November 7, 2023 • 48 mins
Meet Kimbal Musk, he is a restaurateur, chief, and entrepreneur. In this first ever field trip episode of Joy, Craig visits Kimbal at his house in Colorado and Kimbal makes him his famous & very delicious scrambled eggs. They talk about food, culture and Burning Man! Kimbal’s new book titled "The Kitchen Cookbook: Cooking for Your Community" is out on March 12th, 2023 and you can pre-order it now on Amazon here: https://shorturl.at/bh167 EnJOY!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This week on the Craig Ferguson Fancy Rascal Tour November
eighth in The Factory in Saint Louis, Missouri, November ninth,
Victory Theater in Evansville, Indiana, November eleventh, Hollywood Casino at
Charlestown Races in Charlestown, West Virginia, and finally November twelfth, The.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
National in Richmond, Virginia.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Get your tickets at the Craig Ferguson show dot com
slash tour or don't get your tickets. I don't care,
but I would like to see. My name is Craig Ferguson.
The name of this podcast is joy. I talk to
interest in people about what brings them happiness. Meet Kimball Musk.
(00:49):
He's a chef, he's an entrepreneur. He's a member of
the Musk family, and he really likes burning Man. And
I'll listen to this.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
All right, Who want eggs? I won't, Okay, listen.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Here's the thing about you cook and eggs. I'm a
bit of an egg snob.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
No egg snobs until you've met Well here's the.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Thing though, do you have your own chickens?
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Well, we actually did what we realized was that, which
was really a raccoon feeding operation. Yeah, we'd go out
into the backyard and see our chickens and uh and
count them and be like, well, I guess we're three
down today.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
But that's okay raccoons. We've fed at least three raccoons
raccoons last night.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
So the thing is about I have chickens in Scotland,
and there's if you keep them in a little house
or next to your bad Chickens are.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
The dirtiest animal in the world. Do you know that.
I am a big fan of their.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Chickens are actually pretty nasty and they also.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Did you have a Did you have a cock? Well?
I know did right? Okay, we have a cockrell? Do
you say? Can you say cock? I think you can
take cock.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
I have to talk to you, but I mean I
have to be a little more thoughtful about But I
think what else you call it nowadays?
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Right? Well, it's a it's a it's a cock.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
In fact, the slang word for penis came from a cockrell.
I'm sure that's true. There we go anyway, that's not
so your joy is food, that's what joy's food?
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Yeah, I mean not just food, but the fact that
we're going to cook, to get cook together, eat together.
It's like the most beautiful way to get to know people.
And I've just been cooking since I was probably eleven
years old. I had a mom who was wonderful, but
she doesn't cook very well. Right, my mother couldn't cook.
But she was also really cool about me going to
(02:50):
the grocery store and getting whatever I want and cooking.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
You're doing that eleven years old, I'm going to go
at the grocery store and yeah, I would go.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
She thought I was something's wrong here and go and
I like smell the vegetables. Yeah, you know. Do you
still do that? You have a team of people that
go out by Oh I know.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
If I'm cooking, I like to go to either Whole
Foods or the pubmer's market because the quality of the
food is it's not its quality.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
You can get different varieties. Did you train as a chef? Yeah,
so that's part of it, then, isn't it? You go
and I didn't plan on.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
Doing a full professional cooking, but I ended up doing it.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
I started with a three month program. It was this
basic technique at the French Culinary Institute WOW, which is
it's no longer around. It was the top school at
the time in Manhattan.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
And in fact, I learned how to make scrambled eggs
from today.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Exist what you're gonna make. You're gonna make some scrambled eggs.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
Scrambled eggs then from chef Alain Salter who's just passed away,
and you know, they've got a team of fifty chefs.
But scrambled eggs and the omelet, which is really the
same recipe, right, that's on by the head of the school. Really,
it's like that that's big of a bit. That's that
big of a deal.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Because my son could make scrin I can't really make
scrambled eggs, but my youngest son, who's twelve, can make
scrambled eggs. He's really good at him and they told
him at school. I didn't know there is such an
involved thing.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
It's actually very simple, but simple as the hardest, right, Okay.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
It's like cutting hair short. That's how you tell someone's
a good barber cutting hair long. They can hide cutting hair.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Short exactly, hide behind it exactly. Okay, So you're going
to make scrambled eggs. Now, let me ask you this.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
If you're changed as a chef then, and I would
have asked Tony burdein the same thing.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Oh, by the way, he Tony Burdain was one of
the reasons I became a chef. Really, Kitchen Confidential came
out in the late nineties, and that's a great book.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
And I mean it's a great book.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
It really is one of the great Yeah, and it's
of course about cooking, but it's great in every way.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
He was an extraordinary He was an extraordinary, extraordinary guy.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
Troubled guy obviously feel sad.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
I feel like chefs are the.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Chefs to me, like I don't get that vibe from you,
but maybe.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
A little bit because I think that a lot of
people in general struggle. But if you go into the
chef's world, it's a submarine culture. You are you are
literally your mind is completely taken out for twelve hours.
You show up at let's say eleven am, usually working
the dinner shift, you'll be done at eleven pm.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
And if you have a troubled mind.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
Nothing better, yeah, because you are not thinking about anything.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
So do you think that that's why the troubled minds
are called to it? Or troubled minds are caused by
it chick egg scenario. In fact, what comes first the
troubled mind or the or the desire to cook gives
you a troubled mind because you're Not's why I think
about twenty by day.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
This is what I was going to say. You're not fat,
you're thin and thin a lot of sid north. Then
like if I was a shift, I'd be like five hundreds.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
I thing if you are, if you're really cooking in
the kitchen, it's like running a marathon every day.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
It's actually pretty hard to gain weights on your feet
all the times. On your feet. I mean I used
to I wear these little footbits and stuff.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
Twelve miles a day really in a kitchen and a
kitchen and you're just moving two feet and it's twelve miles.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Man.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
It's it's a it's a lot of work. And if
you're in the same with servers, because you have how
many restaurants do you have? Now you have three to three?
Speaker 3 (06:32):
We have the Kitchen in Boulder, in Denver and Chicago,
and to open one in.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Austin that makes sense. Do you go in and do
a shift in the kitchens? I don't do it anymore.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
You know.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
The The thing about it is it's it requires fitness
to do that kind of to do that kind of
twelve hours of cooking. But then the other thing is
it's it's a choreographed dance.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
It's a choreographed you're choreographed with you or other chefs.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
Right, So you might do the the sute where you
might do the you know, the protein, you might chicken
into the fish, but you don't you don't do the
other parts of the dish, right, and you're you're serving
sometimes twenty or thirty people at the same time, and
so you're holding in your head when that chicken needs
to be done, and you know that this plate needs
to come from that.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Just wander in and start cooking.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
There's such a thing as starging where you can come
in and they'll give you a we we'll do that
with other chefs from around the country. The kitchen is
well known for its food, and the kitchen also started
helped start the farm of the Table movement, and it's
got this beautiful history and our and our chefs are talented,
and so a lot of other restaurants will send their
(07:42):
chefs to us, right, and they it's called starging where
they actually come in and they try and help, but
mostly they're just.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Watching, right.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
And then you know they usually start for a whole week,
and then you start on Monday, and by Friday or
Saturday you might be able to get in and join.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Because you have it. It's kind of a philosophy for you. No,
it's not just about cooking, right, because you I mean,
I remember when we talked before about this, you know,
years ago, when we did that thing for for Gant.
You know that that those couple of thinkers things. And
when we we talk about food, like you were talking
(08:19):
about the food deserts and and the areas where people
don't get decent food and the coup you know, it's
just it's it's it's not about economics.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
It's a culture, cultural challenge.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
So that's why we when we work at Big Green,
we work to educate everyone from we used to work
just in schools with kids and now we're the parents
and work in their homes and we work in community gardens.
But you just want to get the education level up
so that when they think about what they want to eat,
they include fresh vegetables. But the fresh vegebals are available,
nothing is easily available in those communities. It's not like
(08:54):
other than you know, seven eleven candy storage. It's terrible,
but the but if you do want to find fresh vestals,
you can't do it. It can always be made easier.
But if culture you're not interested in it, I know.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
I think that's what you need. That's where the education
comes in because it's also delicious.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
Well, that's why I think they'll when like, you go
through an airport and you see like people in the
thing it bugs me is when I see people in
cargo shorts. I don't know why it's always cargo shorts,
but they're always in cargo shorts walking through the airport,
eating as they're walking to a plane. And I'm thinking
there has to be a moment in life where you
don't act. You could either stop and eat or I
(09:34):
just don't believe everybody has the all the time.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
I think people grade Yeah, I do that.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
I Actually one of the things reasons I think I'm
skinny is I don't graze right breakfast, lunch and dinner,
decent proper breaks, launch dinner without trying too hard of
what I should or should eat, and I maintain.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
My weight right. I think if you snack all day.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
It's actually you have no idea how many carries you're
putting in you you could you could even feel bad
like you haven't been eating enough, right, and actually you've
taken it a ton of calories.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Well I got that when I went and rehabed, when
I was getting sober. The doctor that performed the things said, yeah,
I see a lot a lot of this and alcoholics
of your type, he said, is that you're overweight and
you've got you're a touch of malnutrition. You know that
you're you know, I was like, what, Yeah, well you
can't live on beer.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
And how is that a surprise?
