Seattle. Is where
he's based now. But yeah, you know, in terms of summit,
and i'd say, you know, the key skill set that
we you know, gain that helped us build our global community,
it was it was that was that work around the table. Yeah,
I mean, it's the first Internet. It also is, in
(02:35):
my mind, the first architecture, and it's the place where
we became human. So it's it's got a lot of
going on. Unpack that though, tell us what that means.
It's the first architecture, the place where we begat What
does that mean. Yeah, well, let's go back before architecture
and humans actually made the evolutionary lead by cooking. And
(02:56):
this is one of those great moments where Darwin was wrong.
We like Darwin being right, yeah, harah, all about it,
but occasionally Darwin was wrong. And Darwin had it that
we made the evolutionary leap from ape to man by
hunting and killing animals and eating their flesh. That was
actually Neanderthals. We killed off Neanderthals, So I mean, the
(03:18):
did we actually made that leap because we learned how
to cook. And cooking is a weird thing for one,
because apes tend to be afraid of fire and so
at some point we discovered that cooking something over fire
was one delicious, but it also concentrated calories. So an
(03:39):
ape choose seven hours a day, that's like a constant
grind to get the nutrients they need. We chew twenty
four minutes a day, and this huge evolutionary leap happened
because we started getting nutrients a lot easier, and our
bellies got a lot smaller, and all of a sudden
there was this opening and our jaws weren't constantly going,
(04:04):
and our jaws started to thin out, and all of
a sudden there was more space in our brain. And
you know, nature horrors a vacuum, and it ended up
being filled with brains so um, And then we got language,
and somewhere, I'm sure Terrence McKenna's theory of one of
those apes wandering off and chewing on a psilocybin mushroom
(04:24):
came into play. Essentially, cooking made us human. Yeah, there's
a chloric component, but there's also just the pure energy component,
right Like you know, having to digest raw meat or
raw food versus cooked food now allows for all of
that energy to go to the brain, which is as
I understand, it's some of the underpinnings of like the
macrobiotic diet for sure. And you know, with this conversation,
(04:47):
we can't veer too deeply into molecular biology or evolutionary
bioy But tell us what, so what do you mean
by like, you know, the original Internet. The table is
a very interesting intentional space if you think about it.
We had shelter, but the idea of creating a space
that wasn't for our basic human needs, but was for
(05:07):
sharing one of those basic human needs. It's pretty revolutionary
to create a social environment for the sharing in the
exchange of food and then quickly ideas that really is
what the table is and what it has always been.
And for me, it was very clear that it is
architecture and it is the purest form. And you don't
(05:28):
need million dollars or ten million or a hundred million
dollar buildings to achieve the function of pure architecture, which
was to create transformational experience, human experience. And you can
create that with a table or an implied table for
almost nothing, and it's available to everybody. And I got
completely obsessed and enchanted with this idea. But yeah, it's
(05:49):
also the first Internet. This is where our networks grew
and started as humans were drawn to the table like
this magnet. At early tables, people would identify themselves at
these hosted tables, these feasts, et cetera. You would literally
give your hashtag or i mean, your your handle, and
we see it in the Iliad, You're like, I am
(06:10):
Magnum Agamemnon, son of, son of, and you go through
and you give your whole lineage, which is essentially the
modern equivalent of this is my my handle or my
email address. And stories man stories bards went were paid
to go from table to table, tell us how you
got here, you know, and we'll and we'll get to
(06:33):
the work that you do on death and how talking
about death is medicine another one of my favorite topics
to chop it up with you on. But you know,
give us a little bit of your background. Where are
you from? How did you get into this world? Yeah,
so I'm I'm from the Great Pacific Northwest. And when
you're from here, it's hard to ever leave because it's really,
in many ways, heaven on earth. But I went to
(06:55):
Read College to study the classics. I was drawn towards
the classics, and then I realized that I didn't want
to be in an environment, an academic environment that was
so isolated from real life, such an Ivory Tower, even
though it was a very like cool summer of love,
intellectual you know, acid being dropped everywhere Ivory Tower. But
(07:18):
I wanted to change ship. I wanted to be part
of the dusty world of the real life. And so
I started studying architecture. And in my fourth year of
architecture school, I was taken out of architecture school by
a brilliant visionary architect who came to my senior crit
and I was actually in this this pissing match between
(07:42):
Mark Lakeman, this architect, and Brad Klopfelle. So Brad Klopfield
went on to be one of the best known architects
allied works in the country slash world right now. But
the time was Brad was just starting his practice and
he was taking the piss out of me and my
crit and Mark came to my defense and he actually
went so far as to say, Michael, I love your
(08:04):
project so much, I want to buy your model, this
like shitty architectural model, and will you have tea with
me afterwards? So long, long story long, Mark and I
started working together. He asked me to be as co
founder and we started doing a lot of illegal architecture,
what we called guerrilla architecture. And one of those projects
was Intersection Repair, where we illegally went out and got
(08:27):
the whole neighborhood and sell what in Portland to paint
this five hundred foot on a sizzy symbol of life
on the sidewalk, and we ripped up the corners of
the sidewalk and we said essentially this is it was
before burning Man had really become consciousness, but it was like,
this is our space and we're gonna do what we
(08:49):
want with it. In the city went ape ship. So
that was my the first taste of how important crime
is um and how important it is to have a
design attack to your crime, Like you need to have
a really good reason to exercise civil disobedience and when
you do it can be so impactful. The city ended
(09:11):
up adopting after crying in their beer for a long time,
like ended up saying, not only um, are we going
to find you? They end up saying this should be
a citywide project. One the American Institute of Architects People's
Choice Award. There's now thousands of intersection repairs all over
the world. And I really understood another model, which was
this blueprint model. Give people the tools to build their
(09:34):
own saying, their own culture, and it can be so
much more impactful than just what you can create by yourself. Well,
that's also been part of your story as you've moved
through these different disciplines, you know, tell us about your
transition to food. Yeah. Well, we were running this this
big nonprofit in Portland City Repair and Community Texture, and
(09:55):
I grew really exhausted with having to create consensus. Quite frank,
some of us that are dreamers but also manifest urs
want to get busy, like we want to make ship.
We want to draw it, figure out how it's gonna
get done, and then make it in the same day.
And we had developed a culture of consensus, which is
a beautiful way to do something. And I was just
(10:16):
too young and it didn't have the patience for it.
And so started thinking about food, mostly because my girlfriend
at the time was a really talented cook, and we
created a private chef company for her and started catering
and doing these catering events and I was like, catering
is kind of bullshit. I don't want to just do
respond to what people need. Let's how are we going
(10:38):
to use food to create our own experiences? But not
a restaurant. And I'd read this story in severer, which
used to be this great magazine about the Palladores in Cuba,
and they were these illegal restaurants that Cubans were creating
in their in their living rooms, um and in their
kitchens because they didn't know how to feed their emilies um.
(11:00):
And they were doing this at the risk of being
thrown into a Cuban prison, which doesn't sound fun. And
but I saw that idea and was like, wait, we
could do that. In the United States. The culinary world
doesn't have an underground like we have garage music bands,
we have underground artists, we've got underground poets, we've got
we had no food underground. You either went to Culinary
(11:23):
Institute of America, or you came up under Alice Waters
or a lawnde costs, or you cut your teeth and
in the food world and only a couple different ways.
And then you raise a bunch of money and you
open your own restaurant or you work for somebody else
like that's it. No, you know, exciting experimental underground. And
so I was like, wait a second, let's create a
(11:45):
restaurant in our living room. But with the idea, it
won't just be about our experience. It will be that
blueprint model. If we can tell people that you can
do this even if you're breaking the law and it's
very unlikely that they will come and police you, and
you can culture and experience and test out what it
is to cook for people, how good you are at
it in your living room with no investment, Like I
(12:07):
want that everywhere. I want to be able to pop
into Berlin, into Singapore and know that this type of
experience is happening. And so we did it. And you know,
we were kids. And if you would have asked me
what the plan was at that time, if I was
feeling comfortable in conversation, I would have told you that
it was to start a global food underground. Um. And
you would have said, you're fucking crazy. You are a
(12:30):
couple of broke kids with a bungalow, and um. And
we did. We launched this thing two times a month,
and we had like you know, gust Fence sent and
Miranda July and all these fucking amazing people coming to
our dinner and putting money in a jar. And six
months later we're on the front page of the dining
section of the New York Times. It's just an unbelievable story.
