Food, Science, and Culture with Anthony Bourdain [Extended Cut]
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Visit rosettastone.com slash startalk for unlimited access to 25 language courses for the rest of your life. Available for a short time at rosettastone.com slash startalk. On this episode of Startalk, we have a one-on-one interview between me and chef and TV host Anthony Bourdain. I had the privilege of sitting down with Anthony before his untimely death in 2018 to talk about Antarctica, food,

culture, and so much more. You can hear pieces of this conversation in a different episode from our archives, but never before have we released that conversation in its entirety. Until now. Check it out. Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

So, Anthony, thanks for coming back to StarTalk. You were one of our earliest guests like five years ago. Yes. Thanks for helping us out back then. Happy to do it. So tell me how you came to think about food and culture. Most people think of food as simply sustenance. And we don't even spend any, generally, any thought at all that what we're eating is a function of our own culture. It's just the food that's on the table.

And so for you to rise up above that, see the world, and say this food is that culture, that food is that culture, when did that begin? - I think that was a process. I mean, I started out making a show about food in places around the world, but it was essentially one scene after another of me shoving food in my face. I guess it became fairly quickly apparent

that food was intensely personal, that it was a reflection of a place, of a culture, of a history, often a very painful history, you know, of war, migration, of intermarriage, the clash of cultures, also a very personal expression.

I noticed as well that people were very proud of their food, often people very different than me, often people who had no particular reason culturally or politically to like Americans. Yet at the table, given the opportunity to feed me and the fact that I received that food gratefully and with an open mind, I noticed that people opened up to me and told me other things about their lives. So, you know, we all have food.

And it's the consequence of whatever, but generally we don't think about it. And so, what happens when you're in a place where there's more going on than just what came out of the kitchen? Well, I think the most extreme, maybe the most important example in the trajectory of my show was Beirut in 2006, when we were doing what was ostensibly still a food and travel show.

We'd finished shooting another sort of upbeat, snarky maybe restaurant scene. And the crew joined me in my room for beers in the mini bar. And we're looking lazily out the window and rockets and...

Gunships attack the airport, blowing into smithereens. Our local crew disappears from the border, and we found ourselves in a war, blockaded, unable to leave, and trapped in Beirut for the next week or so, waiting to be evacuated. By the U.S. military? Yeah, the Marine Corps, the Navy and Marines took us off the beach in an LCU. It was dramatic. In an LCU filled with wailing, crying...

refugees, most Lebanese who had left the country during the civil war and only just returned to rebuild, to rebuild. And now their hopes and dreams smashed again. And just looking out at the water as we pulled away from the beach and thinking, do we have a show? Because we really just sort of filmed ourselves sweating it out, you know, in quarantine while neighborhoods were vaporized around us.

It just struck me as obscene to contemplate ever doing a upbeat food show in a world that allows things like this to happen regularly. So this is a pivot point for you and your programming. Absolutely. Everything changed at that moment and I started looking around and I was determined, you know, if I'm sitting in the hills of Laos, you know, I'm going to ask the obvious question when my host is missing a limb.

Where'd you lose a limb? And we're eating, true, but chances are he's gonna tell me, well, I wasn't alive for the secret war here, but your military was kind enough to leave behind a few million tons of unexploded ordnance, and I happened to step on one of those. CNN, fortunately, has allowed me to wander completely away from the table. And so we've done shows in places like Congo where there was never any expectation of much in the way of food scenes.

I went there entirely because I was obsessed with the history of the Belgian Congo. You sure CNN just didn't need another correspondent? I have the luxury of not being a reporter. I joke that it's a stealth food show because I think people open up to me and tell me about their lives often in places where they're

They have to be careful about what they say. And I think they do that, or I've noticed that they do that because I'm asking simple questions. We're just eating. We're just eating. I'm not pressing them for what do you think of your government or your government's policy on this or that. I'm asking them simple things. What do you like to eat? What makes you happy? What would you like for your children? Asking those simple questions, I often get very, very complicated, very revealing answers.

