From Tech to Table: Kimbal Musk's Culinary Revolution : 1125

You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey, formerly Bulletproof Radio. You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. If you're watching this on video, you might have noticed I'm not on the normal set. That's because this is recorded here in Boulder at Kimbal Musk's place. This is Kimbal next to me.

Hey, Kimball, nice to see you again.

David, if you're a longtime listener, you remember Kimbal's last interview that we did at his newly opened restaurant called the Kitchen. And I went there to interview you because, like, what is this tech guy? When I say tech guy, Tesla, SpaceX. You guys recognize the last name, right? But you're on the boards of these companies and you were the first company with Elon to do mapping online.

Yeah, we did it in the mid-90s.

I will say I stopped getting lost after Zip2 was farmed, thank you very much.

It was. It was a crazy time.

It really was. And people who were there remember Silicon Valley that way. And yet years later, I didn't meet you back then. Years later, all of a sudden, like, what is the tech guy doing with regenerative Ag and a Grasshopper restaurant? Because I did the Grasshopper restaurant in LA and I'm on a regenerative farm. So we had to talk then, but now it's time for an update because you've done a lot since then, including a new cookbook, which is actually really cool because it's got real food in it.

Yeah, that's right.

Okay, so we're going to cook together, show people some stuff, and we're going to catch up on what's happening in the movement and other just cool stuff.

That sounds great. Looking forward to it. All right.

Regenerative versus industrial plant based. Oat milk, what's your stance?

Sure. Well, you know, I. When we started the kitchen in 2004, I actually did it coming off a 911 experience. And it's kind of weird what's 911 got to do with restaurants or food? But after the mapping company, we sold it. My brother did PayPal, and I went to cooking school in New York. And it was just a passion of mine. I'd cooked since I was a kid. I found that when I cooked, it's literally from 11, 12 years old, my family would sit down and eat. And that was it. I was like, wow, this is pretty cool. And my mom jokes that her lack of cooking skills also inspired me to cook. And so by making the food tastier and also getting Everyone to sit down. We really started to build this tight fabric as a family, and I really, really believe that really is what made us what we are today, where we all are very strongly connected at a very deep level. And that cooking for your community, it gives me life, gives me joy, and it connects me with my community, and I really believe it makes a huge difference. What happened with cooking school was a few weeks after cooking school, 9, 11 happened. I was in New York for cooking school, and I woke up to the sounds of the planes hitting the building. I was right at Chambers and Broadway, and it was this crazy experience where you wake up as a New Yorker and you hear the sound. And then the doorman rang the bell saying, planes hit the building. Planes hit the building. And you live in New York, so you're like some idiot has hit a plane into the building. Like you're thinking it's a small little plane or some marine kitting thing. And so I get in the shower, go down to cross the street to the deli. As I get out of the elevator, another plane's hit the building. And again, you're in New York. You can't look up and see the buildings. You're close by, but you have these other skyscrapers in the way. Go to the deli, and many, many more people in line than usual. So I know the deli really well. Just want to get two cups of coffee. I don't get in line. I just pay right up front, help myself. And over the radio, it said that the Pentagon got hit. And that's when everyone just started running. And I ran upstairs, got my wife Jan at the time, and we just started running. We got to Canal street by the time the first one fell and the second one fell when we were at Union Square. And we actually saw by that point, you could see. Right. All you saw at Canal street was this giant, crazy cloud of white powder. You were running away, running north. Yeah. So, yeah, you're just running. We're just running with the crowd. And when we get to Canal street, you see people coming out of the dust cloud. They might be in a fire truck or they might have been in a police car or just regular cars. You couldn't tell. They were just covered in white dust and people clinging onto the sides of the cars just to get right out. And when I saw that, reality just broke. You just see the World Trade Centers fall in front of your eyes. My mom lives at 22nd street, so us with about eight other people just slept on the floor there for about a week. And then she got a call. She was a well known dietitian at the time. She now retired. That they're looking for volunteers to cook for the firefighters. And she said, look, I can't cook, but my son can. And I said, yeah, I'd love to. That would be an honor. And of course, millions of people trying to volunteer.

So she volunteered you?

She volunteered me. And I just gotten a cooking degree. So they were like, okay, this guy's for real. But the other thing that I had was a security pass, because you can't get down to ground zero unless you live there. And even then, you can only do it like 14 days or so after 9, 11. And so I got back down there and for six weeks, every single day, 16 hours a day, whether it was peeling potatoes or eventually cooking with some of the best chefs in the world, you got to go to the this gymnasium that had been converted to a cafeteria. You're feeding these firefighters. They're coming in from these giant piles of melting metal, still melting. Weeks after 9, 11. You can still smell. It smells like the dentist, the worst smell ever. And you watch them sit down, they're completely gray and their eyes are down. And you feed them this beautiful, real food that we were cooking all constantly, just the best. You can imagine that we were just getting the best farmers, best fishermen, just giving us all their food to cook for them. And slowly the life would come back into their eyes. And then they would start talking to each other, and then they would actually kind of have a revitalized experience. I would do this every day. And it was that feeling of community through food, that this life bringing energy we were putting into them. I said, you know what? I didn't plan on doing a restaurant after cooking school. I just wanted to learn how to cook. I'm a student of life, so let's go learn. And I said, you know, I gotta go do a restaurant. So came to Boulder 2002, and in 2004, we opened the kitchen. And it's just been this beautiful experience of community through food ever since.

This might be one of the less scientific questions in the world of biohacking, but does food taste different when there's love in it?

You know, we actually use that word. It really does make a difference, you know, if you see your grandmother cooking or some figure who in your family loves to cook, and they really are pouring their love into that dish. What, what I think that translates to on a scientific level is they're being really careful not to overcook it or they're cooking it, they're braising it just the right amount and they know where it needs to go, and they're putting that just a little bit extra in at every step of the way. And an easier way to say that is love.

I love it. So, yeah, there's consciousness from the person preparing the food. And Buddhists actually teach that. They say that fewer people who touch your food, the better.

Oh, cool. Yeah.

And the Dalai Lama is very particular about who can prepare his food, because this wants one who's angry and pissed off.

And then they put it into their food. Yeah, yeah.

Because they believe that, you know, food absorbs that. And I. It probably does, you know.

You know, actually, that's funny. You said, I cook dinner for my kids every night. It's one of my things. I'll be working, I'll come home, cook, sit down, have dinner with them, just like I did growing up with my family. And just the other night, I was having an argument with my daughter about what we should cook, and I was like, I'm cook something that you're going to be jealous that I have it and I'll cook something else for you. But honestly, it wasn't related to her at all. But I was just kind of angry. I was having a tough day and I sat down, my meal kind of sucks. So, yeah, when you're angry, you're not able to kind of put that sort of consciousness, that love into it, that sort of soft energy that goes into making it tastes so good. Yeah.

