Declan Kelly - Founder, Chairman and CEO of Consello

0:00This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human. I turned off news altogether. I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything. It's the rage bait. It feels like it's trying to divide people. We got clear facts. Maybe we can calm down a little. NBC News brings you clear reporting. Let's meet at the facts. Let's move forward from there. NBC News reporting for America.

0:56that helps you wake up clearer, calmer, and ready to go. It's resort-level relaxation that turns every night into a reset for your body and mind. Start tomorrow feeling better than today. Shop Karaloja Bamboo Sheets now at karaloja.com. That's C-A-R-I-L-O-H-A dot com. And wake up to better mornings every morning. Ruthie's Table 4 brought to you by Sky and Montclair. I remember my mother walking into my grandmother's bedroom and I was sleeping in the bed beside my grandmother. I was seven years old and she said, we've lost everything. And I said, what do you mean we've lost everything? And she said, our house burned to the ground last night.

1:42All my father's savings were under a mattress. And the only thing he saved was a dog. That changed me forever.

1:54In my experience, you never know what's going to happen, so if in doubt, it's good to say yes. About a month ago, the River Cafe was asked to cook for a grand party at the Serpentine Gallery celebrating the dynamic company Concello and its founder, chairman, and CEO, Declan Kelly. So when they invited me to join, I said yes. From the moment I entered the crowded room, I knew I'd made the right decision. Declan and I were introduced. We covered the bases, our views on the politics of the day, our love for our children, a shared feeling of how lucky we are to work with the best people, and, of course, the importance of food in our lives.

2:34So here we are today in the River Cafe on a Saturday morning, Declan with me, me with Declan, confirming that when you don't know what's going to happen, it's good to say yes. Thank you, Ruthie. Thank you for coming. We can go back to the beginning and I can ask you about growing up in Ireland. I grew up in Tipperary. Where is Tipperary? Tipperary is right in the middle of the country. It's in the Republic of Ireland. There's a song, isn't there? Yes, there's a long way to Tipperary. There's a long way to Tipperary. That's the one. I think that was sung by soldiers in World War I or World War II to rhyme with some sentence in the song.

3:14And the word Tipperary was the right rhyming word. That's a beautiful word. It was a marching song. Yeah. But yeah, I grew up there and, you know, I still don't live there. What was it like? Tell me about your family. You know, my upbringing was happy but very difficult. You know, we had no running water in my house until we were, you know, I was seven years old. What year was that? I was born in 1968. And there's still no running water. So what did you do for water? Oh, we had cousins next door and we went there and, you know, there was a well. and you know i don't make it sound like we're any worse off than anybody else we weren't i really would never do that i grew up in an amazing community with lots of people who had a lot things a lot worse than we did and i had a loving family and all of that but it was difficult and i remember it has really formed me from the inside yeah i remember you know the harshness of life and i remember selling potatoes with my father and we have field we're very small farmers we had so few cows that i could name each one of them we had 12 at the end of the day it was uh it was a tough life my parents both worked three jobs yeah they were always working and uh what jobs would they do just anything that was a small very small farmer manual labor they both left school and they were 12 years old 12 12 and this was in they left school probably what in the late 50s uh yeah uh i was blessed to have a loving family my parents complete devotion to my education and my brother's education my mother in particular she would stand in a field when we'd be doing something whatever it was bringing in the cows or doing something and she would say you know your whole life is dedicated to making sure you never have to do this when you go to college or if you go to college and always remember that's what you're here to do which is to escape from this not the societal aspect or the community which was so important to us and still is my best friends are still where i grew up in wonderful village absolutely but it was all about hardship and escaping hardship and you know the relationship with food was not we didn't eat for pleasure we ate for existence and because you were hungry and i have uh so my relationship with food evolved over time as well when i was able to afford to eat better food but it's um it's really interesting because you know ireland is an amazing country and it's gone through many many iterations and perhaps now is living its best life because the country has done so well it has but but uh when i grew up it was it was very different it was high unemployment there was you know lots of people leaving the country all the time yes uh it was a scary time yeah did you think your mother when she told you that about escape this life or you know do what you do better yeah what would she like to have done do you think that was that her she's the most amazing person yeah tell me she uh she has she has done so many things for so many people so many charities she's raised money she's worked in the community she was out seven nights a week always doing something for other people she is the most extraordinary person I've ever met in my life and she's still with us thank God and she's in our family home in Tipperary and she made me feel alive every day and I owe everything to her when I was younger my mother would always sort of pack my lunch and we used to get up early in the morning because we would milk the cows before we go to school and you'd go and feed them in the winter in the dark and bring hay and my father would already be gone to work somewhere else my mother would probably be milking the cows before she went to another job and so you'd bring in the cattle then you'd feed them then you'd come and have breakfast and then you'd cycle to the bus to go to school it's like sounds like it's like 150 years ago but uh that whole concept of sort of living your life in a different way when i go back there which i do very often thank god every couple of weeks or months it stands in front of me when i'm there and and i'm met by it every single time and uh it it forms you on the inside but in a good way you also have many happy memories yeah it's not just moments of like you know worrying about what happened in the past yeah but it has definitely left a mark on me there's no doubt about that