Tell me about Antarctica. What's going on there? Oh, man. What are you up to? I got people in Antarctica. I was so fortunate to spend time there. I had the most incredible time. It's another planet. It feels like another planet. On one hand, everyone should go and see it. On the other hand, it kind of defeats a purpose. It is the last planet.

un-effed up place on Earth. It's pristine. You know, every drop of urine goes into bottles, then into 55-gallon drums and shipped back to America along with every, or elsewhere, with every little bit of waste not allowed to bring. The people down there, we stayed at McMurdo Station, the former military base, now the National Science NSF. Yeah, National Science Foundation. Yeah, we were guests of the NSF.

and very grateful ones at that. It's very difficult to get to do, even people who work there, it's very difficult to do what we did.

Just to be clear, at least in my field, it's a ripe place for research. It is. Because first, the sky conditions are spectacular when they're clear. And though you are on level ground, it's actually very high elevation relative to sea level. And so for telescopes, you're above a lot of the muck and mire that can interfere with your observations. And there are also interesting air circulation patterns

for balloons where you can ascend detectors to measure the cosmic microwave background, for example. It's incredible because you have all these people working at McMurdo base and like the dishwashers are all like, you know, former professors of Russian lit or, you know, smart, smart, curious outcasts from all over the world who've come to work in maintenance and physical jobs

so that they could be living under incredibly difficult conditions. But you'll see astrophysicists sitting at the table talking to guys who work in waste disposal, engaged in a conversation about neutrinos. They do science lectures every Sunday that the whole base, everyone goes to. It is the most incredible spot, place of pure science and pure learning where people are learning

Incrementally seeking answers to questions. They might never answer in their life They're just looking to move things forward. So we we met with the guys with a super telescope part of an array I guess that goes around the entire globe It's looking at the Sun some people collecting neutrinos, which I don't really fully understand I don't understand at all, but they sound really cool. Um

Oh, just a quick thing, because in Antarctica you get 24 hours of sunlight for six months. Oh, yeah. You continuously monitor the sun. Yeah. It doesn't set for you and you have to wait. Oh, my gosh, did something happen to the sun in the last 12 hours? You will know under those cases. People who love it down there who've been going for 26 seasons to 30 seasons. So what do they eat? Do they got to ship in the steaks and the vegetables? Everything comes in mostly by ship, but some stuff by plane.

There's a cafeteria, both at McMurdo and at the South Pole, where everything is essentially processed, frozen. Frozen, really? Yeah. And, you know, one of the refrains when you arrive from the people who spent months there is, do you have any freshies? It's like the living dead. Do you have brains? They're like, do you have any freshies?

You could sell an avocado down there, a fresh avocado for some big bucks. I asked everybody, what do you want the most? What do you miss the most?

They said if I could just pet a puppy for a minute, I'd give you my month's drinking allowance. Pet a puppy? You just hold a puppy for a little bit. Because there are no dogs, no pets, of course, that are allowed there because they might bring some kind of bacteria or viruses that would affect the penguins and the seals. Oh, right, right. You don't want to mix the two up. No foreign species or anything like that.

So there's a real premium on the rare arrival of lettuce or avocados or anything fresh. But they do a lot with a little. And so that was, was that your first sort of baptism into a community of scientists? Yes, for sure. The things people were looking at were really interesting. I mean, Penguin, one guy had been studying Penguin populations for decades, living with one particular group.

Do they eat penguins? I mean, no, I mean, why not? I'm a bird Amundsen and Scott did but was not their first choice, but okay I mean it has been done. Mm-hmm, but they do not you don't you don't even you're not supposed to pick up rocks interfere with the terrain or what life there is there in any way and and

There's not a single cigarette butt on McMurdo Base on the ground. I mean, everything is separated, very strict living conditions. I found it interesting when going out to visit the penguin colonies, though, we were on a helicopter out to the site.

and a bunch of fresh-faced, very enthusiastic kids who'd come down to help out and in turn, I guess, was go out and hug the penguin day. They were all excited that they'd go out and get to tag penguins and hold one. Penguins are cute. - In all the movies? - Yeah. Well, they didn't tell them that,

When you pick up a penguin, they spray you with, you know, a horrifying array of, you know, wet diarrhea. They all came back rather downcast looking and smelling a bit ripe.