Food nourishes people. Love nourishes people. There's an emotional thing that's hard to measure, but people can feel, and I feel like that's extra important in even how you prepare the food, but also how animals are treated, how plants are treated.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, in the world of regenerative farming, there's a lot of. A lot of scientific principles there, which we'll talk about throughout the podcast. But you're putting love into it. But the animals there are. You're caring for them, they're caring for the land. It's a beautiful cycle.

Can you have regenerative agriculture without animals on the farm?

I don't think so. I mean, obviously there isn't a hard and fast definition of regenerative, in my opinion, and it's supported by most people. Again, there are a lot of views on that subject. When you talk about soil health, manure is a big part of that. And regenerative farming is about bringing life back into the soil. It's about sequestering carbon in the soil, which, by the way, makes the food taste better. So it's really about bringing the soil back to life. And animals are part of life.

They are. And I. When I hear people talk about, let's remove animals from farms because we'd have to kill them when they were done, I kind of feel like, why do you hate animals so much?

Yeah. Well, there's another way to think about it, which is a practice of thanking the animal.

Amen.

Right. And to be grateful for it, for this incredible circle of light that we have. And we did something that was pretty controversial at the kitchen. We would raise our own animals. And that part wasn't controversial.

I did that, too. Why was that controversial?

Yeah, well, what we would do is we would name the animals, and then we would put the names on the menu.

I think that's freaking beautiful.

And so we had these two lambs, and we named them Nessie and Bessie. And we put on the menu Nessie and Bessie with couscous. And we got this uproar. And it was from a lot of vegetarians, and when their first reaction was negative, but when we actually said, actually, what we're here is, we're here to respect the animal and make sure that people really understand that this was a living being that gave themselves to this dish. They changed their tune, and they were like, you know what? You're actually connecting people more to what they're eating. That can only be a good thing.

And is a farmer who cares enough to name his animal going to torture the animal?

No.

To be killed.

Exactly.

In a way, that's disrespectful.

No.

And, yeah, we named our animals, too, for exactly the same reason, because we're nourishing them, and then they're nourishing us. And it's the cycle of life, and there's gratitude, and that's why they're here.

Exactly. And when you're talking about regenerative farming, you get a relationship with your animals.

And with your whole soil.

Yes. Yes. Your farm. You even know that that section of the farm needs a little bit extra here or there. And. And it's this, you know, it's kind of like putting love into your food. If you're putting love into your land. At its core, I think, is what regenerative farming is about.

It really is. And even from a young age, a lot of people. It was controversial because my kids are on a farm, and we have cows and chickens and pigs and sheep and all that, and we let them pick the names. And I Remember the first time we had pigs? My daughter picked the name Sven because it means swine in Swedish. And everyone in Swedish, right? And she thought it was funny, right? And then. But when it's time, she's like, I want to make sure that we know which bacon is from Sven because that's going to taste the best.

That's right. Exactly. Exactly.

And there was no trauma. There was no, like, it was just like a happy thing and like a grateful thing. And the fact that you put those on the menu at the kitchen, I think it exhibits extreme consciousness.

Consciousness and gratitude. Yeah. You really are connecting the guests to the food. And it was actually the meat eaters that struggled with it. When they dug in a bit, they were like, whoa, this is a bit much for me. And actually, that was actually our goal was not to. I'm a meat eater, right? I'm not asking anyone to change, to not eat meat. And as we were saying, it's their part of the cycle. But to be conscious of it and to be grateful for what they've given, I think is pretty great.

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Now I have to go a little bit deeper with it. Okay, we're both tech Silicon Valley guys. So when you boil us down all the way, are we meat robots or do we have a soul and spirit?

I am absolutely a believer in the soul and spirit.

Yeah, me too.

I think it's a quite a depressing outlook to choose to say we're meat and bones, just a bag of meat. And I think it's a choice. It's not like you can prove it either way. So I feel love for people around me. Okay, well where's that coming from? That's not an artificial intelligence. That's not the meat and bones. That's coming from inside me. That's soul and spirit. And there's no denying that for me.

I share that view. And I didn't used to. I was kind of a hardcore atheist Merova. But if you start studying and paying attention, you just realize there's something out there and there's enough data points even to support it that there's stuff going on.

You know, actually I had a different. I had two different lives. I had a very serious accident when I was 37. And prior to that accident I was much more like you described. We were very much hardline techie. I had opened the restaurant at that point, but it was still coming at it from an analytical place. Okay, we should work with our local farms because we want to support our community. We should work with the local farms because we can see how our animals are raised. You know, these are all logical things. And I was going down a ski hill on an inner tube and the tube flips landed on my head going 35 miles an hour.

Ouch.

Ouch. And I have the metal spine here that they put in there. But being paralyzed for those three days and just kind of feeling the voice of God. And I'm not a religious person, I don't subscribe to any of the religions, but I felt the voice of God. I felt a deep resonance in me. And at that point I wasn't sure if I would be able to be healed. And it was about three days. And they did one difficult experience after the other in terms of trying to examine whether they could. Whether they could fix me. And they did complete the surgery. But actually it was in that moment where I said to God, I said, if I am healed, I will really dedicate myself to food in a way that would make the planet a better place. But prior to that I was very tech and heady oriented. And after that I was very soul and spirit oriented.

Was the voice of God scary?

No, it was a. It was just very clear, interesting. It wasn't, you know, monkey brain. Everyone has that. It's gone.

Wow.

Just completely gone. And I've done ayahuasca later in life and ayahuasca is a. There's a DMT chemical that's released that, that, that is simulating when you're dying. And it was actually a very similar experience. It was a. Oh, wow. The voice is. The voice of God is back. That's interesting. And it was a powerful experience for me, but I didn't even necessarily need it that second time. I already had it.

You already had it.

And it's that moving of soul and spirit I now apply to the food I cook. My family, we work in schools helping kids grow food in organic regenerative soil. And it is, it's just a much more beautiful way of living.

Wow, I like that. I had a direct God experience too, and not at all scary. Pure goodness. But I'm pretty sure it's gonna blow a fuse in me. I don't know if I can carry that much current for more than a minute here. Something's gonna melt. And I don't talk about it that often, but yeah, that can make things like psychedelics like meh.

I mean, I think that for people who are going through PTSD or especially military veterans, it's so powerful. It is such a great way to go in and talk to your own spirit and however you want to describe it. For me, it was beautiful in that it reminded me and I also didn't need the reminding because it was always.

With me and it was always with you because you kind of rediscovered your humanity because of a near death experience and then you brought that into all of your work with kids and with restoring soil and the parallels there are just really fascinating for me. So thanks for going.

Yeah, thank you.

Why behind what you do? You know Elon's $100 million carbon capture XPrize?

Sure. Yeah.

So that wasn't going to be elected to be an X Prize. And when I ran Bulletproof I was a small sponsor of the X Prize, and I gave this impassioned speech. My guys, this carbon thing really matters. So I don't have half a million dollars to sponsor the creation of the prize that Elon eventually funded. I said, but I have 50 grand.

Right?

And, like, and you're dumb if you don't do it. And a few other small guys like me pledged a little bit, and someone came in with the rest, and that launched at the end of the prize.

