On the "A Bit of Optimism" podcast, hosts explore what your choice of last meal reveals about you. One guest picks a winter English roast his British aunt made during childhood visits, tied to warmth and family. Most people's final meals turn out to be about memory and comfort, not just favorite foods.
You host The Last Meal with Tom Nash.
Oh yeah.
Where you ask your guests, if the world ended tomorrow and you could have one last meal, what would it be? What have you found a person's last meal choice reveals about them?
I'm usually trying to get them to trigger something about themselves. It could be like a moment in time that they remember fondly, or it could be something that their mother made them. A lot of people in the beginning will just— the knee-jerk reaction is that something that they really like eating. And I usually push back on that. Like, let's pick something that means something to you. What they'll choose is usually correlated with a time in their life where they felt they had more freedom.
I'm so interested how the meal reminded them of something that they either lost or a part of their personality that they like. I mean, obviously you've thought about this. What would yours be?
It changes all the time. My current choice of last meal is an English roast cooked by specifically by my aunt who is British, lives in England, and it has to be in winter.
Okay. Very specific.
Yeah. I used to go over my grandparents when they were alive. I used to visit them when I was young. I would go in when it was Australian holidays and Australian holidays for summer. It's hot over there, but then it's freezing in England. And I would have this really warm English roast dinner with the turkey and the roast vegetables, and it's freezing outside, but it's warm inside and the fireplace is on.
So it's a nostalgia thing. It's so funny because immediately when I asked the question, of course I thought about my own meal, and mine was immediately nostalgia as well.
