The Food Expert: This Diet Slowly Kills You - Avoid These Meals! | Sonny Food Review

21:28And one of the factors is punishment. The other factor is culture. So you're going to get a lot of different results in Los Angeles compared to Tokyo. Even if Tokyo has less harsh penalties, people in Tokyo do the right thing because they're part of this homogenous Japanese society that operates a certain way. Yeah. So that's a yeah, that's a tough one. Interesting. Why do you think there's this connection through eating food together? I mean, food is something that binds us all. It's something that we all do. We all eat food. We all have beliefs around food. We all grow up with a parent or grandparent telling us something is good for you or bad for you or this food heals you or this food is destructive for you.

22:10And so, I mean, that's why food for some people even kind of becomes a religion when you're looking at carnivore or vegan folks. It's something we all do. And so some people develop just really intense beliefs around it.

22:27Graham Stephan:It seems like that's one of those things around the world that everyone gets together and eats together for the most part. Like that's that one thing that everyone could get behind. Like same with music. It's like a universal language similar to eating together. Sure. Yeah, absolutely. It's something that brings people together. It's a time for families to come together. I mean, across the world. It's a good point. And it's just to eat together is human. I've not been to a culture where it's like, oh, you know, like how we go to bathrooms separately. We also eat separately. Nothing like that. you know, everywhere you go, food is either the center of a family or a community.

23:04And it's only, you know, more and more in the U.S. now, it's this thing that we do alone. Like, we go through sad drive-thrus and shame eat in our cars or have somebody deliver us food, way too much food for way too much money on Uber Eats. And I do think food is better when it's shared with others.

23:24Graham Stephan:But it's interesting, though, because I remember I was feeding monkeys in Japan, and they're very much like they'll grab something, but then they'll run off with it. Like they don't want to eat together. It seems like that's a commonality between a lot of animals. Like, let me hoard this to myself. And maybe if food wasn't so bountiful, we would all be like, no, that's mine. And just, you know, I'll be in my corner. When I was with the Hidzabe tribe in Africa, I asked a similar question. You know, the person who gets to be chief there is the person who is the best hunter. But the best hunter, he doesn't take more food than the others.

23:56And no one takes more food than the others because they're part of a community or part of a society, no matter the size. And there it might be groups of, let's say, six to ten people. And you're going to be exiled from this group of people if you're taking more than your share. If you're doing that move, if you're grabbing the food and running away with it, you no longer have this band of brothers to hunt with. And they need a group of people. Like they, they depend on others to hunt and be able to bring it back a baboon or a, and, and to have a meal together. So, um, you know, people are different than animals, but that, that, I mean, my thinking is, it just is part of the social fabric.

24:39If you are greedy, if you take, if you're going to take more than what's yours, you're going to be exiled. How often do you feel pressure to act like the food tastes really good when you're eating it in front of the person that just made it? Or if you're in Afghanistan, let's just say, and you're getting some street vendor food, and there's some guy right next to you is standing with like, you know, a G-U-N. How could you be like, oh yeah, this bread is, you know, disgusting. This is awful. I'm never going to eat this. I like that in your mind. The guys with the guns are like, better say the bread's good.

25:12Better say the bread's good. um how so i think that a couple of things oddly enough my show is called best ever food review show but i don't really see myself as a review show or like as an actual critic my goal is to show different cultures and different food from around the world and just be kind of a vessel through which people can see those things um beyond that um i think there's many ways to talk about what you're eating and kind of try to get the point across in a subtle way even if you're eating something disgusting you don't have to say there's more tactful ways to talk about it than just saying oh yuck gross disgusting um and there's i there's you can always try to focus on something positive and so i i try to you know i hope there's some kind of connection between me and the audience when i speak where they understand oh okay he's not so much into this one but i will say it's certainly more challenging to be open when when the person who made it is right in front of you and maybe they understand the same language as you or speak the same language as you it is more challenging got it so let's talk about some of those disgusting foods and first of all i'm curious which food did you eat that caused the most pain and discomfort down the line let's say like maybe eating it was okay but like you paid a long severe punishment after you ate it well i had a short stint where i did some food challenges in the south in the usa I don't like food challenges.

26:39And for a long time, I wondered, man, what do they do with all that food after they eat? And what I learned is they throw it up. Wait, what do you mean? Now you guys know. What, though? Nobody ever talks about this part. You're talking about like when you eat like 50 hot dogs? Yeah, what do you think they're doing? Going on a treadmill after that? They just throw it up. This is my hot take. Joey Chestnut? This is, I'm not accusing anybody in particular, but here's what happened to me. I ate just only like eight burgers, not even 45. and immediately I was like, I have to get this out of me because I feel so bad.

27:09So I think that's kind of the dirty secret of competitive eating nobody talks about. I always thought there was a minimum time you have to keep it down. There is. Oh, yeah. Yeah, like during the competition or something. And then they helped themselves to the bathroom after that. Really? So the bigger point, you said the food with the most dramatic consequences. I did some kind of a hot wing challenge in New Orleans. they used some kind of unnatural chemical heat one million Scoville units like instantly it made my throat swell up where I felt like I was having trouble breathing my face became red and oh it was it was really bad and I also vomited that because my stomach was just boiling with acid and this nasty man-made chemical goo that I just ate.

27:58And even coming back up, it was, I want to say just as bad. I think it was worse. It was an awful experience. So I don't do any of those challenges. Volume, spice, I'm not into doing food challenges. What about the best bite of food you've ever had? I mean, I could tell you my top three favorite foods are probably Japanese food, Vietnamese food, and kind of American junk food, like Applebee's kind of stuff.

28:26Graham Stephan:But what about foods that you wouldn't think of? If you're like, oh yeah, these roasted ants were just like delicious. Ants are pretty good. Man, I should have brought you something. I'm glad you didn't. Did you think I might? Yes. Yeah, I thought you were going to bring either mad honey or like crickets or something like that. Something you could just like put in your bag that wouldn't raise red flags. I can tell you, there are foods that I started eating because of the show. And then now I still eat off camera, just purely out of enjoyment. And a lot of those would be like foods I'll find in Vietnam, like beef tendon.

29:02You know, if I go to a market, I'll eat some bamboo worms or crickets. What else is good? Chicken feet, blood cubes. My wife is Vietnamese. She doesn't like her blood cubes. So she gives them to me. I love blood cubes. What are those? I mean, it's just a solidified chicken blood that's been boiled and then it's in a cube form. Why? That's a good question. Well, it's about efficiency. It's about utilizing every part of the animal. It's a beautiful thing. So they take the chicken. That chicken blood is full of nutrition and they can utilize that. They can eat that. They don't have to waste that.

29:38And it tastes good too. He's looking at me with disbelief. He's trying to, yeah. No, my wife, she orders a dish called Bun Ba Hue. It has blood cubes. She hands them over to me. I eat them. It's great. So what's the grossest texture you've ever put in your mouth? Maybe like a sea cucumber. A sea cucumber is hard and soft at the same time. It's gooey, but stiff. It's gelatinous. It has a slimy coat on the outside and a bumpy kind of wart-like texture. That's a pretty weird one. Yeah, so you can find those in Korea. In Korea, there's a bunch of strange seafood that they eat in Korea. One of them is a sea cucumber.

30:19They also have something called the fish. And it looks shockingly like what the name describes. And you've eaten that. I've eaten that. Several times? Yeah. You go back for more? So that's kind of a food that's... A second helping? Are you insinuating something? No. That's kind of a food that is fun to bring a friend to because, I mean, you have to have soju or beer or both with it and it's not bad it's just it tastes a little rubbery it's like chewing on rubber bands and you go huh okay so that's the thing people do huh yeah so what's something you'd never eat again there's a food in the philippines known as pog pog have you heard of this i thought you're gonna say balut no oh balut's good no i'll eat balut on purpose off camera i like it okay high in protein um pog pog has a much more tragic story pog pog is is essentially chicken, pre-eaten chicken that's been taken from the garbage and refried.

31:16And so this is something people are eating in very poor communities. And it's something I documented there and I tried for myself. Now, people had been kind of cynically asking me for years to try Pog Pog, especially when I would go to the Philippines in the comments, they'd say, oh, you have to try Pog Pog next time. And then finally I did. And so how it works is, you know, folks will go to Jollibee or KFC or McDonald's, you know, all those places are, including McDonald's are selling fried chicken in the Philippines. Someone will collect the trash and then somebody will dump the trash in a poor neighborhood where they probably sell it to the folks there.

31:51And these guys go through the trash and they sort out the chicken and the remaining food from everything else, from the cups and the plates and forks and everything else that's in there. Then they wash it. I'm not sure how effective it is to wash meat, but they wash it. they re-season it, they re-fry it, and then they serve it. That's pog pog. And so this is not, you know, something you're going to find all over the Philippines by any means, but it's the only place that you'll find it. But just in small, very poor neighborhoods. How does seeing that level of poverty affect your judgment and just general philosophy about like like America and other countries, I imagine like seeing that and seeing like still tribes and stuff in Africa, like it's, it's gotta be pretty eyeopening.