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Yeah, it was a surprise there.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
It's so kind of weird because see, I always thought
of when I grew up in Scotland, food was you know,
it was terrible. The only good food around. I've been
to Scotland. Now it's changing in the countryside, right, are
usually great.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
I did not lack up point of one that was great.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
The thing is what happened with Scotland, particularly, I think
in the Central Belt bomb North too, there's a lot
of emigration from other.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Cultures and other cultures.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Food really makes a difference, like they would bring it
like at first it was the Italians, then the Pakistani
and Indian communities, and the Eastern European communities, the Polish
people coming into Glasgow and stuff like that. It's amazing
the difference that if other communities bring in.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
Yeah, I love I love that. In fact, London twenty
years ago it was just English and then and then
it really I don't know. I don't know how because
Lone has always been called Papulitan, but somehow the more
ethic communities sort of overflowed their feod culture into the
rest of London. That's one of the best food cities
in the world.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Well see, I think that's just the thing short period
of time, right, And I think that's the thing that
the Tony Bourdain had on very well when he was
doing that show about experiencing the food from other cultures
and getting to know other cultures and making them less
mysterious and less frightening. Really, it's hard to it's it's
(12:00):
hard to hate someone you know, or to be scared
of someone or make someone the boogie man. If you
kind of know what the and you've sat down, like
you said, like you sat down and you've literally broken
bread with them.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
Yeah, you break bread with people that are that are
culturally or you know, I actually don't like this term
diverse because to me, a diverse person is someone you
sit down with and you you want to break bread
so you can get to know them.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Right.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
I'm not a Trump supporter, and I will go sit
with Trump supporters. Yeah, that to me is like, okay,
now I've got some serious Yeah, there's meat on that
bone to to go figure.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Out, you know what.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
I think that's quite an interesting take on it, because
the the whole idea right now, you know, and I
was talking about it, but this last name when I
was doing the show which you very graciously came to,
and there's not some off color remarks about your brother,
which was nothing fun. But the idea of being in
(12:53):
contact and interacting with people you don't agree with seems
to be wildly out of fashion. And I think I
think the idea that when you talk about food makes
sense to me because if you can sit down with
someone you politically have nothing in common with, but if
you both are tasting something delicious, that at least you've
got that in Coleman, and it's a starting off point,
you know.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
What I mean? Yeah, I agree, I think that when you.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Sit down with someone and you you also have that
kind of let's say minimum one hour maybe even longer
with them it and then and there's certain things that
come in. You might even agree on the food that
you like, and you might want to suggest something to
someone else.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
That's universal. Yeah, you're right, everybody does. Everybody does that.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
And I always have this joke with if there's someone
really important I want to meet, I invite them to
lunch for.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Dinner and you actually you do that, you see, pass
you off.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
You're making me exactly. He's actually that's why you're here.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
But I would, you know, and I'll go back to
lunch or dinner with them, and you know, when it
comes to you know, you can be a little insecure
about inviting someone that is maybe a celebrity or policish
a certain level. And then I, actually, everyone's got to eat. Yeah,
so we're just gonna go eat. And so it takes
the pressure off the meaning was a very good meeting
in their office. That's like that's a lot of pressure.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Yeah, right, and then it's it's like you're focusing on
the thing, so take it. Let's go back to you
early on when you were a kid. So this is
in South Africa we're talking about.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
When you there's something I did, like talking people reaching
out to have lunch and stuff.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
Was was in my high school in Canada.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
But the but I started cooking for my family from
about age eleven, and you were the cook.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Was the cook? Yeah, the only cook. Yeah, the you know,
my family's pretty busy family. Yeah, they.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
They're they're they're all wonderful people, but just they just
don't prioritize cooking.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Right. I love food. I love the I love just
even these scrambled eggs, which.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Look amazing by the way you get you're getting a
photograph of these grabbled eggs, right, but.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
They look a little different. And that's kind of the point.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
You know, you want it's never perfect also thing, but
tremblings in particular are one of those things where you
can go, I wonder how this is compared to the
last one, and I wonder how tomorrows will be, and uh,
it's just kind of this never ending experiment.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
Now.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
You said something to me about food years ago which
kind of stuck with me.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
It was a phrase you used. You said, food is
the new Internet.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
You remember saying, yeah, right, yeah, do you still feel
that way, that you still feel that there's a huge
gross potential in I.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
Mean it actually has already happened, you know. That was
that was I started sharing that message maybe ten.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Years ago and now now.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Back then, getting locally grown food in your fridge it
was not a thing. I mean, you go to the
farmer's mark. We have to be in a pretty wealthy
community to do that.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Right now, you want to get.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
Locally grown food using vertical farms. Every grocery store has it.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
It's true.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Actually you I've noticed that even like the the the
Borgli like rise of whole foods across America, at least
you can get good food.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
You know that. We but even now.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Like the Krogers and the King Supers and there Albertson's,
they're all they're all doing it.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
I Craig Ferguson will be on the road once again
this fall, bringing the Fancy Rascal Tour two your region.
For tickets and full list of tour dates, go to
my website, The Craig Ferguson Show dot com slash tour.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Come and see me live or don't. I'm not your father?
Where you go? I'm just gonna make sure that's the table.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
We all right, right, yeah, yeah, So when you're in
the restaurant, do you sit down with the chef before
you employ them? And it's that they have to like
embrace the philosophy of what you're talking about, that kind
of thing.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
Well, we have a we have a team now maybe
two hundred people. So why did you sit there? And
I'll sit here, Chad Lileasley, this is lovely.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Let me set a word picture of where we are
because we're sitting in this beautiful house in Colorado, which
is like that you can see the rocky mountains and
the sky. Kimba's just going to get some from the kitchen,
so I'm just going to talk to you aboun for
a bit. And it's very a very nice swimming pool
and the gentle sound of a leaf blow in the distance,
(17:24):
which lets you know that you're in a rich guy neighborhood.
I have to tell you, when I lived in Los Angeles,
the leaf scott blowing more I think than Mick Jagger
did in the sixties.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
They were.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
I don't know if you'd heard that, but there's a
lot of leaf blowers around.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
Is that little house down at the end or is
that your properly? Of course, that's lovely. Yeah, it's a
little old house from the sixties. That oh so nice. Here,
this is delicious, by the way. Wow, look at it.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
Look at how beautiful that is. This is a different
form of eggs.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
Yeah, so this is soft scrambled soft scrambled, and it's
a very similar recipe, classic French recipe. It's technique, not
really that much to it, just salt.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Pepper and a little bit better. So you just like
take them out of the pan earlier. Is that what
you do?
Speaker 3 (18:15):
You turned out of high heat and then you you
really stir it until it kind of warms up, and
then you drop the heat down and you finish it
for like thirty seconds, and then you actually take it
out of the pan and you put it into a
bowl and.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
It will continue to cook for another thirty seconds.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
It's kind of scientific, isn't it is?
Speaker 3 (18:35):
I was the science and art, Like, you're definitely dealing
with the science of it, but the art of it
means that every time you do it it's a little different.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
I know, it's not pleasant to be listening to something
to eat, but this is really good.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Oh my god, So do you bake.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
I'm not the best baker because I have a theory
that people either cook or baked.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
You don't do both.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
I will say that baking requires a personality to be
just to be successful.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
That I don't have.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
What is that you call a scientific But it's more
like chemistry, right, because you're dealing with subtle changes in in.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
The way the gluten works in the.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
Bread, or the how I yased my rise, and it's
it's chemistry, and that you're get it. You get it
exactly right, it's perfect, it's wonderful. You get it one
percent off, and you know who made this?
Speaker 2 (19:29):
Really, this is a this is terrible. Sounds a bit
like aviation to me, a plane, a little bit of
Do you like a coffee?
Speaker 1 (19:39):
I'd love a couple. Actually, I think it's a coffee
right there, the rabbit on it. Yeah, one of your
guys made that. Thank you. You're going to get your coffee.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
So anyway, I'm sitting in the back yard, I'm eating these.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
I'm not cording the best grabbled eggs I've ever tasted
in my life. I mean, really, I kind of feel
like I could get into this. I could like be
a rich guy and sit around eating scrambled eggs that
are kind of soft. So I feel like I'm kind
of made for this. You know, eating a meat pie
in Scotland doesn't hold the same allure right now. Oh
(20:16):
it has to be said for me. Kimmel's off doing
something in the kitchen.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
But it has to be said for me, I enjoy.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
A meat pie in Scotland. Sometimes I'm going to test
the coffee now that'll like. I know this probably sounds
really gross, but here we go.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
Oh my god, that golf is really good. It's good. Hey,
your coffee is pretty good. What you got there? A
little tree condiments, little treat? Yeah, I won't know.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
I well, cream fresh, cream fresh. Everybody is French for
fresh green, I think, or I don't know.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
It's French.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
But it's from Vermont, which is French for green Mountain,
which my wife is from Vermont, and my company is
called Green Mountain West because we were in California when
we started it. It's not quite the same as the
musk companies. Well, you know, we make the occasional thing anyway.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
So this recipe is what I cook every morning. But
you have this every day every morning?
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Yeah, Oh my god. But once a year. I cook
it at Bernie Man.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
I wanted to talk to you because that is a
source of joy for you, and it's completely If you
don't mind me say so. I know that you'll explain
it to me and I'll get it. But right now
it seems completely out of character for you.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Well, I'm curious what makes you think, well, what is
the character of Bernie Man.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
Well, I don't know anything about Bernie Matt. So you're
going to explain it to me. But when I think
about you, I think of someone who is organized and
forward thinking, methodical, business like and adult. These are not
things that I think of about burning man.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Do you know what I mean? Okay, so talk about
trash on my eggs? Hold on, hold on? What is
that little care? Oh man, I don't do caveare but
we don't do well. I've never liked it, but I'm
going to try it. Well, this is the time. I'll
give you a little bit on the side, right, so
you can choose if you like her not caviar right,
(22:25):
cavire o eggs.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
I'm going to I hope that I don't like that
so much because I don't have the kind of money
that means I can have this.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
It is like, so this is like eating raw good.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
To be to be clear, these are these are not
the very expensive kind.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
But you know you're make me with scrambled eggs. You
want to go nuts with the with it? Mm hmm
you know what, Oh my god, it's pretty good.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
I guess, Oh my god, you so when you make
scrambled eggs of burning Man. First of all, I have
to know what's your attachment at Burning Man?
Speaker 2 (22:59):
When did you going? Why do you go? Yeah, as
I first went in nineteen ninety eight. Okay, that's real
burning Man. That's yeah, it's like real the old days.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
And you know, I didn't know what to expect. Frankly,
I think no one knows what to expect.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Ever, I've never been. It's so hard to describe.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
So I went there and I camped next to this
guy kind of took care of us because we we
weren't really prepared properly, as my sister and my cousin
and I, and we showed up with a cooler and
maybe a tense and stuff, and you just you need
more infrastructure than that to have a good time at
burning Man. So this sky was really large, roly poly
(23:41):
kind of michelin Man kind of guy.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Was he wearing a shirt and no pants, because that's
what I think of no shirt, no pants, no shirt,
no totally naked, really yeah, seriously.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
And he he had this roly poly skin like white,
like very very bright white, and he covered himself in
zinc sun block, but still took care of us.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
So we were We're happy to do it anyway we want.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
But he's still to this day has the best art
piece I've ever seen at Bernie Man in twenty five years.