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Hello, I'm Vicki Brooke Allen, and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Nailed Grass Tyson. In your world travels, have you seen any consequences or concerns that local populations have about...

The effect of climate change on their crops, their foodstuffs, their supply chain? Well, many places. First, I want to mention that the climate change discussion is no more acutely felt, at least in people's minds, or observed than in Antarctica, where they're really looking at it

and talk about it a lot. But of course it's perilous now to talk about it because everyone is fully aware that their data is being deleted from government computers, that if they find themselves on a blacklist of people who might possibly be interested in the subject, that they could find themselves suddenly not needed. These are not good times for science or scientists, and they felt very much...

under threat down there and for good reason particularly when you're pursuing

subjects that aren't going to have a useful monetary application anytime soon. Tough argument to make in this political climate. But I see it, look, I see it everywhere. Madagascar, where timbering and the smoke of burning fires is causing huge, huge, huge problems, completely changing the landscape.

The fishing industry is everywhere affected. The Caribbean where I've seen in my own lifetime, you know, not just whole reefs, all the reefs bleached and lifeless now. I mean, I'm seeing the physical changes, but the people who really seem to feel it most and notice it are farmers, fishermen, they're feeling it. So this would affect cuisine directly?

Yeah, I mean, there's no doubt about it. Fish populations are changing, disappearing. The whole inter... The whole relationship between species seems to be altering in small ways, so that...

You know, some species are thriving, others disappearing. You know, that changes what we eat. We, you know, chefs and cooks and, you know, anybody who needs to feed their family responds to what's available. That's always been the engine of cooking. Your experience in Antarctica, that's the closest thing we have on Earth to the surface of Mars. Yes. In fact, I went to the Dry Valleys once.

which is an incredible area of Antarctica where there's no snow and no ice, and it looks like Mars, and they in fact test the Mars rover there. I stayed in a tent out there for a while, and there was even a beach. So does this make you more or less interested in possibly being on a mission to Mars?

I don't know if I have the time. I'm a busy guy. The travel time to Mars is what? Nine months on a good orbit trajectory. That's a long trip. You need a good movie account on the internet. And I did an episode of Top Chef at NASA headquarters once. And we were talking about food in space. And, of course, your entire taste perception. I was told I was talking to...

I think Chuck Yeager, actually. The Chuck Yeager. Yes. And talking about what you crave when you've been away from your favorite restaurants or any restaurants for a considerable amount of time. And he talked about how your ability to perceive flavors changes at altitude. People experience this in planes, of course. Plane food is altered so that it makes up for the effects of altitude.

But astronauts get it really bad, and the stuff they crave more than anything, so Mr. Yeager told me, is hot sauce. Like, you know, Tabasco or anything spicy, because up there everything tastes bland. So you're telling me those bulky areas in their spacesuits, they're smuggling bottles of hot sauce on the way up there.

To bring to their food. The astronauts I've spoken to, they say this without hesitation, that they eagerly want spicy foods. And they find themselves visiting other national modules of the space station where their food tends to be spicier than their American food. Yeah, so that would be tough for me, bland food for nine months. I train in jiu-jitsu, and I...

Foolishly decided I was gonna compete a few times and in the run-up to the competition I had to cut weight to make my weight category which meant doing without salt at all for a week. So you don't retain the water. Yeah It's horrible. It's it is

No matter how much I'd eat, I'd boil a whole chicken loaded with herb and pepper and everything I could, but never satisfied. And I would just get crazier and crazier from the lack of salt to the point that I found myself sitting on the subway in the summer looking at a particularly sweaty homeless dude and thinking, oh, I'd like to lick his neck. Just one lick. Wait.

That is fascinatingly gross. But a measure of how desperate I was. So we won't put you on the Mars trip. Yeah, Mars, too much. We'll keep you here. So for those who do take these missions, is there some food category around the world where you would highly recommend that's what they should take with them? Yeah, for sure. If you ranked it, give me the top five cuisines or national dishes.

Well, Trinidad, food from Trinidad, that would go over real well. That would go far. Nice and spicy, some good scotch bonnet. That'll get you at least halfway to Mars. Yeah. You know, Thai food, good nuclear hot Thai food would be a good choice. Chengdu, the Sichuan, the real Sichuan food. Now, I don't know.