8:08We'll see you next time. iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You mentioned when we were talking this morning, and you mentioned it just before, almost as soon as we sat down, that you witnessed and experienced having your house burned down. Yeah. Can you tell me about that? I was seven years old. My parents were out at something, and I was with my grandmother in her house, which was about three miles, four miles away. I remember my mother walking into my grandmother's bedroom, room and i was sleeping in the bed beside my grandmother i was seven years old and she had our dog in her arms and everyone was covered in soot and dirt and um she said we've lost everything and i said what do you mean we've lost everything and she said our house burned to the ground last night and uh all my father's savings were under a mattress and uh the only thing he saved was uh was a dog and um so they came and saw in flames in flames and he ran in to get the dog and uh i remember the local community coming to my grandmother's house about three days later and they were going to take up a collection to help the family which again speaks to the community i came from they would do it today it's an incredible place incredible it's really unique and uh my mother said no i'm we're good we're going to figure this out and my father built our house that my parents my mom now lives in and uh i lived with my grandmother for a year uh do you know how the fire started yes electric blanket went on fire oh no so however that changed me forever yeah and uh it in the sense that you experienced loss deep trauma deep trauma and loss and you know uncertainty and fear and you know staring into the abyss of the unknown however again i view it as a blessing because if it hadn't happened i would have not i would not have been able to view life the way i've done it and i remember my grandmother telling me everything was going to be okay and and she was right and she she was an incredible woman when we talk about food memories yes what was it like well very often you know i say on the podcast that the people that i talk to so many of them remember their grandmother's food almost more than their mother's and what was your grandmother's she used to make the greatest white soda bread i've ever had in my life i remember her making with flour on the on the table and then she would put it out on the window of this little cottage she lived in and the smell of it would go all over the yard and you would instantly be hungry.

10:47And then in the evening, we would cut slices of it and she would put thick butter on it. And she would put it on a very long fork, really long fork, and she would hold it over the actual wood fire. Oh, so she'd put the butter on and then toast it. Right, and it used to drip into the fire. Wow. And then we would stare into the fire and she would say, let's look at the faces in the fire. And we would see and make up stories about who was living in the fire. And I remember that bread and breaking that bread and eating it. And I can taste it to this minute. And it was the most comforting moment that I would have in my day, my week, my year.

11:25And I loved that experience. And I think about it all the time. Have you made it? Do you have a recipe? I am a terrible cook. Can you get someone to make it for you? But my mother used to make it. And I believe she has the recipe. So I'm going to ask her. You're right. It's a good idea. No, that's sad. Did you, when you lived with your grandma, did your parents live there as well? So you all lived in the house with A.M. built. And then my father built a house and then we moved and went from there. It's interesting because I think that what you're talking about, again, is something that I often say because I witness it a lot in the restaurant, is if I could kind of teach my children and my grandchildren anything, it would be resilience.

12:08You know, how you, empathy, I say empathy and resilience. So empathy has to be in there because if you're just a resilient person, then you think, well, I did it. I managed it. I can do it. Why can't they? But I think that being able to suffer as you did or have some experience like you did and then to carry on. And I see it in the restaurants. I see the ones who have a really bad experience or a day or something happened and really are affected by it deeply, which is fair enough. and the ones that are affected by it deeply and go back to work. Yeah, I mean, we all deal with adversity in different ways.