(12:51):
The demand became unbelievable, right, Like every everybody who is
anybody in Portland wanted to be at these dinners. And
you're literally like making the courses, like in whatever you
can in that buggalow. And fifteen years later you're doing
the same type of work, not just cooking meals but
building tables and creating environments for the Obama's. It was
(13:15):
a gamble and it worked. And I mean what happened
how I ended up in this bungalow with not being
able to afford chairs for dinner, and so the cost
of the first dinner was to bring a chair and
leave it. I built a twenty one foot table three
seven foot hollow court doors from home depot that I
planned on returning if this was a bust, and UM
(13:38):
figured out a way that one person could erect this
table while the other person held the baby. Because August
was three months old when we had our first dinner
at the house. So I got really interested in not
just getting people to the table and having them have
(13:59):
a a meaningful convivial time and a connection. But I
got interested in how can the conversations that we have
at the table change the conversations that we're having nationally
and globally. How can they change the most powerful conversations
in those smoky dark rooms. How do we get access
(14:19):
to those smoky dark rooms or those high level dinners
and then accept them with meaning instead of people just
sizing themselves up, instead of the egoic speechifying that happens
at those dinners, Like how do I get the most
powerful people on the planet to talk about the hardest
ship and be vulnerable with each other and then have
(14:41):
them love that experience and wanted to scale it? And
how could that change world events? Like that was that's
how I started to get interested in the table. I
was like, Okay, this underground restaurant thing is going to
go and people are going to be drawn back to
the table, and that's awesome, But what's next? And that's
that took me on a pretty well journey. We'll be
(15:02):
back with more out of the hustle after the break. Well,
I remember our first dinner that we did together that
we co created first and foremost it started with the provocation,
what is the intention for us all gathering. If it's
just to eat and bullshit with one another, that's not
(15:24):
a really great provocation. And frankly, you're not going to
get the people that you want at the table without
having a real reason for them to gather. And I'd say,
you know, the number one ingredient and all of this
is the quality of people that you can gather and
the diversity of thought. I think the theme of ours
was remixing the Declaration of Independence, and we made a
mini declaration that was letter pressed that came in a
(15:45):
Manila envelope that also had a razor blade in it.
Do you remember this? Of course I remember. I remember
sitting on my bed in the Hyatt where we were
hosting d C ten. You're stage time of an event.
Um here I was on my bed in a hotel
(16:07):
room using sandpaper to slightly dull the edges of the
razor blades that we were about to send out to
this the thirty or so most influential people coming to
your event, to invite them to this dinner. You know,
I was like, I love the idea of giving somebody
a razor blade in something that's an imitation to food,
(16:28):
because I have a dark sense of humor, and I
was like that idea of a razor blade being in
an apple, which was such a fucked up thing and
never actually happened and changed Halloween forever and the way
we trust other people. But like, I wanted to play
with that with these powerful people, and we did. We
reset the Declaration of Independence in health Edica and said,
(16:49):
maybe you want to cut this up, maybe you want
to remix it, maybe you want to save it, but
let's come to dinner together and let's talk about it.
To that point, the dinner begins, like the experiences already
started when you open that envelope and you're like, what
is this? Like this is crazy. It shows the level
of intention, which is frankly what magic is, right, the
fact that somebody would put this much effort into creating
(17:11):
something some illusion for you. In the first place, I
mentioned all of this because like those ingredients of place making,
of making something really special and something really memorable, something
really differentiated. I just think it's so important. I'd love
for you to give just a couple more examples of
this work. The two that stick out to me the
I five dinner, I think was incredibly magical, and then
(17:31):
the one where you brought strangers is like one of
the most beautiful things I've ever heard. Yeah, and let's
pause on the DC ten dinner for just a second,
because I think there's an incredible story that tells please
a very important thing. So we we laid really um
impressive plans for this dinner, right, We had the buses
all lined up, we had the invitation was perfectly hit.
(17:52):
It the James three times James Beard, Winner et cetera
chef working with me, and I was cooking too, and
this incredible frank a wait right, how all these things?
And it was set for thirty people and our friend
Elliott got really excited and and there were sixty people,
um that showed up, literally thirty people that weren't on
the program. Had no fucking idea, and I didn't have
(18:13):
seats for him, and I didn't have food for him,
and it was like loaves and fishes moment. It was
just like fuck it, We're what we're gonna do. We're
just gonna take care of these people, because it was like,
you know, it was Olivia munn and and and Tim
Ferris and Kirsten Bell and like you know, it was
all these and but also Howard Buffett Jr. And it
was incredible group of very thoughtful human beings descended upon
(18:38):
this table of thirty and there were sixty of them.
And I remember then I was just like, fine, I'm
just gonna figure it out. And we got them all down,
we got them all seated at this table, and I
had to make a decision. I was like, many of
these people don't know the program. And I gave got
up and gave one of these speeches that there's moments
(18:59):
that change our lives and this was one of them.
And I said, well, welcome to dinner, you powerful people,
you impressive people. I'm so glad that there's thirty more
of you here. But the reality is it fux our night,
like we've com we had really remember this. We're like
this is a ruined event. It was like it is.
(19:22):
We had a beautiful intention. Let me tell you what
it was. It was this beautiful idea to rethink the
Declaration of Indefense. And we have literally we have destroyed
that and it's okay. Now, what I challenge you to
do was like we could just accept that that was
a beautiful idea and it didn't happen. We can all
eat some pasta and it's gonna be really good pasta.
Or you can be brave enough, you can be powerful
(19:45):
enough to still do the thing like you can do
it right now. You can grab I challenge you to
grab this space that I'm standing in right now and
tell us about how you think the Declaration of Independence
could be rethought and no Attendaby gets up and she's like,
I also, I see your challenge, this incredible activist, actor, artist, writer,
(20:07):
and she says, I'm a Jewish woman from Israel, and
I want to take this moment to talk about forgiveness
for jihad, for jihadas and for jihad is a thing
like and went on this incredible soliloquy about forgiveness and
understanding and how Islam is a younger religion and that
(20:29):
there were a lot of mistakes made in her religion
and then you had Suv and pishfire of all people.
He said, I actually the last night in my BlackBerry,
rewrote the Declaration of Independence and let me read it.
And then Chris Soccer gets up and Ellen Gustafsson gets
up with Socca tas talks about his riding his bike
(20:51):
across the country and we were just in tears and
moved and it became this thing where you can make
plans for things and they they really matter. And like
Jeff said, that intentionality is is magic, but you also
need to be able to be brave enough to step
into a moment and see what the opportunity is when
(21:12):
everything that you've set out to do is being destroyed.
And just because I had mentioned it, will you tell
the listeners just a little bit about so so they
could an understanding of some of the different manifestations of
how this work actually played out. I do want you
to show off and talk about, you know, the ones
that were the most creative and the most sort of
available to people. Yeah, I mean, there's been so many
(21:34):
it's it's hard to even know what to pick from.
But there you mentioned the dinner where I invited strangers
and somebody wanted to make a TV show of the
work that I do, and I was like, oh, and
I'm in that conversation again right now, And it's so hard,
and it's so hard to capture um the type of
magic of human connection that happens at the table. And
(21:55):
I was thinking about how I could actually create a
dinner as a pilot for the show, and I was like,
you know what, bring your television crews, you know, bring
the production crew and just follow me around. I'm gonna
go around Seattle for a day and I'm just gonna
invite complete strangers to a dinner and I'm gonna talk
to like, I don't know, two hundred people and I'm
gonna have this beautiful invite and most people are gonna
(22:17):
think I'm fucking crazy because I'm offering this free dinner
at this location at this time, and I'm gonna have
interesting conversations and people are gonna treat me in a
bunch of different ways and then we'll see what happens
at dinner. And they're like, you don't have a plan
for the dinner. I was like, no, I have no idea.
Let's just like get in my car and let's go.
And we did. And we invited all of these people
and we had sixty people or so fifty people show
(22:39):
up for dinner. And um, I had a couple of chefs,
like some of Seattle's best chefs that were like cooking
in the back alleyway and the amount of humanity and
the stories that came, like people got up on top
of the table and like spat poetry and people cried,
and this man who hasn't probably told his wife that
he loves her for twenty year years, started crying and
(23:01):
telling him how much he loves her and how like
the generosity of the spirit of Seattle. They were like
vacationing from Phoenix or something like had cracked him open.
And then this one story this man started sharing, and
he's like, I work at the Lusty Lady. And the
Lusty Lady is that formerly a peep show parlor. Women
owned a woman operated peep show parlor. And he's like,
(23:24):
I'm the guy, I'm the janitor at this peep show parlor.
And oh my, like the amount of compassion and love
and appreciation for this man who never gets appreciated, right
like we do not we don't go up, like this
man is getting hugged and appreciated, and for his for
(23:46):
the vulnerability to share what he does. You know, it's
just like with a group of strangers, no less, like
a group that typically he would think would judge him.
I imagine absolutely what a risky thing to say, you know,
and you watch these people being vulnerable, and you watch
these people being you know. That's the thing that I learned.
So I did a lot of fancy parties and dinners,
(24:06):
and we brought together presidents and world leaders, and I
actually watched policy shift and change at a single conversation,
at a single table, And that's extraordinary. But the thing
that I saw that was more important than anything is
that if you can tap into the magic of human
beings being vulnerable to each other in a group setting,
especially among the people that they know, exposing them their
(24:29):
humanity being seen and seeing each other, that's the biggest
gift I can possibly give the world, and it is
It's what I have now spent the rest of my
my life focused on, is how do you how do
you scale that? Not just go one by one? I
had to I had to do the one by one.