He had a water tank that held get up, put
his water tank on in the back, and out of
the water tank would come a post and a circle
like a metal tube, and he would walk around Bernie
Man and give people showers. But the catchwords you have
(24:24):
to be in the shower with him. The curtain would
be on that rud and he would close the curtain
and you'd be inside the shower with this guy. You
could not avoid rubbing against him if you wanted the shower.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
And he was completely com I think illegal. No people
volunteer to come in. I don't really want that shower.
Speaker 3 (24:43):
And it took me a few days to even imagine
that I would ever want to get into that shower, right,
And I did. At the end, I was like, you
know that's actually you just stood there and he held
the soap for me, and I was like, this is
it's it's not just about the art. It's the experience
of going out out of your comfort zone that I
just really fell in love with that.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
Bernie Mand, do you fall in love with him? Is
that what you're telling me? Did he get excited you
were there?
Speaker 1 (25:11):
No?
Speaker 3 (25:11):
Okay, okay, nope, just there to be in a shower
with you?
Speaker 2 (25:16):
Right? What is burning mine? Because you got to talk
me through it?
Speaker 1 (25:19):
I imagine it's just like being a bunch of people who
are zapped off their TETs on some kind of you know,
drug and going crazy in the desert.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
It's not that it's not that easy to describe. It's like,
the best way I've described, Bernie Man, is.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Do you like the beach? If you go to the beach.
Of course, but you go.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
To the beach, it's hot, sunny, you know, the lot
of sand. Some people don't like the beach, right, some
people don't like the beach. But if someone had never
seen the beach, would you say to them, I don't understand.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
So it's as diverse and experience as the beach divers.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Is the beach.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
Some people don't like it, some people love it.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
What do you love about it?
Speaker 3 (26:01):
I like the first of all, you get a break
from all technology.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
So you're there.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
There's no internet, there's no phone, there's no sense of time.
You wake up when you're when you wake up, you
got to bed, when you want to go to bed, eat,
when you're hungry, you're There's a lot of dancing, the
beautiful ritual at the end of the week where you
burn the man, which to me is very meaningful because
you kind of put the pass behind you, right, and
it's a very powerful ceremony. Eighty thousand people come around
(26:28):
it and you do it in community.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
It's it's a really amazing experience. That's interesting to me.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
It feels like it has a, as you describe it,
a sort of religious ceremonial feel to it, does it.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
People have tried to call it that, but it's not that.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
It's more it's more like it's more like an ego death,
which is not really spiritual. It's more like a people
talk about these things. You know, I actually broke my
neck when I was in twenty ten, I was.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
Paralyzed for three days.
Speaker 3 (26:56):
It was, Oh my god, it's a complete burning no, no, no, no,
this is on a ski hill, right, and you realize
for several days that everything you've done up until now
can't continue.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
It's just it's just gone. You can't walk.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
It's it's just such a powerful and difficult experience. And
it turns out they healed me and I was able
to function again, but it took two years to get
back to where I am. And thinking as for Western medicine,
no idea, Yeah, no, it really incredible. But that experience.
You kind of get a mini version of that every
year at Burning Mad, where whatever you did in the
past is left behind and you're burning up literalty.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
It's like it's the ritual. And so I wouldn't call
it religious.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
It's more like there's a spiritual element to it. It's
more it's more more of a mind conscious experience.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
Do you think you're you think you, I mean clearly
you are someone who's drawn to the spiritual nature of things,
even even with food.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
Are you a religious person? Do you have a dogma
that you find attractive.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
Or I've had enough experiences in my life to really
feel the presence of God, and I love that.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
I don't. I don't relate to any of the religions.
Fairly recently have to said I'm interested in being a Quaker.
What is that again? Well, it's kind of like burning
Man for Protestants. I think it is, like, I wonder
how the Protestants do it?
Speaker 1 (28:22):
Probably not, Well, the Quakers have no clergy, so I'm
kind of fascinated by that. And Quaker friends, the meetings
that they have, I don't know enough about it, so
I'm kind of outside mind. But they sit down like
for an hour, and if someone wants to talk, they talk,
and if no one wants to talk, they just sit
(28:43):
for an hour.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
And that I feel would be very powerful. The older I.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Get, the more fascinated I am with religion and spirituality.
Do you know it's a C. S. Lewis, who is
a great Christian apologist, said that, you know, when you're young,
it's easy to be an atheist and dismiss it all
because death is a horseman three hills away, right, But
when you hear the sound of the hoof beats, you
(29:08):
kind of it starts to get your attention. And I
don't think I could say that I was drawn into
church like religion. But there's a bunch of people have
become fascinated with. Have you heard of or do you
have any knowledge of the Desert Fathers origin of Alexandria,
(29:29):
Evagrace of Pontus, Saint Anthony was a group of pre
church Christians that lived in the desert in Egypt in
the second.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
And third centuries.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
They're fascinating not just fathers, there were women are doing
it as well, which Christianity at that time was considered
really outrageous because the Romans thought they were atheists because
they only had one God, and they believed that women
had souls, which was like this wildly feminist idea that
(30:00):
women were people, which Christianity had, you know, I don't
know the exact things, but it was much more egalitarian.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
And then when the Roman Empire took it over, and.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
It's kind of like, you know what I think is
probably the way Burning Man is now, and once it's
taken over by Starbucks, Yeah, right, exactly, Amazon, and you
know what I mean, it's like then I think that's
what happens.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
One of the things that that Burning Man has a
women's principal ethos is decommodification, meaning that no Starbucks allowed,
no sponsorships allowed, no people.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
Actually a sorry.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
Companies will support incredible art pieces out there, but it
has to be anonymous, right And it is such an
unusual way to do things in today's world that maybe
there's some truth to that.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
You see that thing about ego death and ego detz
is a fascinating concept for me, the idea of given
the myth of ownership, Like you know, you've got a
bit of money, I've got a bit of money. We
both know that the dirty secret about money. And anyone
who doesn't have money doesn't know this dirty secret. And
I grew up with no money. I know that either
were time in life you didn't have any money. And
(31:12):
the dirty secret about money is it doesn't do as
much as you think it's gone.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
It's like que demoralizing. How the power you get out.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
Of it, It's like it does some things.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
And I remember talking to you know, Jim Carrey. Yeah,
I don't know him, but I know he's wonderful. I
did a movie with Jim.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Jim's he's kind of like a man in search or something,
And he said he wishes everybody in the world could
get everything they ever wanted, because then they would realize
how much it doesn't work, because he got everything he wanted,
you know. And I think that the idea of fascinated
by your description of burning my because the idea of
ego death or the myth of ownership, and.
Speaker 3 (31:51):
That's stually a good point in bringing in. There's no ownership.
So if you even if you created an art piece
that no one knows that yours, there's no recognition. You
can certainly stand next to it and tell people that's
my art piece, but people don't do that. It's very
hard and sunny out there. Even obviously all the camps
are they're set up and taken down and there's leave
no trace.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
So there is no ownership.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
What is the organizational structure of it? Then how does
it come together?
Speaker 2 (32:20):
Yeah, it's a fascinating organization. I'm actually on the board.
Speaker 3 (32:22):
It's an incredible with people in California that run our
incredible group of people that's I think created the most interesting,
definitely the most interesting, but also probably the most awesome
event in the world. But there are only a group
of say one hundred people. The thing that makes berning
men very special. Is in addition to that, those hundred
people organize ten thousand volunteers, right, and those ten thousand
(32:45):
volunteers make up ten thousand of eighty thousand attendees, So
they're both volunteers as well as attendees. And so you
get this community built city, literally the third biggest city
in Nevada for one week of the year, and they
build it and then they take it down.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
It's fascinating.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
It's fascinating because it feels like it would be difficult
to have or it would be a ripe environment for
people to behave badly.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
It doesn't feel well.
Speaker 3 (33:13):
Actually, the opposite happens because you're it's essentially a survival
camp in the desert. You're dependent on everyone around you.
You just can't survive by yourself, right, and that creates
a very different psychological relationship with the people around you,
where you're very nice to them. And I've had people
join me over the years. Yeah, I should bring you
(33:35):
sometimes you have a bleass.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
I am fascinated.
Speaker 3 (33:36):
But it's one of my favorite thing is to bring
a vision to burning memory. They've never been and they
don't understand it, but the people will actually ask me, like,
how is it that everyone is so friendly? It's so
unusual how friendly they are. And it's not just because
they're being friendly to you because you're new or you
don't really know what you're doing. They'll be friendly to
you because they will need your help in some form.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
Right.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
It's funny because I feel like, as you describe it,
I think to myself, I have a level of cynicism
that would look I get uncomfortable in the Midwest when
people are friendly, you know. I mean, it's like, I
wonder if do you have to drop that cynicism in
order to feel comfortable.
Speaker 3 (34:16):
It doesn't serve you to be cynical because you're in
survival camp. So cynicism is a luxury when you're like,
I'm above everyone. I can, I can be cynical, right
when you're in survival mode, that's got to go.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
That's very interesting, So you bring yourself down to it
has to be a community that's against against the konum
An enemy, if you like.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
Is the environment the what you're working again, the dust,
the heat? Is it very druggy? Is it very kind of?
I think it's really whatever people want to do, because
I don't do anything, whatever you want to do.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
I think the use of psychedelics is very strong, I
would imagine, but alcohol.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
Is non existent, right because it's because.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
It's a desert your grade you die with it. So
so I think that it's very sort of mind expanding
kind of drugs or medicines if you take them, but
you also don't need it because it's so overwhelming how
much is going on. And the other thing that is
incredible is there's usually about five hundred art pieces that
(35:18):
could range from the size of this coffee cup to
the size of that tree literally even bigger because it
says so incredible. And these are people who've gifted the
art to the plier for that week, and I also
have to take it down and remove it afterwards. One
time a seven forty seven was deconstructed and rebuilt on
the plier.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
It's awesome.
Speaker 3 (35:34):
I mean, it's just so so the scale of things
is just always always beyond, but the feeling of everyone
gifting makes it turns it around on you. In your
own mind, You're like, well, I wonder what I could
what gift Clibring, right, And so the first time you
come to Bernie Man, you're usually not bringing a gift.
But by the time you've left Bernie Man, you like,
next time I come, I'm going to bring something. I'm
gonna bring my gift whatever that is even be spoken
(35:57):
with poetry. You don't have to bring something physical, but
you're going to bring something. It's hard to hard to
come back to Bernie Man and not be a participant
with a gift.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
What about the advent of social media is it does
that affect it?