A big wok filled with boiling oil laced with Sichuan peppers and the long chili pods. I don't know how that would behave without gravity. Probably not the best thing in a gravity-free environment. Scalding oil beating up and floating around freely. And there is the...

that tends to inspire some digestive anomalies, but that would satisfy, I assure you. So I ate at an authentic Szechuan restaurant in San Francisco recently, and I was waiting for the next dish to be some reprieve from the previous dish, and that did not happen. Every single dish was hotter than the previous one. Even in Chengdu, the major city in Szechuan province, where I've been a few times,

You'll see locals at their favorite Szechuan hot pot place literally doubled over holding their stomachs Mopping mopping their necks faces beet red It is it can be excruciatingly painful and this is an interesting Scientific phenomena that that's always intrigued me a lot of people suggest that their favorite Szechuan hot pot has that they secretly lace it with opium because

What happens is they eat this scorchingly hot food, very uncomfortable to eat but intensely pleasurable. And the next day they wake up with a craving. And I find this as well when I'm eating really, really, really spicy food. And some have suggested that this is due to there's this flood of endorphins that your brain releases when experiencing really painful, painfully hot food. And that

That yeah, I guess that happens while you're eating it in the next morning It's not there and you're you feel this sudden withdraw absence the absence of that endorphin rush that you had the the night before and this immediately compels you to Get more I've had this experience after tattoos as well. I've had a lot of people who've gotten tattooed and

And like me, say that right afterwards they always want another, which seems counterintuitive. This is good because I don't have any, so maybe if I should stay that way. So I'd be interested in knowing the science on that, if this is... Yeah, yeah, we'll get to the bottom of that. It's a real craving, no matter how scorching the experience. You wake up the next day, I want more. You're...

Your modern professional life is so committed to food and culture, yet there's a branch of the culinary universe that seems to focus on molecular cuisine. Molecular gastronomy, yes. Am I correct in characterizing that as how can I bring as much science as I possibly can to the protein molecules and the freezing and the cooking times? Does this subtract...

The experience from you or add to it? It depends. I know a few chefs who are really, really great at this. And they're like scientists. I was just talking to Wiley Dufresne, one of the real masters of this area of cooking.

And he says, look, in my restaurant, we ask questions. We're asking questions about food and the dining experience. They're not necessarily looking to dazzle or to challenge their diners. They're asking questions like, can I deep fry mayonnaise? Answer, yes.

Also, I'm sorry, I would have never in my whole life, that is a not that I'm sorry, I would never thought that. Once he figured out how to deep fry mayonnaise, he figured out how he could fry other sauces, how to cause them to

stay essentially solid. Solid and not explode when you throw in the hot fat. Ferran Adria, Wiley Dufresne, and a very few other chefs make this experience intensely pleasurable and exciting and fun.

Many other imitators, it is a long, painful slog through one of their meals where it's a science class for its own sake. You know, look what I can do. Okay, so you're comfortable thinking, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but you're

that seems like you're comfortable thinking of it as there is this virtual country called science. And here's food that natives of that country might eat because they're simply curious about the chemistry of what they dine upon. And that would be their story relative to some invading army or some food shortage or something else. They're asking themselves constantly, what's...

What's possible? What can we do with that mayonnaise? Somebody figured out you could put ice cream batter in mixed with liquid nitrogen and have instant ice cream. Yes. And that was one of my early thoughts. I just didn't have access to liquid nitrogen at the time. Or expand foie gras into, I don't know how it's done, but into a fluffy sponge-like texture. Yeah.

I've seen so many amazing, amazing things done. Meat glue, which you don't even ask me to explain. They can really make food behave in ways that you wouldn't think it would or maybe even should. Who would have thought... To delicious effect. Who would have thought that the word behave would ever appear in a sentence on food? Well, you know, what is it? You know, when you scramble an egg...

