Kimbal Musk: The Art of Cooking, Tesla, SpaceX, Zip2, and Family | Lex Fridman Podcast #417

for me cooking is an art what's your favorite ingredient to cook with there isn't one it's more like when there is one it really is one you know like there's Peaches on the on the cover of this cookbook those peaches those were in August Colorado peaches it just doesn't get any better than that on that day at that moment that was the best that was the but that only lasts for a week and then they don't taste so great yeah but damn they so good in that moment and you just can't stop wanting to use

that ingredient the following is a conversation with Kimbo musk a longtime entrepreneur and Chef and author of a new cookbook called the kitchen Cookbook cooking for your community you should check it out it is in fact the first cookbook I've ever owned I've already made stuff from it and it's delicious this is Alex fredman podcast to support it please check out our sponsors in the description and now dear friends here's Kimble musk growing up in South Africa you said it was a violent place wha

t are some formative moments that you remember from that time South Africa was so I grew up in uh par South Africa but more specifically the fall of a paride so it was was the 80 I was a teenager in the 80s and uh our community would would um part of our social life frankly was the anti- aparte protests and to go be with white people black people kind of mix mixing it all together the most formative experiences frankly how much I appreciate a place like America where we have value for human life

so is that was a country where human life was not valued it was a it's a weird thing to come from that to he where where we we take it so seriously if someone dies in a war or something like that and um we just didn't take it seriously in South Africa people died but people were killed I saw someone killed in front of me um with uh was getting off a train and it's a very violent train known known for violence we were stupid kids we didn't really listen to our parents we went on this train and u

h the doors opened and I had people trying to get off the train and in front of me two black people one black guy just stabed this knife in the side of this other black guy's head and you're like what the fuck and you just I'm I got to get off the train how old were you at this time proba 16 or 17 and I got to get off the train and everyone is trying to get me to get off because you know they're all behind me so I step off and I step into the pool of blood one foot and then I just walk from for

about 100 Paces while the stickiness of the blood just kind of for my sneakers just on one foot just like leaves a footprint behind me and you just walk on you just walk on did the others as everyone walked on that's an interesting point you make underlying the violence is a kind of philosophy that human life is disposable the individual life is disposable I mean that underlies many ideologies you know I grew up in the Soviet Union the value of human life was lower there than in the United State

s the value of the individual in the United States is really high it's probably an index you can put together like yeah right exactly peration that that's a really interesting way to put it because violence is much easier on a mass scale suffering causing suffering on a mass scale is much easier when you don't value the human life I've heard this before where which I think I agree with is when someone someone is killed someone is someone's taken from our lives the the vacuum that it creates the

social vacuum is extraordinarily painful and and it truly is true I mean if someone in my community passes away it's very very sad for me and when you go to a place where where you live grow up in a place where where that human life is not valued there's there's something about the there's a little bit littleit less of the social vacuum created because everyone is kind of expecting everyone to potentially be taken out at any moment um but then there's also a beauty to it because there's a much m

ore of a celebr celebratory element when we my my cousin Russ and I we again we were stupid kids we shouldn't be doing this but we go into the townships where all a lot of the violence would be happening and we really didn't see most of the violence there it was in in these more protests and and so forth but but the the there's a joy that also comes from lower value of human life there's a real Joy like everyone is like well I mean it's beautiful it's we we have dinner with black friends you kno

w friends with their family we were still pretty young and um and there was just a real joy to it when you accept mortality yeah you can really enjoy life you can really enjoy I mean I think there's actually quite a nice inside I I've never really put it that way but I I think that's right actually I think you you just chill out a bit take things a little less seriously cuz life does end for everybody it does right and if you just head on accept that fact yeah you can just enjoy every single mom

ent and let go of this attachment uh and just enjoy the moment it's a real I do love that we will live longer and so forth but we should live longer with a with the goal of joy and the goal of happiness and peace um not uh some some form of misery that you choose to attach yourself to maximize Joy maximize Joy that's right there's a story that Walter isacson writes about where Elon got beat up pretty bad and you were there and then you also had to watch your dad yell at Elon for an hour calling

him worthless all those kinds of things uh you said it was the worst memory of your life what do you make of such cruelty what do you remember from that time I mean it was horrible I think you know coming back to the point of low value of human life they tried to kill him it wasn't um wasn't it was no holding back so I just watched someone it wasn't just one but but there was a main person and then there was a few others that that piled in they they just uh they tried to kill him in front of me

and I was we were eating sandwiches on a on a staircase at at the school out in outdoor staircase and um uh I just had to I they they were not coming after me and then I just had to watch and I couldn't help it was one of the saddest most difficult um experiences it just was it's just awful just like that life can end yeah it could have been you yeah I think uh uh so I've had I've had a life life a near near-death experience where I where I almost died I went I was in 2010 and I think I think th

at and I I broke my neck and I go to that story in a moment but this was this was different this was a this was this comes back to the low value of human life part where uh if someone had killed my brother if that person had beat him to death which which he was trying to do um it life would have gone on you know is that that's like an insane thought in an American maybe in some tough neighborhoods but for the most part it's a it's another thing yeah the brutality of that the the mundan of the br

utality yeah it makes you think of all the places in the world that that's happening exactly and all the beautiful people that just disappear I always say to people who who have an opinion about America that you know this is a really bad country or or whatever and I say look please go try another country before you say that not to say that America can't get better but please go try another country because not having that perspective or having a perspective that that um uh I don't know that could

chip on their shoulder about the country that they're in okay go go try another country and then come back and tell me and pick any country it doesn't have to be um uh you doesn't have to be some you know very violent country you could pick any country and and and you just realize that actually the the world doesn't think the same way that America thinks and you'll you're going to just learn a perspective that I think uh gives you a better way to critique um where we live in America yeah it's h

umbling you said that your dad was a roller coaster of affection and then verbal abuse Walter Isaacson quotes Barack Obama who said someone once said that every man is trying to live up to to his father's expectations or makeup for his father's mistakes and I suppose that may explain my particular malady uh it's part of that ring true for you what I thought you were going to say was thought you were going to end the sentence with live up to my father's expectations MH that's what most people say

but then you said the second part which is make up for his mistakes MH and I think that's actually that one is that one Rings true for me um he was really is still Al but I don't connect I'm not connected to him but he's very um uh he tght he taught me the phrase I used to have was he taught me what not to do so I still actually learned a lot what what kind of human not to be what kind of actions not to take and so that kind of closer to living up to his mistakes but it's but um my father is su

ch a train wreck that it's not really mistakes it's like intentional actions of what not to do okay don't do that but there's still the trauma of that you know it has an effect on the human psychology and can permeate their time so it has probably complex uh indirect effects on who you are the good and the bad there's a um critique that my friends give me which is when they're talking to me I kind of just Drift Away okay just uh I'm still looking at them still nodding might even respond to their

to their to them in their conversation but I'm actually not there and and I I've realized that actually that grew up because my father would just verbal abuse is one way to say it is abuse but it's more just verbal diarrhea for for hours and constantly saying do you understand like he wants to make sure that I'm paying attention so I I trained myself to look like I'm paying attention but I'm not to disappear to some place disappear to some place wherever that is yeah and um and I do I do that l

ess and less over time but I but that path has been paved somewhere in your mind at childhood so it it could be easy to walk down it you and Elon were close growing up you're still close what did you learn from each other how did you compliment each other yeah I think we are we a good compliment um my I'll talk talk for myself first my my my strength is definitely on the social side I love I love the Gathering Place and I love putting people together in person and I love to have vibrant debates

and conversations I've been doing that forever and including throughing fun parties and stuff where where I bring people together and I really kind of want people to have fun and be but be vulnerable in a in a in a not just like silly partying just but actually like let's all connect definition for me of a good party is people laugh and cry like I want to people I want to have people have have an emotional connection um I go to Bernie man every year and that is there's no question you will cry a

t some point during Bernie man no Small Talk No small talk yes exactly no small talk you're totally right on like most parties not parties but most events you go to our like clubs these sort of nightclubs yeah and I never go to those and my my joke is it's why would I want to go to a place where I pay to shout small talk in the dark good line what it feels like I the only reason I enjoy those places is the full absurdity of exactly that right it's totally ABS what what are we doing what is this

what is this like but I have um so my compliment for my brother was just bringing joy and social connection and he's truly he's an he's an engineering genius I've worked with him forever and we do compliment each other you just came out with a cookbook by the way thank you for giving me my first cookbook I feel legit I love first cookbook I'm going to keep it keep it on the counter and it's going to give me legitimacy when anyone comes over Hey listen I'm basically a chef now that's right exactl

y uh when did you first fall in love with cooking I started cooking when I was 11 years old um my mom uh is just she's she's wonderful but she she's self- admittedly a a a bad cook but but at the time it was a it was and I think anyone with kids goes through this there your kids just want like something that spaghetti bones or a burger or something and my mom would do brown bread plain yogurt and boiled squash you know like the absolute most disgusting things that a child could imagine eating an