Speaker 2 (36:11):
It doesn't affect it as much because you don't have internet.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
Connection, right, so people will still be recording things, which
they do.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
But it's I think there's something about social media that
that it's all about current events, or at least this
is what I'm doing today, not a particularly interesting event.
But if you if you go to Bernie Man and
you come back in a week later, you've got some
videos you want to post, Sure post them, but you're
not in the moment.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
You know, there's no adrenaline around it.
Speaker 3 (36:38):
There's no like endorphins from getting likes or whatever, because
it's it just takes a long time. Sort of recover
from Bernie Man is quite an intense experience. It just
doesn't match social media.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
But what about a situation where if you're there and
you're you're well known, people know who you are. Well known,
people know who if I'm there, like walking around naked
with a show or carton, I can get people like
I feel like that would.
Speaker 2 (37:04):
That make it out? Totally do it?
Speaker 3 (37:08):
But I don't think I've ever seen someone pull out
their phone at burning Man, Right, it's a pretty big statement.
Like I was at the Taylor Swift concert and everyone's
watching through their phone.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
Yeah I know, and you're like, Okay, I get it.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
They want to record it for some posterity, for some
reason at Bernie Men. Yeah, that's just the weirdest thing
you can imagine.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
Then let's talk about the phones a little bit and recording. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I would actually have been lovely. I'm just back here
again with my eggs. I'm going to actually, finally, I'm
just going to steal a few more eggs because I
swear to God, rich guy eggs or best eggs I've
ever tasted in my life. It's a whole different Like
eggs like this and Danny's just don't exist, you know
(37:50):
what I'm saying. Oh my god, it's like barning manners
in my mouth.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
It's delicious.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
I'm not kidding, hey man, thanks, Is this special water
or just water from the process?
Speaker 3 (38:02):
It is from the tapid little filtering in it. Nothing
super special about little bit of right exactly.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
So when you were at the Taylor Swift concert people
were recording through the port I in a slightly different
experience but still an amazing thing to go and see.
Was that the the exhibition of Vangos Cypresses the met
last week, and in the exhibition of Vangos Cypresses is
(38:31):
the starry Starry Night, the starry Night. They not started
starry Night, that's the song, but starry Night, the vango,
very very very famous ango.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
Painting out there and looking at the paint, it's a
remarkable piece of art.
Speaker 1 (38:43):
It's unbelievable piece of art, but as I'm sure a
Taylor Swift concert is. But you have to time how
you see it, to not see it through the screens
of other people's phones as they hold you know, they
allow in there. And I feel like what we are
in danger of losing. And it's interesting that you describe
(39:04):
Burning Man the way you do, because I feel like
it plays in a little bit. I think we're in
danger of losing analogue biological memories. Yeah, that we record
things like we don't have the capacity to do.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
It for ourselves. That seems weird to me.
Speaker 1 (39:19):
I'm perfectly capable of looking at a thing, and I
wonder if something is lost by recording it.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
As as opposed to remembering it. I already do believe that.
Speaker 3 (39:30):
I obviously I don't share most people don't share that
that view. But I love enjoying the Tailor Shrift concerts
and being in the moment with her music right, and
adding my phone reduces that, I agree the perfect experimation.
In fact, when I was through show last night, I
was relieved to see that no phones were allowed.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
Yeah, and in my game, you got to buy on
the phones.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
But you might have a reason because you don't want
that content, that jokes to be shared elsewhere. I think
that is that's they weren't doing that. They were just
watching your show with the phone so they could record
it for their own personal prosperity. Right, it would they
would dampen the laughter by half at least.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
Totally, because like if I do a stand up show,
usually this happens in the bigger venues like Boulder Theater
isn't one of those. But if I'm doing it like
a casino or a bigger venue, which is like, you know,
thousand people, they put big screens up at the site
so that everybody gets a good view. But the nature
of how these screens work, I speak into a microphone
(40:27):
and a fraction of a second layer, the joke is
delivered on it, and so it's.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
Kind of missus the beast.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
So all the timing is definitely you have to time
like when you're playing big venues with screens, you have
to time it differently. Yeah, because nobody looks at you.
You're just a tiny little figure, right exactly. They all
look at the giant close up of your face.
Speaker 3 (40:45):
You're almost watching yourself right and timing yourself for that screen.
Speaker 2 (40:49):
But here's an interesting thing. So there's a i' matt
the mat the other day.
Speaker 1 (40:51):
It's just it feels to me like this plays into
your burning man thing, just as we talk about it,
or maybe there's something magical in the eggs. When I
was in the mat, there was a there's a painting
by Pisaro called I think it's.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
Called mon Matras Street on a Wintersday.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
It's not particularly famous painting, but it's a very famous artists,
these French Oppression as there were post impressions.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
I can't remember.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
But it's a painting of a street in Paris on
a Wednesday, and it's just everybody in it. And if
you look to that reproduction of that painting, it would
do you go, that's pretty. But when you stand next
to the painting, it has an energy and a power.
Speaker 2 (41:28):
Feel, a history feel.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
You can smell the cold air in the street. It's
this weirdest thing. And I wonder, I find myself drifting.
Maybe it's my age, but I find myself drifting to
analog experiences as much as possible because I find.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
I don't know if it's an age thing.
Speaker 3 (41:44):
I think it's a there's a certain there's a very
strong culture, let's say the world. But it's definitely in
America where people use their phones a lot. But at
Burning Man, which was a which was an old ages
kind of thing, right, no one uses their phones at all,
no matter what your age is. And what I actually
find amazing is people walk around with notebooks and they write.
Speaker 2 (42:03):
I mean, I have a notebook.
Speaker 3 (42:04):
I write, but that's very very unusual, and maybe once
or twice a week in that week someone will come
up to you and say, would you write something in
my notebook?
Speaker 2 (42:14):
And I find that experience quite and then.
Speaker 3 (42:16):
You're like, WHOA, I've got to be vulnerable, And it's
more of a it's a culture of being vulnerable, drawing
out vulnerability. It's the exact opposite of recording something on
a phone. There are people out there of any age
that are appreciating the analog experience. I think especially because
of COVID. I mean what happened in COVID lot most
of our analog experiences and one of the things that
(42:39):
we did as a gathering because I love connecting with people,
COVID couldn't have been worse for me. We would get
together sometimes every Sunday, maybe every second Sunday, and we
would just come outside in the mountains of Colorado, pretty safe.
No one ever go to COVID through this, and we
would just get together for you interested the Quaker thing.
We got together for about an hour and people could
(43:01):
just sing a song, they could play a song for
people to dance too, and it was really analog. It
was this appreciation during COVID that we love the analog experience.
We live and thrive by it. Why go to the
tailor shrift concert at all if you purely want the
digital experience right, and you see people there in community
(43:22):
there there's definitely a very strong style guide for a
better word. Everyone's wearing pink Tutuo's and and silver silver
cowboy has. But that is the community. That is the
analog experience, and I think young people love it. I
think the addition of the phone, I don't get it,
but hopefully they still love that analog experience.
Speaker 1 (43:44):
I wonder if human memory is changing though, because you know,
the technology is added to the evolutionary experience of human beings.
So the you know, the print presses invented, you can't
uninvent it. You know, the fullness here is not going.
As I age, I find my memory colors my experiences.
(44:05):
It will take an experience which is unpleasant and negate
the unpleasant effects of it.
Speaker 2 (44:11):
It will take a you know, like something from you. Well,
it is a thing to learn and learn to take
it and stride right.
Speaker 1 (44:21):
I mean, do we lose the ability to because if
you look at you know, what's lazily called cancel culture,
but if you look at the reaction of people, which
is visceral and permanent, that seems quite machine like to me, Like,
for example, everyone in their life has probably had I
certainly have had unhappy love affairs. At the time, the
(44:44):
pain was intense, but I can look back at that
the way I look back at physical scars in my body.
And though the pain was intense at the time, I
have a kind of sweetness and fondness to what happened.
Speaker 3 (44:58):
I mean, I had to go through cassel culture once.
It was just right when COVID happened. So middle of March,
you know, I must last name and stuff. We had
to close our restaurants because of COVID government shutdown. But
we closed our restaurants three days before the government ordered
us to shut down, which just swortal happening. It was
a Monday, that's just closed for the week, right closed.
(45:19):
We don't sure when to reopen. And I have a
lot of empathy for our team, and we did everything
we could.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
To help them out.
Speaker 3 (45:25):
But for those three days, the twittersphere or everyone was
trying to cancel me for closing my restaurants. And then
there was a national security order maybe a national emergency
on the Friday, So it was four days of feeling
it and then by Friday.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
Everyone's like, oh, we get it. We were just a
couple of days ahead. It's like, yeah, that's not okay.
Speaker 3 (45:47):
I'm a very empathetic human and I heard a lot
about my people and to get canceled. People were just
so eager to jump on something to cancel and that's
not healthy.
Speaker 2 (45:58):
No. I think that that's right.
Speaker 1 (46:00):
And that's what fascinates me about your description of burning Man,
because we come to a point I feel like you're
and I know you enough to know your love of food,
you love of these community events. You strive for empathy,
right that I feel like we are in danger of
(46:20):
losing something, something very precious, and we don't have to
lose it. But I think the discussion has to be
about and it's weird because it ties in to all
this Judeo Christian stuff, But you have to find a
form of forgiveness.
Speaker 2 (46:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (46:36):
Forgiveness, by the way, I think, is it's for the forgiver. Yeah,
you benefit yourself always.
Speaker 2 (46:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (46:43):
The person you're trying to forget it probably didn't even
understand what you're forgiving them.
Speaker 2 (46:46):
Right.
Speaker 3 (46:47):
What you're doing is you're saying to yourself, I'm going
to let this go. Yeah, and yeah, okay, you're forgiving
the person. You might have an attachment to that person
and maybe it helps you process that psycho psychologically, But
the person you were helping is yourself.
Speaker 1 (47:02):
Yeah, it's that whole idea of resentment being drinking poison
and hoping somebody else will die, exactly exactly the Kimble
This was delicious, not just the food but the experience.
And it's always a joy for me.
Speaker 2 (47:16):
It's always love your comedy as well.
Speaker 1 (47:19):
Well, thank thank you, and I'm sorry I made a
joke about Elon last night.
Speaker 3 (47:23):
There was good Mark and Zach in a cage match, right,
we need we needed an audience.
Speaker 2 (47:27):
That found that funny. I think they did.
Speaker 1 (47:32):
Just so everybody knows the joke I made about Elon
was and it wasn't really a joke.
Speaker 2 (47:36):
I just said that not many.