That's great.

But my answer was, we just need to fix our soil. Like, we already have technology.

Yeah, Right.

And in my mind, I'm going, it's all about the so soil, right?

Well, actually, if done at scale, and I mean, it would require a lot of scale, the math actually works out that we would be able to sequester all of the carbon that we were using up in the world driving cars and so forth. But we have to do it at scale. And the challenge with regenerative at scale is not that farmers don't want to do it, it's just you kind of have to do it one farmer at a time. And there's actually a lot of government support to help farmers make that transition.

It didn't work in Sri Lanka, though.

Regenerative.

Yeah. Well, I guess they were doing organic but not regenerative. Was that the issue? Yeah, they banned fertilizer or something in an attempt to become regenerative. And of course, food production fell, prices went up, government gets, I think, overthrown. But it was a little bit.

Yeah. I have this experience. I wouldn't say it's the best experience, but I. I got fascinated with Cuba for a long time because they had been forced to be organic for decades, and there were a whole bunch. And I know, I work in Florida with a lot of farmers that are organic and are regenerative, and I wanted to see what Cuba was like. And they have a blockade, so they were not, at the time allowed to have fertilizer, at least not from America. And when you get there, you realize actually they're growing at 10% productivity relative to their neighbors in Florida. Same land, same weather system. And they're doing organic regenerative in Florida, and they're doing organic regenerative in Cuba. But communism is just a terrible system to motivate people. So I can't speak for Sri Lanka, but actually you do need to have systems in place that encourage you to. To put love into your land, put love into your food, and think what you like about capitalism. It certainly makes sure Your output, what you're producing is growing in a healthy way.

It's one of the reasons that I've been so loud about grass fed. There's a global grass fed butter shortage in 2014. That was my fault because I know grass fed leads to regenerative and that's an economic thing. But if demand is high for what you're doing at the kitchen, for all of the regenerative stuff, then farmers will respond. And if instead demand is high for sterilized soil derived soy biscuit vegan puffs, then that's what we're going to have the world made out of. And then we won't have any carbon sequestration in the soil. And then carbon is going to be an issue. But the dead soil was the real issue. Carbon was a symptom. So you're doing something magic. You're teaching kids how to do regenerative farming in schools in a country called Big Green. Tell me about that and why you think that matters.

So my goal is to actually get everyone in America growing food. And the place to start is with kids. You can do it in schools where we do these beautiful outdoor classrooms that are edible schoolyards. And we help the teachers teach classes that they would normally be teaching in the class, they just do it outside. And the motivation, of course, is beautiful to teach outside, but we also design them very beautifully and carefully so that they're very easy to teach in. Kids have fun in it. They're raised about 18 inches off the ground rather than at grade. Irrigation is built in, so the maintenance is very easy. No fences are allowed. All these cool innovations we've been doing, we've been doing that almost now, 13 years. So been beautiful. We're in thousands of schools and the power of them growing their own food. You take those same kids and you give them a tomato, or you give them carrot or lettuce or something like that, they will just reject it outright. But you have them grow something, they will eat that carrot right out of the ground with the dirt on it.

And they love it, love it. They really connect.

And again, it comes back to love. They are actually putting love into that garden. And when it produces something. And carrots are a magic trick, you know, all you see is a little green sprout and you pull it out of the ground and you're five or six years old, you're like, what? I did this. I mean, it's really incredible. And so to do that now with hundreds of thousands of kids now across the country, we also now do A lot of funding for nonprofits in communities. One of the things that Covid forced us to do was to, instead of traveling because you couldn't get on planes and schools had a lot more restrictions, was, well, what if we helped other nonprofits that work in the space? And so now we have a community of about 150 nonprofits that we support, all working on getting Americans to grow food.

That's interesting. To make food safer, more available, cheaper, and healthy environment, we need distributed food production. It can't all be owned by one evil billionaire or another. Not naming names, but in order to do that, you need distribution. But what you're doing is you're also distributing the nonprofit work. So it's also distributed instead of one big nonprofit that maybe isn't doing things for the right reasons. Well, I mean, it actually ensures availability and reliability.

Well, it was an interesting process. When I first started Big Green in 2010, I was a tech guy. This is right after I broke my neck. And I was like, I'm going to go do this. And I was watching what everyone else had been doing, and I'd helped them philanthropically before, and I was like, you're doing this wrong and that wrong. And we just pull that lever there, Pull that lever there. We'll really be able to do this better and faster and reach more kids. And I did do that, and it was very, very effective, very successful. But I also had to deal with quite a lot of frustration from these other nonprofits where they were like, kimberly, why don't you help us instead of doing it for us? And I think I had that tech mentality where I was like, look, we're just going to solve the problem. Let's not complicate things.

It might kind of just run in your upbringing.

Right, Exactly. And so in that process, I actually did learn that by bringing other non profits into the fold, helping them be more effective still, providing them the technology and the tools and those same levers, but allowing them to put their special sauce into it and their love into it has really been a magical evolution of Big Green over the years.

So you're adding even the community vibe?

Oh, yeah. In fact, I would say the power of what we were doing with Big Green has transformed to be about community. It's almost like it's superpower.

Got it.

And that comes back to what we do at the restaurants. I am. There's this wonderful phrase or quote that Picasso does, which is, the meaning of life is to find your gift, and the purpose of life is to give it away.

Wow, that's a beautiful, beautiful.

So for me, I found my gift, which is community. I love bringing people together, whether it's my kids or my family or it's the people at the restaurant and to give it away. And I do the same thing with Big Green and have learned that that's where I get fed. When I feel community around me.

I love it. When I'm chatting with you, I'm watching the way your brain works. I have a neuroscience company and it's part of what I do.

Okay.

When I ask you a technical question, your eyes look up that way and then you actually switch into this analytical mode. Your tone of voice changes.

Oh, yeah, I don't know that, but I could believe that.

What's going on when you switch into like computational tech guy mode versus your default mode now, which is more like compassion?

Well, yeah, there's a switch in there where I recall you just doing that or me just doing it. Was. I was thinking about the technical design of the learning garden and then my head went into analytical place and then I was then connecting to the community that we have at Big Green and I was in a soul spiritual place. And I think it's great to have both.

It is. You're very facile at switching between the two relatively effortlessly compared to most people I've talked with. Have you always been able to do that or is that post injury?

I think prior to me having my life changing accident, I really downplayed the eq, I guess the emotional quotient, and I played up the technical side and now I really enjoy holding both. Yeah. And it's actually a beautiful thing to learn that you don't. There isn't a light side and a dark side. There isn't a good and an evil. There's just like. You can hold a number of things, in fact more than two things in your head. Yeah.

They're useful states as long as you choose the states instead of them choosing you.

Right. If you're conscious about the fact that. If you're just conscious about what's going on inside you. Yeah, I think you learn a lot.