d so I I said can I cook and she said yeah if you want to cook no problem so I went to the grocery store and I I back in those there's a butcher separate to the grocery store and went to the Butcher and I said you know what can I cook and he P pulled out a chicken and he said this is uh this is the easiest recipe for you just put it on a pan in an oven a hot oven cuz back then the ovens weren't necessarily like 400° or 450 or whatever and put it in a hot oven for 1 hour and enjoy that was it and

uh so I I went home and uh actually I also brought some french fries I'll tell you that as well so I I'm I'm I'm a kid of course I went french fries so I the roast chicken with french fries and the chicken came out and it was just fantastic it was absolutely fantastic that's incredible by the way yeah you didn't screw it up the first time first of I think that's also kicks off the magic like you if you screw it up and you're like oh maybe this is not for me so for me it really did did kick it o

ff he started he started out on a high no yeah right exactly but I but I tell the French FR part which was a disaster so I cooked the french fries but I didn't heat the oil first so I just put the potatoes in the oil and I waited for it to heat up and um I just was throwing up later that night you can't your body can't ingest that much cuz it sucks the oils in oh oh and so that was a disaster but but at the time it tasted good the M the the the real magic which I also found was one wonderful was

uh when I cooked you know my brother my sister my mom all very very busy very intense people would sit down and we would have a meal together and I was like wow this is a powerful it's a very powerful thing that I've now got where in no other way could I have that connection with my family I mean obviously we stay connected we're very close Etc but in no other way can we sit down and just talk about things or talk about whatever is on our mind or just to just not even talk just to just to be in

in at the table together and I've done that now we through my whole life my kids um still for my family uh and we will do gratitudes at the beginning of our meal and it's just I think the what kept me cooking what made my love of cooking so great was was actually the fact that we would sit down together and be be present with each other and I'm also just also hard with that too so I I also get to be present what is that about food that like brings people together and not just together but like

really together where you're like paying attention right like what is that what what is why is it food like what else does that sometimes maybe alcohol can do that which is a kind of food I guess yeah but I think alcohol is different because you use the standing when you're doing alcohol so you're you're like you're socializing but it's kind you you're going to stay more in the small talk Zone yeah right whereas if you sit down yeah and I I see this in my restaurant in the kitchen in Boulder whe

re we we have every Viewpoint or we go to Denver every Viewpoint in Chicago every Viewpoint and um the physical presence of someone being with right there uh is people are just they're just they're just very different absolutely different to what they are online I think we all know the difference between you know you send an email to someone and they they they misunderstand email mhm right that and you oh if I just talked to the person it would have been fine well this is now happening at scale

you know with all of these uh these these uh what do you call trolling or whatever and I I have I've I've sat at a at the bar and I've had a hardcore Trump supporter and I and I'm just I'm just curious just like tell me what I'm not a trump supporter but but like tell me more and and and it actually draws the conversation out because you're there there for an hour or longer so there's there's no rush to get the answer and I think that's a big difference um I've had uh one time where just a just

a couple months ago um I had someone I was sitting at the community table we have a community table in the restaurant and and he was I didn't know him too well but he asked me did I know that 9/11 was a conspiracy and it didn't really happen it didn't happen yeah M and I was like huh so I I was at 911 I was I watched I mean I watched the towers 4 I was like I was there physically there so there like no allegedly there's no doubt in my mind okay but I but I but I didn't want to but I didn't want

to interrupt his his what he had to say so I let him talk for five minutes 6 minutes 7 minutes and again you're there for a while so you're not in a rush to to jump in and argue and then I shed that I was there and I think because I had been willing to listen to him he was willing to listen to me and he I don't know if he changed his mind certain he doesn't change my mind but but it was actually a pretty cool conversation to kind of get into each other's mind well I think you connect on a differ

ent level not on the level of like the the conspiracy but on the level of basic Humanity yes like that's what you really connect on and then it's almost becomes interesting and fun that you can exchange ideas even crazy ideas out there ideas and kind of play with them like we humans are good at that yeah exactly I like the I like the term play with them because what what you're not trying to do is shut the conversation down you're also not trying to talk down yeah exactly like you know let me ju

st be nice while I totally disagree with this person um you can do that for a few minutes you can't do that for two hours and there's something like about food that completely it I don't know it must be uh evolutionary that it it makes us vulnerable in a way that even just standing there for a long period of time doesn't there's something about you know like when the animals gather to the water or whatever yeah right like this kind of experience where you're just like all right let's let's just

acknowledge together that we need sustenance yeah and somehow that kind of grounds us to like we're just we're just a bunch of descendants of Apes here just kind of like uh grateful to be alive frankly and grateful to be consuming this thing which keeps us alive and in that context you can talk about all kinds of stuff you can discuss Flat Earth and enjoy absolutely absolutely in fact um one of my favorite things to do is uh is is you do a like a Jeffersonian style dinner like let's say five or

six people sometimes you can people will break off in individual conversations that's actually when things break down mhm so that's when you kind of go back to small talk like oh I'm stuck next to this guy I'm just going to do a small talk what you need to do to really create a great conversation is one conversation at the table and that's where uh you know there'll be some some uh simple questions that I'll say I'll say you know what's your middle name and you'll be amazed at the stories you ge

t from that but it's it's about creating vulnerability yeah so they're like oh no one's ever asked me that before so then they they become vulnerable and then then something as simple as what's the most fun thing you've done recently and what is the most fun thing you're looking forward to mhm and I have gotten into with those prom prompts I've gotten into hours long discussions on God I've gotten into hours long discussions on love um I've gotten into hours long discussions on anger it's actual

ly amazing when people are just asked the question like what's the most fun thing you've done lately well why would anger come up well actually they they're in a vulnerable place so it'll just kind of come out of them so you get to see this you get to see this at the kitchen and you said Boulder Denver Chicago yeah and we're going to open in Austin in Austin that's what I saw when when in October is the goal in October is the goal well I mean speaking of characters and human beings Austin is fas

cinating I've um I forget how long ago me a couple months ago I was just uh sitting at a bar and some the two people were talking and they were talking about Marxism and it turns out that they're anarco Communists which is a thing and I got into this convers communist likes drugs that's a good question ask I think I know some of those anyway they were beautiful people I think they they're local from Austin I don't you know I don't know the depth of their uh personal experience of the different k

inds of communist like systems but it was fascinating to listen to them and get to know them and the the humanity the weirdness like the characters it's just I mean I love it one of the reasons I really love Austin I decided to uh be here is just the the cliche thing of Keep Austin Weird I mean there's a lot of weird I love it think I think that um I've talken to a lot of atin I have been here forever and I'm like man you got to hold us accountable we got to keep this place weird 100% which make

s the restaurant seem great because CU you have all these characters come in it's it's great so I look forward to that but you were saying like you get to see humans in real life interact that's one of the beautiful things over food in the book you write Picasso once said the meaning of life is to find your gift the purpose of life is to give it away then you wrote that you believe food is a gift we give ourselves three times a day can you explain that the gift yeah it's actually um I think it's

one of my most powerful life lessons is is we we have to eat so it's it's not it's not like you have a choice you have to eat and so what I choose to do is I'm choose to make it a gift to myself each for each meal and most of the time the best gift is with friends with with family so we out to C cook some scrambled eggs in the morning with my daughter or we'll have dinner with the our family to me it's a it's a gift we give ourselves three times a day you know at least but for the most part thr

ee times a day let's make it a good one what makes it a good one to you like what what aspect what makes it a good one well first definitely eating with with people so that makes it a good one so eating um eating as a in a restaurant or it doesn't have to be my restaurant where you have the energy of of people around you energy of the Town people you don't know creates a little bit of a vibe that you you mentioned the The Watering Hole analogy that animals like sipping at the water but there's a

there's an to that because they're also like looking around going is am I just about to be eaten so there's they're all in it together but we need to have water but there also a little bit of tension as well in the background and I think that's what restaurants do is a very very subtle version of that you're in a room with strangers yeah and you're yeah you're a little cluster okay fine you guys are connected and yeah but you're in a room of strangers and it's just something that adds that ener

gy to to the meal yeah you're a little bit wondering like what does everyone else think about our little cluster right like are we too loud or or or just you also just people are random so something random could happen and also depending on your personality if you're an extrovert maybe you want to show off to the other cluster exactly yeah absolutely totally right I mean you know look at the cowboy hat I mean actually I'll take my hat off when I want to have a quiet meal and I can leave my head

on when I'm so you're aware of the L I'm aware of the effect it has yeah absolutely everyone turns right and then it's back to the watering hole cuz when you wear a cowboy hat you just might actually not yeah I'm I'm like they're going to come they're going to get me first at noon I love it I I got to tell the story so talk to the the the craziness of being of being in the restaurant world where you know you're sitting at a table and anything can happen in the restaurant so there's one time like