Speaker 1 (47:37):
People know that Elon was the sun Baby and Telly Tuppies.
Speaker 2 (47:40):
It was just a remark and the truth is he
was your move Internet Kimble is a joy. Thank you
so much.
This week on the Craig Ferguson Fancy Rascal Tour November
eighth in The Factory in Saint Louis, Missouri, November ninth,
Victory Theater in Evansville, Indiana, November eleventh, Hollywood Casino at
Charlestown Races in Charlestown, West Virginia, and finally November twelfth, The.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
National in Richmond, Virginia.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Get your tickets at the Craig Ferguson show dot com
slash tour or don't get your tickets. I don't care,
but I would like to see. My name is Craig Ferguson.
The name of this podcast is joy. I talk to
interest in people about what brings them happiness. Meet Kimball Musk.
(00:49):
He's a chef, he's an entrepreneur. He's a member of
the Musk family, and he really likes burning Man. And
I'll listen to this.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
All right, Who want eggs? I won't, Okay, listen.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Here's the thing about you cook and eggs. I'm a
bit of an egg snob.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
No egg snobs until you've met Well here's the.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Thing though, do you have your own chickens?
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Well, we actually did what we realized was that, which
was really a raccoon feeding operation. Yeah, we'd go out
into the backyard and see our chickens and uh and
count them and be like, well, I guess we're three
down today.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
But that's okay raccoons. We've fed at least three raccoons
raccoons last night.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
So the thing is about I have chickens in Scotland,
and there's if you keep them in a little house
or next to your bad Chickens are.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
The dirtiest animal in the world. Do you know that.
I am a big fan of their.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Chickens are actually pretty nasty and they also.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Did you have a Did you have a cock? Well?
I know did right? Okay, we have a cockrell? Do
you say? Can you say cock? I think you can
take cock.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
I have to talk to you, but I mean I
have to be a little more thoughtful about But I
think what else you call it nowadays?
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Right? Well, it's a it's a it's a cock.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
In fact, the slang word for penis came from a cockrell.
I'm sure that's true. There we go anyway, that's not
so your joy is food, that's what joy's food?
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Yeah, I mean not just food, but the fact that
we're going to cook, to get cook together, eat together.
It's like the most beautiful way to get to know people.
And I've just been cooking since I was probably eleven
years old. I had a mom who was wonderful, but
she doesn't cook very well. Right, my mother couldn't cook.
But she was also really cool about me going to
(02:50):
the grocery store and getting whatever I want and cooking.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
You're doing that eleven years old, I'm going to go
at the grocery store and yeah, I would go.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
She thought I was something's wrong here and go and
I like smell the vegetables. Yeah, you know. Do you
still do that? You have a team of people that
go out by Oh I know.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
If I'm cooking, I like to go to either Whole
Foods or the pubmer's market because the quality of the
food is it's not its quality.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
You can get different varieties. Did you train as a chef? Yeah,
so that's part of it, then, isn't it? You go
and I didn't plan on.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
Doing a full professional cooking, but I ended up doing it.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
I started with a three month program. It was this
basic technique at the French Culinary Institute WOW, which is
it's no longer around. It was the top school at
the time in Manhattan.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
And in fact, I learned how to make scrambled eggs
from today.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Exist what you're gonna make. You're gonna make some scrambled eggs.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
Scrambled eggs then from chef Alain Salter who's just passed away,
and you know, they've got a team of fifty chefs.
But scrambled eggs and the omelet, which is really the
same recipe, right, that's on by the head of the school. Really,
it's like that that's big of a bit. That's that
big of a deal.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Because my son could make scrin I can't really make
scrambled eggs, but my youngest son, who's twelve, can make
scrambled eggs. He's really good at him and they told
him at school. I didn't know there is such an
involved thing.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
It's actually very simple, but simple as the hardest, right, Okay.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
It's like cutting hair short. That's how you tell someone's
a good barber cutting hair long. They can hide cutting hair.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Short exactly, hide behind it exactly. Okay, So you're going
to make scrambled eggs. Now, let me ask you this.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
If you're changed as a chef then, and I would
have asked Tony burdein the same thing.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Oh, by the way, he Tony Burdain was one of
the reasons I became a chef. Really, Kitchen Confidential came
out in the late nineties, and that's a great book.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
And I mean it's a great book.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
It really is one of the great Yeah, and it's
of course about cooking, but it's great in every way.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
He was an extraordinary He was an extraordinary, extraordinary guy.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
Troubled guy obviously feel sad.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
I feel like chefs are the.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Chefs to me, like I don't get that vibe from you,
but maybe.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
A little bit because I think that a lot of
people in general struggle. But if you go into the
chef's world, it's a submarine culture. You are you are
literally your mind is completely taken out for twelve hours.
You show up at let's say eleven am, usually working
the dinner shift, you'll be done at eleven pm.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
And if you have a troubled mind.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
Nothing better, yeah, because you are not thinking about anything.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
So do you think that that's why the troubled minds
are called to it? Or troubled minds are caused by
it chick egg scenario. In fact, what comes first the
troubled mind or the or the desire to cook gives
you a troubled mind because you're Not's why I think
about twenty by day.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
This is what I was going to say. You're not fat,
you're thin and thin a lot of sid north. Then
like if I was a shift, I'd be like five hundreds.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
I thing if you are, if you're really cooking in
the kitchen, it's like running a marathon every day.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
It's actually pretty hard to gain weights on your feet
all the times. On your feet. I mean I used
to I wear these little footbits and stuff.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
Twelve miles a day really in a kitchen and a
kitchen and you're just moving two feet and it's twelve miles.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Man.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
It's it's a it's a lot of work. And if
you're in the same with servers, because you have how
many restaurants do you have? Now you have three to three?
Speaker 3 (06:32):
We have the Kitchen in Boulder, in Denver and Chicago,
and to open one in.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Austin that makes sense. Do you go in and do
a shift in the kitchens? I don't do it anymore.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
You know.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
The The thing about it is it's it requires fitness
to do that kind of to do that kind of
twelve hours of cooking. But then the other thing is
it's it's a choreographed dance.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
It's a choreographed you're choreographed with you or other chefs.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
Right, So you might do the the sute where you
might do the you know, the protein, you might chicken
into the fish, but you don't you don't do the
other parts of the dish, right, and you're you're serving
sometimes twenty or thirty people at the same time, and
so you're holding in your head when that chicken needs
to be done, and you know that this plate needs
to come from that.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Just wander in and start cooking.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
There's such a thing as starging where you can come
in and they'll give you a we we'll do that
with other chefs from around the country. The kitchen is
well known for its food, and the kitchen also started
helped start the farm of the Table movement, and it's
got this beautiful history and our and our chefs are talented,
and so a lot of other restaurants will send their
(07:42):
chefs to us, right, and they it's called starging where
they actually come in and they try and help, but
mostly they're just.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Watching, right.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
And then you know they usually start for a whole week,
and then you start on Monday, and by Friday or
Saturday you might be able to get in and join.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Because you have it. It's kind of a philosophy for you. No,
it's not just about cooking, right, because you I mean,
I remember when we talked before about this, you know,
years ago, when we did that thing for for Gant.
You know that that those couple of thinkers things. And
when we we talk about food, like you were talking
(08:19):
about the food deserts and and the areas where people
don't get decent food and the coup you know, it's
just it's it's it's not about economics.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
It's a culture, cultural challenge.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
So that's why we when we work at Big Green,
we work to educate everyone from we used to work
just in schools with kids and now we're the parents
and work in their homes and we work in community gardens.
But you just want to get the education level up
so that when they think about what they want to eat,
they include fresh vegetables. But the fresh vegebals are available,
nothing is easily available in those communities. It's not like
(08:54):
other than you know, seven eleven candy storage. It's terrible,
but the but if you do want to find fresh vestals,
you can't do it. It can always be made easier.
But if culture you're not interested in it, I know.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
I think that's what you need. That's where the education
comes in because it's also delicious.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
Well, that's why I think they'll when like, you go
through an airport and you see like people in the
thing it bugs me is when I see people in
cargo shorts. I don't know why it's always cargo shorts,
but they're always in cargo shorts walking through the airport,
eating as they're walking to a plane. And I'm thinking
there has to be a moment in life where you
don't act. You could either stop and eat or I
(09:34):
just don't believe everybody has the all the time.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
I think people grade Yeah, I do that.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
I Actually one of the things reasons I think I'm
skinny is I don't graze right breakfast, lunch and dinner,
decent proper breaks, launch dinner without trying too hard of
what I should or should eat, and I maintain.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
My weight right. I think if you snack all day.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
It's actually you have no idea how many carries you're
putting in you you could you could even feel bad
like you haven't been eating enough, right, and actually you've
taken it a ton of calories.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Well I got that when I went and rehabed, when
I was getting sober. The doctor that performed the things said, yeah,
I see a lot a lot of this and alcoholics
of your type, he said, is that you're overweight and
you've got you're a touch of malnutrition. You know that
you're you know, I was like, what, Yeah, well you
can't live on beer.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
And how is that a surprise?