I wanted to create more resilience and cognitive function in myself. That's why I started doing biohacking before it called it that. And in my mid-20s here in Silicon Valley, I'm like, if only my brain could work better, then I could do even more. And I didn't understand it was consciousness that was a part of it. And I started paying more and more attention and looking at things that were affecting My state and nootropics and psychedelics and all the blinky lights you can possibly imagine. But one of the things that showed up in my data, which is on the side of lab notebooks mostly, was food. So when I eat the right stuff, the good stuff, my resiliency, what I called the bulletproof state of high performance. For a while, it was so strong and I could hold it almost effortlessly for 24 hours straight if I needed to, until everyone else couldn't do it anymore. I'm like, no, there's more. But if you gave me the wrong stuff for my biology and it's not the same for everyone. I was kind of. Kind of a jackass.

Oh, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I couldn't control my emotions the way I wanted to. And now I just have to control them. I have to be aware and they do what they're going to do.

Yeah.

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What's your relationship with food and your level of love and compassion that you, that you carry?

So for me, for me, food is for me. It's the gift I give myself. Three times a day I cook breakfast, lunch and dinner. If I'm at work and I am eating with colleagues, I won't cook in that case because it has to be in a restaurant nearby. I really try to avoid eating in the office. I think that it's the experience of eating calms the nervous system if you choose to let it be that way. So for me I put love into it. I find cooking is like therapy, you know. So you. I'm a pretty high strung guy when I'm working at work and I dealing with a lot of challenging things and I come home and like I said earlier, I cook every night and I come home and I cook and that sort of 20 to 30 minutes of calming myself down sets me up to then sit down with my family and we do a gratitude at table before we start eating. Your kids are still pretty young, 11 to 20.

Okay.

Yeah. But you know, even the 20 year olds, you'd think they would be like why are we doing that anymore? They're like, nope, we're having dinner. They are on it. They're holding, they're holding me accountable now.

That's so good.

It's great.

I the idea of having family meals is something I've always done. I like to think I've had dinner with my kids at least as much if not more than any other tech CEO guy. Oh yeah, and you sound like you're at the top 1% of that.

I find it amazing that a lot of families don't do that, and it's just. It's obviously work. Not everyone can comfortably do it. The cookbook that I wrote has some of the best recipes from the kitchen over the past 20 years. But the other filter I put on it was, can a home cook do this? Can I cook this for their family? Will their family enjoy it?

That's why I wanted to talk with you about it. We have all kinds of cool stuff to talk about, but. And by the way, guys, yes, you can pre order on Amazon now, and I think you should, because Kimball's doing awesome stuff. But you have a QR code for every recipe. And so many people. And I've been working on getting people to cook at home too. So many people, they don't know how to saute. And you can say, saute it until it's done. And it's like speaking French. Actually, it is speaking French, but it doesn't translate. And so you are going to a lot of trouble, actually, to record videos.

Yeah, exactly. So we have a steak recipe there, and it comes with this beautiful chimichurri sauce. But what people often don't know is how do you even season a steak? And it's like, if you just use the right salt, which is just plain kosher salt, which is a slightly bigger grain, you can just see how much salt you're putting on the steak. You use table salt, which most people use, it just disappears. Right. You have no idea.

Why do you use plain kosher instead of, like, maldon sea salt?

Maldon is delicious for finishing, but I have too much respect for maldon salt, so I'll put it on at the end of the top of the steak. At the end, but not when I cook it.

If you're not a chef. Maldon sea salt, you might have seen it at a nice restaurant. It comes in little pyramids, and it's crunchy and it's delicious. But, yeah, it would be kind of wasted.

It would break up in the pan. Exactly.

Yeah. I have four containers of different kinds of salt in my kitchen, so I can use the right one.

The two that I use mostly are kosher and maldon salt. Then molden for finishing, and then kosher for cooking.

I'll use, like, a Redmond or an oryx, which is actually South African.

Oh, cool. Yeah.

But regardless, guys, whatever you use, the hint that using iodized table salt is not good for cooking because you can't even see it. So I like that.

Yeah, you just want to be able to see it. And everyone has a different salt preference, so you Just learn. Do it a few times. You're like, oh, that's kind of what I like. And it's actually a simple technique, but if you describe it in a recipe, people just gloss over it. But if you show them a video in about 10 seconds, they know exactly what you're talking about. Right.

And by the way, there's no reason to fear salt. You've heard lots of my videos about that. Stressed people need more sodium. If your body wants more sodium, have more sodium. But maybe you should take magnesium and potassium too, because you need those, too.

Great.

Okay, what are we looking at here?

Okay, so these are two amazing dishes from the cookbook. Number one is this char grilled sea bass. These are gorgeous, delicious. And obviously it's a great recipe. You'll love the recipe. But the technique here is, how do you char. How do you char fish? And charring fish is a technique and one of the ones we do with the video. So you'll see here you have fish here that is perfectly cooked with a crispy, delicious skin that's got that caramelized, salty texture because it gets the salt on it. And the technique is you put it on the grill and you don't move it at all. And then when you can slowly kind of pull the fish off without it sticking, it's done.

That is such an amazing trick. It also works with really nice cuts of meat. Oh, yeah.

If you're yanking at it, it should not be touched. Yeah, exactly.

But no one teaches you that.

Exactly.

I am not a trained chef like you, but I have done my chef cooking, cooking classes and all. I was trying to combine molecular, basically molecular gastronomy or modernist cuisine with health. Like, my goal isn't to make it taste good first. My goal is how's it going to make me feel first and then how's it taste? Yeah, So I got into that, and I did not know that. And I don't think most people listening know that. So that's how you grill.

Yeah. And so what we do with next to each recipe is there'll be a beautiful photo of this, but then a little QR code takes you to the video, shows you how and shows you how to do it.

And it's just go to anywhere you like to buy books. It's called the Kitchen Cookbook.

Yeah.

Okay. And the restaurant is called the Kitchen. I heard you're opening one in Austin.

That's right.

I hope it's next door to upgrade labs, but I don't know.

We're going to be at sixth in Guadalupe.

Oh, my gosh. We're at fifth.

Amazing. That's fantastic.

And coming next.

That is great. That is great.

Now, I don't know if you guys can go tight on the fish here, but. So if I was going to choose from these two fish, which are both gorgeous.

Yep.

I would choose this fish because it's less charred than that fish, but it still has a nice crust on it because too much charring of protein can increase inflammation. So I'm always working on teaching people. Follow recipes in your book and cook it so that it's perfectly beautiful, but maybe not all the way blackened.

Yeah, you want to go more golden brown.

Golden brown, yeah.

So that one is better than that one. It is.

Okay, so I was going to ask, because some people like the flavor.

I actually enjoy it. I do enjoy it. But if I were to serve it at the restaurant, which one would I prefer to serve? It would be the golden brown.

Okay, got it. So then we're in alignment there. Would I eat that one? Yeah, I might take some of the crust off, but I'm not a perfectionist either. These are both amazing.

Yeah, both of those will taste great. They're magical. And then we have the broccoli here, where I actually do like a little char on the broccoli, and it gives a. Like here we have broccoli without chore on it, and it's gonna taste great, well cooked. And then you add the char to it with a little olive oil and it just comes to life. And actually a little lemon juice. Don't forget the lemon juice.