15 years ago the um this guy comes up to us and says we'd like to propose to his wife his his girlfriend um and and uh and so we we said okay cool that we've done this before make sure it's all set up 6 p.m. kind of reservation so she shows up and uh we we give her a glass of champagne and just yeah we didn't obviously didn't want to spoil the surprise we just doing everything weend but then he doesn't then he doesn't arrive and then we're like oh man now we're like don't don't leave can we get

you another glass of champ we're doing everything we can because the guy was obviously Earnest earlier we just is he in traffic or whatever and uh out coming through the back door of the restaurant which is you're not allowed to come through the back door of the restaurant a marching band from the school of the University like comes through the restaurant you know fullon Brass Band and the whole thing and um and you know he gets down and he proposes and it's it's it's it's it's it's beautiful s

ure but it's also like chaos man this is chaos this is insane and we would never have said yes to this if he had actually told us what he was going to do well sometimes in life yeah you have to uh do it and apologize you do it and apologize but that talks to that kind of what's the crazy thing that could happen in a it's subtle but it's but it's still there so in 2004 you opened the kitchen it's an American uh beastro restaurant what was it like what's it like running a restaurant The Good the B

ad and ugly what's the what's the easy what's the fun and what's the hard I think the thing that I absolutely love about running the restaurant not eating it I but running the restaurant is the the tangible reaction from from people and uh um you you know you also kind of know when you screwed it up and you also know when you got it right so even it's kind of a weird way to say this but even if the customer's unhappy you know whether you got a right or wrong it's not just about the food you're m

aking but it's about the person's psychological State yeah and you'll even you'll you'll do something that you like you you know that that was not well and their psychological state is they're just in a very happy place and they love it and you're like huh interesting you know like that's not how I would have reacted to that dish yeah and then the other way around you like no I got that right and that that person is just like really unhappy today yeah and it's so hard to read humans because you

have to if you got to write that can look a million different ways depending on the emotional role course that human is living through like I've been some very low points and I've gone to like a restaurant alone and just sitting there and be truly happy with just the Zen aspect of it and it was just a great like a great stake or something like this and maybe to uh other people around me would look like I'm very unhappy just because I'm within my myself with your day yeah within myself but I'm tr

uly happy within that struggle so yeah it's interesting but you can kind of tell yeah you can tell and um what you mentioned being at the bar one of the most gift the the most gifted bartenders really understand that you know it's it it's goes beyond um but what's also great about a restaurant goes beyond the onetime experience that you walk in and you have that experience is the good bartenders they they remember you yeah oh you were in a few months ago and this this is kind of your thing you m

ight need a little time M and um uh other other people come and they want a conversation yeah or other people come in and they're going through a divorce and they just want to be sad for a moment have a scotch yeah and it's like it's amazing what you learn in the in the rest of world to just be connected to humanity yeah what is that about bars that's a different experience you said the the table the the communal the table is when you connect with people learn about each other bars you can somet

imes do that you can talk left and right but but you have the freedom to always break Break Free free like you can say oh okay great I'm going to go back to my meal it's it's kind of like the it's like a it's a friend you can turn on and off at any time M because at the bartender knows that they're trained like if you want attention I'm going to give it to you if you don't I'm going to I'm going to stay away um if you if you want to be chatty I'll be chatty you want to be completely in your head

I'll leave you in your head but there's also strangers kind of next to you that you kind of there's a feeling with a bar that you're kind of Alone Together yeah right and you can reach out you can add some conversation or you can choose not to and you can exit quickly you can exit you can exactly it's a really good exit so so bars are are wonderful and I love going to a bar by myself after work I might might have a Squatch might even not even have alcohol just have something and I just uh and m

aybe have a snack or something before dinner because I'm going to go home and have dinner with with the family and that that 20 minutes it's just a an amazing State change from daytime to nighttime where if I went straight home I'm like still in my head and I'm just trying to try to get grounded and I'm just I'm not as pleasant of a person so that's another powerful use of a bar it's just like a transition time well I mean it would be remiss not to mention the other use of the bar which is like

when you're going through some shit in life and you just go I mean that's sort of it's the cliche thing I've been some my exactly the but like the bar makes The Melancholy somehow like uh rich and beautiful and like it's you feel heard yeah in the silence yes yes you feel heard you like like I said earlier like the the people going through a divorce they don't know where else to go yeah um this is these are mostly men Sometimes women will do it but mostly men will do this and women have other wa

ys of processing it but they just they want a place to be sad and a place where they could feel uh comfortable talking about it if uh they W they're certainly not going to go into too much detail but they just want to say something yeah and the bartender is there for them yeah you don't know where to go you don't know where to go exactly the bar the bar yeah you're right like it for men especially is a place to just go and just I don't know what is that I mean be honest I still do it myself wher

e if I'm at home and you know don't don't have a work thing that I got to deal with and I don't have kids and I don't have uh my wife or a family around um I I don't often cook for myself I I I actually love going to a bar by myself I have a glass of red wine and I have you know usually don't have starter appetizer I just have like a main meal and I just take in the energy of the space was my restaurant or someone else's restaurant just take in the energy and it's so much so much better than bei

ng home and but turning the TV on no no no no no I I want to be out in the restaurant I want to feel the energy of the town uh the other thing that restaurants teach me is the they're the front lines of of the economy or what the better word for it it's like front front lines of the energy of of of how things are going oh like of a people's in general like it doesn't I mean this part of town but it could be the entire Society exactly so you can you can go into a restaurant and I'll use a simple

example and the why is the restaurant empty ah there's a football game going on and that's they PE there's such a large number of people want to watch that game that the restaurant is quiet or it might be like another like World Series or something and you're like wow that's so interesting you can actually watch in America of course American Humanity you can watch them move in their pattern pns just by being in the restaurant yeah yeah and then another time you might be in a restaurant and it's

just jamming and it's a Monday night and you're like what what what is the energy that created this on a Monday night and maybe even on a cold February Monday night what is it and sometimes you can't find out but you can feel it and it's it's like it's my it's my front lines of humanity that I that I also just really love about the restaurants yeah it could be empty could be full empty bars there's some magic to those too yeah you could still feel that energy I don't know I actually prefer empty

bars than than full ones just you and the bartender I mean some of my greatest experience is just the quiet bar with just me and the bartender and they're doing their thing and they've seen so many I've almost like through osmosis somehow feel the stories that that bartender has seen has felt has heard yeah and all that kind of stuff I mean that it's it's not to be sort of uh like spiritual about it but it seems like it's in the walls or something like there's the history is felt and some of th

ese bars are actually very old and and it's wonderful like there many in Europe like this but there's a couple in New York City few hundred years old and you you and they're still operating non-stop for that long and man you feel it yeah let me ask you some questions about ingredients what's your favorite ingredient to cook with for me cooking is an art right so be like asking me what's my favorite favorite paint color that use it doesn't it's not that it there it isn't like um there isn't one i

t's more like when there is one it really is one you know like there's Peaches on the on the cover of this cookbook those peaches that those were in August Colorado peaches it just doesn't get any better than that on that day at that moment that was the best that was the but that only lasts for a week and then they don't taste so great yeah but damn they so good in that moment and you just can't stop wanting to use that ingredient they look really good they are so good what's your favorite uh fr

uit I'm I love veggies and fruit what's your favorite fruit I love a smoothie Bowl so I do sort of a berries raspberries uh but I but I use fruit more in the form of a smoothie Bowl than I eat fruit that often I like I like an apple or banana but for most part I prefer like the Blended not me I love the way you casually set it like an apple for me a good apple is pretty great for me it's a problem I think probably Cherry's number one probably uh what are they called granny smooth apples number t

wo oh yeah those are great but try when sometime come to Colorado in August and when you try those peaches it is like heaven has arrived in your mouth it is so ridiculously good but just for a week in a just for a week you can't have it all year long okay uh what about veggies you wrote that Chef Hugo that you worked with the co-founded the kitchen with taught you the power of a good vegetable yeah what's the power of a good vegetable so I trained in New York right as a French chef but it wasn't

very much ingredients focused it wasn't very much uh sourcing focused he came from the River Cafe in London which was one of the N the ogs of the farm to table and uh still going strong today and he he taught me the the value of getting to know farmers and getting to know vegetables from that farm versus vegetables from that farm and they're actually different soil's a little different way the way they grow it a little different it's the opposite of the industrial machine where everything needs

to look exactly the same and um sometimes you'll get carrots that are kind of ugly and deformed but there's much sweeter than the carrots you'd get for other purposes so you'd make a carrot puree out of that and then you take carrots that are that are more typical in shape and size you might roast roast them for uh for dinner so the the it's the appreciation for uh vegetables in general um I I probably would say carrots is my favorite just because I've us that was an example of one where i' I'v