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Yeah, it was a surprise there.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
It's so kind of weird because see, I always thought
of when I grew up in Scotland, food was you know,
it was terrible. The only good food around. I've been
to Scotland. Now it's changing in the countryside, right, are
usually great.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
I did not lack up point of one that was great.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
The thing is what happened with Scotland, particularly, I think
in the Central Belt bomb North too, there's a lot
of emigration from other.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Cultures and other cultures.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Food really makes a difference, like they would bring it
like at first it was the Italians, then the Pakistani
and Indian communities, and the Eastern European communities, the Polish
people coming into Glasgow and stuff like that. It's amazing
the difference that if other communities bring in.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
Yeah, I love I love that. In fact, London twenty
years ago it was just English and then and then
it really I don't know. I don't know how because
Lone has always been called Papulitan, but somehow the more
ethic communities sort of overflowed their feod culture into the
rest of London. That's one of the best food cities
in the world.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Well see, I think that's just the thing short period
of time, right, And I think that's the thing that
the Tony Bourdain had on very well when he was
doing that show about experiencing the food from other cultures
and getting to know other cultures and making them less
mysterious and less frightening. Really, it's hard to it's it's
(12:00):
hard to hate someone you know, or to be scared
of someone or make someone the boogie man. If you
kind of know what the and you've sat down, like
you said, like you sat down and you've literally broken
bread with them.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
Yeah, you break bread with people that are that are
culturally or you know, I actually don't like this term
diverse because to me, a diverse person is someone you
sit down with and you you want to break bread
so you can get to know them.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Right.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
I'm not a Trump supporter, and I will go sit
with Trump supporters. Yeah, that to me is like, okay,
now I've got some serious Yeah, there's meat on that
bone to to go figure.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Out, you know what.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
I think that's quite an interesting take on it, because
the the whole idea right now, you know, and I
was talking about it, but this last name when I
was doing the show which you very graciously came to,
and there's not some off color remarks about your brother,
which was nothing fun. But the idea of being in
(12:53):
contact and interacting with people you don't agree with seems
to be wildly out of fashion. And I think I
think the idea that when you talk about food makes
sense to me because if you can sit down with
someone you politically have nothing in common with, but if
you both are tasting something delicious, that at least you've
got that in Coleman, and it's a starting off point,
you know.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
What I mean? Yeah, I agree, I think that when you.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Sit down with someone and you you also have that
kind of let's say minimum one hour maybe even longer
with them it and then and there's certain things that
come in. You might even agree on the food that
you like, and you might want to suggest something to
someone else.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
That's universal. Yeah, you're right, everybody does. Everybody does that.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
And I always have this joke with if there's someone
really important I want to meet, I invite them to
lunch for.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Dinner and you actually you do that, you see, pass
you off.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
You're making me exactly. He's actually that's why you're here.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
But I would, you know, and I'll go back to
lunch or dinner with them, and you know, when it
comes to you know, you can be a little insecure
about inviting someone that is maybe a celebrity or policish
a certain level. And then I, actually, everyone's got to eat. Yeah,
so we're just gonna go eat. And so it takes
the pressure off the meaning was a very good meeting
in their office. That's like that's a lot of pressure.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Yeah, right, and then it's it's like you're focusing on
the thing, so take it. Let's go back to you
early on when you were a kid. So this is
in South Africa we're talking about.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
When you there's something I did, like talking people reaching
out to have lunch and stuff.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
Was was in my high school in Canada.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
But the but I started cooking for my family from
about age eleven, and you were the cook.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Was the cook? Yeah, the only cook. Yeah, the you know,
my family's pretty busy family. Yeah, they.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
They're they're they're all wonderful people, but just they just
don't prioritize cooking.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Right. I love food. I love the I love just
even these scrambled eggs, which.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Look amazing by the way you get you're getting a
photograph of these grabbled eggs, right, but.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
They look a little different. And that's kind of the point.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
You know, you want it's never perfect also thing, but
tremblings in particular are one of those things where you
can go, I wonder how this is compared to the
last one, and I wonder how tomorrows will be, and uh,
it's just kind of this never ending experiment.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
Now.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
You said something to me about food years ago which
kind of stuck with me.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
It was a phrase you used. You said, food is
the new Internet.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
You remember saying, yeah, right, yeah, do you still feel
that way, that you still feel that there's a huge
gross potential in I.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
Mean it actually has already happened, you know. That was
that was I started sharing that message maybe ten.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Years ago and now now.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Back then, getting locally grown food in your fridge it
was not a thing. I mean, you go to the
farmer's mark. We have to be in a pretty wealthy
community to do that.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Right now, you want to get.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
Locally grown food using vertical farms. Every grocery store has it.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
It's true.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Actually you I've noticed that even like the the the
Borgli like rise of whole foods across America, at least
you can get good food.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
You know that. We but even now.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Like the Krogers and the King Supers and there Albertson's,
they're all they're all doing it.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
I Craig Ferguson will be on the road once again
this fall, bringing the Fancy Rascal Tour two your region.
For tickets and full list of tour dates, go to
my website, The Craig Ferguson Show dot com slash tour.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Come and see me live or don't. I'm not your father?
Where you go? I'm just gonna make sure that's the table.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
We all right, right, yeah, yeah, So when you're in
the restaurant, do you sit down with the chef before
you employ them? And it's that they have to like
embrace the philosophy of what you're talking about, that kind
of thing.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
Well, we have a we have a team now maybe
two hundred people. So why did you sit there? And
I'll sit here, Chad Lileasley, this is lovely.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Let me set a word picture of where we are
because we're sitting in this beautiful house in Colorado, which
is like that you can see the rocky mountains and
the sky. Kimba's just going to get some from the kitchen,
so I'm just going to talk to you aboun for
a bit. And it's very a very nice swimming pool
and the gentle sound of a leaf blow in the distance,
(17:24):
which lets you know that you're in a rich guy neighborhood.
I have to tell you, when I lived in Los Angeles,
the leaf scott blowing more I think than Mick Jagger
did in the sixties.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
They were.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
I don't know if you'd heard that, but there's a
lot of leaf blowers around.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
Is that little house down at the end or is
that your properly? Of course, that's lovely. Yeah, it's a
little old house from the sixties. That oh so nice. Here,
this is delicious, by the way. Wow, look at it.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
Look at how beautiful that is. This is a different
form of eggs.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
Yeah, so this is soft scrambled soft scrambled, and it's
a very similar recipe, classic French recipe. It's technique, not
really that much to it, just salt.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Pepper and a little bit better. So you just like
take them out of the pan earlier. Is that what
you do?
Speaker 3 (18:15):
You turned out of high heat and then you you
really stir it until it kind of warms up, and
then you drop the heat down and you finish it
for like thirty seconds, and then you actually take it
out of the pan and you put it into a
bowl and.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
It will continue to cook for another thirty seconds.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
It's kind of scientific, isn't it is?
Speaker 3 (18:35):
I was the science and art, Like, you're definitely dealing
with the science of it, but the art of it
means that every time you do it it's a little different.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
I know, it's not pleasant to be listening to something
to eat, but this is really good.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Oh my god, So do you bake.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
I'm not the best baker because I have a theory
that people either cook or baked.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
You don't do both.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
I will say that baking requires a personality to be
just to be successful.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
That I don't have.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
What is that you call a scientific But it's more
like chemistry, right, because you're dealing with subtle changes in in.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
The way the gluten works in the.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
Bread, or the how I yased my rise, and it's
it's chemistry, and that you're get it. You get it
exactly right, it's perfect, it's wonderful. You get it one
percent off, and you know who made this?
Speaker 2 (19:29):
Really, this is a this is terrible. Sounds a bit
like aviation to me, a plane, a little bit of
Do you like a coffee?
Speaker 1 (19:39):
I'd love a couple. Actually, I think it's a coffee
right there, the rabbit on it. Yeah, one of your
guys made that. Thank you. You're going to get your coffee.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
So anyway, I'm sitting in the back yard, I'm eating these.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
I'm not cording the best grabbled eggs I've ever tasted
in my life. I mean, really, I kind of feel
like I could get into this. I could like be
a rich guy and sit around eating scrambled eggs that
are kind of soft. So I feel like I'm kind
of made for this. You know, eating a meat pie
in Scotland doesn't hold the same allure right now. Oh
(20:16):
it has to be said for me. Kimmel's off doing
something in the kitchen.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
But it has to be said for me, I enjoy.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
A meat pie in Scotland. Sometimes I'm going to test
the coffee now that'll like. I know this probably sounds
really gross, but here we go.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
Oh my god, that golf is really good. It's good. Hey,
your coffee is pretty good. What you got there? A
little tree condiments, little treat? Yeah, I won't know.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
I well, cream fresh, cream fresh. Everybody is French for
fresh green, I think, or I don't know.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
It's French.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
But it's from Vermont, which is French for green Mountain,
which my wife is from Vermont, and my company is
called Green Mountain West because we were in California when
we started it. It's not quite the same as the
musk companies. Well, you know, we make the occasional thing anyway.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
So this recipe is what I cook every morning. But
you have this every day every morning?
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Yeah, Oh my god. But once a year. I cook
it at Bernie Man.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
I wanted to talk to you because that is a
source of joy for you, and it's completely If you
don't mind me say so. I know that you'll explain
it to me and I'll get it. But right now
it seems completely out of character for you.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Well, I'm curious what makes you think, well, what is
the character of Bernie Man.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
Well, I don't know anything about Bernie Matt. So you're
going to explain it to me. But when I think
about you, I think of someone who is organized and
forward thinking, methodical, business like and adult. These are not
things that I think of about burning man.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Do you know what I mean? Okay, so talk about
trash on my eggs? Hold on, hold on? What is
that little care? Oh man, I don't do caveare but
we don't do well. I've never liked it, but I'm
going to try it. Well, this is the time. I'll
give you a little bit on the side, right, so
you can choose if you like her not caviar right,
(22:25):
cavire o eggs.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
I'm going to I hope that I don't like that
so much because I don't have the kind of money
that means I can have this.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
It is like, so this is like eating raw good.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
To be to be clear, these are these are not
the very expensive kind.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
But you know you're make me with scrambled eggs. You
want to go nuts with the with it? Mm hmm
you know what, Oh my god, it's pretty good.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
I guess, Oh my god, you so when you make
scrambled eggs of burning Man. First of all, I have
to know what's your attachment at Burning Man?
Speaker 2 (22:59):
When did you going? Why do you go? Yeah, as
I first went in nineteen ninety eight. Okay, that's real
burning Man. That's yeah, it's like real the old days.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
And you know, I didn't know what to expect. Frankly,
I think no one knows what to expect.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Ever, I've never been. It's so hard to describe.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
So I went there and I camped next to this
guy kind of took care of us because we we
weren't really prepared properly, as my sister and my cousin
and I, and we showed up with a cooler and
maybe a tense and stuff, and you just you need
more infrastructure than that to have a good time at
burning Man. So this sky was really large, roly poly
(23:41):
kind of michelin Man kind of guy.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Was he wearing a shirt and no pants, because that's
what I think of no shirt, no pants, no shirt,
no totally naked, really yeah, seriously.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
And he he had this roly poly skin like white,
like very very bright white, and he covered himself in
zinc sun block, but still took care of us.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
So we were We're happy to do it anyway we want.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
But he's still to this day has the best art
piece I've ever seen at Bernie Man in twenty five years.
He had a water tank that held get up, put
his water tank on in the back, and out of
the water tank would come a post and a circle
like a metal tube, and he would walk around Bernie
Man and give people showers. But the catchwords you have
(24:24):
to be in the shower with him. The curtain would
be on that rud and he would close the curtain
and you'd be inside the shower with this guy. You
could not avoid rubbing against him if you wanted the shower.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
And he was completely com I think illegal. No people
volunteer to come in. I don't really want that shower.