32:42Is there any, you know, I guess epiphanies that you've had about living in America or just overall, like how certain cultures have accepted some things to be okay and others haven't? Um, it, you know, if anything, after traveling so much, you know, some people, I would, I would think the shallow takeaway would be like, wow, we're really lucky here to be in the usa away from you know these people's disgusting lifestyles but i don't see it that way i see you know when i go to certain places in africa or you know especially in vietnam if you go north in vietnam to the haiyang loop where they have all these beautiful mountains people living in wooden or clay houses a foot thick what you will find there is people with community multi-generational families people eating people moving every day Nobody's overweight.

33:31They're walking. They're not going to a gym, but they're exercising because of their lifestyle. They're eating organic food. I mean, they're eating fruits and vegetables, grains, rice, rice noodles, and they're happy. They're some of the happiest people you'll meet anywhere around the world. And so more often than not, I'm not going around traveling thinking, wow, I'm so lucky to be an American and away from this. I think these people have something figured out. and it's not you know of course there's things that could be better they could have better medical and they could you know have better education in some places or there's some places are overrun with disease but there's something to take away from seeing people living in this very old-fashioned traditional way where where they have this strong sense of family and community and uh and they're happy what do you think americans can learn from that you know i love the usa too and there's so much that's good about this country but we are a very individualistic culture and you know i think that affects why you know there's a loneliness epidemic in our country i think it's a good thing if you can you know be close to your parents live close to your extended family if you can have a big family you know just it's just all the obvious things that we've done for all of time that we've just slowly stripped away in the last 100 years what's the most expensive meal you've eaten oh expensive um i should know this maybe two thousand dollars and what was it um that was a pizza in new york city so i did a video about cheap versus expensive pizza so of course you can get like the dollar slice in new york city and there was a place also selling a$2 ,000 pizza, which they gave to me half off.

35:20Only$1 ,000. Pretty cool. And what was on it? I mean, you know, the typical stuff. Like name an expensive ingredient. Caviar. Gold. Gold flake. Yes. Truffle. Yes. And foie gras. Oh. And then there was some kind of like a squid ink black pizza crust. Oh my gosh. You know, maybe the cheese was aged or something. How'd it taste? It was fun. was it better than like a domino's um no i don't think so i don't think so so why do people get it i mean i think it's they said they maybe sell a couple a month i mean i think it's just about the story yeah and i think with a lot of these outrageously expensive foods it's about the story it's about the flex it's about somebody trying to do something exclusive that not so many people can do um i mean and that's why i was doing it for the show and hopefully by seeing me do it people go, oh, okay, so that's all that is.

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37:54Graham Stephan:Guys, I could not recommend their product more. So check out Cozy Earth again down below in the description. They are the gift that lasts way longer than the holidays. Enjoy. What's the best poor man's food or street food that's accessible everywhere in a certain location? like what would be in a certain country yeah i love like cheap pad thai i'll go crazy for it well if i had to say which uh if i had to pick a country that has my favorite street food that would be vietnam vietnam has street food all over the place um and look southeast asia is amazing for street food and street food was a new word for me when i moved over there and it might be a word that a lot of americans don't know i mean the closest american equivalent would be like a food truck but it's like these vendors who quite literally operate on the street in vietnam you'll find these low slung plastic stools and chairs um people cooking on the on a grill or in a walk basically in the elements making banh mi or pho or banh cheng nung any of these like amazing vietnamese dishes that at most cost two or three dollars and by the way vietnamese food my first time trying Vietnamese food was in Vietnam.

39:05And so when I came back to the USA to try Vietnamese food, it was heartbreaking. I mean, there are good places here and there, but it's challenging to make Vietnamese food as good as it is in Vietnam. And there's a couple of reasons why. Some, well, half the reason is because people aren't staying true to the recipes. I'm not sure why that happens. For example, in a goi koon, like a spring roll, people will put here in the US, some people, like half these restaurants, I might get hate for this. It has to be said. This is important. Instead of putting proper herbs and like really green leafy lettuce, they put like iceberg lettuce, like white lettuce and it just, and bean sprouts.

39:47And then they'll ask you, do you want shrimp or pork? It's like, no, it's supposed to be both. But when you go to a place like Vietnam and you eat pho or you eat banh mi, the reason it's different there is because they have factories making that food every single day. And so they have somebody taking a rice flour, turning that into a batter, steaming big sheets of that and cutting those sheets into thin strips. That's your fa noodle. Now that's a fresh noodle that they're going to put into a hot, delicious bone broth that's been cooking away since 3 a.m. Meanwhile, here stateside, they have a dried noodle.

40:22So someone's made that same noodle, then dried it, then they had to rehydrate it. And it's Just not the same. Where is the local food closest to the American version of that food? Like none of them. They're all so different. So it's still way different. Like you can get Thai food in America and it's going to be way different than Thai food in Thailand. Yeah. The same thing goes for Vietnamese food. The same thing goes for Indian food. It's just not even close.

40:45Graham Stephan:Yeah. How is the American version different? I feel like a lot of our food is just like fried. So I could run through some examples. So Chinese American food is completely different than Chinese food. And most Americans know that. And the same thing with Mexican food is different than Mexican food in the U.S. It usually ends up being Tex-Mex. Now, of course, you can find authentic Mexican food. And honestly, of any food that you're going to find in the U.S. that's the most authentic, probably you'll have your best bet with Mexico because it's right next door. And folks come over and, you know, have similar ingredients.

41:20and maybe a demographic who really wants to eat the actual authentic thing instead of like a chalupa wrapped in cheese, wrapped in a stuffed crust pizza. So Mexican food's your best bet. But almost every other food, it kind of changes and morphs and becomes something new and different when it comes to the USA. That's not always a bad thing. I love Chinese-American food. I love orange chicken and general Tao's chicken. But you're not going to find that if you go to Beijing.

41:50Graham Stephan:Why do you think American food is so unhealthy? It just seems like compared to anywhere else in the world, our food is just awful. Like the quality is so bad. Everything is processed. The common trope of like, okay, I can eat pasta here in America and feel totally fine. And then I go to Italy or sorry, I feel awful and I get bloated and I gain weight or I go on an Italian vacation and I eat tons of food while I'm in Italy. And then you somehow lose weight. Oh yeah. I mean, there's just so many, there's so many answers to this question. um first of all every developing country is getting more and more overweight every year even in japan so even if you look at japan and korea those countries are still getting more overweight every year um beyond that i mean we're so good at having scientists like some of the top scientists in the world work on making the most palatable food possible food that just like shouldn't be that tasty and that delicious and pairing you know like a delicious Whopper paired with a Coke with some salty French fries.

42:51And so beyond that, when you go to the grocery store, there's just so many pre-packaged, pre-made foods. The local market I go to in Vietnam, and I'm not talking just like an outdoor market with fish heads. I'm just talking like a Vietnamese normal looking grocery store. If you go into those places, I mean, it's like the size of an American gas station. An American gas station is equivalent to some of these Vietnamese grocery stores because once you just have meat, fruits, vegetables, rice, bread, there's not that much more that you need to put on the shelves. And so there's just so much more processed food here.

43:29How did you get interested in reviewing food like this? Where does the interest come from? I grew up watching Food Network. And so I always loved Emeril and Gordon Ramsay and especially Andrew Zimmern and Anthony Bourdain. Those guys were like my two biggest inspirations, especially Andrew Zimmern, who I got to meet recently at the Minnesota State Fair. And so I always looked up to, I always was interested in those shows. When I was around the age of 23, I watched Bizarre Foods a lot. And the show was just, it blew my mind at that time. And maybe I'm doing the same thing for someone else now. And that's great if I can do that.

44:11but I just remember one of the first episodes I watched was Andrew Zimmern going to Taiwan to Taipei eating stinky tofu and it was stuffed with fermented cabbage and some kind of a spicy sauce and he's just talking about how intense the odor is and the the I couldn't smell anything but the visuals and the sounds and how chaotic the streets were the different food people were preparing outside. It looked so insane and so different from where I'm from in central Minnesota that I just knew I had to see something more eventually. And so that's what led me to moving to Korea at age 24. But I mean, I was heavily inspired by all those shows on Food Network.

44:54When did you realize you could turn that into a business? Oh, you know, when I first started YouTube, which was almost 10 years ago in December, this December it'll be about 10 years I didn't even think about making money I didn't I mean I didn't I didn't know how I was going to make money I was so naive in the beginning that I was telling myself I'm never going to put ads on my videos because I don't want anything to come between the audience experience and you know the content I'm putting out well that changed a little bit um and I guess it took time to actually figure out how YouTube works how you can actually make money it's so weird because back then there weren't like these rich youtubers or people making money or there wasn't alex harmozy or a cody sanchez it was just um buzzfeed that's it and nobody knew about how much money they were making because like a couple of people were making money and all the creators weren't making anything and so um really when i started I had very pure intentions of just being able to make the best, most interesting food videos that I could.