e really had to learn how to use the the the the different types of carrots that come from around from all of our farms and um it's fun you know it's a fun ingredient if you just went to Whole Foods or just went to a grocery store and you just got exactly the same carrot every time less fun but go to a pharmers market and see what you get and you'll you'll see they're quite different yeah carrot for me is probably number one I have uh rigorous detailed rankings for fruit and veggies aming we'll

get into I'm just well I am the kind of person that would have like a spreadsheet for that great but I'm mostly just making fun of myself but I do love carrots uh I wish they weren't so full of carbs but yeah I'm not I'm just not anti carbs you know I think the anti carb yeah yeah I think think they played a role you know like I um have a great friend who's an amazing doctor and um he did some tests for me and everything and and turns out I have a gluten allergy and I was like okay uh so what th

at means is I shouldn't eat gluten it's like yeah it's like okay but I also have hay fever and that that means I should not go out into nature MH so I was like N I think I'm going to go out into nature and maybe what I'll on bread and pasta or like the true carbs I'll I'll just have it when it's really good mhm because when it's really good it's really good and you don't want to miss that most of the time okay find some crummy bread whatever like I can skip that part but I find all of these diet

s are like no none of this or super this super that I I I wonder if they're just like um like a people are just looking for something to hang on to but these diets have been around forever and if they work then we would know that yeah I think one of the biggest problems with diets is it adds stress when you do have that perfect bowl of pasta if you're if you have categorized yourself as a low carb eating person you might be very stressed about enjoying this thing when you should just let go let

go this is your cheat day or whatever yeah yeah and I've heard that and actually I I I I have friends who do that their cheat day and I say to them I'm only going to hang out with you on your cheat day because that's when you're actually yeah I I mean I I would say like for me there's things that make me feel really good but they're not rules they're not uh they're they're like go-to favorites speak like in terms of diet and so on for example I've mostly been eating once a day oh wow for for the

longest time but that's not a rule okay like it's it's completely flexible and I most have been eating very low carb okay but you must be eating a lot of food in that one meal yeah it's not you know because it's usually a very sort of meat heavy it's not like portions are not that big so your body needs food yeah but I need so you're talking about like 2,000 calories what you find out is like that dinner is like the most social time of the day yeah I mean I have kids in the morning so if you ha

ve kids it's for sure a morning experience but if you don't then you're right yeah but like you said I I deviate you know I'm more afraid of missing the per the perfect dessert the perfect breakfast the perfect uh bowl of pasta pizza all that kind of stuff and then I don't think if it as a cheat day I think it's um well if you're only eating one meal a day you can eat whatever you like well well like I I want to make clear that it's not one meal a day always and I'm like this very strict thing u

h it's you always have to be open to the experience to the new experience uh otherwise you do miss out just like you said hey fever like I think if you want to be really safe you should never leave your home yes just w we learned during Co if you wrap yourself in Cotton wool in your basement yes you're you're not going to die from covid you might die from a lot of other things of just pure misery yeah well you might live forever we don't know but it certainly doesn't maximize the joy of whatever

whatever makes life worth living it doesn't maximize that yeah exactly you wrote In the book that Anthony Bordain was one of your Heroes M uh can you speak to what inspired you uh about him yeah he wrote a book called Kitchen Confidential in the '90s I was in cooking school at the time it was so he romanticized the kit cooking in the restaurant so well his writing is great he kind of got me into like oh that's cool I I want to do that that was it was it was it was cool uh so I you know got into

cooking school got more engaged in it and I and I was like this had this fomo feeling of I wanted to experience what it's like to be in in the back when you cooking school you are you are in the back had a restaurant we would serve people but it's not the same thing as actually being in a like a real restaurant it's like you're in a submarine with with you know your your teammates and you got to win tonight like it's a real it's a real energy and so that that was a big inspiration I followed hi

m over there so sad that he he he chose to in his life but I also had met with him a few times not not like one-on-one over dinner or anything but just like met with him and and um I just felt his love for for food and truly just love for food he gave the advice of Don't Be Afraid get excited and cook with love yeah I've used that phrase especially the cook with love one I mean when you know one of the things about which we talked about this earlier where you get quick tangible feedback from a c

ustomer when you're in the restaurant um I know when I didn't put love into that dish I know when one of my line Cooks did not put love into that part of the dish I know when that expert person did not put love into look you know double checking the dish before putting it on the table I I you just know and and cook with love is uh when you do it for your family oh actually especially when you do it with for your family the food isn't doesn't have to be perfect but you're cooking with love that's

why you love scrambled eggs I do that it's that's in the book Kimble scrambled eggs yes you promised to make me scramble legs I'm going to hold you to it that's great uh a cooking school you mentioned the French Culinary Institute I heard it was a a bit of a rough experience in parts are would call it it's it's not a rough experience in that in a beautiful way yeah yeah it's exactly it's not like I'm a victim of it it's it's uh it's rough in that they intentionally make it rough so the the scho

ol costs the same price as Harvard to go to you show up you have to it's an 18-month program you are allowed to drop out at any time you don't get your money back 25 people started six people graduated and the people who graduated I graduated but man it was there were times where I'm like I I can't handle this I mean I would literally say to to to my friends oh I got to go to cooking school I'm going to go get screamed at for the next six or seven hours yeah and I had this little French chef who

was my uh Nemesis does he still live in your head somewhere he still lives in my head exactly heally does he's like 5'2 or something and uh and I remember him screaming so much at me that this he's like the short guy I'm 6'5 the spittle would land on my face nice and I would just have to sit there I stand there and take it it was a very humbling experience I did learn though that it it's it's intentionally rough so I took a little bit of the um edge off it one day when that same Chef had come o

ver to me and said move over a little bit and I moved over and he took my carrots whatever and started just chopping everything and like perfectly and then he said okay now you just can come back and then he went over to someone else it started screaming at them saying that look even Kimble can do this and you can't do this and I was like this whole thing's like a psych psycho game so it did take the edge off when I realized there was like the guy the guy was intentionally trying to break you do

wn and they do this apparently in the Army I've not been to the Army but they they they need you to they need to break you down everything you know is worthless so that then we can teach you and you can come out of it with at what with what actually we want you to know Are there specific technical lessons you remember you learned from that sort of how to cut carrots or how to approach food how to prepare food how to think about food how to carry yourself in the kitchen you know all of those thin

gs um I think that the one of the most beautiful lessons was actually scrambled eggs um so the there's different layers of shfs so they all master shfs they're all very well-known people and everything but but Alan sua was one of the chief like main main guys and he just passed away Master Chef and uh everything kind of stopped when he would show up in the kitchen and he would teach very few things and all of the other chefs who would you know the same ones that were screaming at us just like it

was like the Red Sea partying like they have total respect for this human and he can do whatever he wants and the one of the things he wanted wanted to teach was how do you make an omelette a French omelette and it's really fundamentally the same thing it's a soft scrambled egg that you that you fold and uh the love that he put into the time with us and of course he's a legend there were moments like that where I'm like wow okay he he also he also just like the other she didn't have any concern

berating anyone so he berated our Master Chefs nice saying I don't trust these people to teach you how to make scrambled EGS so I'm going to do it instead what I mean can you speak to that cuz you know a lot of people hearing this would be like scrambled eggs like why do you need to be a Master Chef to to really make SCS it's a it's a well first of all um for me and and it's it's a it's a learning Journey forever so so I make I make scramble legs I mean almost made it 10 10,000 times or more wh

atever so it's like jro Dreams of Sushi Kimble dreams of scrambled egg pretty much okay so I will um I will wake up and uh be held accountable my by my kids to make scramble this happens every morning and um it's I I know all the steps muscle memory level kind of steps how much while I know it and then I'll cook it and it's very meditative for me because you have to focus so most scrambled eggs soft scrambled eggs recipes are 10 15 minutes uh to get them to that that perfect softness and the the

the recipe that I got from uh chef chef Alan was um was something that you do in 90 seconds MH but it requires Total Focus like if you like look up for a second you're going to miss you're going to miss the the the perfect moment where you have to stop and get those eggs out of the pan because once the pan eggs will keep cooking and so it's this meditation and it's sometimes you hit it like perfectly but most times could have been a little softer could have been a little firmer could have been

a little bit more salt could have been a little more pepper um uh and so so what's really fun about the morning is my kids are kind of into it so they're sort of like we we critique the eggs yeah every morning do they have a rating system we're back to the spr it's more of a it's more like and again it also come back to how people feel right so like can be in a bad mood and they can be grumpy like a Michelin star system like what no no there not it's more like oh yeah I uh I like my a little mor

e gooier or or yesterday it was this way a little bit more salt a little less less salt um salt is usually the one that is because um uh not all salts are are equal so if you are used to working with a certain kind of salt and then you're you just are forced for some ran out of salt to use some use some other salt you you actually don't know how to use it you really you need really want to have the same salt all the time yeah you have a page on salt in the book which is fascinating salt is you g