I forget what it's called, the coagulation of proteins? I'm not sure about the specific processes. But we're all, you know, caramelization, you know, why does your steak get brown as you cook it and develop the sugars on the outside? All of these things are essential scientific techniques or processes. There's a science reason for it. Every cook understands instinctively, they may not be able to name what's happening,

But they understand very, very, very well when, you know, the effect you want, how to get there, when it's going wrong, when it's going right. So even something as simple as scrambling an egg is essentially a scientific manipulation of an ingredient by exposing it to both heat and movement and incorporating air. You're making it behave, an egg behave in a desired way.

It reminds me, this is an obscure analogy, but it reminds me of when medicine became modern.

It did so because, in part, it looked to see what sort of folk remedies existed around the world and cultures. Oh, you chew on this bark and that gets rid of your headache. Well, what got rid of your headache? So you find out what's in the bark. Right. And there's this molecule that becomes what we today call aspirin. And so you extract the active ingredient. Right. And then you can exploit that to great gain. And so it seems to me if you knew exactly...

the moment and why a sauteed onion becomes sweet. You can possibly hone in on that and exploit that fact with other foods. And that's what chefs are doing, some chefs are doing every day. I have friends who are rotting all varieties of things in some dark corner of their cellar, experimenting, talking to microbiologists from major universities,

talking to them late at night, working with them in kitchens, discussing the wonders of fermentation. What can you ferment? What's going on in miso? How can I apply that to something else? I love miso. So much of food is not about freshness. It's what's called that sweet spot.

The precise moment in its decay where it is best. Sushi being the best example. Anyone who goes and tells you that, you know, oh, I went to a sushi bar last night. It was the best. The fish was so fresh. I have no understanding at all of sushi. Sushi is not about freshness at all. First of all, even the best place is deliberately fresh.

cure their fish by freezing it, sometimes out of necessity to kill the critters, others because it makes it better. But it's almost never about the freshest fish. Fresh fish is right out of the water, is still in rigor, and it's rubbery, often rough, most fish are rubbery and unpleasant and without much flavor.

Which is why they in Iceland they brought it sometimes because you get more fun You're looking for the perfect point in the decay of the fish same with meat almost everything we eat and like cheese meat fish They're all aged just wine So it's really about decay and rot and death and

As cheerful as that sounds. I never knew. Thank you. I mean, fresh tuna right out of the water. No self-respecting Japanese wants that. They want it just right after more days than you probably want to know.

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Hurry into Verizon this Black Friday. Service plan required for iPad and Apple Watch. Up to $2,000 value based on iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. Trade-in and additional terms apply. See Verizon.com for details. Apple Intelligence available now. Well, you talk about bark. And, you know, I was in the jungle in Peru, and I tried ayahuasca with the shaman there, the so-known, I guess it's like a yaje, they also call it. It's a...

psychedelic jungle root used as a curative in traditional medicine. How do you ingest it? The doctor, so to speak, brews a liquid out of it. This one particular root, often mixed with others, and administers it, often drinking it, almost always, in my experience, drinking it himself.

And you're supposed to get in touch with your spirit animal. And it's supposed to cure any variety of ills, both psychological and physical. I have friends who claim it's solved a lot of personal problems for them. The repeated controlled use in groups. Emphasis on controlled use. Yes. I believe it's legal...

form of therapy in some states. I know there are organized groups who do it. It's a rather extraordinary thing. It's an odd fact that in the history of our relationship with plant life, people have either tried to eat it, smoke it, extract it, drink it. I'm just intrigued that we feel this urge. I think primitive man had a lot of free time. And they were hungry also.

They didn't have the internet or anything, right? Yeah. You know, when you're hungry and living in harsh conditions, I mean, to some extent, Chinese food is an extension of this. When you don't have the luxury of, you know, fat steaks at the supermarket, you really have to make the most of everything you've got. And if anything, Chinese food is the story of people figuring out

relentlessly over thousands of years figuring out not just everything that could possibly be good and how to cook it as well as how to take things that aren't particularly good and through application of heat and time and technique making that good, you know, so, you know chicken feet or pig's tails might not seem like they're good but in the hands of a great cook they certainly can be.