46:03And the money just ended up coming later on. What were some of the early videos? Like, how did you come up with those concepts? So I was really inspired by a channel way back in the day called Jack's Gap, which was a British kid who made little like fun blogs, vlogs, I should say. And he would travel and make cool travel videos. and um you know a long time ago Ethan Klein from H3H3 was making a bunch of like silly I like that he was making really silly low quality videos with like his wife zooming in and out and it looks terrible and it sounds terrible but he was very entertaining and so for me as somebody who's kind of a perfectionist it made me think like oh this is something I could just do and not do it so perfectly or focus on the quality being perfect and so that kind of gave me permission in the beginning to get started with it being okay with it having mistakes or being sloppy or having the exposure being off sometimes my first videos were just about american fast food in korea because i just wanted to start with something that was interesting to me and so i covered you know things like uh burgers and nachos and pizza and i i asked myself like who who's gonna watch this content nobody's watching this nobody's searching or wanting to share a video about American fast food in Korea.

47:24And so after making about eight videos, I pivoted and I said, I said, I made a video about it. I said, I'm, I've always been interested in Andrew Zimmern's channel, Bizarre Foods or his show Bizarre Foods. And so I'm going to try to make a channel that kind of mimics what he does. I'm going to go see Bizarre Foods. Um, the, the difference is I want to add a comedic twist to everything. And so in the beginning, I was way more maybe over the top or a little bit try hard about trying to make everything silly and funny and irreverent. And over time, I realized people were there for the food and for the people, and I was kind of getting in the way.

48:05So over time, I pulled back some of the silliness and I tried to just, you know, I still want to have comedic beats and fun moments, but hopefully that just comes through my natural engagements with the people I'm dealing with, my natural interactions rather than, you know, writing silly jokes or something. What point did you decide to do it full time? So when I started, I was living in Korea and I was doing video full time as a job in Korea. And I'd saved up some money. I'd saved up maybe about$15 ,000. And I got the opportunity to move to Vietnam. And, and so I'm very early on, maybe, no, the first three, four or five months in Vietnam, I got the opportunity to, to get a$1 ,000 a month salary to get a room and to get a camera guy.

48:58As long as every week, I also made a video for a local tour company. And so I was making videos for myself and for this tour company, but I was making enough money to kind of break even. And so maybe I was doing that for another year or year and a half before I could not have to work with them or depend on them anymore. I was actually making money and then I could just go full time on my own. So I would say to go full time at least a year and a half to two years. How much does it cost today to make one of your videos? It really varies. So and we try to mix it up for that reason. You know, if we're shooting something in Vietnam, then, you know, it's going to be under$5 ,000 and it could even be less than that.

49:44But we're going to be doing a Greenland trip soon and this is going to be our most expensive country by far. We're just shooting four videos and it looks like it could cost up to$100 ,000. So it depends on the country. And so we try to find a balance of countries throughout the year. some countries are more expensive and some countries are less expensive. Where is that money being spent? It's tough because I guess I'm not really including like the full-timers salary. So I've 20, about 20 staff in Vietnam, full-time staff. And so when I talk about the price of a video, I'm just talking about the production price.

50:22And so that most of that money is visas, airplane tickets, hotels, the local fixer, potentially paying local guides, paying for food. You know, if we have to buy a cow to give to a village for them to slaughter and cook up, we got to pay for that. Study and play. Come together on a Windows 11 PC. And for a limited time, college students get the best of both worlds. Get the Unreal College Deal. Everything you need to study and play with select Windows 11 PCs. Eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 Premium and a year of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate with a custom color Xbox wireless controller.

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51:40So I would say those are the main costs incurred outside of, you know, my full-time staff, which includes, you know, producers, editors, mastering editors, and so on. How do you get access to some of these tribes? You know, each country has people who just specialize in this. And so there's websites, there's ways of reaching out to people who have access. And I mean, that's the goal. That's what a good producer does is we get a country in mind, they start doing research, and then my team does research. So we have five producers right now. We have an amazing team and they find some of the wildest topics.

52:16So sometimes maybe we start with ideas I have or I have a country idea and then they bring up topic ideas I never would have thought of. So between my team and the local fixers, we come up with a plan.

52:32Graham Stephan:Curious, would you be able to run your business in the United States? Because I'd imagine that it's a lot less expensive to operate in Vietnam. I mean, could I run it in the U.S.? Yeah, for sure. But I just, that idea doesn't appeal to me. Right now, you know, I have a cabin in Minnesota and that's where I'm from. And I go to Minnesota every July and August, but I like living in Vietnam. I mean, there's a lot, for so many reasons, it just makes more sense for me to be there. And I, you know, in a way I kind of lucked out. I didn't plan to move to Vietnam and I'm going to move to a country where, where it's going to be more, my money's going to go further.

53:11That wasn't ever the plan. It just happened to be that that's where I was when the channel started to grow organically. And every few months we needed to add another person, then add another person until our team grew to what it is now. Could we operate in the U.S.? A hundred percent. But it would be much more expensive. What I want to know about is the hygiene. When you're going to some of these countries, like what is, have you seen like many, I'm guessing, infestations in the restaurants and the kitchens that you've seen? Oh, yeah. That's how you know it's a good spot. When we were getting, we were getting street food in Hong Kong and there's rats going through the alleyways, running over the kitchen.

53:47Oh yeah. Cockroaches. So, so I've seen like in my Instagram reels, like I think it's some, some like Indian street vendor or something. And I see them a lot of the times, like they like run their hands through their, not a lot of the times. So like I've seen it happen where they like run their hands through their hair and like their shirt, like, you know what I mean? and they're like, and then they touch the food and then they put it together and they hand it to some person. They, that's like, well, so every country is a little bit different and some countries take hygiene, you know, Japan would be very intense about hygiene.

54:22A place like India, kind of the opposite. And it's, I mean, I guess it's developed that reputation for a reason and it's not like that everywhere, but I do remember shooting in India in Varanasi and this guy just suddenly, he has this doll or some big masala mix. And he's just using his whole arm, like up to his elbow to mix what's inside. And I was with my Indian friends who helped me when I shoot there. And they're like, I don't know. They're like, we also don't think that's awesome. But it's certainly more accepted there than other countries. For me, I think a big spoon would do. Big old spoon.

55:01That's what I would put in there. But I saw it, it happened. Did I eat the food? I did. I mean, every culture is different, right? So it's, I mean, it is interesting though, when you see like, you know, flies and insects and stuff, like landing in the bowl of whatever it is and like getting just mixed in.

55:18Graham Stephan:Is that an American thing where if a fly lands on your food, you're like, no, I can't eat that anymore. I'm going to send it back. I do think Americans, when it comes to food, they're kind of, and it's weird because we kind of pride ourselves on being so tough all the time with, depending on - Being macho. and MMA and guns and wrestling and football. But then if someone has a hair in their soup, like they freak out. Like I've had, I've eaten at American restaurants where there's a hair and I just, okay, I just put it to the side. If there's a fly in my soup, I just get it out and put it to the side.

55:55I don't know. I think people here, it doesn't match the sentiment that you'll find in America. That's kind of like tough sentiment where people will see a food that's a bit, new a bit different a bit uncomfortable and their first thought is oh i'd never eat that that doesn't make you tough that makes you a huge puss and so people should be more open the tough cool guy thing would be like i'll give it a shot let's see let's see if it's good like i brought my friend greg to vietnam for the first time and we went to a restaurant where they cook cobra not only do they cook cobra they take the cobra they slid it down the middle of its body they grab out it's still beating heart, put it into a shot glass, fill that with vodka, and while it's still beating, you need to take the shot.

56:44And Greg didn't go, oh, not me, man. He goes, all right, let's give it a shot. Let's go for it.

56:51Graham Stephan:Why is that necessary to get the still beating heart out of a cobra and then take a shot with that? Well, for stamina. Graham, for stamina. The world of stamina foods in Asia is unending. And your question of why, the answer to many of those questions is male stamina. What is stamina? Well, you don't have, Jack doesn't have it. That's why. For someone named Jack, you should know about stamina. I mean, because your name could be used as a verb. So anyways.