ot to get to know your salt you got to you got to love your salt and you got to use it over and over and over again yeah and it will teach you uh how to use that salt by you know your pallette will tell you how salty you like things but if you change it up and you mix up a whole bunch of salt you've now multiplied your learning path so for me I my favorite salt is is uh kosal salt and I like to use that all the time and if uh if I ever change it I might sprinkle a little bit of molden salt a cru

nchy uh sort of a flaky salt but it's more for for that at when you're actually eating texture yeah it gives you texture as well as salt exactly you wouldn't use it on scrambled eggs but the but if you switch out your salts it's a different weapon need to learn it you I like I like how you know usually there's wine connoisseurs you're saying you going back to sort of farm to table when you're talking about carrots in that same rigor and Nuance you have to consider the different Farms involved fo

r the carrots in that same way you have to consider the different salts yeah with like and also not even all kosha salts are the same it's the particular salt that you like get to know it be get in a relationship with it it's like great people learn so much how they in terms of the uh the measurement the proportion the the amount you put of salt you put in are you doing that like exactly or are you doing it by feel so it's by feel and that's where you get the relationship so in fact I have a in

the the book in The cookbook I have QR codes that people can scan because uh what I struggle with recipes is they don't they don't teach technique right they can they can describe the technique but they don't teach the technique it's it's a technique it's not a recipe and so one of the one of the lessons is how do you salt a steak mhm and the answer is not here's a teaspoon and you do it this way the answer is use kosher salt so you can see with your eyes CU they're little flakes how much salt i

s on your steak and then taste cook it and then taste it and know you think you need more or you need it less okay now next time put a little more on because you can see it and it's about learning the the the fact that you you want to be able to see how much salt is on the steak so that you can then train yourself for the future of how much salt you want to your steak Yeah but then the steak and the salt kind of dance together it depends on where the steak came from true that's true all the thic

kness of the steak that'll make a difference but for the most part if you learn if if you're able to see it versus table salt for example just just just disappears you just can't see what you're putting on your steak you can't really learn as a result I think you talk about roast chickens where your love of food be uh began what about steak what's love a good steak so so great so in in the in the scho in the French school you add sauces and all this kind of stuff and in Boulders when you realize

like there's a beauty to the to the basic ingredient yeah like a good um uh New York strip from a good Rancher that that U you know the the there's a lot of uh discussion controversy on how how cattle should be raised and we have a we have a very uh different approach which is we know how our Kettle are raised we go to the farm we get to know the the Rancher we and um sometimes you do want to have them be finished on like they'll be grass-fed for the most part but then then there's some sort of

cool recipe of food you're giving them that will then make them taste better um and sometimes it it is actually pretty good to have 100% grass-fed I've had some amazing uh ranches that that show me that the flavor is all there for the average person that you know might go to Whole fuse or grocery store I think the Simplicity of a of of a good steak it's it it is important to get good sourcing but also it's just it's just it's just good what's your favorite cut of meat it's New York strip probab

ly New York strip for me yeah newor strip yeah I like the fact that it's lean but if you want the fat you can dive into that little strip of fat or you can leave it alone because you you don't want it that night um and it's a uh it's also a great stake for or uh adding something like if you want to you could either do a a pepper sauce or you could do a lot of ground pepper which gives it a peppery kind it's not not sauce but it's a peppery steak it's a really good steak for like a a canvas for f

or other things but the basic ingredients you're playing with is salt and pepper and just actually I will say there's another one uh garlic when you when you can one of this is my favorite recipe for for a steak is you you season it both Sid salt and pepper you sauté it um in in a little olive oil barely barely anything and um you're getting a nice crisp like a golden dark golden brown on both both sides the other the other trick with cooking a steak is don't touch it you know just put one side

when you're ready to turn it turn it around don't touch any other any other time but at the end you take a dab of butter and you crush a clove of garlic you don't even chop it you just crush the glove and you you put the two of them in the in the pan and you just roll the steak around in the garlic butter I think that's the one bold move Kim bold move what do you uh since you're in Austin quite a bit opening a restaurant here what do you think about barbecue it's kind of the the Texas way well I

would say there's an Austin way which is an Austin which and and actually even Austin would say there's a suburb of Austin way I think that actually the the adventure of food is wonderful um I would absolutely say that that Austin is is one of the great food uh cities of America and barbecue is one of is one of its gifts that that it gives the city but but you go to one and the other and you'll have a different approach and that that's the part I love is where there a real celebration of the Ar

tisan so um you might go to one and they have a they have a style that they love and they've been doing it for years and then you'll go to another and they have a style that they love and they've been doing it for years and it's it's not they're still barbecue but they're actually different and it's really beautiful to see that and that's I think that's what that's that's what food culture is like it just builds up over time by people who love this style of cooking well I especially love the com

munal like how they structure restaurants usually or I I don't even want to call it a restaurant cuz it's a it it doesn't feel like a restaurant it feels like a Tavern or some sort like Terry blacks is like that it's like yeah they also have like paper towels get as messy as you like and it's a whole roll of paper towels they don't just give you a napkin they know what you're getting into yeah and it there's just wood everywhere and it's kind of has this feel like this place has been around fore

ver it's not changing I know it's the 21st century with the internet and all this kind of nonsense that you people are building but really this is all about same it's been the same for Generations we're doing it the same that kind of feel if you want to escape the world in that way and then truly connect with people one of the other things that will happen in in a town like Austin is there'll be a barbecue joint that is just legendary right and then out of that will come someone who wants to do

their own barbecue joint and they'll take the learning from that barbecue joint they'll open up a new one but it won't be the same as the other barbec you joined part of it is like dude like don't just do the same thing do something what what what do you have to say but also part of it is if you're in the world of food like as an art form and you want to go open up another barbecue joint you you you kind of want to prove yourself like I deserve to have a barbecue joint in this town I know this i

s one of the Holy grills of barbecue and and people will follow you like they're following a musician or they're following an artist and they are excited to see what your version is M and how well you can pull it off it's like it's actually that's what I love that's what I mean by like a a city with a food culture that Austin has that there's also like a legend to certain places certain places are more than just the food they create it's like that could be a burden they have to like live up to t

he leg legendary nature of the name our restaurant in Boulder the kitchen is 20 years old um we're very well known very well respected and and we do have to live up to the name I think that our our restaurant lives up to its name in it in not just the food it's like you walk in and you feel the restaurant and that that is also uh it's something we we've just done naturally um the space is a 120y old building used to be a brothel and was bookstore like story history this was a literally this was

a um a mining town right so back in 1800s this was built late 1800s um uh that sort of Brussels Riv that was a thing yeah and so there's an actual tunnel under in the basement that goes to the local hotel that uh would be used for going back and forth between the hotel and and rothel without people knowing and the tunnel is now concreted up but you can go about 20 30t into the tunnel but you go into you go into the space and it's actually an old space you feel like it's been there forever yeah i

n 2010 you had a life-threatening accident uh that changed the way you see life the world also the way you see food and cooking uh can you tell me the story of it yeah uh so 2010 I was 37 I had opened the restaurant uh in 2004 and I had loved the restaurant world loved it but it I didn't really want to grow a restaurant company that wasn't my my goal and so I got went back into technology and I had uh I had gone from something that I love to something that I like for me it was like was like chew

ing sawdust every day I just couldn't believe that I had gone from that had changed my life had gone back into technology and now I do do work in technology and I I I do love it but I found a better relationship with it but I was really really unhappy um from the outside I was a sort of CEO of a hot startup but from the inside I was just just very unhappy and I um was in Jackson Hall and I was doing these very aggressive snowboard runs and I'm at the time a pretty pretty good aggressive snowboar

der and I remember saying to myself look I've got kids I need to chill on this I'm next day was Valentine's Day next day tomorrow is Valentine's Day I'm just going to have a nice day with the family and and my my wife time and um we've been to a children's run to do the inner tube run and the tubes are small but everyone uses the same tube so I'm 6'5 and uh my kids are four years old and everyone uses the same size tube that should have been a message to me not not to get on this thing but I wen

t and got on it and on the first run and I went down and you're going super fast 35 miles an hour and the tube hit the braking mats and it stopped the little tube just stopped where where it was it just threw me I was my my head was uh facing downhill so that's created the wrong center of gravity so instead of breaking it just through me I landed on my head my head went into my chest like compression into my chest down like that I ruptured my spine at C6 and C7 and in like the blink of a second