12:47And I don't want to dwell on it too much as being who I am because I guess it's at the root of who I am. But at the same time, I have been very, very, very fortunate in my life in so many ways. And there have been so many serendipitous moments that have guided me in certain directions that would otherwise not have happened. so I'm very blessed to have the life I have and I know that and blessed to have the family I have and the friends I have and the things I've been able to do in my life but at the same time I never take anything for granted ever and I'm always afraid that you go back

13:25Had anybody in your family been to university before? I remember my mother used to clean a meat factory at night she used to clean the offices and I would go and help her whenever I was available and able. What age? I would have been 17. Right. But, you know, she did it for many years. And in those days when you wanted to get your results to figure out if you got into college or not, you dialed a number and they read out the results. Oh, really? And so I remember calling from the phone in the office of the manager of the plant to find out if I was getting into university. and my whole life had been built up to this moment because it was all a question of if i didn't get into college i didn't know what would happen and i remember dialing this number and finding out that i got in and both of us sat on the floor holding each other crying our eyes out and it was like a movie i understand how it sounds and bawling our eyes out for 10 minutes and hugging each other because everything that we had done had led up to this moment it's interesting because after i finished uh high school or secondary school as we call it i uh you know i worked as a journalist and in local newspaper between university nina when i grew up so i had a full-time job while you were at college right so i used to drive um i guess 120 miles every day uh to for three years uh to keep my job in the newspaper and uh go to college and during the day and at night and i would always come home to my mom for lunch and so she lived near where you were where the newspaper was exactly right i remember one day i had this yellow uh renault 12 car and it was a thousand years old and my father and mother left the kitchen they went out to look at the car while i was in having whatever lunch i was having and my father said those tires are so bald on your car you'd be better off putting the tubes on the outside because i had driven so many hundreds and hundreds of miles and so but i would look forward to that lunch yeah because it was like coming into a refuge for a little period of time and then going back out into the big bad world but um was it so the job the the newspaper was i was a journalist i was but you went in the morning and stayed till i would go in the morning and then i would drive to galway where i went to college and then I would study law and English literature at night until 1030 at night and then I would go again in the morning early early then drive back to Tipperary for the newspaper then go and have lunch then go back to work drive back to go I did that for three and a half years did you have a social life at all no but it doesn't matter I didn't care I when my son went to Columbia he wanted to have a job and I thought well you're not going to be able to study and have a job you know how are you going to make this work and I called being you know the parent I called the dean of students I said what do you think I should do about you know the fact that my son wants to work and and study he said you know the best students are the ones that have jobs he said because they learn really early that they have to manage their time they have to be at work they have to focus when they focus and he said the fact that he wants and again some do you know obviously because of need he didn't have to do it because he needed to but he wanted to you know and he wanted to do both and i think it was interesting that he said that maybe that is you know how did you i can't looking at this i can't imagine how you did it though that is really intense you know i think life is all about organization i'm very organized person i'm maniacally compulsively organized uh i make less every day I live by the morning and the night let's go to that you you get into bed and then you know before I go to bed before you do a list it'll take maybe 40 minutes for elements no matter what happens no matter where I am in the world including Saturdays and Sundays yeah I mean this is a sad you know but there we are and I have a list of all the things I have to do and my day is not complete until I've done that list so would you go to bed with the list that you did the night before I think oh I didn't do that I didn't do that and so you do that and that and that yeah and so so i did that when i was a student and i did that when i was a kid growing up and i did that when i was going