Speaker 3 (24:43):
And it took me a few days to even imagine
that I would ever want to get into that shower, right,
And I did. At the end, I was like, you
know that's actually you just stood there and he held
the soap for me, and I was like, this is
it's it's not just about the art. It's the experience
of going out out of your comfort zone that I
just really fell in love with that.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
Bernie Mand, do you fall in love with him? Is
that what you're telling me? Did he get excited you
were there?
Speaker 1 (25:11):
No?
Speaker 3 (25:11):
Okay, okay, nope, just there to be in a shower
with you?
Speaker 2 (25:16):
Right? What is burning mine? Because you got to talk
me through it?
Speaker 1 (25:19):
I imagine it's just like being a bunch of people who
are zapped off their TETs on some kind of you know,
drug and going crazy in the desert.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
It's not that it's not that easy to describe. It's like,
the best way I've described, Bernie Man, is.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Do you like the beach? If you go to the beach.
Of course, but you go.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
To the beach, it's hot, sunny, you know, the lot
of sand. Some people don't like the beach, right, some
people don't like the beach. But if someone had never
seen the beach, would you say to them, I don't understand.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
So it's as diverse and experience as the beach divers.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Is the beach.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
Some people don't like it, some people love it.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
What do you love about it?
Speaker 3 (26:01):
I like the first of all, you get a break
from all technology.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
So you're there.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
There's no internet, there's no phone, there's no sense of time.
You wake up when you're when you wake up, you
got to bed, when you want to go to bed, eat,
when you're hungry, you're There's a lot of dancing, the
beautiful ritual at the end of the week where you
burn the man, which to me is very meaningful because
you kind of put the pass behind you, right, and
it's a very powerful ceremony. Eighty thousand people come around
(26:28):
it and you do it in community.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
It's it's a really amazing experience. That's interesting to me.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
It feels like it has a, as you describe it,
a sort of religious ceremonial feel to it, does it.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
People have tried to call it that, but it's not that.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
It's more it's more like it's more like an ego death,
which is not really spiritual. It's more like a people
talk about these things. You know, I actually broke my
neck when I was in twenty ten, I was.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
Paralyzed for three days.
Speaker 3 (26:56):
It was, Oh my god, it's a complete burning no, no, no, no,
this is on a ski hill, right, and you realize
for several days that everything you've done up until now
can't continue.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
It's just it's just gone. You can't walk.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
It's it's just such a powerful and difficult experience. And
it turns out they healed me and I was able
to function again, but it took two years to get
back to where I am. And thinking as for Western medicine,
no idea, Yeah, no, it really incredible. But that experience.
You kind of get a mini version of that every
year at Burning Mad, where whatever you did in the
past is left behind and you're burning up literalty.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
It's like it's the ritual. And so I wouldn't call
it religious.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
It's more like there's a spiritual element to it. It's
more it's more more of a mind conscious experience.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
Do you think you're you think you, I mean clearly
you are someone who's drawn to the spiritual nature of things,
even even with food.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
Are you a religious person? Do you have a dogma
that you find attractive.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
Or I've had enough experiences in my life to really
feel the presence of God, and I love that.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
I don't. I don't relate to any of the religions.
Fairly recently have to said I'm interested in being a Quaker.
What is that again? Well, it's kind of like burning
Man for Protestants. I think it is, like, I wonder
how the Protestants do it?
Speaker 1 (28:22):
Probably not, Well, the Quakers have no clergy, so I'm
kind of fascinated by that. And Quaker friends, the meetings
that they have, I don't know enough about it, so
I'm kind of outside mind. But they sit down like
for an hour, and if someone wants to talk, they talk,
and if no one wants to talk, they just sit
(28:43):
for an hour.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
And that I feel would be very powerful. The older I.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Get, the more fascinated I am with religion and spirituality.
Do you know it's a C. S. Lewis, who is
a great Christian apologist, said that, you know, when you're young,
it's easy to be an atheist and dismiss it all
because death is a horseman three hills away, right, But
when you hear the sound of the hoof beats, you
(29:08):
kind of it starts to get your attention. And I
don't think I could say that I was drawn into
church like religion. But there's a bunch of people have
become fascinated with. Have you heard of or do you
have any knowledge of the Desert Fathers origin of Alexandria,
(29:29):
Evagrace of Pontus, Saint Anthony was a group of pre
church Christians that lived in the desert in Egypt in
the second.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
And third centuries.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
They're fascinating not just fathers, there were women are doing
it as well, which Christianity at that time was considered
really outrageous because the Romans thought they were atheists because
they only had one God, and they believed that women
had souls, which was like this wildly feminist idea that
(30:00):
women were people, which Christianity had, you know, I don't
know the exact things, but it was much more egalitarian.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
And then when the Roman Empire took it over, and.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
It's kind of like, you know what I think is
probably the way Burning Man is now, and once it's
taken over by Starbucks, Yeah, right, exactly, Amazon, and you
know what I mean, it's like then I think that's
what happens.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
One of the things that that Burning Man has a
women's principal ethos is decommodification, meaning that no Starbucks allowed,
no sponsorships allowed, no people.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
Actually a sorry.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
Companies will support incredible art pieces out there, but it
has to be anonymous, right And it is such an
unusual way to do things in today's world that maybe
there's some truth to that.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
You see that thing about ego death and ego detz
is a fascinating concept for me, the idea of given
the myth of ownership, Like you know, you've got a
bit of money, I've got a bit of money. We
both know that the dirty secret about money. And anyone
who doesn't have money doesn't know this dirty secret. And
I grew up with no money. I know that either
were time in life you didn't have any money. And
(31:12):
the dirty secret about money is it doesn't do as
much as you think it's gone.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
It's like que demoralizing. How the power you get out.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
Of it, It's like it does some things.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
And I remember talking to you know, Jim Carrey. Yeah,
I don't know him, but I know he's wonderful. I
did a movie with Jim.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Jim's he's kind of like a man in search or something,
And he said he wishes everybody in the world could
get everything they ever wanted, because then they would realize
how much it doesn't work, because he got everything he wanted,
you know. And I think that the idea of fascinated
by your description of burning my because the idea of
ego death or the myth of ownership, and.
Speaker 3 (31:51):
That's stually a good point in bringing in. There's no ownership.
So if you even if you created an art piece
that no one knows that yours, there's no recognition. You
can certainly stand next to it and tell people that's
my art piece, but people don't do that. It's very
hard and sunny out there. Even obviously all the camps
are they're set up and taken down and there's leave
no trace.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
So there is no ownership.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
What is the organizational structure of it? Then how does
it come together?
Speaker 2 (32:20):
Yeah, it's a fascinating organization. I'm actually on the board.
Speaker 3 (32:22):
It's an incredible with people in California that run our
incredible group of people that's I think created the most interesting,
definitely the most interesting, but also probably the most awesome
event in the world. But there are only a group
of say one hundred people. The thing that makes berning
men very special. Is in addition to that, those hundred
people organize ten thousand volunteers, right, and those ten thousand
(32:45):
volunteers make up ten thousand of eighty thousand attendees, So
they're both volunteers as well as attendees. And so you
get this community built city, literally the third biggest city
in Nevada for one week of the year, and they
build it and then they take it down.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
It's fascinating.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
It's fascinating because it feels like it would be difficult
to have or it would be a ripe environment for
people to behave badly.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
It doesn't feel well.
Speaker 3 (33:13):
Actually, the opposite happens because you're it's essentially a survival
camp in the desert. You're dependent on everyone around you.
You just can't survive by yourself, right, and that creates
a very different psychological relationship with the people around you,
where you're very nice to them. And I've had people
join me over the years. Yeah, I should bring you
(33:35):
sometimes you have a bleass.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
I am fascinated.
Speaker 3 (33:36):
But it's one of my favorite thing is to bring
a vision to burning memory. They've never been and they
don't understand it, but the people will actually ask me, like,
how is it that everyone is so friendly? It's so
unusual how friendly they are. And it's not just because
they're being friendly to you because you're new or you
don't really know what you're doing. They'll be friendly to
you because they will need your help in some form.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
Right.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
It's funny because I feel like, as you describe it,
I think to myself, I have a level of cynicism
that would look I get uncomfortable in the Midwest when
people are friendly, you know. I mean, it's like, I
wonder if do you have to drop that cynicism in
order to feel comfortable.
Speaker 3 (34:16):
It doesn't serve you to be cynical because you're in
survival camp. So cynicism is a luxury when you're like,
I'm above everyone. I can, I can be cynical, right
when you're in survival mode, that's got to go.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
That's very interesting, So you bring yourself down to it
has to be a community that's against against the konum
An enemy, if you like.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
Is the environment the what you're working again, the dust,
the heat? Is it very druggy? Is it very kind of?
I think it's really whatever people want to do, because
I don't do anything, whatever you want to do.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
I think the use of psychedelics is very strong, I
would imagine, but alcohol.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
Is non existent, right because it's because.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
It's a desert your grade you die with it. So
so I think that it's very sort of mind expanding
kind of drugs or medicines if you take them, but
you also don't need it because it's so overwhelming how
much is going on. And the other thing that is
incredible is there's usually about five hundred art pieces that
(35:18):
could range from the size of this coffee cup to
the size of that tree literally even bigger because it
says so incredible. And these are people who've gifted the
art to the plier for that week, and I also
have to take it down and remove it afterwards. One
time a seven forty seven was deconstructed and rebuilt on
the plier.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
It's awesome.
Speaker 3 (35:34):
I mean, it's just so so the scale of things
is just always always beyond, but the feeling of everyone
gifting makes it turns it around on you. In your
own mind, You're like, well, I wonder what I could
what gift Clibring, right, And so the first time you
come to Bernie Man, you're usually not bringing a gift.
But by the time you've left Bernie Man, you like,
next time I come, I'm going to bring something. I'm
gonna bring my gift whatever that is even be spoken
(35:57):
with poetry. You don't have to bring something physical, but
you're going to bring something. It's hard to hard to
come back to Bernie Man and not be a participant
with a gift.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
What about the advent of social media is it does
that affect it?
Speaker 2 (36:11):
It doesn't affect it as much because you don't have internet.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
Connection, right, so people will still be recording things, which
they do.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
But it's I think there's something about social media that
that it's all about current events, or at least this
is what I'm doing today, not a particularly interesting event.
But if you if you go to Bernie Man and
you come back in a week later, you've got some
videos you want to post, Sure post them, but you're
not in the moment.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
You know, there's no adrenaline around it.