I was paralyze I was like like like what you know just like impossible to impossible to comprehend and that they take me put this they put this big thing on my halo on my head and they take me to the hospital which was more of a medical clinic and I'm just like what was going on here do you remember your thoughts from the moment it happened to like way to get to got to the hospital I remember being so this is a one of the things that actually the doctor said caused the most damage was um I was t

hrown from the tube and I and I heard this big crunch sound in my body and I knew that I was hurt but I didn't feel any pain just Al that's that's also like why wouldn't you feel pain cuz you you don't paralyze you don't feel pain and so and I'm face down on the on the snow and the snow is burning my face cuz you know you can't you can't do that you need something and I found a way to turn myself around so that my face wouldn't be on the ground but I knew I couldn't move and um uh that they said

actually caused more damage than well obviously the accident created the opening but once once you move your body the blood goes into the spinal column at a faster rate and that that is what caused my paralysis but I remember that and I um I remember getting into the into the the the ambulance um did you think you were going to die at that like in those seconds minutes it was a different feeling of death it was it's more it was more of a what is going on here like I just was it was more like I

can't make sense of what's going on it was uh uh it was there was a moment where I got to the hospital and they they did this MRI and the doctor comes up to me and says look we've we've done this MRI and uh so so I'm now now I'm in the hospital and I'm like can't I can't move but I also don't have feel any pain so I'm like it's very confusing your body looks like you can move it like look see I'm moving my hand like it looks like you can do that and then it just doesn't move it there there's no

there's no there's no feed back Loop that it's not moving you your brain even thinks it's moving but it's not moving it's like the worst like most terrifying thing so the doctor says the way the way you broke your neck was really at a Zer degree angle that so rare but as a result there is no twisting of the of the spine we think that we can get the blood out of your of your spinal column and you should get uh some or maybe all of your movement back and um uh I was like oh okay I think I'm going

to be fine I guess I'm going to be fine and then I realized I had tears just streaming down the side of my face and I was like Whoa man I have no idea what is going on so this kind of intense state of confusion I wonder if it's a weird psychological defense mechanism of like Tak taking you away from the obvious possibility of death yeah it was a for sure all the events all of the defenses were up I don't know else to describe it but there was there was denial yeah there was uh uh this there was

this curiosity of like why is there no pain like that's that when they did actually repair me and fix me it was 3 days later the pain was Indescribable how much pain I was in but there was no pain for 3 days this is like human body is fascinating man wow so they were able yeah so they did the surgery but I had this I had this very clear voice in my head that uh kind of determined that it's God I'm not religious but I don't know how else to describe the voice and this voice is very clear you're g

oing to work with kids in food look okay where did that come from I'm like Tech CEO I have a restaurant should I and then we were working with some kids in schools with like some you know helping a local nonprofit and like no you're just going to work on kids and food U uh my good friend Antonio and my brother were in the hospital and I was like I'm going to work on kids and food you know CU they're like he's crazy he's lost his mind but but not not not that they were already no one was arguing

with me but I was like I'm just going to do that I need to say it out loud and I remember resigning from my my job as CEO from the hospital and um that was it it was it was just clear it was a clear voice wasn't for a moment wasn't like a flash of light or anything it was probably two weeks of clear voice of clarity Clarity exactly Clarity and no monkey brain nothing no monkey brain just Clarity so you're not a religious person but you do call it the voice of God who is that God do you think lik

e who is that that where where did that come from well I've done iasa and I've spoken to what they call mother a which is another version of of God it's a it's a divine presence is maybe I think it's a better way to say it I've also had this debate in my head like maybe it's just me I'm talking to me and it's my my uh peaceful uh more Kinder more less caught up in the emotion of the day P version of Me Maybe it's me okay maybe it is but it's there but who are you like how deep does it go what wh

at does you mean you could be you know first of all like the depth of what the human mind even is is a a gigantic mystery Consciousness all of it yeah like who are you it's like yeah maybe it is you but then maybe in order to build you we need to build the universe and the entire like you are actually a fundamentally a part of this whole Human Society so the piece the pieces of humans that you've interacted with are all within you and then maybe the history of the humans that came before also in

there and maybe the entirety of life on Earth is also in there and whatever the the whatever brought life about on Earth is in there somewhere so that's all you yeah all of the the which is really true evolution is it literally is true that that that we all are the photons from the sun came in part fish we all came from all came from that I think this is one you know so one of the uh one of the things I do is meditate and this was I've been meditating for many many years and what way I meditate

is I I sit and I listen to my thoughts and I simply just do that for 15 to 20 minutes and it just calms the calms the nervous system and I I might breathe and just be breathe through because it's been a stressful day and it's just a beautiful way to I kind of do it around I remember I said I used to do a scatch at at the bar after work now I go meditate for instance it's a little less a little bit better for my uh for my for my for my health but um meditation I was taught um was Sam Harris actu

ally taught me this uh was is not so much just about watching your thoughts but realizing that you're a watcher you're actually a watcher you're not just like who who is the person watching that that's you actually your thoughts are are floating through your mind but you are the Watcher and I was like Ah that's very interesting okay so I'm going to learn that I'm going to I'm going to be the Watcher and what I learned was I'm watching these thought go by and there's a consistent other presence a

nd I'm like what is that consistent other presence that's not a thought that is not a it's not a not something I can kind of let it float away and it doesn't even want to float away it isn't it's just it's just a consistent other presence that I can watch and feel so you you are the Watcher watching the feelings and thoughts but there's also other presence next to you almost yes yeah that's how I feel and it's a beautiful presence it's not not a presence that is trying to intervene it's not a pr

esence that is trying to tell you what to do it's just a beautiful presence and that might be the the the thing part of the thing you met when uh you took iasa I learned about mother I where you have this experience of talking to actually I would say the closest thing to breaking my neck that feeling was I can you go through that experience cuz I'm actually traveling to the Amazon jungle in a in a month I'll probably do iasa for the first time okay so I need a preview unofficial instruction manu

al yeah sure so first of all I think many many different ways to do it right so and I have done I've done many many different ways um there's a very Western medicine approach where you have uh doctors that uh look after you during the day you know put an eye mask on you're on on a futon and you're really are in a western medicine setting and it's a frankly for me has been the most powerful experience I feel the most comfortable because I'm part of western medicine in my upbringing The Other Extr

eme that they're kind of in between would be very probably a Peruvian ceremon where probably where we going to go very much um uh about you do it in a community you do it with others and you you feel people go through their pain and their processing um so I I know I know the whole gamut but the the thing that the thing that I found most powerful about it uh and profoundly powerful I would say first of all it's non-recreational so no don't no one should do this for a good time it's is not a good

time this is uh this is a very almost traumatic but in again a beautiful way I actually going to say that way but it's not it's not traumatic it's profound so it's it's more like you don't have have you you you you you really leave who you were before behind and then you become the person you will be afterwards and that that's never an easy thing yes exactly and sometimes what what I recall is was arguing with brother a and saying no I'm I'm fine like what what what are you talking about like le

ave me alone [Laughter] and uh yeah how did that work [Laughter] out uh but before 2010 the accident and the the two transformational experiences you had you were a very successful uh Tech CEO uh maybe go back to the early days uh with zip 2 in 1994 you and Elon started zip 2 tell me a story of that that yeah so 94 we actually did a road trip around the US to brainstorm about what what we wanted to do after college what was the road trip like was it that was awesome so we went from Silicon Valle

y to to Philadelphia nice and my brother's uh old like a very really cool you know it's one of those very old BMWs not not not ones like from the' 60s or 70s but it wasn't but but the car didn't work it would break down all the time but we had um we had a blast you know we just I remember going through needles on the border of California Arizona it's a town called needles it's the hottest place in America mhm and the engine could was not cooling so we had to put the heat on so we for the heat bl

asting to cool the keep the engine cool and keep the windows down because that you can't stand the heat in the car but actually the outside heat is hotter than the inside heat so you're you're just you're just in in a furnace you're driving through night even I can't imagine doing that in the day yeah it was it was a it was a wonderful we took us a few weeks I think three weeks maybe first time Across America first uh like a road trip like that yeah for sure um but it was really not a road trip

for tourist sites we we went to the weirdest places um and actually I would say we didn't we didn't go to them we broke down in the weirdest places because that's what that's when we stopped yeah dur Mee any interesting people I remember um we broke down in the bad lands of South Dakota mhm about an hour from Rapid City and there that road is empty and so we actually slept in in the car because there was there was just no one around you no cell phones in those days and eventually a trucker picke

d us up I was just like man you you guys are the dumbest kids on the planet was like 21 he was maybe 22 and uh but but he was so he was so nice to us and so kind to us and found us a mechanic in rep a city and and then found us a tow truck and yeah you find you find the most wonderful people when when you're when you're in a place of distress people uh people do want to take care of other people they help you yeah they want to help and especially when you're on a road trip I because I I've taken

a road trip across the United States and there's a part of people where they they really love that they um I think part of them wants to do that also wants to kind of Escape whatever the local struggles just whatever the mundaneness the struggle of Life are a road trip is a kind of thing where you're like you know what I'm going to get away from it all and I'm going to experience life in the full the Epic sort of Jack carak way of seeing America and the people not the tourist sites just the hum

ans yeah exactly we this was not tourist related we did of course one we stopped at Mount Rushmore at night which you can see nothing yeah yeah we we thought that was hilarious you you couldn't see Mount Rush more that's great it was like well we we physically were here we a photo of us not in the dark you could just say you went to the Grand Canyon too at night uh and just visit different places when the car broke down I love it uh so yes you took the road trip before founding zip 2 yeah so so