to college and so in order to be able to do these things you have to be massively organized yeah you do and uh so i've carried that through my life so what i agree with what the dean of admission said to you about your son people who have busy lives make time yeah and if you want to give i know it's an old saying if you want to give busy person get something don't give it to a busy person yeah and i find that to be true also in life when you then were in university and you were doing the two jobs did you then carry on into journalism was that what you decided did you always know that's what you wanted to do yeah i was 12 years old yeah from 12 i had a teacher called mrs o'shea who came up one day and she said you know you should become a journalist and i said what's a journalist yeah and she started explaining it to me and she said let's pretend and let's write a little news story and uh that day i decided and so it sounds crazy i know but for the next six seven eight years everything i did was dedicated towards becoming a journalist i was very lucky my uncle john joe brought me to a local guy called pat ryan who won't know in the local newspaper still does yeah and place called nina and he said this is my nephew and he'll work for free he just wants to get a start and uh pat said well sure let's give him a shot and so i covered a what did you cover i used to cover i used to cover hurling games and football games and eventually a very kind man called jerry mclaughlin and who has since passed and a friend of mine peter gleason who just retired they gave me a chance to be a junior reporter and i remember i was making 172 pounds which at the time was a fortune and uh 172 pounds per per month and uh it was a it was a fortune and uh before tax and uh so so i was using all of this and i would go and cover court cases and i would go and cover accidents and i would go and cover murders not that they happen very often once in 10 years but things like that and and so you grew up very quickly and you met adults and you were forced to get engaged i was always interested in the human condition and i love to write and i love to read and i was sold from day one and then you know i became a journalist i i worked in that local newspaper then went to another one locally and then i became a daily news in a daily newspaper in cork and newspaper called the cork examiner and now it's called the examiner uh but it was a daily newspaper had a morning edition and an evening newspaper and uh yeah i worked there for a number of years and they were some of the happiest years of my life do you remember the food you ate when you were working as a journalist some of the best stories were found in pubs and some of the best people that you met were in pubs and a lot of singing in pubs lots of singing in Ireland especially and storytelling and and and you you grew up around men if you're a boy and you saw them you know extract stuff from people so it could appear on the page and to be able to get people to tell you things they didn't want to tell you that whole art is is lost and so i just think it is lost yeah it's harder now in the digital age yeah and also i think there's a something that's happened in the last decade or yeah so i think truth is now uh the definition of truth has been lost forever do you think nobody really it's opinion is it and i don't mean journalism i don't mean that there aren't journalists who tell the truth that's not what i mean what i mean is we have a difficulty understanding what's real and what's not because the world that we live in yeah and i know i'm stating the blind in the obvious because with ai you can do everything but i just and and journalism in some respects has gotten easier but in some respects it's gotten a lot harder because for people to actually break through and write or say or do something that is differentiated is much harder because there's so much more competition and the things that we used to care about as journalists uh you know people think about different things now but back then it was it was an art yeah did you did you ever do it any did you were ever foreign correspondents you've ever sent yeah i traveled all over the world i was really lucky uh i was just thinking on the way here this morning in 1992 i covered the olympics in barcelona did you and i carried a little briefcase with me called a tandy yeah and when the 100 meters was over you raced down to a phone box yeah you place the collect call to the newspaper and then they would answer the phone and then you would have the the words on a word processor and you would have two cups on both ends and she would say at the other end usually the type type setter press send now and you press send and then you put a cup over the mouthpiece and a cup over the earpiece and all the words would go down the page down the line and it would appear on the other end and that was in 1992 when i That was pretty radical, wasn't it?