I had to learn that scary, difficult conversations are actually
(24:49):
the most transformative and how do you get people to
go there? Well? And speaking of scary difficult conversations that
yield the most incredible outcomes, um, you know, you around
this exact same time gave me what what is still
one of my favorite books, which is called The Denial
of Death by Ernest Becker. You went on to write,
you know, a wonderful book called Let's Have Dinner and
(25:10):
Talk about Death and build a global organization called Death
over Dinner, which you know yielded those conversations to a
scale I imagine you never thought would have been possible. Yeah,
And actually, our mutual friend David Denberg is staying with
me right now and we're talking to his his fiance
(25:30):
about the beginning of Death over Dinner just this morning,
and it reminded me that I had this deep yearning
to scale the dinner table. I was doing an art
form that was a one off, experiential art form. You
had to be there. It was gone. It's almost impossible
to document and very difficulult to actually get the value
(25:53):
for what it is in payment. And I certainly didn't
want to have people pay one by one to come
to dinners. Um. I wanted patrons, and you know, so
working like an artist, and then I realized, and kind
of a Marcel du Champ way, like how do you scale?
How do you take art and produce it at scale
without it losing value, without it losing meaning, without it
(26:15):
losing its potency that's a that's a real trick and
it's age old challenge. Yeah, and and it looks impossible,
like how do you make the finite infinite? And I
was like, how do I make the dinner table which
is defined by its intimacy divined by its edges? And
by that I mean like dinner for six is so
(26:36):
much better than a dinner for a hundred. And we
all know this because of the weddings and the events
that we've been to. And we sat in a sea
of tables and it just doesn't feel good, Whereas our
most memorable meals are always a few friends. And I like,
you know, and some caper happened, and we're in this place,
and it's never I was at the French laundry or Noma.
It's always a human connection. But anyways, like, how do
(26:58):
you how do we ale these experiences that I was
having and so that they could impact more people? And
I took a job teaching at the University of Washington
and the Graduate School of Communications. And for the listeners
out there, since you know this is the art of
the hustle. Um, I'm a college dropout who got a
graduate teaching position, so you can do that, and you
(27:19):
will piss off people who have He's attached to their
names when you do that. But you can do it.
And I'm talking about an honorary degree. I'm talking about
like teaching. Um, I took this position to teach and
think about how you scale the table and our mutual
friend Chase Jarvis and I like, we're like, maybe the
table is a broadcasting agent. And we wired it up
(27:42):
with cameras so that we could broadcast the conversation and
that was fun, but it was a failure. And our
other mutual friend, Kate Bailey, who designed the Microsoft Surface,
we designed a table trefethan Vineyard that was like, what
if the table remembers the conversation but subtly like our brains,
and then it able was able to tell its stories.
And so we interwove cameras secretly into the table or
(28:06):
you know, we let people know what then they forgot
about them because it was integrated. And that was a disaster.
It was great and almost became a TV show with
our friends Stacy Share, but nonetheless landed at wait a second,
why don't we look at board games and say we
really understand board games? You sit down to a board
(28:27):
game and they own you for a period of time
and you follow the rules and there's no question about
how to do it. There's no anger. There's very little
anxiety about playing a board game. It's like, let's use
that model. Let's tell people how to have the dinner,
give them the script, give them the container. They have
to create the experience themselves like they would with a
(28:50):
board game. We're not going to go around and roast
chicken for them, but we'll give them everything they need
for the experience. So I went shopping for a a
topic and death has had a huge impact on my life.
I lost my father when I was thirteen, and it
was tragic the way that my family didn't talk about it,
didn't deal with it, and I realized I was educated
(29:12):
quite synchronistically. On a train ride to physicians were like,
the most broken part of our health care system is
how we die. And most people want to die at home,
and most people die in hospitals. Most people aren't getting
what they want. And what is it of our lifetime
healthcare cost happens in the last year of our lives.
(29:32):
It's it's a ridiculous amount. The reason why our health
care system is so expensive is because we're not in
my mind, and there are statistics to support this, but
all we don't need to go down statistic highway. But
it's very clear to me that our system would be
affordable if doctors and nurses and the system itself, it's
(29:54):
not just them, but social workers. They were given the permission,
the training and the tools and the billable hours to
have conversations with people about end of life, to create
a plan because the default is always very expensive. It's
the same as, Hey, I want to go to Italy
a year from now, let me shop around for some deals.
You're gonna go to Italy for two hundred bucks, four bucks,
(30:16):
five hundred bucks. Now, if I'm like, I want to
go to Italy this afternoon, right, you're gonna pay two
dollars something like that. Right, You're gonna pay. Same thing
with death, same thing with any kind of same thing
with the house, same thing with anything. If you're doing
(30:36):
it as an impulse, or if you're doing it as
a default, it's going to cost you. And so I
saw that, I was like, Wow, people aren't having this conversation.
No one's given them permission or an invitation of this
conversation and it's costing them emotionally, physically in their wellness,
which we can talk about, but financially as well. All right,
let's change that, And so death of a dinner was born.
(31:00):
Part of the hustle. Will be right back after this
short break. We've heard you say it a number of
times that it's medicine to talk about death while you're living.
Not just the economic cost, which is significant to many
families throughout the country, throughout the world, but how do
(31:21):
you see it as a medicine for us while we're living. Yeah,
I mean death has always been medicine. Philosophers have understood this, certainly,
religion has always understood this. The thing is, we don't
know anything about death. We can't say anything about death.
We can only talk about life. But death is one
of the best ways to look at our lives and
what we want to do with it. It is a
(31:43):
finite life that we have as far as we know,
I mean, we don't know what happens when we kick
through the other side. But if you want to get
clear on your priorities, why you're hearing, what you want
to accomplish, if you want to live a meaningful life
right right now, we are suffering from a public health
(32:04):
crisis that is called the lack of meaning um and
that's why there's so many pills for depression and pain killers.
It's one of the reasons why there's so much of
that consumed. We have a massive global lack of meaning problem.
If you want those things, then death is the best
way talking about your mortality. Facing your mortality is the
(32:26):
best thing to get clear on those things. And if
you want something that resembles what feels like a destiny,
then facing your mortality has always been the best way
to get to that. You know, I want to echo
what you're saying. Like when I went through that self
education and self conversation, it really was incredibly freeing. It
really allowed me to like sort of love with more abandoned,
(32:48):
knowing that I was choosing those people and that love,
and it allowed me to really focus on my work
in a way where I both know that it's not
important and it's of ultimate importance. What you're talking about can,
I think can be clarified in a really simple analogy.
Those those folks like Becker are certainly talk about how
(33:11):
the castles we build are about defending ourselves against death
right and whether it's our worker, our our love life,
or are who we associate with. I'm doing this work
defending myself against death because death is I'm coming. Now.
That's one way of doing it. Like and you can
have this beautiful castle that is set up with moats
(33:34):
and walls. You know, what I'd rather have is something
that looks more like Auroraville or something that looks like
an ostrom, something that people can walk into. It isn't defended.
That feels good, and so you can live in the
classic death denying way. I don't think Becker and some
of those folks young a little bit don't give us
(33:55):
access to it, but certainly Eastern mysticism does. Is if
we get okay, or we get more comfortable with or
have a deeper relationship with our impermanence, then we actually
can reduce the distance between each other, not just have
it be camera one and camera too, but start to
get actually intimate in our lives, with our relationships. And
(34:17):
that's the type of immortality that I'm interested in. You know,
I know that that Death over dinner was incredibly empowering
to so many people, just to have these conversations for
the first or the hundredth time. You know, it's always
an incredible reset and reframing, just to focus on honoring death,
honoring and permanence with the glorious present. The other aspect
(34:40):
of talking about your mortality, talking about your last chapter,
talking about death and you don't even have to call
it death if you want to. I think that's the
stronger medicine and you should take it. And it's okay
to get good with the D word. But what you're
doing is the opposite of repression and the opposite of suppression.
You know you're mortal, you know it, and so if
you're not talking about it or coming to terms with it,
(35:02):
you are repressing it or suppressing it. And we know
that that actually causes disease. Mayo Clinic knows that repressive
styles caused cancer. We know that suppression of emotion is
connected to heart disease. So if you want to exercise
that muscle, that's going to keep you alive longer, um
(35:23):
it is talking about the things that we're repressing and suppressing.
And you might as well start with a number one, right.
The other ones are much easier once you knock off death.
And actually people love talking about death and they're talking
about death all the time. They're just not being giving
the great design and imitation the way the Death over
Dinner does, or Death Cafes or the Conversation Project, And
(35:44):
so we lost this thing that's like crazy as idea,
like yeah, everybody wants to talk about death, everybody wants
to come to dinner and talk about death. Here's how
you do it. And it worked. And at first it
didn't work in a sense that the medical world was
still like don't we don't want what you're selling. But
at this point, over a million people, Sorry about the
(36:06):
background noise, but um, over a million people, um have
come together and I had these death dinners, and eventually
we broke through, and we broke into the medical establishment,
and we ended up this lat past year building the
healthcare edition of Death over Dinner with the Cleveland Clinic. Congratulations,
I didn't know that. Yeah, there there are from the
(36:27):
ground up with them and with Memorial slone cattering two
of the most respected medical institutions in the world, and
they're now having death dinners all of the time, even
virtually during COVID, and it's changing the culture of the
conversation with these frontline healthcare workers, which will impact countless people.