I had a experience in college running a house painting business that for me was my first uh experience with success it was very very hard it was a franchise where where they teach you know students how to paint houses and and but I I was good at it you know I um I built a team of 30 people but then after about two years and so I was like I I had a taste of hey I'm not I'm not unable to do this in fact my most vulnerable place I remember as an entrepreneur was I I had U I had I just loved the ide

a of Wall Street and finance was kind of allured by it this is in late 80s I'm in high school and there was a lot of these books liars poker and others that came out I was like a man this this is awesome these people must be amazing so I went to business school and I I busted my ass to get like a kickass summer job and I got a job in one of the main Banks and it was in Toronto but it was like the original Wall Street and I was I was so disappointed with the people that I was around I was just li

ke whoa I totally misunderstood what what what the banking world is it was very large Bank I'm sure if I'd gone to a more aggressive one maybe I would have had a better experience and I say aggressive meaning someone was paying attention like this was just a uh just people kind of showing up and not doing much you know and um any actually this funny so this is great so the so 1991 92 so one of those Summers uh the the but the summer job was literally you go to the the they print out the sales fo

r all for all brokerage houses for the whole company like it's a pile of papers that's maybe four or five feet tall and you have a pencil and you add things up using your pencil and a calculator and I had known about Lotus 123 forever Excel was coming out and I was like hey guys you know that there's a different way to do this and they're like don't talk to us just the just your job yeah go do it just use the pencil so I went to the head of the data I just asked you know those those days you hav

e the manila envelope where you can you you just write the name of the person that you want this to go to and it'll go to them it's like email I guess but you there's no there's no filter so you I there's spam filter there's no spam filter so sent a note I wrote a nice letter to the to the database administrator who I didn't really know and I said would you be open to me saying hi and maybe I can get access to the file rather than print the damn thing out and use a pencil and she responded right

away and we hit it off I mean she was great and so she's like of course you can have I can't believe these guys are doing what they're doing so um for the first couple of weeks of the summer I I wrote I wrote code in Lotus 123 that would um you it's going to sound crazy but you type in the date range you type in the geography and you type in the you know which part of the bank you care about and it will literally just create it a new spreadsheet and it would just the macro would print it out it

was like a magic trick for these guys and incredible I know no it's like it's a sounding that that's I mean for me I'm like guys this is so obvious and uh um so I I got all that done and this job was supposed to take three or four months because it's really you're doing this with a pencil and now I'd created this macro that you could not just not just do it you could do it you could tweak it and say I want this this area of the world or this area of um or this this month or you know that month

compared to that month you know all the normal things you could do with a spreadsheet and um the software was on a floppy disc and I was like here's the software and just put it put it into your computer all right now now load open one two three and and it just pops up with a little box that type in your dates and you know the whole little I coded little thing like that and um what I what I was astounded by was not not so much that it was a magic trick it was the lack of appreciation for Innovat

ion they just looked at it they were like huh that's nice M and I was like you just we're going to have someone spend hundreds of hours doing something and now it's something you can do in a minute yeah if that doesn't you excitement Mo yeah like if that doesn't move your needle what the heck and so I was really disappointed with with the banking World anyway so that that was that was also fun such a good example though yeah and then also see the possibility of where that goes but then so then I

I I got back to business school and I I I canceled all of my business classes I possibly could I was actually in business school so I couldn't cancel them all all finance courses like I'm I'm done with that industry I'm not going back so the the vulnerable part for me was my whole family is full of entrepreneurs and there was there was this franchise to do house painting and I genuinely was afraid that I wouldn't be good at it and I was like wow I really am afraid of failure it's very easy to a

void entrepreneurship but if your whole family's entrepreneurs you and you go in and you aren't good um I was really afraid you're going to have to face that failure every time you meet your family yes and um it's it's uh our family wonderful and everything but they but pretty much everyone's an entrepreneur and and of of course not everyone is perfect not everyone's you know doing it successfully all the time but when you're when you're young and you want to prove yourself it really was putting

my heart on my sleeve is I started the the the business in this part of Toronto and for the first paint the houses in the summer but you do all your sales pre before the summer and you know all the way till a April I was just not succeeding and I was like oh I'm like oh my God I'm just I'm just going to fail and I I remember that I was like my my whole nervous system was like I'm a failure and I remember had this general manager who who you know he was like you seem like you know what you're do

ing why are you not making any sales and so so he actually went with me on a few sales calls and I was like he's like oh you're he he was great you're doing this wrong you're doing that wrong you're doing this wrong and Chang those three things and it was like a uh like a like a watershed moment just like all of a sudden and I and I just follow the instructions of what this guy told me all of a sudden every single sale I would make I was like I can't believe that I it was really my my um lack of

humility to learn from someone else I was like no I'm going to prove that I can do this without your teachings and I I was going to fail so to you that humility is essential for the entrepreneur especially young I would say if we if we have an openness to learning which does require humility um you you you course correct you help get other people to help you course correct but it it does start with humility because if you if you try and pretend you have all the answers you don't so you went fro

m that to founding zip 2 that was an interesting time in the history of tech yeah what I mean what was it like you mentioned uh the first people to look at a map uh basically a directions yeah so mapping had been on the internet but vector-based mapping had not so that's the ability to zoom in or zoom out and it's really data versus an image that comes across and uh we we came went to this company called navtech my brother and I and we just asked for the data and they this is Silicon Valley they

wrote us onepage letter that we had to sign and said here's all of our data that we own it you don't own it but you can use it on the internet and if you ever make any money on it you have to call us MH that was it yeah we're like okay that sounds great so we put it up on the internet and back in those days it might take 60 to 120 seconds to actually give you an answer back but it was amazing the door too directions the ability to take a map and zoom in and zoom out uh we use these things 10 ti

mes a day now um it was amazing we were the first two humans to see it on the internet like this stuff didn't even exist to the world like the navtec was building it for never L for HZ never loss which would come out a few years later this was not something that people knew existed this was something we discovered that it existed and we're like well let's put it on the internet and share it with the world what did the two of you feel like to like to see that magic did you know amazing it was lik

e what like did you I mean the amazing just that it's cool but also that you could see the future that this could transform I don't think I don't think people understand before this moment you could not be told your directions yeah you just could not like today we live in this world where we told our directions all the time before this moment you could not be told your directions yeah and all of a sudden you could yeah it wasn't like a little thing yeah there's uh there's a bunch of things that

we once we have we take it for granted and that takes like a day for people transition totally it's like boom oh okay cool right exactly exactly and it's when you see maybe when you're one of the first humans to see that thing you're like holy shit holy shit this is going to be used by everyone all the time forever so zip 2 was a success I would say this was a success but it was also a very hard company to build and I mean it because the internet in those days was a boom time we were being funde

d but you couldn't make any money and so it was actually really hard the constant outside criticism that we aren't for real this is not going to survive this is not going to and it it it started to feel that way we're like wow man this this is uh we are doing something that is great that people are using and we were top 100 website um most of our work was through folks like the New York Times so we even even much much busier than that but the but the um but there was just no money at it and even

today go to Google Maps there's no money in it it's just uh it's just local search that that is needed for everyone and so it became an add-on to search but even remember in those days you couldn't make money at search either mhm no one had figured out adwards or anything they didn't realize how big of a business this was but we all knew this was a thing mhm and everyone was using it but didn't quite know how to make money couldn't make money when we got acquired it was a Bittersweet moment bec

ause compact that owned alter Vista wanted to merge so that's sort of regular search with with the best search engine at the time preg Google with zip 2 which would be the best local search and it would be a Yahoo killer and the the uh compac just wanted to make money by taking the company public but they wouldn't give us any stock they would just they paid us cash which turned out actually very well for us but because the whole internet Bubble Burst we didn't know that at the time and so it was

bittersweet because they they essentially wanted our company with and we were welcome to stay but uh but you don't have to right and that feeling was pretty that was pretty rough feeling but in retrospect it opened the door to it set us set us up for an incredible platform to go do beautiful things you've invested in x.com uh that eventually merged with PayPal that's a fascinating story there also fascinating on many levels including the fact that the the current social media company formerly k

nown as Twitter is now called X there's a history has like a has a rhyme to it like it's kind of all hilarious in a certain kind of way uh you invested in and help sell a lot of the initial products for Tesla yeah I still still on the board of Tesla Tesla is 20 years now is that amazing 20 years yeah from the Roadster the initial Roadster to I still have the the first business plan so I didn't join as a Founder I join as a as a founding board member and so I actually I didn't write the business