The fact that the very phrase, it's a matter of taste, means I might like something that you don't and vice versa. So what does it even mean for you to have a show to talk about what's good and what isn't? How does that work? It is completely subjective. I mean, they say that all food tastes are acquired or learned, that they are not—I mean—

Babies will eat rotten food if them if their mothers say this is good. I think bitter we Babies at least in this country react to negatively Hence no vegetables. Yeah. Yeah, I never say I never evaluate food on the show anymore. I don't use adjectives anymore I never say I've no toast, you know background notes of minerality. Does this help anyone in any way? I I say wow, this is really good or and that's a sure about that. Um

But it's entirely subjective. Are there certain regions of the world where the taste buds genetically don't taste some things versus others, and so the food reflects this? I'm not sure. I know that one out of a small group of people will not

Detect certain flavors at all at all or certain elements of popular Commonly eaten foods. Well if they become a colony they could end up creating dishes That would be offensive to those who taste that we have the capacity to taste it and they don't and therefore It's just fine to them. I think one of the things that's prevented the Philippines from taking their

rightful place as a major world cuisine beloved by everybody on every corner. I mean, Thai food is widely loved and appreciated. Sichuan food, as spicy as it is. But I think Filipino food has been less quick to spread. And I think that's because, my guess, they like an element of bitterness. And in fact, in the Philippines, they will use bile.

to add that very important note to some of their traditional dishes. And that's a taste that Americans, I think, instinctively recoil from in a way that they just simply do not. That's a treasured component. We have textural predilections and aversions that seem innate to

or at least are so deep in our culture. America, we love anything crispy. Anything covered in batter and crispy, we're going to love. It's better. We don't even need anything inside the batter. We'll eat the batter. But when you get into that chewy, rubbery, gelatinous, boiled chicken skin, fish skin, abalone, a lot of things that they really love in tendon in China and Japan. Tendon?

And the tenants great fantastic, but look that's that's most Americans go to know tendon that you know Those are major ingredients in you know, Vietnam China Japan and those are textures that they're very comfortable with and in fact they prize them whereas we're who right away I'm not sure no just a quick excursion here

We joke a lot in America about some countries that eat dog or things that we otherwise identify as pets. Do you have any insights into such aversions psychologically, culturally? I mean, I know that pigs are... I think pigs are smarter than dogs, right? But...

I grew up with dogs as pets, and I think of them as pets. So it's something I've managed to gracefully avoid eating for my entire career, 17 years traveling around the world eating. I've managed to avoid offers of dog at every turn, and will try to do so for the rest of my life. But it is a completely arbitrary thing.

It is hypocritical of me, I grant you, to eat and love pig on one hand and spare poochie, where they are eaten in parts of the world. And I am instinctively appalled, but it is a random culturally imperialistic thing.

of feeling on my part, you know? But I mean, it's a very deeply felt one. - Any thoughts on the future of sort of laboratory grown proteins to simulate meat so that you don't ever have to kill an animal?

Yeah, I mean, I think laboratory-grown meat, the thought horrifies me as a chef, as a cook, as somebody who's passionate. You still get to cook it. You just don't have to kill the animal. Yeah, but I mean, we're talking meat-like, aren't we? I mean, so much of meat is textural. It is the interconnected viscera and muscle and, you know, fat. And, you know, what makes meat interesting is the...

The degree of exercise, its diet, how the, you know, what you prize in beef is the marbling, the ripple of fat through lean that comes from movement. Presumably your laboratory-grown meat will not have moved at any point. But I suspect given... It's out of pasture now. It's a cube. Given the way the world is going, we might well have to eat

Laboratory grown meat soon if not our neighbors. I think the first round of it will be ground meat Yeah, well might replace hamburger meat which you're not in search of the marbling and the textures and oh Not as much as the t-bone or I buy I well not as much right, right? That's all I'm saying. That's it might be its first foray, but that could completely transform your world um

Yes, and look, a lot of the world... Not only your world, the world. Look, there are a lot of hungry people in this world for whom a single chicken is a life or death thing. They need protein, and I guess laboratory-grown meat would be a solution. But we've given up on something really...

Fundamental it goes when we move to laboratory grown meat when any culture does it's a surrender We're shutting ourselves off to something that goes back to the beginning of human civilization in fact It's likely it was the beginning of human civilization the fire and a hunk of meat You know it was the first time people probably cooperated you know I'll kill the animal

You drag it back to the fire, you build the fire, and then we're all sitting around figuring out how we're going to divide up this thing. That's kind of the beginning of any kind of organized society, according to some scientists.