So we knocked a little knock on the big Castle gate.
(36:52):
And I would love for you to tell us about
your work now with Round Glass and Into Life and
how you guys are working to bring vitality and paredness
to the end of life conversation. Yeah, so we were
doing great work, you know, with death of a Dinner
and it continues. Um. But it was a little bit
like we had invited people to a party, almost like
(37:12):
to a summit, Like say, we're inviting them to summit
outside and we're like, it's gonna be amazing. Um, you're
gonna come and you're gonna create this amazing plan. Now
you've had nuanced conversations about end of life and so
you're ready for it, and you need to make a plan.
You need to make a plan. And then it was like,
well where do we go to make a plan? You
got us talking about this thing and you said, it's
(37:33):
really important that we have a power of attorney and
an advanced care directive and you know, a d n
R and all of these things. How do we do
that and where do we do that? And there's was
no good resource. Um, there was no singular place where
I could send somebody to say, here's where you make
a plan, and here's where you find the best providers,
and here's where you find the best experts and content
(37:55):
and courses if you need them, and you can invite
your family in and they can make a plan to
when you can share it. And you know, in this
crazy world where we don't have control, you can have
a little bit of control. So we I knew it
was missing from the moment, from the first death dinner.
I knew that we had set people up for a
little bit of failure. I knew I wanted to correct it.
(38:17):
And I eventually met Um Sunny, saying, the founder of
round Glass. We spent a long time getting to know
each other, you know. And I didn't want to take
venture capital money for this. I didn't want to take
bank money for it. Why not. It's it's heart work, Um,
It isn't. The death Space is not about turning a
quick profit. It's not about the number of likes, the
(38:37):
number of users. It's not the metrics that Silicon Valley.
You don't want to be people like your disruptor in
the end of what it's like, No, no, no, no, no no,
We're not disruptor were caregivers were not interested in, you know,
being a tech crunch. We are actually interested in creating
an ecosystem of caregivers so when people need care, they
(39:00):
nowhere to go um And that might be as simple
as an app that which will have soon that creates
a plan, but the platform already does that. And I
wanted the money to be a slow investment that came
from the right place. And that's where Sunny is coming
from around Glass too. So yeah, we built it, man,
and it's live and people are using it like crazy.
And we literally have four of the best end of
(39:22):
life providers who built it with us, who are on there,
which actually means thousands of experts when I say providers,
because it's you know, the association of all the chaplains
or all of the hospices, and they're all partners and
they are on this platform as community members, and they're
taking care of people when they have hard questions and
(39:43):
they need they need assistance, and so it's really really
beautiful and you don't even have to join the community.
You can just like pop around and find the right
service provider or complete your end of life plan and
never have a conversation with anybody. So it's it's, it's been,
it's and pretty stunning to see. I'm pinching myself every day.
(40:03):
So I wake up and realize that has been built.
What you just described is like something that is very rare.
You made a choice not to take venture capital and
found another means to support your heart centric work. So like,
tell us a little bit about how you found someone
like minded and like what you were looking for, and
how you communicated this work um in a way that
(40:26):
you know allowed you to build it in the way
that you had envisioned. You know, you've got to start
with shipp to get to gold. It isn't a voila
and it was done path And I mean it's hard
to say no to lots of things. I said no
to Martha Stewart because I don't want to be on
our show. I said no to Rachel Ray because I
don't want to be in our show because I was like,
that's not my personal brand. You're on some other ship.
(40:47):
I'm actually interested in creating culture. You've made food this
circus or hospitality of the circus. I mean that was
when I was in my twenties and I was like
and people like you're saying the marthast producers like no,
one says no, and I was like, yeah, well no, sorry,
and they call me back. They're like, I'm gonna lose
my job, and I was like, I'm sorry, but maybe
(41:10):
work for somebody who has a little more integrity. I
actually love Martha, but at the time I was just like,
we're not aligned and I'm not going to come on
your show. And then Rachel Ray was hard no. But
I will tell you, since this is the art of
the hustle, they've probably been over a hundred times where
I spent my last penny and actually overdrawn my bank
account to cook for other people. I have spent my
(41:32):
last dollar on a dinner that I paid for, oftentimes
for billionaires. Doesn't doesn't even matter, it wasn't who, but
just constantly going beyond what were my means in order
to give or to create an experience. And those people
that I fed and took care of, they create a
(41:55):
community of trust around you. They know that your intention
what your intention, and so are we are able to
get the four hundred best end of life providers onto
the platform with a hundred percent conversion? Right? People said yes,
because they knew they could trust us because for seven
years we gave away death over dinner and didn't transactionalize it.
(42:17):
Literally the most successful end of life awareness campaign going globally,
and I never monetized it. I never transactionalized it. I
never took a penny for it. Your your actions expressed
your priorities to the people that mattered the most, and
we gave it away for free. And people are like,
when do you think I could turn this into a profit,
to a revenue stream. It was like, you know, people
(42:38):
tend to do that way too early in my mind, Um,
show the world what you're made of. Show them that
your heart is actually in your priorities are in your
walk and your talk, and and then things the universe
will respond to that. We hear the stories of when
it when it does, and I'm sure there's stories of
when it doesn't. Put the reality is I think that
(43:00):
the universe does hear us and does see us. You know,
I have a I have a different term for what
you just described, the triangulation of goodwill. You know, like
you create this ecosystem around you. It doesn't necessarily need
to be reciprocal from the person who you, you know,
overdrew your bank account to feed It's the fact that
that is the type of person that you are, and
(43:21):
you've done it so many times for so many people
that you know. It just shows what you're really all
about and what's most valuable to you. And so when
people see things that are aligned with those values, you're
the first person they're going to think of. You're the
first person they're gonna call. And but I just you know,
want to echo that, like my own life story, you know,
mirrors that. And I also think that you know, when
you're when you've seen the account go to zero, when
(43:45):
you've had enough final Fridays, you know you know that
the game's not over, You'll always be able to find
a way out. Nothing's ever really fucked like. It's a
different story of course altogether when you have kids and
you have you know, other people depending on you to
at food on the table. But I think that with
the type of experiences and skill set that you built
through that generosity of spirit and action, that was never
(44:08):
really like a a mortal fear. All it is to
say is that you know, I love you, and I
really appreciate everything you do and stand for and uh,
and completely resonate with with you know how you built
this thing. Well, let me acknowledge something that you and
the rest of the Summit crew do that is brilliant
and is hard and isn't just you know, this idea
(44:31):
of giving selflessly and and it was the first thing
that drew me to the Summit community and to you
in friendship was you were curious about getting hard feedback.
You wanted to know where you were fucking up, how
you could be better. And you and Elliott specifically have
always like really welcomed and taken that and then integrated
(44:55):
what you could with grace and with humility. And that's
that's rare and and anyone in any industry, if you
can do that, your gift to the world is gonna
be so much more bright and aligned and alive. And
I've seen it again and again. And that was one
of the things I learned from you in this beautiful
(45:16):
mentorship that we're we're each other's mentor. And I learned
that among many other things. But I just want to
acknowledge you for that while we're well we're officially on
the air. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. Michael, anything
that you want to leave us with You know, we
really appreciate your time. We're huge fans of your work.
I'm so excited to introduce the listeners to the end
of life work that you're doing now with Round Glass
(45:37):
and just this whole concept of really considering death to
honor the present. Take us out, say something really inspiring
and deeply philosophical before we leave the air let maybe
grotesquely the other direction to make sure people can find
the work, and it's it's a better idea because you
can come find me at e o l dot community
and my offer, um instead of profunded in the moment,
(46:00):
is that come meet me in there and I'll take
care of you um and your family at end of
life personally. So how's that perfect? Thank you, Michael hab
round Glass end of Life part of the Hustle e
O L dot community. Thank you Michael for being on
my pleasure. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit
(46:39):
the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Art of the Hustle is a production of I Heart Radio.
You're listening to the Art of the Hustle, the show
that breaks down how some of the world's most fascinating
people have hustled and learned their way into achieving great things.
I'm your host Jeff Rosenthal, co founder of Summit, and
(00:23):
today on the show, had the pleasure of chatting with
Michael Hebb. Michael is one of his generations great tablemakers,
underground restaurateurs, food provocateur, and is credited with creating the
modern underground restaurant movement in the United States. He's a
partner at Round Glass and the founder of Death over
Dinner dot org, The Living Wake, and the co founder
of Muslim neighbor dot com, and the author of Let's
(00:44):
Talk About Death. He currently serves as a board advisor
at the Freedman School of Nutrition, Science and Policy at Tufts.
He's also the founder of Convivium One Pot, a creative
agency specializing in the common tables, technology and the ability
to shift culture through thoughtful food, discourse based engagements and happenings.