plan I I got to read it and I still have that I still have it as a part of History did you see the future at that time like the company that Tesla is today could you have possibly could you Elon imagine it no no I I um I certainly didn't what I what I saw in it was a real for me personally I was really upset that the General Motors had killed the their EV car there's even a movie called who killed the electric car and I and I knew that the the physics of of um of electric is perfectly fine I mea

n there's no reason why you couldn't use an electric car to drive around what what I what resonated with me with the with the business plan was take an electric motor which is really a high performance motor and put it in a sports car and sell it at a high price as a way to enter into the market whereas what what others had been doing at least General Motors had done is you put it into a really crummy car and you you sell it as a commuter vehicle that doesn't really work that well and looks ugly

as well like they really did everything they could to make that thing as ugly as Sin and and then um I was like okay I get it we're we're going to take a an appropriate technology and put it in an appropriate car so that when you have because electric motors they have constant torque you incredible power put it in a car that that looks like a sports car you know so so so the idea was to put it in the Lotus Elise redesigned it a bit um and um I even at that point I was like this is theoretically

good so I'm going to join and help build it but I was not convinced that it would work because because General Motors had done such a terrible job of making everyone think that these things are terrible but but I was curious and the time that I fell in love with the company and its mission was I was driving in in a in a what's called a mule where we we take a a a a car and we take the engine out and we put put in a electric drive train and I drove it you know even the dashboards there's no dash

board it's just like you got you got to steering wheel and it's just like wires and everything around and I remember there's a street we were on in the Bay Area called Bing Street and I was just like no no no no traffic so I'm just going to drive this I'm the floor it and see what happens and it was it was a feeling I'd never experienced before so it's not gasoline cars have an inertia to them so you yeah this is just was like being shot out of a cannon mhm and I okay this is going to be real it

's a very spaceship like feeling yeah it's like whoa it's like the G the G the g4ce pulls you back yeah so so I was like okay this is uh this is going to be great this going be this is going to be an interesting we're going to create something interesting here I think the real transformative thing for Tesla was the the model 3 uh when we were able to get the price down for um the world and that was also one of the most challenging oh my periods for Tesla for we were borderline bankrupt like two

or three times that year I mean it was just every and everyone was hating on us about whether we'd get that done the model 3 today is incredibly affordable car like a 300 bucks a month kind of lease and $3,000 down that's where you get the scale that's where you get people who and by the way it's a great car it's even a better model 3 now than it was five years ago we we don't function the way car companies function right we we function more like how an iPhone company Apple works so our model 3

today is is this year is better than last year it's like it's way better and like we just keep getting better yeah and the software is a fundamental part of the car and the software keeps improving exactly and we can we upload over the air which was one of the things that people don't often acknowledge it's the overthe a updates it's like a revolutionary thing it's not just the autopilot to me it's like the over the a updates is even bigger thing that an autopilot at least in this like moment of

History because you you basically turned the car into the iPhone exactly it's an iPhone with wheels um but actually talking about autopilot like right after this interview I'm going to go test out the latest model 3 you're going to get driven around by a robot I'm going to get driven around by the car I'm going to say I want to go to this barbecue join mhm take me there and park me there and um I'm going to see how it is and this is our the the latest model 3 that we have out since in productio

n anyone can buy it and it's super affordable and it's like okay um uh it's not you know full stop driving is is a is a journey right it's it's it's not like there's a destination it's a journey forever so let's see where we are on the journey today and there's been a bit of a push and pull between you and Elon in terms of levels of optimism about deadlines and so on timelines about when we'll arrive at the destination I like that you said it's a journey yeah for Elon there's a destination I exa

ctly and that destination is tomorrow or yesterday I think that's that's that's a really good Insight I I actually live with this concept of a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset and and it's a I don't know philosophical term where where fixed mindset is about the destination and a growth mindset is about learning on the journey and I think that I'm a happier person because I take that learning on the journey approach whereas it's really frustrating if you're always it has to be about the dest

ination every time the nice thing about destination at least from my personal perspective as like a programmer engineer is like it's it puts a little fire under you to get shit done like if there's a clear deadline of a destination you feel the aniet would say that I still do that but I call those forcing functions instead of destinations sure because you're just forcing people to crank on on some code or cookbook or whatever because you have a date and and you really and often times there's a r

eason I mean this 20th anniversary wanted to get the cookbook out we have a reason is we didn't make this up out of thin air um and so you yeah that does push you but just because we have the cookbook doesn't mean it's a destination M it means it was a forcing function to get it out there now we're on the journey speaking of Journeys I have to ask you about SpaceX uh I mean the journey that all of Humanity on seriously that is pokot in a journey that is incredible um it's an interesting moment i

n the history of humanity that perhaps hopefully will become a multiplanetary species uh but SpaceX is also a company you invested in SpaceX you were side by side with Elon through through uh through the highs and the lows to the lows and the highs uh so what were some memorable um challenges what were some low points sure I from the history of SpaceX one of the hardest times in SpaceX was uh we were in the mid Pacific in quasand and my brother had had sold PayPal he' done well financially but i

n the rocket world that money goes away really quickly and we're in this military base in qualin and uh I think it was the second rocket that blew up I'm not sure but uh we didn't have infinite resources I certainly didn't have the resources I mean I'm there to support um brotherly support but the um the so so every every rocket launch was like to or die and the first one had blown up and so the second one I think it was the second one uh blew up and it was it was so depressing it was just like

H and there's nowhere to go you're in the there's no there's no distraction you're just you're on this military base you don't really socialize so it's just we were all together and I had uh I'd gotten to know you know for me I'm not part of the team I'm just there for emotional support or whatever because it's cool and so I got to know this a couple of people locally and got to know this one guy who who had a mobile home um best view in the world but it's just a mobile home next with a patch of

grass next to it and uh I was just desperate to find food that wasn't from the cafeteria cuz this is the worst food you can imagine yeah and and so he showed I met met him and he showed me this little tiny little grocery store which had a few things like canned tomatoes and not this is again you middle of nowhere it's just nothing fresh and I made this dish that was kind of a version of a like an Italian version of chili you know just baked beans and sweating onions and and then tomatoes and it

was a big pot of food cuz it's a group of people we didn't even have a table and we just uh put the big pot in the middle and we had our little paper plakes and took a scoop as we needed it and it was really the Gathering Place of like food brings people together in the most difficult times and it was one of my favorite memories because I was able to bring my gift to this group of incredible people um that their hearts were broken you know and to sit there and share a meal and feel the life kin

d of come back into us and by the end of the night we're actually having a good time what a fascinating contrast of rock as kind of representing the peak accomplishment of human beings as a society and then returning to the thing that is the foundation of human society which is that communal experience communal vulnerable connection like we mentioned vulnerability earlier the most vulnerable place actually that's when you have some of your most beautiful meals yeah the descendants of Apes gather

ing around some baked beans right after watching a rocket explode yeah uh what gives you hope about this the future of this whole thing we got going on Humanity if you look at how things have changed over the past say 50 years uh you can clearly say oh wow poverty rates have gone down um infant mortality's gone down dramatically all these things have gone down a lot so so if you if you if you look at it on a daily basis you can tell that life is very dramatic you know whether it's uh some some s

omething's blowing up on X or on from the newspapers or whatever and you can really get caught up into it but if you look back over over the past few decades things things are getting better and it's and me at the fundamental level like are less people hungry are more uh people they are more is there are there I there is war going on of course but are there less Wars yes um and so I think that um I think if if we all just step back a little bit it's it's less about hope it's more of P perspectiv

e and reflection and um and if if uh uh if I if I do see a problem like in case of the Obesity epidemic I work really hard to help with that I work our nonprofits called big Green and we we work with 150 nonprofits around the country to help Americans grow food again get connected to their food because I really believe growing food changes your life and so okay let's let's go do that so then so I you know I'll help out where I think we really do can make a difference but but if you step back a l

ittle things are are actually getting better um it's just a bumpy yeah and for those of us watching all of this I think uh I would love to see more celebrating of the people that are helping um find the people that have found their way of helping and just celebrating those people well I would also actually that's a really nice point I have learned that you really want to celebrate your successes because even in the greater scheme of things I've learned this in the startup world where you you're

constantly facing death you know like just why should you even exist do customers want your product or whatever and and then something will happen where you're like wow we really nailed that that's really great you got a product released or got some good Kudos from something all right everyone we're going to go celebrate and and actually everyone's still like no no we got all these other problems nope we're going to go celebrate and then we'll go back to the problems but if you don't do that the

n it starts building on this kind of you never really get to celebrate mhm and be grateful well I think this is a good time to go celebrate the very fact that we're alive today we get to live and enjoy this incredible life the two of us and have this great conversation and we'll get to celebrate over some scrambled eggs I'm going to hold you to it beautiful uh Kim thank you so much for talking today thank you for having me thanks for listening to this conversation with Kimo musk to support this

podcast please check out our sponsors in the description and now let me leave you some words from Anthony Bain your body is not a temple it's an amusement park enjoy the ride thank you for listening and hope to see you next time