Yeah, lemon juice is really nice.

People underrate lemon juice. You just little squeeze. Almost anything will taste better.

The tiny little sour note at the end. Yeah. It also has health benefits. People don't talk about enough around breaking up oxalate in the body and all. So I do about a shot of it a day between all my different.

People don't. Maybe not always remember, but. But it was really the use of citric acid or oranges and lemons and so forth when we. That enabled us to explore the world because we. Our body needs. Absolutely needs it. Not like kind of needs it needs it.

And when you use real lemon juice, a lot of people don't know the citric acid you buy now. It's all from black mold fermentation from an industrial process.

Oh, wow. Yeah. Okay.

Versus actual real citric acid from lemon. So lemon juice or lime juice or whatever.

Freshly cut. It's just so good. All right.

Is it true? Because we did talk about Burning man and Is it true that the sea bass has DMT sauce on it?

You know, it's probably a good idea. I mean, someone's got to try it, you know. What I've learned is everyone has tried everything at least once. I'm sure someone has tried it.

So we both go to Burning Man.

Yeah. In fact, that's where we met. Yeah. Yeah.

It's funny. And I think most people now know what that is, obviously the listeners of the show. And I've been going for 10 plus years. And I think you've been going for a while too.

25 years.

25, wow. It's been on my list for 25 years, but the first 15, my main industry conferences at the same time. And I finally went in 2011 because I said I have to go to a wedding. I didn't tell them. I didn't know whose wedding it was. I just had to go to Burning Man. So I gave my keynote and flew out.

That might have been the year we met, actually, because I remember meeting quite a while ago. We met on the bus from the airport to our camp. Yeah.

It might have been 2011 or 2014.

Yeah, something like that. Yeah.

And it's such a funny serendipity place. And who would have thought, years later.

We'Re in your kitchen. I know.

Are you concerned about the role of the overuse of psychedelics now?

Well, I am. I'm a big fan of Ram Dass and Ram Dass from his early days. He was part of the Harvard situation where he was Temo o' Leary's partner in that situation and got kicked out of the school and so forth. And what you learn if you read his books is he just got to a point where he just didn't need them anymore. It wasn't that they didn't help him at the time. And especially if you use them for mental health. I don't think there's anything more powerful and certainly better than pharmaceutical products which are really more about you taking something every day or there's a business model associated with it. The psychedelics have the worst business model on the planet. You try them once, you get that experience and you're good. Right.

So try the once thing that we're aligned on or maybe a few times.

When I say try, I mean like when you really, really are willing to let go and you want to do it with a therapist, someone that looks after you. It's just not a recreational experience and it's a life changing, positive experience.

I tried it in 1999 in the jungle In Peru. And when I was around, they're like, you're white.

I know.

It's for local people. You'll throw up. You'll hate it.

Yes.

No, really. And years later, one of my Burning man campmates, Glenn Wilcox, is one of the guys in dmt, the spirit molecule. In the book about the first studies at unm, he was one of the patients in the study and talks about it. So I recognize what you're saying. You probably had some DMT when you had your neck thing.

Yeah, I absolutely had that. Exactly.

And it's so magical. And it's not really a party drug. And I feel like it should be kind of like cooking or growing food. It should be treated with respect.

With respect. And when you need it, it really is there for you. But I was actually just in Peru. I came back a few days ago and I was there. My wife wanted. We do a lot of philanthropic work to help veterans get access to psychedelics for their pts. It's all ran by the government.

Thank you for doing that. PTSD is horrible. I've had it and it's horrible. The black rifle coffee guys, you probably know them through that as well. Do you know them?

No. Here? Yeah, please, I'd love to. Love to, yeah. So we went down to Peru to visit some of the indigenous tribes and I didn't partake. I didn't need to.

You weren't called to.

I just wanted to learn where it came from. I wanted to be there to experience this. Let's learn about this because we're helping veterans in America. Great. But we should do our research as well. Let's see how it is done in a more indigenous, traditional way. And like I was saying, it's a terrible business model because you don't seek it, you don't grasp for it like you might other drugs.

And it's kind of scary. Clearly, fentanyl is the best business model.

Oh, my God, what a nightmare.

It's a great business model because you can't say no.

You can't say no. And you know, actually the state of Kentucky is now working with a medicine pool, Ibogaine, which I've never taken that, but it's actually.

I'm actually scheduled to go do it.

And it's about getting people off fentanyl. And guess who's fighting it? The pharmaceutical industry.

I wonder why.

Yeah, I mean, it's just so sad. I mean, it's.

Maybe the. Who can ban it for us, right?

Seriously.

So let's see. I have two more questions. Let's Cook a steak.

Great. Love it.

Okay, first question. You spent a lot of time with Walter Isaacson.

Yeah.

Biography. And I thought it was really interesting. Is Walter legit? He talks a lot of. Look, a lot of stories. Was he really that embedded with you?

I mean, I spent hundreds of hours with Walter. You did? Okay.

I was blown away by the whole story and the narrative, and I thought it was such a respectful. And I felt like I got inside his head. But I always wonder, did they sit there for 10 hours and tell a story? But you spent hundreds of hours.

No, he was more embedded than he was interviewing. Okay. And I don't think you can write a book like that without actually being, you know, with my brother, I think maybe 10,000 hours even, you know, like two years of either physically there or on conference calls, and then with us, with me, a lot. And he's just so good at what he does. He's not trying to. He's not trying to create a gotcha. He's just trying to get to the. To the story. The truth is the truth. What is truth? Okay, fair enough. He's got to have an opinion. He's got to write a story that captures the reader, which he's so good at. But he worked so hard to get as much of the story in his own psyche as possible versus writing a story about someone else.

It was just fantastic. I was kind of mesmerized by it. Here's an idea, guys. If you haven't read or listened to Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson, you could do that, and at the same time, order the Kitchen Cookbook, and then they'll show up on Amazon, if that's where you go as people who read this, bought this, and then everybody wins. What do you think?

I think it's great. In fact, there are quite a few recipes in there that I've cooked with Elon over the years.

So we'll get those paired up. And I'm serious, guys. The Kitchen Cookbook. If you like to cook, and you probably do, because you probably read the bulletproof diet and all that stuff, there's really good stuff in here and the techniques. You want to know this because you'll save money, and food's expensive right now when you just use the QR code. So that's one of the cool things. It matters. So do that. And also, I recommend meaningful books. The biography's amazing, so pair them together. Do everyone a solid.

I mean, I think the joy of cooking for me actually even comes through in the book where I cook. I Do actually cook for my brother. And again, I don't even. I didn't tell him that story. He just heard it through the ether. I would do it with SpaceX engineers when I would fly out to this island in the mid Pacific called Kwajalein. And they're all rocket scientists, I'm Elon's brother. So they've got stuff to do. I'm just kind of there to be helpful and there to advise my brother where I can. But really they're working. So I got to know someone on the island to start cooking for them and found this little grocery store, barely even a grocery store. And it was either that or the military cafeteria, which is the worst food you can imagine. And so at the end of the day, we're talking about very simple ingredients, like cans of tomatoes with some hint of vegetable here and there, beans. But still there was loving it. And we sit down after a hard day, sometimes really crummy day, where blew up a rocket and sit around a part of like, again, there's no tables. This is a military base on an island. And we just scoop into our bowl and sit around a circle.