57:30What's a verb? Sexual prowess. Oh, that. See, I just think of stamina like a cross-country runner. Right. You know, like endurance. Endurance sort of thing. Yes, very naive. So there's a lot of foods out there, and some of them are, you know, fun. They usually involve animals or some weird part of an animal, and then some are tragic, like pangolin scales being shipped from Ghana in Africa all the way to China. And when we were in Ghana, we went to some wild animal markets, some bushmeat markets and we actually caught or we bought a pangolin do you know pangolins look like okay so we bought a pangolin and we we talked to them who's usually buying this stuff and they said the people from china and they've even caught these huge shipments shipments of pangolin scales that were going from africa to china you know rhino horn so that is like kind of the ugly side of stamina foods yeah but then there's you know guys who eat rooster testicles and uh that's fun but

58:32Graham Stephan:does any of that work i feel like they're all just ways to sell rare animals yeah i of course it doesn't work and also viagra is available in those countries so is it aphrodisiac not a real thing um i don't think it is so you're saying like if you eat an oyster what but that's different and Afro-Aphrodisiac - Chocolate covered strawberry. I think it's supposed to like get you in the mood, but stamina is like, you know, the guy's trying to -

59:05I just think it comes, I always call it dude food. I think it's just food that old guys eat and they like. And then the story that they add to the food is, oh, this is good for your stamina. So it's like, why are you eating rooster testicles?

59:21Graham Stephan:That's weird. It's a placebo effect. That's what it's got to be, where if you eat the rooster testicles and you think I'm going to last longer, maybe you're just going to last longer. That's what I heard from like, I remember, I think, I don't want to misquote, but I think Liver King came, when he came on our podcast, he laid out a platter of a bunch of different foods. And he's like, if you eat pancreas, it strengthens your pancreas. If you eat heart, it strengthens your heart. I'm pretty sure he said something like that. And I guess like intuitively, you know, if you eat testicles, maybe it strengthens those strength, strength, strength, increases, how do you measure that?

59:55Okay. Um, so, so I mean, look, that's part of a Asian lore, Asian belief is that, you know, whatever you eat, it's good for that part. If you eat eyes, it's good for your eyes. If you, if you eat, um, heart, it's good for your heart. If you eat brain, it's good for your brain. So, I mean, that's not limited to just the king of liver. And so what about eating live animals? What have you eaten that's live? Did you ever feel bad eating something that's live? Yeah, I've eaten live animals, but it was seafood. It was a fish. So that's mainly just happened in Japan. In Japan, oh, I forgot the name of it, but it's this art of making sashimi where they fillet the fish so quickly that they actually can present you the fish and the sashimi on the plate at the same time and the fish is still kind of gasping and looking at you wondering what the hell is going on and that's how you know it's fresh is that

1:00:50Graham Stephan:cruel because part of me thinks to keep an animal alive for your entertainment while you eat it is not a good thing but but you look at like in the wild this fish is being eaten by a bigger fish who takes a chomp out of it, and this fish, you know, flutters away a little bit and, like, is in a corner. Yeah. Well, like, you know, over hours. I would say it's not necessary. But does it bother me? Look, it would bother me if it was maybe a mammal or a different type of animal. It's fish. I'm kind of lenient on fish. I don't know. When you go to Thailand and you buy a lobster, you know, I've bought lobsters there that were almost 10 pounds.

1:01:29They don't, like, slice the brain and then carefully drop it in boiling water. They rip it in half. Now it's dead. That's it. It's seafood. I mean, these are people with real problems. These are real like salt of the earth people. And so am I somebody who's an advocate of animal cruelty or do I not care about any animals at all? No. But I think there's differences between a bug because I've eaten maybe like a live coconut worm. Eating a live coconut worm is not the same as eating a live mammal of some sort.

1:02:05Graham Stephan:Where do we draw the line of like what's okay to eat and what's okay to eat alive? Like I've seen, you know, people eating the dogs or cats. Alive? No, and I'm just saying in general. Or insects. Like a cow is more protected than an insect, but a dog is more protected than a cow. Yeah. So there's a funny PETA billboard that shows all these animals in a line. and you know on one side it's like dogs cats rabbits horse pig cow sure and it says where do you draw the line and i'm like right after the cat i eat horse and i've eaten rabbit and i've eaten cows and i've eaten pigs um but you know it's up it's it's for each person to decide i some people eat dog you know it still happens in in korea it still happens in vietnam and i myself have eaten dog i ate it one time maybe 15 years ago in korea i went out with some friends i tried it didn't like it we wanted just to see what it was like um do but it's hip we all know that it's hypocritical to say you shouldn't be able to eat dog right but we all know because it's such like they have such a personality but i'm sure you could say the same thing about a pig yes like the fish that i have when you walked in like some of those fish have a great personality And I like I wouldn't not eat a fish, but I see like what's behind their eyes.

1:03:37Graham Stephan:Of course, you know. Well, and that's what makes us human is we connect with each other and we connect more with certain animals. And so I at the same time, I completely understand why people don't eat dogs. Many or most people around the world. But when some people still do, I'm not baffled by this. It's like, right, we eat other animals, too. The bigger issue is, or another big issue is that in certain countries in Southeast Asia, it's not just that they're eating dogs, it's how they procure those dogs. So there are places where it's the job for people, like a black market job, to go around on a motorbike and use a loop to capture dogs that are pets, and then those pets get cooked.

1:04:20That's something that actually happens in some countries in Southeast Asia. today. Yes. And so that's awful. That's an awful practice. And of course I would, that's something that's indefensible. That's somebody's property. That's somebody's companion that should not be happening. And so, I mean, that's also one of the reasons that people hate the dog meat trade or dog meat consumption is like the treatment of the animals is also awful. So I'm a meat eater. I'm always going to be a meat eater. I think we should do what we can to treat animals humanely, at least mammals, fish, eh, sorry fish, I don't care that much.

1:04:55Could someone pay you$100 to never eat meat for the rest of your life? Oh,$100. A hundred, did I say? Yes. You're talking real money here, Jack. All right, 20 bucks, dude.

1:05:06Graham Stephan:Dude, I'll give you a hundred bucks just for the entertainment value of this. Could someone pay you$100 million to never eat meat for the rest of your life? Oh, that's tough. i don't think so 100 million well first of all first of all maybe i already have 100 million did you think about that 100 million in viet currency because another guy paid me to not eat vegetables ever again look most of the joy in my life comes from food then alcohol then my wife is on that list somewhere and then somewhere after that my child so am i really gonna just for money like take away the thing that brings me the most joy eating delicious food and it doesn't i'm not just eating meat but i love meat i i couldn't do it do you think that's an easy answer so you take the 100 million and eat soy milk yeah see but i i have a weird diet where to me it's like i i get enjoyment from food but i don't need like i'd rather eat something that is like the perfect meal to like live, then eat something for enjoyment.

1:06:15Graham Stephan:Like I'm more of like a eat to live versus live to eat type of guy. Like if you gave me a gelatinous food and you said, this is the perfect nutrition, exactly the amount of calories you need for whatever you want to do, right amount of protein, but you just eat this, like you slurp this thing once a day. I just, I would just do that. Yeah. Yeah. Completely different. Yeah. I mean, I love it. It brings me so much joy. Well, this summer we went to five different state fairs and you would think by the fifth one, I'd be getting sick of it. But I just love seeing people's creations and people trying to make the most insane over the top decadent food possible.

1:06:52I love it. It's like, uh, drugs. And so what about just random animals? Like if I were to list off, you know, tortoise, sloth, or parrot, you know, like what animals do you want to try? Or maybe they just don't even cook it. Well, so I want to back up again and just say, you know, the mission of our channel is to document, to search out and document the most unique cultures and unique foods from around the world. and we're doing that in an effort to create more empathy and more understanding and more awareness for people around the world. And so that's our mission. So everything starts from that place.

1:07:30So that can lead us to many different places. And so that has led me to eating peacock, to eating sea turtle, to eating the Australian version of a manatee. But I didn't do those things because I'm just trying to eat every animal possible. I did them because there was a legitimate story behind why people are doing it. If you go to Australia, they're eating, the Aboriginal people are eating, they're eating sea turtles, and they have permission to do so, and they have permission to hunt because this is what they were doing for hundreds or thousands of years. and if you go to Sri Lanka, there's a tribe called the Veda tribe who has hunted peacock in the past and sometimes they still hunt peacock, they eat it and it's one of their traditional foods from decades ago.

1:08:19So there's a story behind the food. It's not just me trying to be as salacious or crazy as possible for YouTube views. It's also that, no, I'm just kidding. Have you ever eaten anything illegal? I'm sure I have. I mean even in Vietnam technically coconut worms are illegal because the government there doesn't want people raising coconut worms because coconut worms are destroying coconut trees and they can get out of control and destroy the coconut industry there so I've eaten those in a restaurant they're illegal so technically that's an illegal food I'm trying to think, do I have a better example than eating worms?

1:09:00I don't think I do

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1:11:42Graham Stephan:the food culture in other countries like eating things like dogs or cats when we here have just factory farms that do so much destruction or treat the animals probably more poorly than in the other countries yeah and we just consume more food than other countries too just the amount of food we consume is insane um what do i think about it um look i'm i think it's fine for people to have their own opinions and points of view. If somebody thinks that somebody in some small village in China, they hate the idea of them eating dog, that's not with me. My thing is I just want to be able to show different cultures, perspectives, and points of views and their stories, and then I want people to decide for themselves.