Speaker 3 (36:38):
There's no like endorphins from getting likes or whatever, because
it's it just takes a long time. Sort of recover
from Bernie Man is quite an intense experience. It just
doesn't match social media.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
But what about a situation where if you're there and
you're you're well known, people know who you are. Well known,
people know who if I'm there, like walking around naked
with a show or carton, I can get people like
I feel like that would.
Speaker 2 (37:04):
That make it out? Totally do it?
Speaker 3 (37:08):
But I don't think I've ever seen someone pull out
their phone at burning Man, Right, it's a pretty big statement.
Like I was at the Taylor Swift concert and everyone's
watching through their phone.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
Yeah I know, and you're like, Okay, I get it.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
They want to record it for some posterity, for some
reason at Bernie Men. Yeah, that's just the weirdest thing
you can imagine.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
Then let's talk about the phones a little bit and recording. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I would actually have been lovely. I'm just back here
again with my eggs. I'm going to actually, finally, I'm
just going to steal a few more eggs because I
swear to God, rich guy eggs or best eggs I've
ever tasted in my life. It's a whole different Like
eggs like this and Danny's just don't exist, you know
(37:50):
what I'm saying. Oh my god, it's like barning manners
in my mouth.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
It's delicious.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
I'm not kidding, hey man, thanks, Is this special water
or just water from the process?
Speaker 3 (38:02):
It is from the tapid little filtering in it. Nothing
super special about little bit of right exactly.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
So when you were at the Taylor Swift concert people
were recording through the port I in a slightly different
experience but still an amazing thing to go and see.
Was that the the exhibition of Vangos Cypresses the met
last week, and in the exhibition of Vangos Cypresses is
(38:31):
the starry Starry Night, the starry Night. They not started
starry Night, that's the song, but starry Night, the vango,
very very very famous ango.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
Painting out there and looking at the paint, it's a
remarkable piece of art.
Speaker 1 (38:43):
It's unbelievable piece of art, but as I'm sure a
Taylor Swift concert is. But you have to time how
you see it, to not see it through the screens
of other people's phones as they hold you know, they
allow in there. And I feel like what we are
in danger of losing. And it's interesting that you describe
(39:04):
Burning Man the way you do, because I feel like
it plays in a little bit. I think we're in
danger of losing analogue biological memories. Yeah, that we record
things like we don't have the capacity to do.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
It for ourselves. That seems weird to me.
Speaker 1 (39:19):
I'm perfectly capable of looking at a thing, and I
wonder if something is lost by recording it.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
As as opposed to remembering it. I already do believe that.
Speaker 3 (39:30):
I obviously I don't share most people don't share that
that view. But I love enjoying the Tailor Shrift concerts
and being in the moment with her music right, and
adding my phone reduces that, I agree the perfect experimation.
In fact, when I was through show last night, I
was relieved to see that no phones were allowed.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
Yeah, and in my game, you got to buy on
the phones.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
But you might have a reason because you don't want
that content, that jokes to be shared elsewhere. I think
that is that's they weren't doing that. They were just
watching your show with the phone so they could record
it for their own personal prosperity. Right, it would they
would dampen the laughter by half at least.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
Totally, because like if I do a stand up show,
usually this happens in the bigger venues like Boulder Theater
isn't one of those. But if I'm doing it like
a casino or a bigger venue, which is like, you know,
thousand people, they put big screens up at the site
so that everybody gets a good view. But the nature
of how these screens work, I speak into a microphone
(40:27):
and a fraction of a second layer, the joke is
delivered on it, and so it's.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
Kind of missus the beast.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
So all the timing is definitely you have to time
like when you're playing big venues with screens, you have
to time it differently. Yeah, because nobody looks at you.
You're just a tiny little figure, right exactly. They all
look at the giant close up of your face.
Speaker 3 (40:45):
You're almost watching yourself right and timing yourself for that screen.
Speaker 2 (40:49):
But here's an interesting thing. So there's a i' matt
the mat the other day.
Speaker 1 (40:51):
It's just it feels to me like this plays into
your burning man thing, just as we talk about it,
or maybe there's something magical in the eggs. When I
was in the mat, there was a there's a painting
by Pisaro called I think it's.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
Called mon Matras Street on a Wintersday.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
It's not particularly famous painting, but it's a very famous artists,
these French Oppression as there were post impressions.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
I can't remember.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
But it's a painting of a street in Paris on
a Wednesday, and it's just everybody in it. And if
you look to that reproduction of that painting, it would
do you go, that's pretty. But when you stand next
to the painting, it has an energy and a power.
Speaker 2 (41:28):
Feel, a history feel.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
You can smell the cold air in the street. It's
this weirdest thing. And I wonder, I find myself drifting.
Maybe it's my age, but I find myself drifting to
analog experiences as much as possible because I find.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
I don't know if it's an age thing.
Speaker 3 (41:44):
I think it's a there's a certain there's a very
strong culture, let's say the world. But it's definitely in
America where people use their phones a lot. But at
Burning Man, which was a which was an old ages
kind of thing, right, no one uses their phones at all,
no matter what your age is. And what I actually
find amazing is people walk around with notebooks and they write.
Speaker 2 (42:03):
I mean, I have a notebook.
Speaker 3 (42:04):
I write, but that's very very unusual, and maybe once
or twice a week in that week someone will come
up to you and say, would you write something in
my notebook?
Speaker 2 (42:14):
And I find that experience quite and then.
Speaker 3 (42:16):
You're like, WHOA, I've got to be vulnerable, And it's
more of a it's a culture of being vulnerable, drawing
out vulnerability. It's the exact opposite of recording something on
a phone. There are people out there of any age
that are appreciating the analog experience. I think especially because
of COVID. I mean what happened in COVID lot most
of our analog experiences and one of the things that
(42:39):
we did as a gathering because I love connecting with people,
COVID couldn't have been worse for me. We would get
together sometimes every Sunday, maybe every second Sunday, and we
would just come outside in the mountains of Colorado, pretty safe.
No one ever go to COVID through this, and we
would just get together for you interested the Quaker thing.
We got together for about an hour and people could
(43:01):
just sing a song, they could play a song for
people to dance too, and it was really analog. It
was this appreciation during COVID that we love the analog experience.
We live and thrive by it. Why go to the
tailor shrift concert at all if you purely want the
digital experience right, and you see people there in community
(43:22):
there there's definitely a very strong style guide for a
better word. Everyone's wearing pink Tutuo's and and silver silver
cowboy has. But that is the community. That is the
analog experience, and I think young people love it. I
think the addition of the phone, I don't get it,
but hopefully they still love that analog experience.
Speaker 1 (43:44):
I wonder if human memory is changing though, because you know,
the technology is added to the evolutionary experience of human beings.
So the you know, the print presses invented, you can't
uninvent it. You know, the fullness here is not going.
As I age, I find my memory colors my experiences.
(44:05):
It will take an experience which is unpleasant and negate
the unpleasant effects of it.
Speaker 2 (44:11):
It will take a you know, like something from you. Well,
it is a thing to learn and learn to take
it and stride right.
Speaker 1 (44:21):
I mean, do we lose the ability to because if
you look at you know, what's lazily called cancel culture,
but if you look at the reaction of people, which
is visceral and permanent, that seems quite machine like to me, Like,
for example, everyone in their life has probably had I
certainly have had unhappy love affairs. At the time, the
(44:44):
pain was intense, but I can look back at that
the way I look back at physical scars in my body.
And though the pain was intense at the time, I
have a kind of sweetness and fondness to what happened.
Speaker 3 (44:58):
I mean, I had to go through cassel culture once.
It was just right when COVID happened. So middle of March,
you know, I must last name and stuff. We had
to close our restaurants because of COVID government shutdown. But
we closed our restaurants three days before the government ordered
us to shut down, which just swortal happening. It was
a Monday, that's just closed for the week, right closed.
(45:19):
We don't sure when to reopen. And I have a
lot of empathy for our team, and we did everything
we could.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
To help them out.
Speaker 3 (45:25):
But for those three days, the twittersphere or everyone was
trying to cancel me for closing my restaurants. And then
there was a national security order maybe a national emergency
on the Friday, So it was four days of feeling
it and then by Friday.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
Everyone's like, oh, we get it. We were just a
couple of days ahead. It's like, yeah, that's not okay.
Speaker 3 (45:47):
I'm a very empathetic human and I heard a lot
about my people and to get canceled. People were just
so eager to jump on something to cancel and that's
not healthy.
Speaker 2 (45:58):
No. I think that that's right.
Speaker 1 (46:00):
And that's what fascinates me about your description of burning Man,
because we come to a point I feel like you're
and I know you enough to know your love of food,
you love of these community events. You strive for empathy,
right that I feel like we are in danger of
(46:20):
losing something, something very precious, and we don't have to
lose it. But I think the discussion has to be
about and it's weird because it ties in to all
this Judeo Christian stuff, But you have to find a
form of forgiveness.
Speaker 2 (46:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (46:36):
Forgiveness, by the way, I think, is it's for the forgiver. Yeah,
you benefit yourself always.
Speaker 2 (46:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (46:43):
The person you're trying to forget it probably didn't even
understand what you're forgiving them.
Speaker 2 (46:46):
Right.
Speaker 3 (46:47):
What you're doing is you're saying to yourself, I'm going
to let this go. Yeah, and yeah, okay, you're forgiving
the person. You might have an attachment to that person
and maybe it helps you process that psycho psychologically, But
the person you were helping is yourself.
Speaker 1 (47:02):
Yeah, it's that whole idea of resentment being drinking poison
and hoping somebody else will die, exactly exactly the Kimble
This was delicious, not just the food but the experience.
And it's always a joy for me.
Speaker 2 (47:16):
It's always love your comedy as well.
Speaker 1 (47:19):
Well, thank thank you, and I'm sorry I made a
joke about Elon last night.
Speaker 3 (47:23):
There was good Mark and Zach in a cage match, right,
we need we needed an audience.
Speaker 2 (47:27):
That found that funny. I think they did.
Speaker 1 (47:32):
Just so everybody knows the joke I made about Elon
was and it wasn't really a joke.
Speaker 2 (47:36):
I just said that not many.
Speaker 1 (47:37):
People know that Elon was the sun Baby and Telly Tuppies.
Speaker 2 (47:40):
It was just a remark and the truth is he
was your move Internet Kimble is a joy. Thank you
so much.
Host
Craig Ferguson
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