He joins us to discuss founding what many regardless the
(01:05):
modern underground food scene in the us and how that
work lad him to his current focus around death dying
well in his view that talking about death is great
medicine for the living. Please enjoy my conversation with Michael
Hen Michael, thank you for being on the podcast. Jeffrey,
it's Michael. Not only are you a dear friend, but
(01:27):
you were for a time a mentor. I still consider
you a mentor, Jeff don't pretend my first reverse mentor.
M m Well, uh, Michael. The theme of much of
this podcast is going to be on Michael's work on death,
but Michael also had a storied career as a tablemaker
and a chef. True or false true, very talented woodworker.
(01:51):
That's a good correction because you can't assume that people
know what I mean by that. Michael had a specialty
of really gathering people around the dimmer the table. He
once told me that the greatest piece of technology ever
created was actually the dinner table, because that's where people
came together to break bread and collaborate, and that was
the thing that ended up changing the outcomes of civilizations.
(02:14):
And so he did this work both as a restaurant
tour formerly of Portland and now in Seattle. Is where
he's based now. But yeah, you know, in terms of summit,
and i'd say, you know, the key skill set that
we you know, gain that helped us build our global community,
it was it was that was that work around the table. Yeah,
I mean, it's the first Internet. It also is, in
(02:35):
my mind, the first architecture, and it's the place where
we became human. So it's it's got a lot of
going on. Unpack that though, tell us what that means.
It's the first architecture, the place where we begat What
does that mean. Yeah, well, let's go back before architecture
and humans actually made the evolutionary lead by cooking. And
(02:56):
this is one of those great moments where Darwin was wrong.
We like Darwin being right, yeah, harah, all about it,
but occasionally Darwin was wrong. And Darwin had it that
we made the evolutionary leap from ape to man by
hunting and killing animals and eating their flesh. That was
actually Neanderthals. We killed off Neanderthals, So I mean, the
(03:18):
did we actually made that leap because we learned how
to cook. And cooking is a weird thing for one,
because apes tend to be afraid of fire and so
at some point we discovered that cooking something over fire
was one delicious, but it also concentrated calories. So an
(03:39):
ape choose seven hours a day, that's like a constant
grind to get the nutrients they need. We chew twenty
four minutes a day, and this huge evolutionary leap happened
because we started getting nutrients a lot easier, and our
bellies got a lot smaller, and all of a sudden
there was this opening and our jaws weren't constantly going,
(04:04):
and our jaws started to thin out, and all of
a sudden there was more space in our brain. And
you know, nature horrors a vacuum, and it ended up
being filled with brains so um, And then we got language,
and somewhere, I'm sure Terrence McKenna's theory of one of
those apes wandering off and chewing on a psilocybin mushroom
(04:24):
came into play. Essentially, cooking made us human. Yeah, there's
a chloric component, but there's also just the pure energy component,
right Like you know, having to digest raw meat or
raw food versus cooked food now allows for all of
that energy to go to the brain, which is as
I understand, it's some of the underpinnings of like the
macrobiotic diet for sure. And you know, with this conversation,
(04:47):
we can't veer too deeply into molecular biology or evolutionary
bioy But tell us what, so what do you mean
by like, you know, the original Internet. The table is
a very interesting intentional space if you think about it.
We had shelter, but the idea of creating a space
that wasn't for our basic human needs, but was for
(05:07):
sharing one of those basic human needs. It's pretty revolutionary
to create a social environment for the sharing in the
exchange of food and then quickly ideas that really is
what the table is and what it has always been.
And for me, it was very clear that it is
architecture and it is the purest form. And you don't
(05:28):
need million dollars or ten million or a hundred million
dollar buildings to achieve the function of pure architecture, which
was to create transformational experience, human experience. And you can
create that with a table or an implied table for
almost nothing, and it's available to everybody. And I got
completely obsessed and enchanted with this idea. But yeah, it's
(05:49):
also the first Internet. This is where our networks grew
and started as humans were drawn to the table like
this magnet. At early tables, people would identify themselves at
these hosted tables, these feasts, et cetera. You would literally
give your hashtag or i mean, your your handle, and
we see it in the Iliad, You're like, I am
(06:10):
Magnum Agamemnon, son of, son of, and you go through
and you give your whole lineage, which is essentially the
modern equivalent of this is my my handle or my
email address. And stories man stories bards went were paid
to go from table to table, tell us how you
got here, you know, and we'll and we'll get to
(06:33):
the work that you do on death and how talking
about death is medicine another one of my favorite topics
to chop it up with you on. But you know,
give us a little bit of your background. Where are
you from? How did you get into this world? Yeah,
so I'm I'm from the Great Pacific Northwest. And when
you're from here, it's hard to ever leave because it's really,
in many ways, heaven on earth. But I went to
(06:55):
Read College to study the classics. I was drawn towards
the classics, and then I realized that I didn't want
to be in an environment, an academic environment that was
so isolated from real life, such an Ivory Tower, even
though it was a very like cool summer of love,
intellectual you know, acid being dropped everywhere Ivory Tower. But
(07:18):
I wanted to change ship. I wanted to be part
of the dusty world of the real life. And so
I started studying architecture. And in my fourth year of
architecture school, I was taken out of architecture school by
a brilliant visionary architect who came to my senior crit
and I was actually in this this pissing match between
(07:42):
Mark Lakeman, this architect, and Brad Klopfelle. So Brad Klopfield
went on to be one of the best known architects
allied works in the country slash world right now. But
the time was Brad was just starting his practice and
he was taking the piss out of me and my
crit and Mark came to my defense and he actually
went so far as to say, Michael, I love your
(08:04):
project so much, I want to buy your model, this
like shitty architectural model, and will you have tea with
me afterwards? So long, long story long, Mark and I
started working together. He asked me to be as co
founder and we started doing a lot of illegal architecture,
what we called guerrilla architecture. And one of those projects
was Intersection Repair, where we illegally went out and got
(08:27):
the whole neighborhood and sell what in Portland to paint
this five hundred foot on a sizzy symbol of life
on the sidewalk, and we ripped up the corners of
the sidewalk and we said essentially this is it was
before burning Man had really become consciousness, but it was like,
this is our space and we're gonna do what we
(08:49):
want with it. In the city went ape ship. So
that was my the first taste of how important crime
is um and how important it is to have a
design attack to your crime, Like you need to have
a really good reason to exercise civil disobedience and when
you do it can be so impactful. The city ended
(09:11):
up adopting after crying in their beer for a long time,
like ended up saying, not only um, are we going
to find you? They end up saying this should be
a citywide project. One the American Institute of Architects People's
Choice Award. There's now thousands of intersection repairs all over
the world. And I really understood another model, which was
this blueprint model. Give people the tools to build their
(09:34):
own saying, their own culture, and it can be so
much more impactful than just what you can create by yourself. Well,
that's also been part of your story as you've moved
through these different disciplines, you know, tell us about your
transition to food. Yeah. Well, we were running this this
big nonprofit in Portland City Repair and Community Texture, and
(09:55):
I grew really exhausted with having to create consensus. Quite frank,
some of us that are dreamers but also manifest urs
want to get busy, like we want to make ship.
We want to draw it, figure out how it's gonna
get done, and then make it in the same day.
And we had developed a culture of consensus, which is
a beautiful way to do something. And I was just
(10:16):
too young and it didn't have the patience for it.
And so started thinking about food, mostly because my girlfriend
at the time was a really talented cook, and we
created a private chef company for her and started catering
and doing these catering events and I was like, catering
is kind of bullshit. I don't want to just do
respond to what people need. Let's how are we going
(10:38):
to use food to create our own experiences? But not
a restaurant. And I'd read this story in severer, which
used to be this great magazine about the Palladores in Cuba,
and they were these illegal restaurants that Cubans were creating
in their in their living rooms, um and in their
kitchens because they didn't know how to feed their emilies um.
(11:00):
And they were doing this at the risk of being
thrown into a Cuban prison, which doesn't sound fun. And
but I saw that idea and was like, wait, we
could do that. In the United States. The culinary world
doesn't have an underground like we have garage music bands,
we have underground artists, we've got underground poets, we've got
we had no food underground. You either went to Culinary
(11:23):
Institute of America, or you came up under Alice Waters
or a lawnde costs, or you cut your teeth and
in the food world and only a couple different ways.
And then you raise a bunch of money and you
open your own restaurant or you work for somebody else
like that's it. No, you know, exciting experimental underground. And
so I was like, wait a second, let's create a
(11:45):
restaurant in our living room. But with the idea, it
won't just be about our experience. It will be that
blueprint model. If we can tell people that you can
do this even if you're breaking the law and it's
very unlikely that they will come and police you, and
you can culture and experience and test out what it
is to cook for people, how good you are at
it in your living room with no investment, Like I
(12:07):
want that everywhere. I want to be able to pop
into Berlin, into Singapore and know that this type of
experience is happening. And so we did it. And you know,
we were kids. And if you would have asked me
what the plan was at that time, if I was
feeling comfortable in conversation, I would have told you that
it was to start a global food underground. Um. And
you would have said, you're fucking crazy. You are a
(12:30):
couple of broke kids with a bungalow, and um. And
we did. We launched this thing two times a month,
and we had like you know, gust Fence sent and
Miranda July and all these fucking amazing people coming to
our dinner and putting money in a jar. And six
months later we're on the front page of the dining
section of the New York Times. It's just an unbelievable story.