1:12:32And I'm not necessarily there to say what these people are doing is right or wrong. I mainly want to present the information, present their stories and then people can decide for themselves um and so i would compare it to like when we went to when we went to the faroe islands in the faroe islands do you know where that is no it's kind of between the uk and iceland it's a small island chained owned by denmark and they've got about 50 000 people there and they have a long history of hunting whales pilot whales and so recently these activist groups have been protesting and anytime they're having a when they're when they're bringing the whales in they will try to protest and videotape and make these people look bad and like evil savages but it's something these people have always done it's a way of life for them it's uh well people say to eat local it's super local and it's been a part of their diet for years so why would you say you know don't eat whale eat more lamb instead of eating whale it doesn't it doesn't really make any sense people like whales i get it but we went there we filmed um we we weren't able to film the actual harvesting of whales because it's something that's unscheduled that just happens when they have happened to see the whales, but we sat with a family and they cooked us a meal and you get to see it like, oh my God, this is whale meat.

1:14:00And they take it out and it's four inches deep. You see this layer of skin and then a big layer of blubber and then protein after that. And they cook it up and you try it and you talk to them. And I got their point of view because any documentaries on YouTube about that was just about the hunt itself and showing all the blood and sensationalizing, you know, how bad these people must be. But it was a completely new and different perspective to be able to sit down across from these people and to share a meal of something that they grew up eating. How long does that last them? The whale, I mean, sometimes they might get on 12, 13, 15 whales.

1:14:41And then they have a special way of dividing it depending on who helped. and how much people helped. So some people might go on boats, some people are helping to bring them in. And, uh, I mean, it could, uh, for the most part, I would say most people there have some whale in their freezer. And so if, if your objective of the channel is to let people come to their own conclusions, what conclusions have you came to personally on where you're drawing the line on the ethics of how a different culture dispatches an animal or how, you know, the animals are treated when they're alive? Yeah, I mean, like I said, I prefer especially mammals to be treated humanely.

1:15:24You know, I've been in villages where someone will kick a dog or throw a rock at a dog. I hate that. I don't like it. It bothers me. Sometimes I'll say something.

1:15:35Dispatching. Dispatching is interesting. I have thoughts on it, and it's part of what gets us in trouble sometimes with YouTube because it's a desensitive thing. For me, I guess it's just interesting to explore why they do what they do and to go deeper into the why. And, you know, showing dispatching, I think, is just an important part of telling the story of those people. Do you think lab-grown meat could ever replace the real thing? Oh, it's hard to say it never could on a long enough timeline. Anything's possible, but I just don't think it would happen anytime soon. Have you tried any? No. I'd be fair.

1:16:12I would eat it. I'd give it a shot. That'd be totally good with that. Mm-hmm. I'd try it.

1:16:16Graham Stephan:Yeah. Okay. If lab-grown meat was, you couldn't tell the difference between that and normal meat, would you be comfortable switching 100 % to lab-grown? Yeah, maybe. It just feels like there's always a catch. And I just highly doubt that it could be as healthy as just actual animal protein. So if you're also drawing your own conclusions, you're letting people come to their conclusions, but you also, of course, develop your own opinion on things. Which culture do you think has criminally overrated food? You could say underrated and overrated. Like I'm sure you've just been somewhere where everything you've tried is just like, okay, it's just not my cup of tea.

1:16:59So this is interesting because I'm going to talk about two countries that are right next to each other. The first is Iran. Iran is really known for its food. and they have some really iconic food. While I was there, a good amount of the food I had felt very bland and that's because it was very unsalted, which is wild because they have salt flats like two hours from Tehran. I don't know. Maybe we just had a string of bad luck. They did have some very good food that we tried, but there was a lot during that trip, at least, that I would eat it and they would have cinnamon and pomegranate and all these flavors, but then just like no salt.

1:17:40So I'm hoping that I'm wrong and that I just had some bad experiences and I'll go back, I'll give it a shot again in the future. That said, a food that really shocked me in the last year was Afghan food. Food in Afghanistan was amazing. And that's right next door that you run. Some of the best bread I've ever had, amazing kebabs, meat, seasoned lamb,

1:18:03Graham Stephan:chicken, really good stuff. How do you stay healthy when you travel and you eat so much? You're on the road, yeah gym um just uh i always make sure that every hotel i go to has a gym and try to get enough sleep and i try to not work too much but i'm not good at that yeah but staying healthy can be challenging especially if i'm eating a lot for the show i actually prefer episodes where i don't have to eat a lot like if we go to a village and we slaughter a cow and then it's just going to be one big meal at the end and it's all meat i'm like nice then i feel good um but if it's like we're gonna try four different types of noodles today it's like uh this is gonna be rough the restaurants ever pay to for promotion because i'd imagine if you show a place in your video like it's a lot of exposure for them um no no but restaurants might give us free food yeah but we've never that's never been our business model and that makes sense for some channels especially smaller channels, maybe in a niche area.

1:19:05If someone's trying to be like the king of food in Las Vegas, that makes sense. But I don't, restaurants don't have a ton of extra money for marketing. And we do, we do well on YouTube and we have a big massive audience. We get about 45, 50 million views per month. And so I would never think to try to negotiate with restaurants to get a certain amount of money. Instead, I would rather have the freedom to kind of say what I want to say about the food rather than getting. And also it should be win-win. I love restaurateurs. I think it's a very difficult job. It's a job with slim margins where you have infinite conflicts and challenges and obstacles, and it's hard to make money and it's hard to make a restaurant last.

1:19:48And those are our people. Without restaurants, I have no channel. And so it should be a win-win. I want to go in there, help promote these places to the best of my ability. and then we get something too. We get the story of them and their food and their dish. Yeah. And what about on the topic of health, getting sick when you're traveling to some of these countries? Because I imagine, I mean, I went to Indonesia. I heard of this thing called Bali Belly before I went there. Went there and I was super cautious. I'm like, okay, I'm buying water. When I'm brushing my teeth, I'm going to pour the water on my toothbrush.

1:20:21You know, I'm doing everything right that I possibly can. Guess who still got Bali Belly? What is that? What is this guy? Uh, it's when you are just throwing up on the flight back home, basically. Really? That's what happened to me. Oh, it was - Diarrhea? Just throwing up? It was throw up. Oh, okay. Yeah. Oh, it was horrible though. Like my stomach was in knots. And I remember like we were at the point of takeoff and it's like, you can't really go up to use the bathroom at that point. And I went up and I also have fear of throwing up. And so I went back and I talked to the cabin crew and I'm just kind of like pacing around.

1:20:56I'm like sweating, you know? And they're like, it's okay. You can do it. you can do it. And then I went to the bathroom and then I couldn't do it. And I came, it was a whole thing. Then I did it and I thought I was done. Wasn't done. It's a pretty, uh, on the plane, on the plane. That sounds awful. You know, what's funny is I've always, so I have a small anxiety of flying as well. And so whenever I fly, like I always feel like I'm going to, and I always have thought that throwing up on a plane would be, I couldn't imagine a thing that's, that's more torturous than throwing up while you're on a plane in the bathroom or just if

1:21:25Graham Stephan:you're in the seat and you're using the bag honestly wasn't that bad oh good it was it was uncomfortable you know absolutely uncomfortable wasn't as bad as i thought it would be oh it's a happy ending i like that but you must have been on a good like a indonesian airline or something right i don't remember which airline it was i think it was um some filipino yeah all the airlines in asia are just so much better they are than any of them in the u.s yeah and the attendants are super friendly. So if you would have said that to like a Delta...

1:22:23uh what are you supposed to call flight attendant flight attendant um yeah so if you would have said that too they called they they went on the thing and they're like do we have a doctor on board because because i didn't know what was going on with my body at the time you know it was just in knots it was hurting and i was getting like dizzy and stuff and i was having a hard time standing and then they called for the doctor and then some guy came up and he went to the back of the plane it was so funny and he was like an american just like me and i'm like hey man like are you a doctor he's like, no.

1:22:52He's like, I'm a firefighter. I was like, yeah, sure. I'm like, what's going on with me? He's like, I think you need to drink some water. And I like, couldn't get it down. But anyways, I ended up throwing up on that flight and then I had a layover and then I threw up on the, I literally had a layover for two hours and I was in a lounge the entire time, tried to throw up in there, couldn't do it. Got in the next flight, immediately had to go to the bathroom and finish the job. Oh, wow. Yeah. That sounds awful. But anyways, I was still trying this entire trip to take every precautionary measure that I could and, you know, drink only bottled water, even avoid smoothies at times, because I know the ice sometimes can be contaminated with something and make you sick.