Do you have any question you might have of me? I as an astrophysicist. Any questions you've harbored in your life about the universe? This would be the time to ask. Well, it's a global warming question. If I was thinking of buying some waterfront real estate, beachfront property in Uruguay,

I've been told that it would be okay for me and probably for my daughter, but I'd advise against my granddaughter buying beachfront property in Uruguay. Would you concur? No. I would say it's not a good thing at all. Really? I'll tell you why. Because it's one thing for the sea levels to rise, and you'll say, all right, I'll put my house here, and I've got 20 years before the sea level goes up four inches. Mm-hmm.

Okay, that's one way to think about it Another way to think about it is the storm that used to come only once a century Now comes once a decade and that storm involves a tide surge And so that four inches that you're just comparing to sea level is now four inches on a tide surge and you completely flood your house So on that one storm

Just as what happened in lower Manhattan here with Hurricane Sandy. So if I hear you correctly, you're advising against the purchase of beachfront property anywhere. I'm saying get the hell out of here. I'm just saying. Unless you have no descendants or you don't care about your descendants. Yeah, it's a matter of not just will the water level inch its way up and one day you'll just pack up and leave. It's the storm that previously didn't breach your property properly.

Then does and when it breaches it's catastrophic to everything you own Wow, what a Debbie Downer

Really harsh mind buzz. So that's how you first experience the effects of the global warming. It's the simple storm that is now a few inches higher than it once was. And the town or the municipality had built the flood wall. They built the, you know, for the once in 100 year storm. And now it's once in 10 years. And then you have a storm that's now

the once in a thousand year storm. You didn't even know that existed because you didn't have a town there a thousand years ago. So, yeah. I don't know. I had a Nazi cyborg question. I think I'll save that for the next time around. What haven't you eaten yet and where haven't you been to do so? Wow. Oh,

You know, there's nothing on my bucket list as far as food off the top of my head. There are countries I haven't been to, but at this point, really, if I haven't been there and want to go there, it's for security reasons. I mean, I've wanted to go to Yemen for a long time. That's obviously not a safe option at this point. Syria,

I'm not going to make that anytime soon. Afghanistan, we come close every year, but insurance companies are a little uncomfortable. Kashmir, I'd like to go very much. I've never been to Switzerland. Really? But I will tell you, that is by choice. I have a deep, psychological, inexplicable terror of all things Swiss. I don't know why, but I'm afraid of Switzerland. I think it was a

Some forgotten childhood incident. Repeated viewings of Sound of Music. I'm not kidding you. I really creeped out by Chalet Architecture. Cuckoo Clocks. Snow-covered peaks. Cuckoo Clocks. Lederhosen. Alpine Vistas.

No joke. I mean, I know it sounds funny and it is kind of a joke, but I've been to a well over 100 countries. Is that why you're wearing a Timex watch and not a Swiss watch? I mean, I've been to well over, I think, 120 countries. And I haven't been to Switzerland because I'm afraid. Wow. Okay. We all have phobias, I guess. You're Swiss-phobic. Yodeling. That is the sound of terror.

And is Ricola the throat candy? I can't watch shows. Oh, dude. I'm going to start twitching. Congratulations at 23 Emmy nominations over the life of the show. Oh, my gosh. Thank you. Peabody. I mean, this is what anyone who creates TV for love and for art, that's what anybody wants. And so just congratulations on that. Thank you very much. And may you have many, many more seasons doing this. Thanks.

Hope you enjoyed that one-on-one conversation with Anthony Bourdain. Neil deGrasse Tyson here for StarTalk. As always, I bid you to keep looking up.

Hey, aren't you that PBM? Middleman. At your service, doctor. Don't you get rebates that save money on medicines? Oh, PBMs like me get big rebates. So why do patients tell me they're worried about their costs? No one says we have to share the savings with patients. Congress should make sure medicine savings go directly to patients, not middlemen. Visit prma.org slash middlemen to learn more. Paid for by Pharma.

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