(12:51):
The demand became unbelievable, right, Like every everybody who is
anybody in Portland wanted to be at these dinners. And
you're literally like making the courses, like in whatever you
can in that buggalow. And fifteen years later you're doing
the same type of work, not just cooking meals but
building tables and creating environments for the Obama's. It was
(13:15):
a gamble and it worked. And I mean what happened
how I ended up in this bungalow with not being
able to afford chairs for dinner, and so the cost
of the first dinner was to bring a chair and
leave it. I built a twenty one foot table three
seven foot hollow court doors from home depot that I
planned on returning if this was a bust, and UM
(13:38):
figured out a way that one person could erect this
table while the other person held the baby. Because August
was three months old when we had our first dinner
at the house. So I got really interested in not
just getting people to the table and having them have
(13:59):
a a meaningful convivial time and a connection. But I
got interested in how can the conversations that we have
at the table change the conversations that we're having nationally
and globally. How can they change the most powerful conversations
in those smoky dark rooms. How do we get access
(14:19):
to those smoky dark rooms or those high level dinners
and then accept them with meaning instead of people just
sizing themselves up, instead of the egoic speechifying that happens
at those dinners, Like how do I get the most
powerful people on the planet to talk about the hardest
ship and be vulnerable with each other and then have
(14:41):
them love that experience and wanted to scale it? And
how could that change world events? Like that was that's
how I started to get interested in the table. I
was like, Okay, this underground restaurant thing is going to
go and people are going to be drawn back to
the table, and that's awesome, But what's next? And that's
that took me on a pretty well journey. We'll be
(15:02):
back with more out of the hustle after the break. Well,
I remember our first dinner that we did together that
we co created first and foremost it started with the provocation,
what is the intention for us all gathering. If it's
just to eat and bullshit with one another, that's not
(15:24):
a really great provocation. And frankly, you're not going to
get the people that you want at the table without
having a real reason for them to gather. And I'd say,
you know, the number one ingredient and all of this
is the quality of people that you can gather and
the diversity of thought. I think the theme of ours
was remixing the Declaration of Independence, and we made a
mini declaration that was letter pressed that came in a
(15:45):
Manila envelope that also had a razor blade in it.
Do you remember this? Of course I remember. I remember
sitting on my bed in the Hyatt where we were
hosting d C ten. You're stage time of an event.
Um here I was on my bed in a hotel
(16:07):
room using sandpaper to slightly dull the edges of the
razor blades that we were about to send out to
this the thirty or so most influential people coming to
your event, to invite them to this dinner. You know,
I was like, I love the idea of giving somebody
a razor blade in something that's an imitation to food,
(16:28):
because I have a dark sense of humor, and I
was like that idea of a razor blade being in
an apple, which was such a fucked up thing and
never actually happened and changed Halloween forever and the way
we trust other people. But like, I wanted to play
with that with these powerful people, and we did. We
reset the Declaration of Independence in health Edica and said,
(16:49):
maybe you want to cut this up, maybe you want
to remix it, maybe you want to save it, but
let's come to dinner together and let's talk about it.
To that point, the dinner begins, like the experiences already
started when you open that envelope and you're like, what
is this? Like this is crazy. It shows the level
of intention, which is frankly what magic is, right, the
fact that somebody would put this much effort into creating
(17:11):
something some illusion for you. In the first place, I
mentioned all of this because like those ingredients of place making,
of making something really special and something really memorable, something
really differentiated. I just think it's so important. I'd love
for you to give just a couple more examples of
this work. The two that stick out to me the
I five dinner, I think was incredibly magical, and then
(17:31):
the one where you brought strangers is like one of
the most beautiful things I've ever heard. Yeah, and let's
pause on the DC ten dinner for just a second,
because I think there's an incredible story that tells please
a very important thing. So we we laid really um
impressive plans for this dinner, right, We had the buses
all lined up, we had the invitation was perfectly hit.
(17:52):
It the James three times James Beard, Winner et cetera
chef working with me, and I was cooking too, and
this incredible frank a wait right, how all these things?
And it was set for thirty people and our friend
Elliott got really excited and and there were sixty people,
um that showed up, literally thirty people that weren't on
the program. Had no fucking idea, and I didn't have
(18:13):
seats for him, and I didn't have food for him,
and it was like loaves and fishes moment. It was
just like fuck it, We're what we're gonna do. We're
just gonna take care of these people, because it was like,
you know, it was Olivia munn and and and Tim
Ferris and Kirsten Bell and like you know, it was
all these and but also Howard Buffett Jr. And it
was incredible group of very thoughtful human beings descended upon
(18:38):
this table of thirty and there were sixty of them.
And I remember then I was just like, fine, I'm
just gonna figure it out. And we got them all down,
we got them all seated at this table, and I
had to make a decision. I was like, many of
these people don't know the program. And I gave got
up and gave one of these speeches that there's moments
(18:59):
that change our lives and this was one of them.
And I said, well, welcome to dinner, you powerful people,
you impressive people. I'm so glad that there's thirty more
of you here. But the reality is it fux our night,
like we've com we had really remember this. We're like
this is a ruined event. It was like it is.
(19:22):
We had a beautiful intention. Let me tell you what
it was. It was this beautiful idea to rethink the
Declaration of Indefense. And we have literally we have destroyed
that and it's okay. Now, what I challenge you to
do was like we could just accept that that was
a beautiful idea and it didn't happen. We can all
eat some pasta and it's gonna be really good pasta.
Or you can be brave enough, you can be powerful
(19:45):
enough to still do the thing like you can do
it right now. You can grab I challenge you to
grab this space that I'm standing in right now and
tell us about how you think the Declaration of Independence
could be rethought and no Attendaby gets up and she's like,
I also, I see your challenge, this incredible activist, actor, artist, writer,
(20:07):
and she says, I'm a Jewish woman from Israel, and
I want to take this moment to talk about forgiveness
for jihad, for jihadas and for jihad is a thing
like and went on this incredible soliloquy about forgiveness and
understanding and how Islam is a younger religion and that
(20:29):
there were a lot of mistakes made in her religion
and then you had Suv and pishfire of all people.
He said, I actually the last night in my BlackBerry,
rewrote the Declaration of Independence and let me read it.
And then Chris Soccer gets up and Ellen Gustafsson gets
up with Socca tas talks about his riding his bike
(20:51):
across the country and we were just in tears and
moved and it became this thing where you can make
plans for things and they they really matter. And like
Jeff said, that intentionality is is magic, but you also
need to be able to be brave enough to step
into a moment and see what the opportunity is when
(21:12):
everything that you've set out to do is being destroyed.
And just because I had mentioned it, will you tell
the listeners just a little bit about so so they
could an understanding of some of the different manifestations of
how this work actually played out. I do want you
to show off and talk about, you know, the ones
that were the most creative and the most sort of
available to people. Yeah, I mean, there's been so many
(21:34):
it's it's hard to even know what to pick from.
But there you mentioned the dinner where I invited strangers
and somebody wanted to make a TV show of the
work that I do, and I was like, oh, and
I'm in that conversation again right now, And it's so hard,
and it's so hard to capture um the type of
magic of human connection that happens at the table. And
(21:55):
I was thinking about how I could actually create a
dinner as a pilot for the show, and I was like,
you know what, bring your television crews, you know, bring
the production crew and just follow me around. I'm gonna
go around Seattle for a day and I'm just gonna
invite complete strangers to a dinner and I'm gonna talk
to like, I don't know, two hundred people and I'm
gonna have this beautiful invite and most people are gonna
(22:17):
think I'm fucking crazy because I'm offering this free dinner
at this location at this time, and I'm gonna have
interesting conversations and people are gonna treat me in a
bunch of different ways and then we'll see what happens
at dinner. And they're like, you don't have a plan
for the dinner. I was like, no, I have no idea.
Let's just like get in my car and let's go.
And we did. And we invited all of these people
and we had sixty people or so fifty people show
(22:39):
up for dinner. And um, I had a couple of chefs,
like some of Seattle's best chefs that were like cooking
in the back alleyway and the amount of humanity and
the stories that came, like people got up on top
of the table and like spat poetry and people cried,
and this man who hasn't probably told his wife that
he loves her for twenty year years, started crying and
(23:01):
telling him how much he loves her and how like
the generosity of the spirit of Seattle. They were like
vacationing from Phoenix or something like had cracked him open.
And then this one story this man started sharing, and
he's like, I work at the Lusty Lady. And the
Lusty Lady is that formerly a peep show parlor. Women
owned a woman operated peep show parlor. And he's like,
(23:24):
I'm the guy, I'm the janitor at this peep show parlor.