1:23:29That's smart. And so, so what, what things have you learned along the way traveling to these countries to avoid to getting, to avoid getting sick? Water is the big one. I don't know who started the using, like, you can't use sink water on a toothbrush. I'm not sure who started that. And for me, I've given up on that. I'm like, I'm using sink water no matter where I am in the world. I'm putting out my toothbrush. And if I get sick, I deserve it. That's how I feel. Beyond that, water is the biggest concern. And so you want to check if you want to just drink bottled water only. You want to check that it's actually sealed because one time I went to a hotel in India and they gave me three bottles of water and I turned it.

1:24:09No crack. And I brought it back and I had some words for the gentleman behind the counter. So you need to make sure you're drinking fresh water. Also, you want to be careful for ice. So you're doing the right thing there. Juicy kind of drinks, slushy drinks. I would avoid that. But, you know, fried food. Fried food is good. Oil is everything. I would say most. I mean, I mean, I eat most street food. I think it's the liquids that get people in trouble. And were you drinking enough alcohol? I was drinking more than enough. Okay. Yeah. So that also could, I guess. Usually that helps. Played the part in it.

1:24:47Yeah. Does that actually help drinking alcohol? I don't know. People say it doesn't. Okay. I think a big part of it is like staying very hydrated. And so they have like the oral rehydration salts and stuff that you need to drink with water and alcohol is a diuretic. So it does dehydrate you. So I think you, yeah, it's. True. Do you ever get burnout? Yeah. And what do you do? I used to just have my main channel, but during the pandemic, I left Vietnam and because stuff. So for the first year of the pandemic in Vietnam, stuff was pretty good. We didn't have to wear masks. We could travel all over.

1:25:19And we shot over a hundred videos in a row just in Vietnam, which is pretty remarkable for a travel channel that we were able to do that. And we were growing like crazy at that same time. And so eventually the virus got to Vietnam like it got to everywhere else. we had to leave the country and we didn't know when we would be able to come back. So I left with my wife, but I'm not Vietnamese. So the border was closed to me. And so we ended up traveling for 10 months in a row. So during that 10 months, we would be in places like the Bahamas or Mexico with all this extra time after the main channel shoot.

1:25:53We're like, why don't we shoot with a GoPro or a phone or something? And then we could put it on the second channel. And so that's how the second channel was born. oddly enough my second channel gets the same or better views than my main channel but it costs 10 times less to produce because it's usually at least the way it started out was my wife holding a phone and then me with a lav mic hitting record on a 200 lav mark mic and that's it so suddenly we feel this pressure of having two videos on the main channel every week plus doing a video on the second channel. And it was maybe 2022 where I just completely hit my limit.

1:26:33And I was just out of my mind working so much. I think we probably put out 150 videos that year. When I hear some YouTubers, now this is not a diss at all, but for example, Nick DiGiovanni, nice guy, hardworking guy. But when I just hear like, he was recently on a podcast and he said, oh, oh, we're doing videos. They go every two weeks. He goes, ah, it's every three weeks now. I go, oh my God, that sounds amazing. Now I'm sure he's a busy guy and a lot goes into a video. I'm not judging, but we did 150 videos in a year. It was wild. And so I really had to take a step back and reduce my output.

1:27:14And it's hard because I grew up really poor and my dad didn't, my mom didn't go to college. My dad didn't finish high school. Um, I failed out of college three times and it took me forever to find any path in life. I always felt like such a loser compared to my brothers and sister who got degrees and got actual jobs. And they're, they're going down kind of an unexpected path. And I was meandering down a path, which seemed like it was leading to nowhere. And now I finally have this opportunity where I know I can make money and a lot of money. the only thing that's stopping me from making even more money is just doing even more of that same thing and so i think a lot of youtubers struggle with this at some point where where you just hit your wall you kind of you find your absolute limit and you go okay that's where it is now what i didn't do was make a video about it saying hey guys i'm sad i need to let you all know that's kind of the move right you're supposed to do that you're supposed to do the video people love this with a big sigh in the beginning but i'm always like look this is my problem who cares I need to figure it out.

1:28:19It's not for my audience. People love hearing about it, though.

1:28:21Graham Stephan:They do. I made a video similar to that because I did three videos a week on my main channel, three videos a week on my second channel, and one podcast a week. So seven videos a week. And I did that for six or seven years. That's a lot. Without missing an upload. Like the only day I'd miss an upload is on Christmas Day, sometimes New Year's if it fell on a weekend, or a major holiday where views would be down that day. That's it. And that was very purposeful. Wow. That was it. But I made a video because I stopped posting. I got rid of the second channel. We kept the podcast. And I went from three videos a week of my main channel down to like one a week.

1:29:00Graham Stephan:And I made a video talking about my reasoning behind it. People loved it. And people even today, and it was over a year ago, referenced that video. They're like, that made me feel better about, you know, pulling back on my own because I feel the exact same way as you do. Yeah, that's interesting. yeah you so one one could look at it as kind of an admission of weakness or um you know having the strength to tell people what you're going through which is kind of how you're framing it or what your experience was for me i'm just like who cares let's just get to work and that's how i'm about most things um you know i have a friend who's in this space who does travel videos and i I feel like every six months he's making a video explaining to people about how hard his job is and saying things like, well, you think you would want to be a travel YouTuber, but you don't know how hard it really is.

1:29:53Let me explain everything that's very hard about what I do. And when I talk to that guy, I go, hey, stop doing that. What we make is wanderlust. We essentially were selling this dream because it's not to say that what I make is artificial, but an edit is certainly different from what is actually happening on the ground. What's happening on the ground is, okay, you have your eating scene and then you're like, okay, get a shot of me walking through the street. Okay, run down there. Yeah, is it in focus? Yeah, okay, let me walk. How'd that look? That looks like the composition's bad. Let's do it again.

1:30:26That guy stepped in front of me. Do it again. Okay, drone, bring the drone up. Let's get some drone shots. And then you cut it all together with amazing music and it's like, oh my God, India, Bangladesh, Japan, Vietnam. I wish I could be there. But it's like this fabrication. Do you get my point? I do. And so I think there's no reason to turn people away from the dream. And the dream is to escape, to watch a video and to get outside yourself and to be fully emerged in a different culture. Burnout. So how did I deal with burnout? I just reduced my output. it's, but it's easy to say just, it wasn't an easy thing to do.

1:31:11And anytime I've reduced my output, it's given me anxiety, but I've tried to be smart about the way I do it. So let me break down what I've done. And cause it sounds like you've done something similar. So I went to one video a week on my main channel and one video a week on my second channel, but we also do compilations. And now a lot of food channels are doing the same thing. So how does it work on my main channel? We'll tell a five story, sorry, a five video story that we can later turn into a compilation. So for example, we'll go to Japan, we'll do a seafood series, we'll go to five different cities within the country.

1:31:47And then all of those five can combine into a cohesive compilation or a full documentary, if you want to call it that. But it's just repurposed content that gets us an extra posting day and alleviates some of the pressure to shoot even more videos on my second channel we do the same thing but every four videos becomes a compilation so now we've we've saved ourselves a few shooting days throughout the the year now last year what i started doing was not posting in january as you know january is the lowest revenue month out of the whole year but even that wasn't quite enough so i subtracted three more posting days, which would be the first weekend of each new quarter.

1:32:30Because I've noticed over the years that the revenue goes up January, February, March, April. It's the end of the quarterly budget. April, May, June, July. And so if you're going to not post videos, you might as well be strategic and intentional about it. And so it makes sense to not post it during a time. I don't want a viral video during a time where the revenue is tanking yeah and so that's my approach for us to shoot you know roughly 40 videos for each channel uh and then some days where we're not posting and then some compilations but it's still 80 videos it's still a lot yeah now you're here

1:33:10Graham Stephan:for alex ramosi's boot camp his workshop yeah his scaling workshop why did you sign up for that what were you expecting to gain from that um so i've listened to a bunch of alex armosi stuff about scaling i like it it's interesting and for me i mean i don't have a um mba i don't have any special certification i'm i read books and do what feels right and i have intuition but i have a team of 20 people and i need to keep people engaged i want to keep retention i want to um maybe take some pressure off myself. So I have a little bit more time freed up for myself in the coming years. And so I'm always looking at what we can do, what we and what I can do to run the company better and more efficiently.

1:33:57And so I'm hoping to see, you know, when you're running a company, the day to day is always like putting out fires and dealing with small tasks. And few people take the time to get the big view, the global view of the company and what could be changed and what be adjusted. And so that's my, my goal. Walk us through your current revenue. Where is most of your revenue coming from? What are the different, uh, I would say slices of the pie look like?