22:44That was incredible. I thought I was a superstar carrying around this little briefcase. But yeah, back then it was... I remember meeting Don McCullen, who was the greatest hero of the war. And just the process where he would take a photograph in Saigon during the Vietnam War and Ethiopia during the famine and getting it back to London, getting it on the plane, the role of film, which would have to be put on the plane if they could get a plane, get it to london get it to the developer get it to the paper you know and now you see what we do you know i mean you know i started out in journalism with the typewriter like that and i would carry it around it was like 30 pounds and uh but did you did you eat well in cork did you did yeah i mean cork is an incredible it is valley maloo is right well darina is amazing arena yeah uh cork is uh is one of the greatest culinary capitals in my opinion yeah you've got places like kinsale which have incredible restaurants you've got the english market in in cork uh yeah i mean but when i'd gotten to cork life had changed and uh thank god i was able to afford to do things and you know my whole experience with life had changed uh by then thank god so yeah i think that's when i really began to start to enjoy food was there a restaurant column I wonder, a food column in the paper.

24:05Oh, there were. And also, I know this is not what you meant, but there was a fear associated with somebody coming to gray at a restaurant. Oh, yeah. I'm on that side. And you, of course, know that very well. You make a break, you know. Right. It's like theater opening night. Yeah. Yeah. Adrian Gill, you know, he could walk in and say, it wasn't even about the food, but, you know, I walked in and the lighting was on a woman's face and it made me never want to walk in that room again. And there goes the restaurant. I know. It's crazy. Yeah. but um yeah back in the day having food columns and then for a period of time i used to be serve as an as a as a night editor a news editor in the newspaper and so you'd have these older gentlemen coming up you know usually having had two or three beers or a cigarette or whatever and they'd say well this is my piece and you have to go okay i need you to do this i need you to do that maybe not and so i was um i was always sort of trying to negotiate with people yeah and so that gave me the skill to do that but when you were um covering food or covering anything that people consumed i always felt that the journalist who was writing that stuff had a softer touch oh do you in what way because they needed to put they needed to humanize yeah on the page yeah what was going on in the restaurant which is why i think it's such a great shame that food columns have disappeared I agree.

25:27It's different than writing about hard news or writing about sports or things that actually happened. Yeah. Whereas you walk in and you form an impression. It's almost, it's the ultimate subjectivity. And I think it's a great shame that that has been lost.

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26:16What happened after Cork? After Cork, I couldn't afford my mortgage after a while. I had a house and I remember I was making$18 ,000 a year and I needed to make$22 ,000 in order to pay my mortgage. So I went to Dublin and I applied for a job in public relations and got it. But how old were you then, about 20? It was in 1996, so I guess I was 28. Yeah, and you went to Dublin. Yeah, and a big city. I went to the big smoke. And my mother asked me, are you sure this is going to be okay? I think I'll manage. So I went and did that. And then after a couple of years, I decided, you know, I was going to strike out on my own.

26:58And I did with a partner who's still practicing in Dublin, a great guy called Jackie Gallagher. And we started a firm together. And it was in communications and public relations. And the reason I did that is that I would phone up PR people all the time. Yeah. Trying to, you know, figure out what the story was on a particular day. You did it as a journalist. you would call them and I figured you know what I think I can do that and so portrait from Gamekeeper or whatever and I did it and I liked it were there the kind of Madman business lunches did you have those with the two dry martinis oh yeah back then it was different I mean again this was in Dublin and you know you would have days where you know Friday was taken very seriously as a day where you didn't work after lunch you know all things I think that was probably international it might not have been just Dublin but I think work wise do they still have those lunches?

27:53Do you go for long lunches? No, God no. That's a thing of the past. Mad Men, I think, glorifies it, but not anymore. I mean, it doesn't exist. I mean, in New York... Do you like the food in New York? Do you think the restaurants are really... Because you travel so many places. Do you think as a city of food, it is... Yeah, I mean, it's very hard to beat. I mean, it's something like 12 ,000 restaurants. And some of the best restaurants, as you know, in New York are the simplest hole in the wall. restaurants that nobody knows about and a lot of the experience in New York is about who you meet when you're there yeah and it's such a melting pot and it's such a wonderful place I mean every day every day and I've lived there for 27 years every day I still look up at the big buildings I still marvel it's the greatest country in the world no matter what happens from one year one decade one president there's this spirit of you're never beaten you can always achieve what you set out to achieve people don't judge you if you fail they want you to sit it's just uh it's an amazing place and you know we all have different views at different times about what's going on in america at any given moment in the history of the country but one thing is true for me at least i mean i love ireland i'm deeply proud to be irish and i'm an irishman seems like your identity is But I've grown in America.

29:17I've now lived half my life in both places. And I'm both Irish and American. Yeah, I'd like to talk about that. Because you became politically engaged as well, going from journalism to public relations to advising to mentoring. But also you were crucial in the work that you did with Hillary Clinton. I served in government with Secretary Clinton under President Obama. What was that like working and going back to Ireland but this time as a diplomat I have a deep love for Northern Ireland and one of the promises I made myself when I went into government which was the greatest honour of my life and nothing I've ever done or will ever do will be more important or better or more rewarding I already know that I promised myself I would go and visit every town in Northern Ireland over the time I was there Did you?