And oh my, like the amount of compassion and love
and appreciation for this man who never gets appreciated, right
like we do not we don't go up, like this
man is getting hugged and appreciated, and for his for
(23:46):
the vulnerability to share what he does. You know, it's
just like with a group of strangers, no less, like
a group that typically he would think would judge him.
I imagine absolutely what a risky thing to say, you know,
and you watch these people being vulnerable, and you watch
these people being you know. That's the thing that I learned.
So I did a lot of fancy parties and dinners,
(24:06):
and we brought together presidents and world leaders, and I
actually watched policy shift and change at a single conversation,
at a single table, And that's extraordinary. But the thing
that I saw that was more important than anything is
that if you can tap into the magic of human
beings being vulnerable to each other in a group setting,
especially among the people that they know, exposing them their
(24:29):
humanity being seen and seeing each other, that's the biggest
gift I can possibly give the world, and it is
It's what I have now spent the rest of my
my life focused on, is how do you how do
you scale that? Not just go one by one? I
had to I had to do the one by one.
I had to learn that scary, difficult conversations are actually
(24:49):
the most transformative and how do you get people to
go there? Well? And speaking of scary difficult conversations that
yield the most incredible outcomes, um, you know, you around
this exact same time gave me what what is still
one of my favorite books, which is called The Denial
of Death by Ernest Becker. You went on to write,
you know, a wonderful book called Let's Have Dinner and
(25:10):
Talk about Death and build a global organization called Death
over Dinner, which you know yielded those conversations to a
scale I imagine you never thought would have been possible. Yeah,
And actually, our mutual friend David Denberg is staying with
me right now and we're talking to his his fiance
(25:30):
about the beginning of Death over Dinner just this morning,
and it reminded me that I had this deep yearning
to scale the dinner table. I was doing an art
form that was a one off, experiential art form. You
had to be there. It was gone. It's almost impossible
to document and very difficulult to actually get the value
(25:53):
for what it is in payment. And I certainly didn't
want to have people pay one by one to come
to dinners. Um. I wanted patrons, and you know, so
working like an artist, and then I realized, and kind
of a Marcel du Champ way, like how do you scale?
How do you take art and produce it at scale
without it losing value, without it losing meaning, without it
(26:15):
losing its potency that's a that's a real trick and
it's age old challenge. Yeah, and and it looks impossible,
like how do you make the finite infinite? And I
was like, how do I make the dinner table which
is defined by its intimacy divined by its edges? And
by that I mean like dinner for six is so
(26:36):
much better than a dinner for a hundred. And we
all know this because of the weddings and the events
that we've been to. And we sat in a sea
of tables and it just doesn't feel good, Whereas our
most memorable meals are always a few friends. And I like,
you know, and some caper happened, and we're in this place,
and it's never I was at the French laundry or Noma.
It's always a human connection. But anyways, like, how do
(26:58):
you how do we ale these experiences that I was
having and so that they could impact more people? And
I took a job teaching at the University of Washington
and the Graduate School of Communications. And for the listeners
out there, since you know this is the art of
the hustle. Um, I'm a college dropout who got a
graduate teaching position, so you can do that, and you
(27:19):
will piss off people who have He's attached to their
names when you do that. But you can do it.
And I'm talking about an honorary degree. I'm talking about
like teaching. Um, I took this position to teach and
think about how you scale the table and our mutual
friend Chase Jarvis and I like, we're like, maybe the
table is a broadcasting agent. And we wired it up
(27:42):
with cameras so that we could broadcast the conversation and
that was fun, but it was a failure. And our
other mutual friend, Kate Bailey, who designed the Microsoft Surface,
we designed a table trefethan Vineyard that was like, what
if the table remembers the conversation but subtly like our brains,
and then it able was able to tell its stories.
And so we interwove cameras secretly into the table or
(28:06):
you know, we let people know what then they forgot
about them because it was integrated. And that was a disaster.
It was great and almost became a TV show with
our friends Stacy Share, but nonetheless landed at wait a second,
why don't we look at board games and say we
really understand board games? You sit down to a board
(28:27):
game and they own you for a period of time
and you follow the rules and there's no question about
how to do it. There's no anger. There's very little
anxiety about playing a board game. It's like, let's use
that model. Let's tell people how to have the dinner,
give them the script, give them the container. They have
to create the experience themselves like they would with a
(28:50):
board game. We're not going to go around and roast
chicken for them, but we'll give them everything they need
for the experience. So I went shopping for a a
topic and death has had a huge impact on my life.
I lost my father when I was thirteen, and it
was tragic the way that my family didn't talk about it,
didn't deal with it, and I realized I was educated
(29:12):
quite synchronistically. On a train ride to physicians were like,
the most broken part of our health care system is
how we die. And most people want to die at home,
and most people die in hospitals. Most people aren't getting
what they want. And what is it of our lifetime
healthcare cost happens in the last year of our lives.
(29:32):
It's it's a ridiculous amount. The reason why our health
care system is so expensive is because we're not in
my mind, and there are statistics to support this, but
all we don't need to go down statistic highway. But
it's very clear to me that our system would be
affordable if doctors and nurses and the system itself, it's
(29:54):
not just them, but social workers. They were given the permission,
the training and the tools and the billable hours to
have conversations with people about end of life, to create
a plan because the default is always very expensive. It's
the same as, Hey, I want to go to Italy
a year from now, let me shop around for some deals.
You're gonna go to Italy for two hundred bucks, four bucks,
(30:16):
five hundred bucks. Now, if I'm like, I want to
go to Italy this afternoon, right, you're gonna pay two
dollars something like that. Right, You're gonna pay. Same thing
with death, same thing with any kind of same thing
with the house, same thing with anything. If you're doing
(30:36):
it as an impulse, or if you're doing it as
a default, it's going to cost you. And so I
saw that, I was like, Wow, people aren't having this conversation.
No one's given them permission or an invitation of this
conversation and it's costing them emotionally, physically in their wellness,
which we can talk about, but financially as well. All right,
let's change that, And so death of a dinner was born.
(31:00):
Part of the hustle. Will be right back after this
short break. We've heard you say it a number of
times that it's medicine to talk about death while you're living.
Not just the economic cost, which is significant to many
families throughout the country, throughout the world, but how do
(31:21):
you see it as a medicine for us while we're living. Yeah,
I mean death has always been medicine. Philosophers have understood this, certainly,
religion has always understood this. The thing is, we don't
know anything about death. We can't say anything about death.
We can only talk about life. But death is one
of the best ways to look at our lives and
what we want to do with it. It is a
(31:43):
finite life that we have as far as we know,
I mean, we don't know what happens when we kick
through the other side. But if you want to get
clear on your priorities, why you're hearing, what you want
to accomplish, if you want to live a meaningful life
right right now, we are suffering from a public health
(32:04):
crisis that is called the lack of meaning um and
that's why there's so many pills for depression and pain killers.
It's one of the reasons why there's so much of
that consumed. We have a massive global lack of meaning problem.
If you want those things, then death is the best
way talking about your mortality. Facing your mortality is the
(32:26):
best thing to get clear on those things. And if
you want something that resembles what feels like a destiny,
then facing your mortality has always been the best way
to get to that. You know, I want to echo
what you're saying. Like when I went through that self
education and self conversation, it really was incredibly freeing. It
really allowed me to like sort of love with more abandoned,
(32:48):
knowing that I was choosing those people and that love,
and it allowed me to really focus on my work
in a way where I both know that it's not
important and it's of ultimate importance. What you're talking about can,
I think can be clarified in a really simple analogy.
Those those folks like Becker are certainly talk about how
(33:11):
the castles we build are about defending ourselves against death
right and whether it's our worker, our our love life,
or are who we associate with. I'm doing this work
defending myself against death because death is I'm coming. Now.
That's one way of doing it. Like and you can
have this beautiful castle that is set up with moats
(33:34):
and walls. You know, what I'd rather have is something
that looks more like Auroraville or something that looks like
an ostrom, something that people can walk into. It isn't defended.
That feels good, and so you can live in the
classic death denying way. I don't think Becker and some
of those folks young a little bit don't give us
(33:55):
access to it, but certainly Eastern mysticism does. Is if
we get okay, or we get more comfortable with or
have a deeper relationship with our impermanence, then we actually
can reduce the distance between each other, not just have
it be camera one and camera too, but start to
get actually intimate in our lives, with our relationships. And
(34:17):
that's the type of immortality that I'm interested in. You know,
I know that that Death over dinner was incredibly empowering
to so many people, just to have these conversations for
the first or the hundredth time. You know, it's always
an incredible reset and reframing, just to focus on honoring death,
honoring and permanence with the glorious present. The other aspect
(34:40):
of talking about your mortality, talking about your last chapter,
talking about death and you don't even have to call
it death if you want to. I think that's the
stronger medicine and you should take it. And it's okay
to get good with the D word. But what you're
doing is the opposite of repression and the opposite of suppression.
You know you're mortal, you know it, and so if
you're not talking about it or coming to terms with it,
(35:02):
you are repressing it or suppressing it. And we know
that that actually causes disease. Mayo Clinic knows that repressive
styles caused cancer. We know that suppression of emotion is
connected to heart disease. So if you want to exercise
that muscle, that's going to keep you alive longer, um
(35:23):
it is talking about the things that we're repressing and suppressing.