1:34:26Graham Stephan:I love this. All right. Revenue sources. Most of our revenue comes from YouTube. Like the, the biggest chunk, I would say over 70 % comes from YouTube. Then we have, after that, sponsors, Facebook. Are you comfortable saying the amounts or do you just want to say percentages? I'll just say percentages for now. You know, maybe give me a few years. Maybe I'll come back and I'll tell you amounts. Cool. But let's just stick with percentages for now. Facebook, then Snapchat, and then we have some YouTube channels that are in other languages. And that does, okay, you know, maybe 1%. Have you thought about creating your own product or some sort of food that you could sell?

1:35:11Yeah. You know, I'm very much, I'm interested, I'm always interested in increasing revenue, right? And everybody always has some idea for how you should increase revenue. And though you should sell a thing, why don't you make Facebook channels in Vietnamese and every other language? Well, the answer is because it all takes some of my bandwidth. with. And so I try to be very 80, 20 about just being, doing the most, the few things that are going to get the biggest result. Um, you know, recently a year or two ago, I had the idea to go from two channels to five channels. I don't know why I thought this was a good idea.

1:35:48I already have best ever food review show that I have more best ever food review show. And then I had best ever food India. We started shooting best ever food trucks in the USA. I like that. And I was going to do best ever hotel reviews.

1:36:04Graham Stephan:Oh, I like that too. I love all these concepts, but it's just way too much for me to do. And so the India one, we actually had it going. It was making a profit. We had a whole workflow and assembly line. We had producers, we had a shooter in India who we trained up, who we trusted. We had editors, we had everything, but it just took too much of my time. So it was profitable, but it wasn't enough profit. It was like, if we just got two more sponsors in a year, that would crush everything that we're doing for this channel. And so I try to be really careful about adding new stuff to my plate these days.

1:36:42And I've those three channels since then, because I want to just focus on the few things that we can do that are going to get the biggest outcome, outcome outsized outcome and one of those would be you know increasing our sponsorship deals or

1:36:57Graham Stephan:having more sponsorship deals yeah that's something i've been focusing on a lot recently is uh they call it return on hassle and it's something that no one ever looks at how much hassle is this going to take in your life and it's got to be a high enough return to be worth the hassle and a lot of things that i've done over the last few years are they're never worth the hassle and when i go through it, I regret doing it because I think the same way I could have just posted one other video and that would outpace all of this hassle I'm doing over here. Even though this is a good ROI, it's not worth it.

1:37:30Graham Stephan:Right. And so I'm, I'm dealing with exactly that right now is dealing with all of my past decisions that were not worth the hassle because I just saw it as a good ROI. We, we tried selling Vietnamese coffee, which is something I was passionate about. I love in V I live in Vietnam. I love Vietnamese coffee, but it just didn't work. And, you know, I've listened to some of Alex Harmozy's books and I just think about, oh, we could have done this and that. And I'm like, that would be a brand new skill set. I've already developed this kind of world-class skill set about how to make food videos that people actually watch.

1:38:08Why am I going to take a big percentage of my time to figure out how to sell coffee and what kind of marketing materials are going to work and what kind of offers are going to get people to refer other people to get coffee. I'm just going to make more cool food videos. Yeah. That's it. So in what areas do you think you could improve? The company in general? Yeah. Um, I think we could, well, so recently I've hired a COO, uh, to help with operations. And so I think we could have better standards throughout the company. So, you know, any good company should have standard operating procedures or manuals.

1:38:47There's a great book called The E-Myth Revisited. You guys know that book? Really? This is a great book. This guy basically talks about how to manualize any business. And his whole point is you should be able to try to take yourself more and more out of your business by writing, by like, um, creating standards and protocols for every task that has to be done within the business and then creating a manual for it and then taking yourself out of it. So I think we could do a better job at that. I want to improve that. Uh, and that's going to help me. It's also going to help my team to have much more clear expectations.

1:39:23Um, beyond that, other things we could improve. Um, maybe if I just had somebody to take a little bit more off my shoulders. Like I said, we have a team of 20 in Vietnam and I talked to maybe 15 of them directly. It's too much. So I'm giving very detailed feedback on every thumbnail, on every edit, watching every edit, maybe three times. I'm looking at color. Uh, and then that's like, uh, not including producing all the research that goes into the country that we're going to next. We're going to New York city in a week and then Greenland after that. And so we're going through the stories and the foods and this food is too boring or not related enough.

1:40:02So I'm going through all that too. So maybe if I could, oh, and then, you know, voiceover and then shooting the actual videos. So if I could have somebody take some of that off of my plate, that would be beneficial.

1:40:13Graham Stephan:How do you feel about outsourcing yourself to some degree? Because the channel is really about you and your experience. And for myself, I'm always, I'm really bad at that. I say, jack is better at delegating but i want to be like my hands involved in everything like overseeing everything how do you get over that um it's tough it's tough so i mean the lifeblood of the channel are the videos and so i don't feel that comfortable just letting letting somebody else say that they're good to go um look i have an amazing team a world-class team and they have very high standards and, but, but I am the final standard.

1:40:54I'm the final boss of standards. And so I'm, I'm also, you know, it's me who's responsible for all their, for their job security. And so if we start going in a bad direction or losing viewership or something happens to the company, that's on me. And so part of the responsibility is to the audience, but also to my team to ensure that this machine keeps running for as long as possible. I'm curious on the topic of being a digital nomad, because that's kind of what you are. You're basically an American living in a different country with a lower cost of living. Which countries would you say are like the most viable options?

1:41:38Because this is something I've considered. Obviously, it's not possible due to the nature of the business, but it would be so cool to be able to go and live in indonesia for a year live in vietnam which countries do you think are the most viable for americans looking to keep an american wage live elsewhere be able to live a very like affluent life yeah so yeah you're talking about yeah the arbitrage of having an american job or wages and then living somewhere cheaper where your money can go a lot i think a lot of people consider doing it but i think i think a lot of people are going to retire in other countries i mean you see all of these videos like going viral on instagram reels are like check out my 300 us dollar a month apartment in bangkok and it's a mansion yeah i'm like oh my gosh yeah you know i would say southeast asia almost anywhere some people love malaysia um so southeast asia the main countries that people where you'll find digital nomads would be you know vietnam Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia, probably those countries.

1:42:44And so, yes, it's true. Your dollar goes a lot further. If you're spending$1 ,000 on an apartment in Vietnam, it's going to be a lot better than what you're going to find in Austin, Texas, or in LA here in the USA. So beyond that, I'm trying to think. There's also people who like South America. I'm in love with Asia. I love Asian food. I love traveling around Asia, but there's folks who live in Colombia and Brazil and they do the same kind of arbitrage there. But if I had to pick one country in Asia, well, it's probably the one that I'm in right now. Vietnam. Yeah.

1:43:23Graham Stephan:I think we're going to have a huge retirement crisis in the United States because people just aren't saving enough money to be able to retire long-term in the U.S. and we're running out of social security. So I think it's a matter of time until they push the retirement age back. Millennials have 500 grand saved up. They're 60 years old now. They can't retire. They have to work another 30 years. What do they do? Right. I think they're going to go to Vietnam. I think they're going to go to the Philippines. They're going to go to other countries where all of a sudden 500 grand, you spend 150, you buy a house, you live off the rest.

1:43:54Graham Stephan:You live like a king. Why live in the US? If you want to retire with 500 grand, you don't want to work for the rest of it. That's your option. And it's, I think, a better quality of life in the U.S. for what you have. I think you'll see that, but I think you'll see more people in Mexico and Central America and South America. I think Americans in general are afraid to travel abroad. And then when they travel abroad, they seem afraid about going to places like Indonesia, Vietnam, China. And so I just can't imagine a significant population or percentage of the population moving to Asia. It'll happen.

1:44:34Some will, but there's going to be more Europeans going to Asia than Americans. That's for sure. I think, but I think you'll see some Americans maybe going to some of the Latin countries. What's the cheapest country you've ever been to? Some people say Hanoi is one of the cheapest cities in the world. It's tough because, you know, Afghanistan, very, very cheap, more cheap than Vietnam. But then, you know, there's, you're not going to find like a modern gym or certain conveniences that you would want. You got to kind of balance the quality of life with the cheapness thing. You know what I'm saying?

1:45:10Yeah. So what would you say is like the optimal then if you're balancing quality of life and cheapness? And then what about just overall objective cheapness? So this, the whole digital nomad thing, it's not really my expertise and all my experience is in Southeast Asia. So I have a bias towards Southeast Asia. So probably I'll just keep repeating Southeast Asia. How were you able to live in Korea illegally for eight years? So I went there, I tutored people, but I was on a tourist visa. And so every 90 days I had to leave Korea. And so every 90 days I would go to Japan and I would come back. And the trip, it was a rough trip because the plane ticket was expensive and I was so broke back then.