30:11Did you? Yeah. And it is a most unique, special and misunderstood place. And I'm still deeply involved there. I'm involved in Queens University and I do a number of things there. Fantastic institution. But, you know, never bet against the Irish people. Never bet against Northern Ireland. It's been through so much and it'll take decades for it to fully change. but it is a place of uh of of it has many gifts and i love it deeply and when i was there it was such a privilege to be able to work with the people who were there on both sides of the religious divide and you know what i try to do when i'm there every time is to give more hope to people because they you know when i was going there back then there were generations of people living in the same house you know you'd have a grandchild a father and a grandfather all of them were unemployed and the unemployment rate was extremely high what year was that 2009 2011 those two three years in that period but you know um northern ireland has done so well yeah and it has you know picked itself off the ground so many times and there are so many exciting things happening there and one of the best educated workforces in the world and you know now of course you go there and it's it's a much better place but it still has a huge amount of work to do to to get to where it needs to be but one thing i can tell you is if you want to see an indefatigable spur you go there never bet against the north i promise you it'll always come out okay in the end and and did um did did you ever consider that being political full-time no you have to decide do you want to advise companies and CEOs on what they do or do you want to be involved in business and politics and I know lots of people do both but I I didn't want to do that and I felt like I'd given 10 years of my life to politics and public life in that respect either being active in politics or being an advisor and you know I still get called a lot by politicians by prime ministers and leaders of different countries to give advice on what I think is happening in the world and if I'm asked I'll give it but i i don't want to be involved in politics if i put it that way anymore yeah and it's uh my brother is a politician what does he do he is a politician in ireland and has been for for gosh three decades and uh you know it's a very tough life yeah it is and there's no appreciation for anything that you do it doesn't matter who you are what political party at the end of the day you can count on one hand the number of politicians who've left the stage of their own accord yeah and said yeah goodbye to all that ultimately it doesn't end well and we have a very as a world we have a very unforgiving attitude with some reason uh towards politicians but at the end of the day i believe the majority of them are trying to do the right thing i do too and they're good people who got into public service because they like it and uh they they get a hard knock and a hard you know scorecard and i i just think for me that wasn't something that attracted me in all your travels do you have a memory of a grand dinner in china or in france or you know um i would say these formal events where a lot of effort goes into preparing the meal and the menu and the food it's very important of course because of the message that it conveys but ironically the vast majority of people who go to those events spend most of their time talking and not really focusing on the food.

33:55Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which sounds weird. No, no, no, but it gets them around a table. Invariably people end up talking about things and the food becomes kind of incidental, which is always a shame. Yeah, yeah. The most valuable experiences that I've had in business have been where you can combine the two. Yeah. And a lot of that has to do with something you talked about it last night which is you know where you choose to eat and who you choose to eat with and a proximity to each other when you're around the table and i really like meeting people who think about that before they do it it's so good that we're here and we just you did a brilliant i think i might as well hang up my uh job i think there is room for the two of us in the podcast world but um you know to anybody listening to this one listen to gray matter because uh it's i've never been asked questions like that before how did that happen gray matter gray matter um well first of all thanks for having me secondly uh gray matter came about because i spent the last 35 years dealing with i'm blessed to say the top ceos in the world and i'm always fascinated by the person behind the person just as i am with you and we all get to see the public figure that's out there doing whatever they're doing in their careers but very few people get to see them behind the firewall and I spend my life with them behind the far wall.