And how often does the board of directors cook for people?

I think that is something that's special to me.

Very, very special. And I believe that people on teams and, and engineers and the rocket guys in the bike, it changes the culture of the company.

It really, it really does. And especially when you go through hard times with folks and you don't really know what to do. Going back to kind of social anxiety of I think I have it where what cooking does for me, it calms me down. And so when you're dealing with a difficult time and you're cooking and everyone gets to kind of partake and it calms them down and, and it brings people together.

It really does.

Yeah.

Let's cook the steaks and then we're going to talk about health, longevity, cognitive function.

Great. I love it.

All right, so what do we have for steak?

We have two New York strips. So these are grass fed.

And we have a grain fed one.

We have a grain fed one for comparison. And to the trained eye, to the trained eye, you can tell the difference.

So industrial grain fed beef.

Grass fed. Right.

So at the store, just look for the difference.

You can do this. All right, so what we're going to do is we have some delicious ghee with some thyme. And this is a tip that Dave gave me, which is you actually put the thyme, the dry thyme into the ghee and it'll help prevent the ghee from oxidizing too much onto the steak. So first of all, we're going to do a little seasoning. So let me get the.

Room temperature. Are they designed to be room temperature?

Ideally, you want them to be a little bit room temperature. You want to take them out of the fridge a little bit because it'll just cook more evenly through. Obviously, most people don't have that necessarily that much time, but Even if it's five or 10 minutes out of the fridge, it helps a lot.

As a professional trained chef, well done is the best steak, right?

Yeah. With ketchup, right? With ketchup, exactly. In fact, it's one of the recipes. Just cook until it's dead. And ketchup. You're a rare.

Medium rare guy.

Medium rare.

Medium rare, too.

Yeah. So ribeye is a bit fattier. This New York strip here, you can see especially this one has got a gamier look to it. I prefer the flavor of grass fed because it tastes more like meat.

It tastes like meat, right?

Yeah, exactly. And what we do at the kitchen is we work with our farmers. We actually go visit the farm, we watch what they do.

I have a confession. When I'm staying in Boulder, I go to the kitchen and I have your steak for lunch and dinner almost every day.

Fantastic. It's the best thing. We obsess over it.

And also, I have to tell you something. It's a nice sit down restaurant. It's 29 bucks. It's actually fairly priced and it's really good. So thanks.

Thank you. Absolutely.

I can eat that.

Awesome. All right, well, now what we're gonna do is we're gonna put some seasoning on the steaks. Let's do one ribeye and one New York strip.

Okay.

So one of the things, one of the tips in the cookbook is to use kosher salt when you're seasoning and you can tell how much you can see it. Whereas if you use table salt, it just kind of disappears into the steak.

So, Kimbal, is this the steak that I'm going to be able to get at the kitchen in Austin?

You're gonna be able to get a great steak at the kitchen in Austin. We actually do a special, special cut all the time. It won't be this one, won't be this exact one. I think we're going to have to eat this one today.

All right, I guess. When are you opening, by the way?

We're going to open late summer of 2024.

Late summer.

Okay.

When you do that, I Will, I'll be there on opening day. Just let me know.

Love it. It's great. Thank you. And now I love that you're in Austin now. It's so awesome. So we're going to turn it over. Going to get salt on the other side.

That is a beautiful steak.

Yeah, the grass fed that. You can just see the color in it. It's just so much better.

They look like healthy animals. The other ones look like yeasty animals.

Yeah, exactly. So this is, I'm giving this, this is your trick that I'm doing right here, which I think is pretty fun. And I pretty sure it's going to work out pretty great. So this is thyme mixed in ghee. And what we're going to do is we put that straight onto the, onto the stove. And what you're saying is like actually reduces the oxidization. Yeah.

Some of the polyphenols in the herbs, rosemary and tama oregano in particular, they help to protect the oil. So you get that nice caramelization. But the oil is better.

Yes.

So now I noticed using stainless steel, do you recommend in the book the kind of pans people should use?

Yeah. So actually there's sort of two kinds of pans I would recommend. One is cast iron and the other is a thick bottomed stainless steel pan. And it's, it's really about that, that ability to hold heat. If you use a thin pan, you're just going to burn things much quicker. But what you get out of a nice thick pan is even heat won't burn. You'll get burning spots in a thin pan and then that comes back to oxidizing the oil and you get that kind of metallic taste out of the oil which no one likes.

For years I was using Le Creuset because these are those really heavy cast iron.

Yeah, I've got them right here. Yeah.

Okay. But you, if it has the not ceramic, I guess it's ceramic coating. Not the non stick ceramic, but just ceramic. But then I was finding if I left the food in there, it keeps cooking for half hour. So you have to.

That is one of the benefits I'll give you a cast iron because you can cook, you can braise things and it holds heat better. The benefit of a stainless steel is it's lighter. So when you move, depending on who you are and what size of the pan is, you're pulling this out of the oven. You got a hot handle. Yeah, sure. You're gonna wear gloves and everything, but it makes a difference with lighting.

If your pan weighs 20 pounds.

You have little kids.

Something bad's gonna happen. Just.

Yeah, yeah. And actually, one of the things I teach in the cookbook is how do you handle hot pans? Oh.

So this is kitchen skills and cooking.

As a good way to put it.

It'S called the kitchen cookbook, and this is how cookbooks should be, to be honest.

Yeah, you know, it was really fun, you know, for me to work on. I'm a student of cookbooks. I use them all the time, but I actually still learn something new every day, and that's what's beautiful about cooking. And so I was like, well, why don't I try and teach some of these what I'll call kitchen hacks into the cookbook?

It's beautiful. Now, I have two questions for you. One, our butter. Our ghee is p. Puddling over here. Do you like to roll it back?

What I'll do is I'll just turn the pan around a little. Okay, that works.

Just to get. Second one, the number two source of indoor air pollution after smoking is kitchens.

Yep.

Right. And so I'm always encouraging people to, you know, turn on the exhaust fan, but mine at home doesn't even work. So I end up putting an air filter in the kitchen, and it does turn yellow when I do it.

As a.

When you're working in kitchens and all, how do you protect your. Your lungs when you're over a pan all day?

Well, one of the things like I just did here was I was. I was noticing it's smoke on the side, and I just pulled pan over here because I. I guess you're controlling it. I'm controlling it. So you. It would benefit, I guess, a little bit from having the. The. The fan on.

Then they couldn't hear us, but Then.

They couldn't hear us. But actually, a lot of it's got to do with you. You're just letting it. You're letting the oil burn so you can.

The oil so it doesn't burn.