And you might as well start with a number one, right.
The other ones are much easier once you knock off death.
And actually people love talking about death and they're talking
about death all the time. They're just not being giving
the great design and imitation the way the Death over
Dinner does, or Death Cafes or the Conversation Project, And
(35:44):
so we lost this thing that's like crazy as idea,
like yeah, everybody wants to talk about death, everybody wants
to come to dinner and talk about death. Here's how
you do it. And it worked. And at first it
didn't work in a sense that the medical world was
still like don't we don't want what you're selling. But
at this point, over a million people, Sorry about the
(36:06):
background noise, but um, over a million people, um have
come together and I had these death dinners, and eventually
we broke through, and we broke into the medical establishment,
and we ended up this lat past year building the
healthcare edition of Death over Dinner with the Cleveland Clinic. Congratulations,
I didn't know that. Yeah, there there are from the
(36:27):
ground up with them and with Memorial slone cattering two
of the most respected medical institutions in the world, and
they're now having death dinners all of the time, even
virtually during COVID, and it's changing the culture of the
conversation with these frontline healthcare workers, which will impact countless people.
So we knocked a little knock on the big Castle gate.
(36:52):
And I would love for you to tell us about
your work now with Round Glass and Into Life and
how you guys are working to bring vitality and paredness
to the end of life conversation. Yeah, so we were
doing great work, you know, with death of a Dinner
and it continues. Um. But it was a little bit
like we had invited people to a party, almost like
(37:12):
to a summit, Like say, we're inviting them to summit
outside and we're like, it's gonna be amazing. Um, you're
gonna come and you're gonna create this amazing plan. Now
you've had nuanced conversations about end of life and so
you're ready for it, and you need to make a plan.
You need to make a plan. And then it was like,
well where do we go to make a plan? You
got us talking about this thing and you said, it's
(37:33):
really important that we have a power of attorney and
an advanced care directive and you know, a d n
R and all of these things. How do we do
that and where do we do that? And there's was
no good resource. Um, there was no singular place where
I could send somebody to say, here's where you make
a plan, and here's where you find the best providers,
and here's where you find the best experts and content
(37:55):
and courses if you need them, and you can invite
your family in and they can make a plan to
when you can share it. And you know, in this
crazy world where we don't have control, you can have
a little bit of control. So we I knew it
was missing from the moment, from the first death dinner.
I knew that we had set people up for a
little bit of failure. I knew I wanted to correct it.
(38:17):
And I eventually met Um Sunny, saying, the founder of
round Glass. We spent a long time getting to know
each other, you know. And I didn't want to take
venture capital money for this. I didn't want to take
bank money for it. Why not. It's it's heart work, Um,
It isn't. The death Space is not about turning a
quick profit. It's not about the number of likes, the
(38:37):
number of users. It's not the metrics that Silicon Valley.
You don't want to be people like your disruptor in
the end of what it's like, No, no, no, no, no no,
We're not disruptor were caregivers were not interested in, you know,
being a tech crunch. We are actually interested in creating
an ecosystem of caregivers so when people need care, they
(39:00):
nowhere to go um And that might be as simple
as an app that which will have soon that creates
a plan, but the platform already does that. And I
wanted the money to be a slow investment that came
from the right place. And that's where Sunny is coming
from around Glass too. So yeah, we built it, man,
and it's live and people are using it like crazy.
And we literally have four of the best end of
(39:22):
life providers who built it with us, who are on there,
which actually means thousands of experts when I say providers,
because it's you know, the association of all the chaplains
or all of the hospices, and they're all partners and
they are on this platform as community members, and they're
taking care of people when they have hard questions and
(39:43):
they need they need assistance, and so it's really really
beautiful and you don't even have to join the community.
You can just like pop around and find the right
service provider or complete your end of life plan and
never have a conversation with anybody. So it's it's, it's been,
it's and pretty stunning to see. I'm pinching myself every day.
(40:03):
So I wake up and realize that has been built.
What you just described is like something that is very rare.
You made a choice not to take venture capital and
found another means to support your heart centric work. So like,
tell us a little bit about how you found someone
like minded and like what you were looking for, and
how you communicated this work um in a way that
(40:26):
you know allowed you to build it in the way
that you had envisioned. You know, you've got to start
with shipp to get to gold. It isn't a voila
and it was done path And I mean it's hard
to say no to lots of things. I said no
to Martha Stewart because I don't want to be on
our show. I said no to Rachel Ray because I
don't want to be in our show because I was like,
that's not my personal brand. You're on some other ship.
(40:47):
I'm actually interested in creating culture. You've made food this
circus or hospitality of the circus. I mean that was
when I was in my twenties and I was like
and people like you're saying the marthast producers like no,
one says no, and I was like, yeah, well no, sorry,
and they call me back. They're like, I'm gonna lose
my job, and I was like, I'm sorry, but maybe
(41:10):
work for somebody who has a little more integrity. I
actually love Martha, but at the time I was just like,
we're not aligned and I'm not going to come on
your show. And then Rachel Ray was hard no. But
I will tell you, since this is the art of
the hustle, they've probably been over a hundred times where
I spent my last penny and actually overdrawn my bank
account to cook for other people. I have spent my
(41:32):
last dollar on a dinner that I paid for, oftentimes
for billionaires. Doesn't doesn't even matter, it wasn't who, but
just constantly going beyond what were my means in order
to give or to create an experience. And those people
that I fed and took care of, they create a
(41:55):
community of trust around you. They know that your intention
what your intention, and so are we are able to
get the four hundred best end of life providers onto
the platform with a hundred percent conversion? Right? People said yes,
because they knew they could trust us because for seven
years we gave away death over dinner and didn't transactionalize it.
(42:17):
Literally the most successful end of life awareness campaign going globally,
and I never monetized it. I never transactionalized it. I
never took a penny for it. Your your actions expressed
your priorities to the people that mattered the most, and
we gave it away for free. And people are like,
when do you think I could turn this into a profit,
to a revenue stream. It was like, you know, people
(42:38):
tend to do that way too early in my mind, Um,
show the world what you're made of. Show them that
your heart is actually in your priorities are in your
walk and your talk, and and then things the universe
will respond to that. We hear the stories of when
it when it does, and I'm sure there's stories of
when it doesn't. Put the reality is I think that
(43:00):
the universe does hear us and does see us. You know,
I have a I have a different term for what
you just described, the triangulation of goodwill. You know, like
you create this ecosystem around you. It doesn't necessarily need
to be reciprocal from the person who you, you know,
overdrew your bank account to feed It's the fact that
that is the type of person that you are, and
(43:21):
you've done it so many times for so many people
that you know. It just shows what you're really all
about and what's most valuable to you. And so when
people see things that are aligned with those values, you're
the first person they're going to think of. You're the
first person they're gonna call. And but I just you know,
want to echo that, like my own life story, you know,
mirrors that. And I also think that you know, when
you're when you've seen the account go to zero, when
(43:45):
you've had enough final Fridays, you know you know that
the game's not over, You'll always be able to find
a way out. Nothing's ever really fucked like. It's a
different story of course altogether when you have kids and
you have you know, other people depending on you to
at food on the table. But I think that with
the type of experiences and skill set that you built
through that generosity of spirit and action, that was never
(44:08):
really like a a mortal fear. All it is to
say is that you know, I love you, and I
really appreciate everything you do and stand for and uh,
and completely resonate with with you know how you built
this thing. Well, let me acknowledge something that you and
the rest of the Summit crew do that is brilliant
and is hard and isn't just you know, this idea
(44:31):
of giving selflessly and and it was the first thing
that drew me to the Summit community and to you
in friendship was you were curious about getting hard feedback.
You wanted to know where you were fucking up, how
you could be better. And you and Elliott specifically have
always like really welcomed and taken that and then integrated
(44:55):
what you could with grace and with humility. And that's
that's rare and and anyone in any industry, if you
can do that, your gift to the world is gonna
be so much more bright and aligned and alive. And
I've seen it again and again. And that was one
of the things I learned from you in this beautiful
(45:16):
mentorship that we're we're each other's mentor. And I learned
that among many other things. But I just want to
acknowledge you for that while we're well we're officially on
the air. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. Michael, anything
that you want to leave us with You know, we
really appreciate your time. We're huge fans of your work.
I'm so excited to introduce the listeners to the end
of life work that you're doing now with Round Glass
(45:37):
and just this whole concept of really considering death to
honor the present. Take us out, say something really inspiring
and deeply philosophical before we leave the air let maybe
grotesquely the other direction to make sure people can find
the work, and it's it's a better idea because you
can come find me at e o l dot community
and my offer, um instead of profunded in the moment,
(46:00):
is that come meet me in there and I'll take
care of you um and your family at end of
life personally. So how's that perfect? Thank you, Michael hab
round Glass end of Life part of the Hustle e
O L dot community. Thank you Michael for being on
my pleasure. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit
(46:39):
the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
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