35:19And I often find that people don't get to think about how do you think, how do you do what you do? One of the things I've been fascinated with Churchill my entire life and everyone's written extensively, thousands of books. But what I'm fascinated by with Churchill is why did he think the way he thought? What were the formative reasons for him to be that way? Exceptionally brilliant, but why? And so I decided to do Grey Matter because there are thousands of podcasts out there but i wanted to do it around the idea of how somebody is formed and how they think so the rules of engagement are you're not allowed to talk about dollars and cents you're not allowed to talk about your products you're not allowed to go out and promote yourself it's actually to make yourself vulnerable and talk about what's in here behind your brain and so far it's proven to be an interesting journey the ones that i listen to because there is a common thread which is you say it's the success it's coming from building something up um achieving what they've achieved but do you find a thread between all of them because i've listened to about three or four of them only do you find that you could say that a person in that situation is of a certain type and what would that be obsession it's complete obsession and i would say that in myself i not to compare myself to any of these people but you know i live by lists i'm a creature of habit but i'm obsessed with detail to the level i will argue with somebody over a comma for five hours it's just something that makes you who you are and in your case i had blessed to have dinner with you last night and you're having dinner with me and my family and it's an amazing dinner but i also know that you're obsessed with the detail of everything that's going on around you because this is your entire enterprise in order to to talk to you about this they have to have a sense of trust in you that they can talk to you that they can be open and I think that's a huge credit to you that the people that you work with have that trust in you you know I always say trust is earned and yes I'm very fortunate to spend my entire life 14 15 times a day talking to the CEOs biggest companies in the world and they have to trust me and I have to trust them and we talk about things that they don't talk to anybody else about why is that because the further up the food chain you go the lonelier it gets people can't trust everyone around them yeah they work for them they tell them what they want to hear you need a safe space you need a safe place and you need somebody to talk to you that doesn't have an agenda and so that's what i've tried to do my entire life is to be that person and so when i'm in gray matter i'm really giving myself to that person to say it's okay to be vulnerable and just tell me what you really think because i'm not going to ask you questions that are either asinine or so difficult and probing that you're going to go well that felt uncomfortable but what you find is that people ultimately want to tell you a story about themselves because they don't get an opportunity even someone like you who's been interviewed hundreds of times what i'm really interested in is what made you who you are because when people observe you and they look at you they don't know you even though they've met you a thousand times it's an interesting concept you can spend days on this but i just think the people who make the most interesting subjects are the people who are most interested in other people yeah and detail yeah detail is everything detail i agree is everything i agree but i do ask everyone and i will ask you and i think i'm trying to guess that maybe i know the answers but there might be a few of them is that if food is something we share and food is something that alleviates hunger but it also is comfort and so i hope you don't need comfort very often but if you did is there a food that you would go to for comfort Declan yeah I would say there are three okay yeah I thought the market yeah sorry to give you a very long write down what I think they are okay mine match yours let's see okay uh well we know well I think you think you probably guessed one already maybe yeah we talked about the uh soda bread yeah baked potato and soda bread we're big on carbs apparently yeah

39:28okay i got two well you tell me all right so my favorite number one my number one might not be any of these because it might not be a memory it could be something you had no my number one would definitely be potato for sure without a question that's easy and i'm not unique uh my number two would be uh believe it or not oatmeal like porridge yeah yeah and so i grew up having it all the time and i love it and i have it almost every day and then my favorite pasta i'm obsessed with pesto do you obsessed good and uh my favorite pasta is trophy pasta with pine nuts potatoes green beans and pesto and maybe some broccoli have you ever had it in lugaree have you been to any of those little towns i have had it all over there it's more special there than anywhere else because it's my favorite dish.

40:22Thank you. I really appreciate it. Thank you very much. Thank you. Ruthie's Table 4 is proud to support Leukemia UK. Their Cartwheel for a Cure campaign raises funds for vital research and more effective and kinder treatments for acute myeloid leukemia. Please donate and to do so, search Cartwheel for a Cure. Ruthie's Table 4 was produced by Alex Bell, Robbie Hamilton, and Zad Rogers with Andrew Sang and Bella Salini. This has been an Atomize production for iHeartMedia. Hey guys, it's us, the Jonas Brothers. I'm Joe. I'm Kevin. And I'm Nick. And guess what? We created our own podcast called Hey Jonas.

41:05We invented a podcast? Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to it. We're the first people to do podcasts. We get to ask other people questions because we're sick and tired of being asked questions. Well, sick and tired is a strong way to put it, but you know, tired and sick. Tired and sick. Listen to Hey Jonas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Just listen. We don't care where you hear it. Hey, I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and host of the podcast, A Slight Change of Plans. A show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans.

41:37I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. You can have opinions. You can have like a strong stance. And then there's your body having its own program. Listen to A Slight Change of Plans on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.