Yeah, exactly. And move the pan around. So if I like. You can see it kind of out there. That's where the heat is. And no pan is perfect. So you just gotta watch your pan. If you see it smoking, just move it a little bit off the heat.

Now, do you like to turn it with tongs or a spatula?

What tool do you use? I love spatulas.

Okay.

No, I have two kitchen. Actually, spatulas and tongs are my two favorite pieces of equipment. The. See if I've got my favorite here. So it's actually not here. But one of the things that is very, very important about a spatula, grass.

Fed Merry Christmas spatula. Right.

Of grass fed Merry Christmas. Is a flat edge. So most many spatulas or even wooden spoons are kind of rounded and actually you need that flat edge. Yeah. So. So what I can do here is I can get in there with it. I can see it's moving nicely.

If it moves nicely, it's ready. If it doesn't move, it's not ready.

Yeah. That one looks like it needs a bit of time. That one looks like it's ready to be turned.

If your steak doesn't want to lift off the pan, leave it alone. And then it'll want to lift off. Right.

And look how that. Beautiful.

That's gorgeous. Wow.

Gorgeous. That also comes from being grass fed. Yeah, yeah. And you can actually see the time that we put in the ghee.

So it's embedded in there.

Yeah.

And it's not burned.

Not burned.

You had temperature control.

That was good. Okay. And that one, that one. Only a little time before I turn it.

Wow. And this has also. This was a really fatty New York, like what you want, like the more fat is better.

And it's actually rare for grass fed. Grass fed is usually leaner. But this was a. You could tell it's grass fed because it's darker. But that cow had a good life. Yeah, that cow had a good life. Exactly, exactly.

And then this guy is the ribeye.

Which normally, normally be very fatty, but that's quite a lean ribeye.

I picked the ribeyes. But the other thing is the steak shouldn't be the same. It's not a cubed industrial product. It's a function of how did the cow live, what was it fed, where was it, how much sunshine, how cold was it? So it's supposed to be different and it's okay. And when you go to Instacart, they give you a hunk of meat, but when you go and you say, I want that one, you can actually pick the good cuts.

Right. And we, we love. And I would encourage anyone else to T9 out is moving nicely. Right. So. Oh, that's gorgeous. See that? And that's just like, if you, if you need to, if you. It doesn't want to move, it is not ready to be moved.

And even here the herbs are intact.

Yeah.

So it's kind of that nice infused way.

That's a beautiful little thing. I'm going to use that in the future. So. Yeah. Mixing the time in with the gi and then you just smear it on the. On the steak. Great. Now what we're going to do is we're going to put some fresh thyme on it and we're going to put it in the oven.

The oven is 400.

I like to do it pretty hot. So 400 degrees. Convection.

Convection. Convetion is magic.

Yeah. Because it'll actually keep crisping the steak.

And how do you know how long to leave it in for?

Well, because we have two side steaks. It's actually not fair. Right. We're gonna have to take one out sooner than the other. But I'll eat that one.

I'll eat that one.

Yeah, right, exactly. But the. No. So that neo strip, it's a thinner cut. Five minutes. Okay. Now in 10 minutes.

And the way I tell my steaks, and for me, meat is a central food group. Right. I use the test where if you squeeze your fist all the way, that would be, you know, well done. And if your hand is totally loose and you push right here, that's rare. So I just push on the steak a little bit to know how well done it is.

Yeah.

Well, if you might like mush the steak. Am I harming?

No, no, no, you're doing fine. If you actually penetrate the steak with a knife, which is which a lot of people do, like, they'll do a thermometer. That's gonna hurt the steak. Yeah. That's gonna take the juices out. You really wanna learn how to touch it with your finger and get a feel. And you're gonna make a lot of steaks in your life. So just practice.

It takes about one week.

Yeah.

Oh, that one is too.

Yeah, I like that one better. You know, it's pretty straightforward.

And if you use an infrared thermometer, it's useless. Cause it's exterior temperature and it's the middle. You're worried about it, right?

Yeah, exactly. I don't use the marmot is unless it's like a Thanksgiving turkey. And I'm cooking for people that really want a dry turkey. Okay, fine.

If it's a 12 hour roast or something, you want the inside and you're never.

Yeah, you really can get it, right? Yeah, sure. Then use it even then around the thermometer.

It's always cooked wrong. Because the thermometer.

No, exactly. And you know, where's the measuring point? Is it actually getting to the center? Things like that.

All right. As it's in the oven and I know you're using your chef's clock in your head to know when it's. You'll just know. Unless I distract you. So I'm into radical longevity. Wrote a really big book on all the science, all the things we can do to live longer. Food is at the center of living longer.

Yeah.

Eating industrial toxic food with. And I say toxic food like actual toxins from man made or from lead and mercury and cadmium or nature made pesticides. Some of those are not really good for us. By the way, nature made pesticide caffeine. So that's also.

You're a fan.

Not all plants are bad. But what's your take on radical longevity? I mean, how long do you think you could live?

You know, I have my. What's the right word? My idol or my inspiration is my grandmother on my mom's side who died when she was 98. And she was the happiest person I know. And I love learning and I know this about you as well. I love learning from my elders. I love learning from people who are 70s, 80s, 90s. What about it is working for you? And I really have learned. It comes back to community. It comes back to those relationships you have that are deep, that are there for you, that bring you happiness, bring you joy. There's this beautiful study by Harvard. It's almost 100 years old now. Started in the 1930s. They did like 450 kids, half from the very difficult part of Boston, half from more upper class. And they've been following them now almost 100 years. There's five or 10 of them still alive in their late 90s. And there are many things that each one of them could do. This is prior to biohacking, prior to kind of the, the amazing lessons that you've been able to learn and share with the world. And so the only thing that they could correlate that there's one thing consistent with people who lived into their 90s was really strong, good relationships at age 50.

Wow.

And I was like, wow, I'm 51 and I've got these beautiful relationships with my kids and my family, my wife. Okay. I think I'm gonna do okay. Wow.

I love it. See, you're open. As long as it's a good life. But if you could live 200 years and you had great relationships the whole time, would you do it?

I. Yeah, I don't, I don't have a. I think because of my accident, I feel like I've already died. So I kind of. Everything's gravy for now.

This is really important because a lot of people, especially the people I worked with for 25 years ago in the.

Longevity movement, my clock is going off.

Yeah, yeah. They're clearly afraid of dying. And as long as I want a better and longer life to do more good versus I don't want to die.

Yeah, exactly.

These are gorgeous.

Look at these steaks.

It's like a professional fish. These are true.

So that's what you do with your.

I never have done this.

That's what you do. Just put it on there.

If you're listening. Now, you take the hot glove thing of a knit and you just invert it and put it over the handle. I've seriously never done that in my life.

That is what the greatest hacks ever. And now, of course, you're not going to grab it by accident, but no one else is going to grab it by accident. Exactly. And when I, I, I move pretty fast, I actually do forget. So I'm like, ah, I'm so grateful. Yeah, exactly. Okay, so we're just going to take this guy out. And the other thing you want to do is you want to let the, let the steak rest.

How long should it rest?

It should rest. The rule of thumb is one third of the time that it cooked that long. Yeah. Wow. So. But it's a rule of thumb, so I'd say it can actually rest longer than that. You know, good steak doesn't kind of get, doesn't get worse. You just don't want to get cold.

Yeah. Cold steak is not so nice. Now, one of the things I've done because I put a lot of energy into food, like when I cooked in my family, and I've done a lot of that, especially when the kids were younger. When my companies were smaller, I would always heat up the plates in the oven because I feel like food tastes better on a warm plate. And it's free.

Totally. Right.

Okay, so you do that too.

Totally.

Right.

Absolutely.

It's life changing, guys. If you don't believe me and you're a cook, even if you're just making Mac and cheese, which I probably wouldn't recommend, even if it's vegan, it doesn't matter. It's probably worse. But then just warm the plate up with hot water and dry it off real quick and it'll taste better. Yeah, it's free.

Yeah. In fact, we have a hot oven there. Put a plate in the oven for just 30 seconds and it warms it up nicely.

There's something nourishing about that.

Yeah, that's great. Any good restaurant will always do that. So that's why you always, why do things Taste better in a restaurant. Well, a whole bunch of things add up and one of those things is a warm plate.

Very, very cool.

Yeah.

Other question. So you're saying you're down with dyeing whenever you're done is what I'm hearing.

Well, I mean, I don't want to go anywhere. I mean, I'm, I'm not.

But you're not afraid of it when it comes.

You know, I think I don't really have a relationship with it. One of the things you, you taught my community over the years is that it's, it's okay to have fat. You know, good fats and you know, good butter or good ghee or in this case, this delicious steak. And it gives a sense of freedom for people to enjoy food because fat does good fats, does make it taste better, does, does give it, give it that umami flavor. But it's been great. So I've always, always appreciated that.

About your work, a new study just came out. You just brought it to mind where they looked at the difference between a 20% and a 40% of calories from fat diet on testosterone levels. And they were doing saturated fat like butter and animal fat, and they found 40% raised testosterone 50% above 20%. So if you're on a low fat diet because you think it's good for you and you're tired and you're not motivated, your testosterone's low whether you're a man or a woman, and when testosterone's low, your dopamine's low. So just, you just don't care as much.

Yeah.

So I feel like quality fats are part of the diet. You don't have to go crazy.

Yeah. I think the key is quality. The key is real food. If you can identify it, it's not processed. But it's funny you say that. I just got my 50 year old checkup and my doctor was like, ah, you're probably going to have low testosterone and so forth. Nope, I'm good.

Good for you.

He's like, you're good.

You don't look like you have lotus estrogen. You can spot it. As a former 300 pound guy, you tend to get like the dad bod and no matter how much you exercise, it won't go away.

Ah, interesting. Okay.

That's when you know the testosterone has dropped.

Interesting.

And you look like you're in pretty good shape.

Yeah. No, but I also think it's got a lot to do with the food I just found. Yeah.

Do you know about 08?

Yeah. So what I Love to do is constantly learn about food. So whether it's cultured oil like this or even lab based, lab grown meat, my wife and I will advise or help companies mostly because we are curious what we want to learn. This is a pretty good product.

0 acre. Now hopdadi and another big chain, they just replaced their fry oil with this. I was a seed investor and advisor. Zero acre cultured oil. And the reason for this is it destroys less farmland than soy and canola and it increases the health of everyone who eats the fast food over what they're doing now.

Yeah.

So I just caught this out of the corner of my eye. I'm like, you know about this?

Yeah. We are constantly experimenting and love the. Even though of course I care about the love of food and how animals are raised and whether it's regenerative and so forth. And we also have science.

Yes.

You know, like there is no reason we have to choose. We can do both.

Thank you for saying that. It's not one or the other.

Yeah, exactly.

And I show gratitude and respect for animals and I also eat them and find them delicious. And I know that they're okay with that because I've done the deep work. And at the same time, we can calculate deaths per calorie. We can calculate the square meters required to feed a person quality food versus what, a lot of people. Well, how much does it cost to feed them? Well, if you're going to feed them ground up cockroaches or something, it's not very much. We don't want to do that.

We don't want to do that. Exactly.

Let's honor humans too.

Yeah, exactly.

I love that science.

And yeah, you can have. You can have both. And in fact, why cut yourself out from learning from as many cultures or ethnicities or ways of life? Just don't. Don't necessarily look, just choose the ones that matter. That matter to you. I love that very much.

Kimble, thanks for inviting me to your kitchen.

This was so fun.

It was super fun, guys. It's called the Kitchen Cookbook. And I'm serious. This is a cookbook you want to get. Because I just learned two things right now about the handle on the handle on the pan and whether I'm supposed to eat the stuff, which is.

It's pretty good, right?

It's like French fries, but good.

Yeah, right, Exactly. Exactly.

So get the Kitchen Cook book. And I'm also serious. If you haven't already listened to the autobiography from Walter Isaacson, buy them together. And then what will happen is everyone will know. Oh, if you read this book, you should read that book. And that just helps your message in your mission, which is genuinely a good one.

Thank you very much. Thanks for having me on the show.

You're listening to the Heat Human Upgrade.

With Dave Asprey.

The Human Upgrade, formerly Bulletproof Radio, was created and is hosted by Dave Asprey. The information contained in this podcast is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended for the purposes of diagnosing, treating, curing, or preventing any disease. Before using any products referenced on the podcast, consult with your healthcare provider carefully read all labels and heed all directions and cautions that accompany the products. Information found or received through the podcast should not be used in place of the for consultation or advice from a healthcare provider. If you suspect you have a medical problem or should you have any healthcare questions, please promptly call or see your healthcare provider. This podcast, including Dave Asprey and the producers, disclaim responsibility for any possible adverse effects from the use of information contained herein. Opinions of guests are their own and this podcast does not endorse or accept responsibility for statements made by guests. This podcast does not make any representations or warranties about guest qualifications or credibility. This podcast may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products or services. Individuals on this podcast may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to herein. This podcast is owned by Bulletproof Media. A Human Upgrade, formerly Bulletproof Radio, was created and is hosted by Dave Asprey. The information contained in this podcast is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended for the purposes of diagnosing, treating, curing, or preventing any disease. Before using any products referenced on the podcast, consult with your healthcare provider carefully read all labels and heed all directions and cautions that accompany the products. Information found or received through the podcast should not be used in place of a consultation or advice from a healthcare provider. If you suspect you have a medical problem or should you have any healthcare questions, please promptly call or or see your healthcare provider. This podcast, including Dave Asprey and the producers, disclaim responsibility for any possible adverse effects from the use of information contained herein. Opinions of guests are their own and this podcast does not endorse or accept responsibility for statements made by guests. This podcast does not make any representations or warranties about guest qualifications or credibility. This podcast may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products or services. Individuals on this podcast may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services is referred to herein. This podcast is owned by Bulletproof Media.