1:45:52So I would have to go from Seoul to Busan on a three-hour train, and then I would take the slow ferry from Busan to Fukuoka in Japan. So that ferry took 13 hours one way and six hours back. It's confusing. 13 hours because it was parked half the night and then it left in the morning. In the beginning, it didn't feel like that big of a deal. But over time, I'm mounting this growing number of stamps in my passport. And I'm getting more and more questions every time I go back and forth from Japan to Korea. Because they know there are people who are there teaching English illegally. And eventually, it is true that I got a job working for a school for a kindergarten.

1:46:33And I also taught science. I taught at different English academies. And all of it was under the table. so how it worked back then is i didn't have a degree i didn't have a teaching visa so i would say can you pay cash and half the schools wouldn't do it and the other half were like no problemo and so i would i would go i would teach english i would get paid in cash and that's how i made a living for a long time in korea now while i was in korea i didn't look i didn't like this lifestyle it was tough like when i moved to korea i moved there with two thousand dollars in my pocket i i didn't have a plan for how long i was going to be there and i certainly didn't have anything to come back to not even like you know a nice parents house or something my dad lived in a beat-up trailer house it's definitely not the type of place you want to go back to and so i'm trying to figure out how to make things work while i'm there and that's why while i was in korea i got into video and i started training myself i started workshops and i i started getting more and more experience with video excuse me um that said it was terrifying and it was anxiety provoking every time going to japan coming back rehearsing answers to questions in my mind that they might ask how long are you going to be in korea what are you doing here are you a teacher you're a teacher aren't you why are you why do you keep going back and forth oh well i'm uh i'm gonna apply i'm a student i want to be a student i want to apply to seoul university um i i love korea i love the language here i want to learn more about the language and so on and so really when i had the opportunity to leave korea and go to vietnam it was so it was such a load up my shoulders because like clockwork that 90 days would go by so fast and I go, oh my God, I have to do another visa run.

1:48:30I mean, this is when people live in these countries, they know this terminology visa run. It means you, your date is coming up and you better get out and come back. Even if you leave for three hours, it still counts. You, you left, you came back. And so like clockwork every 90 days, those days would go by and I would have to leave and come back again and hope that I made it back in. Cause I didn't know if I was going to get deported, if I was going to get kicked out, if I was going to have some kind of consequences, anything could have happened. So when I moved to Vietnam, it was a huge relief.

1:49:06Graham Stephan:Do you do it on the 90th day or do you do it like day 85 or like close to the 90th? One day I did it on the 91st day on accident. I lost track. They took me into a side room and they're like, never do this again. I'm like, oh my God, I'll never do it again. I'm so sorry. My mistake. And they let it go. Oh, wow. Yeah. What was your experience like with Mad Honey? Mad Honey. So I never took a huge amount of it. Mad Honey, for people who don't know, it comes from, well, it comes from a few different countries, but I got it from Nepal. So there are these insane, essentially, these villagers who climb mountains.

1:49:50It's just like a sheer cliff wall. They'll climb it with simple ropes and then they'll cut off the honey. They'll cut the honeycomb from the mountain and they'll collect the honey and they'll squeeze it. And some in the right season, it'll be mad honey. And so bees get this certain nectar from a certain flower that has a toxin in it that gives these hallucinatory effects to the people who eat the honey. And so I got that. I tried a little bit while I was there and I felt a little bit light, a little bit numb, a little bit warm and kind of flush in my face. But I was worried about taking too much because we still had an hour hike out of that place.

1:50:32But I brought that honey back and my brother tried it and he had an awful experience. My brother took maybe six spoonfuls of the honey and he at first felt great. He felt warm. He felt tingly. He felt happy. And then he felt sick to his stomach and he was vomiting and he felt like achy. And the whole next day, he just, he couldn't go anywhere. He couldn't do anything. He just felt like he had the worst hangover of his life. And for some people, what I've heard is it can lower your blood pressure. And so it's harder to move. It makes you feel nauseous. It makes you feel sick, but it can also lower your blood pressure too.

1:51:14It's very dangerous. People in the mountain, you think you're like, oh, I'm in the mountains. I'm in the village of Nepal. These guys do it all the time. They all have one story of one idiot who did it too much and no one else does it. But you can't from it. It's a good question for chat TPT. I bet you might be able to. Huh. The worst part about Mad Honey is that I brought Joe

1:51:37Graham Stephan:Rogan Mad Honey and I talked about it. And then somebody from customs in the USA watched that episode and the next four times I entered the USA, they went through every single thing in my suitcase. It was completely miserable and so anxiety provoking. Now I think I've finally been taken off that list, but I've been put on a different list because when I came back this time, it's my fifth time coming back since doing the Joe Rogan podcast. They had me go talk to somebody because I had been to Afghanistan. So I had somebody from Homeland Security talking to me about, why'd you go there? Who'd you go there with?

1:52:18What was your purpose? Like all these questions because it's an unusual thing to do. And it's amazing that they just, from the moment they scan me in at immigration, they go, oh, someone's going to have to talk to you. They just know immediately that I've been there. They're not looking through the passport. They just know. yeah what have you got on your list here oh my list is just in case you asked about worst foods or unique foods because i always like uh it's all a blur so i wrote a list to refer to i wrote like sea turtle zebra placenta buffalo placenta stuffed horse stomach i'm happy to talk about any of those if you want me to stuffed horse stomach what do they stuff it with more horse it's what so when i was in kazakhstan um kazakhstan is the second biggest consumer of horse in the world right after china and a lot of the horse that china is eating comes from kazakhstan kazakhstan's this massive sprawling country and it's they used to be this nomadic culture they they raised horses they moved around with horses and they ate horses too So while I was there, we got to see the process of dispatching and cooking a horse.

1:53:32And one of the unique foods that they make in Kazakhstan is a stuffed horse stomach. Now, a horse stomach, a horse and a cow, both big animals inside, completely different. A cow is a ruminant animal. It has a four chambered stomach. A horse just has one big stomach. And that one big stomach is great for stuffing with different stuff. stuff so what they what do they stuff it with it's like a sausage it well oddly enough they're stuffing it with horse sausage they put meat they put a horse sausage inside maybe there's some potatoes in there and they they sew it up and they cook the whole thing they boil it in a giant wok and the craziest thing is it was pretty good i kind of liked it what other things did you go into highly skeptical, but were like surprisingly delicious.

1:54:23Oh, there's so many things like that. And that's the story most of the time. And that's what's fun about doing the show. And that's, you know, it's fun if you have this arc in a show of having doubt going into a food and then being kind of pleasantly surprised. Even something like eating buffalo placenta in northern Thailand. I was slightly skeptical. I thought that's kind of that's insane. I mean, a buffalo is born, the placenta comes out, they take it away, and they eat it. So they stir fry it. I mean, it felt like mushy, wet portobello mushrooms. Yeah. But it kind of didn't taste that bad. What opportunities came from the Joe Rogan podcast?

1:55:07Well, so I just did the Joe Rogan podcast because it was like a bucket list item. He wanted me on. Of course, I did it. It was a fun, great experience. And, um, and we had a great clip. So back then he would just like clip a 10 minute section of the video and put that on YouTube. So the 10 minute section he clipped was of him trying the mad honey. Uh, and then that went on to get, you know, about 10 million views or so. And so, you know, there was some crossover effect. Some people went to my channel from that, but if I'm honest, anytime I've ever done a podcast, it's because it's just the experience I want to have, or I want to meet the people who are on the podcast um it doesn't really move the needle views wise for me i'm not selling a book or anything like today i'm just here because i want to meet you guys and

1:55:55Graham Stephan:i thought it'd be fun cool i was curious jack came up with this what would be your throw meal oh that's yeah that's a good question It probably have a lot of different stuff. So I'll just name off some of my favorites like sashimi. What kind of sashimi? Toro? Salmon, yeah. Maybe a lot of different tuna cuts, especially fatty cuts. But it's good to have a variety so you have contrast. And then salmon nigiri that's been roasted with that mayonnaise-y stuff on top. I love that. A stuffed crust Pizza Hut pizza, pepperoni, extra cheese. that's my fat guy food okay that's how i got to be 300 pounds back in the day lots of pizza so something with cheese a couple of oysters for the stamina yeah for the stamina no steak no uh steak no no steak is too rich because then then my mind goes oh maybe you walk you but it's just gonna be too rich and too heavy um maybe something like cheeseburger burger would be good bon mi pho I love Vietnamese foods but they're not like on my necessarily like they're more like a good lunch food not really on my crave list um I'd be good with that pizza and some Japanese sushi do you have a lot of YouTubers come on the show good amount yeah I'd say maybe a third at least do you find that they run their companies like very differently yeah yeah um so that's always what's interesting to me when i watch you know even when i watched joshua weissman on this podcast i thought oh that's interesting um that and that's different from what i do so what i do um we have a uh we have 20 people in vietnam can i do you mind if i go through the workflow of a video and if you kind of like i don't know who gives a shit so um here's how we approach a video first we figure out what country we're going to go to and we have to figure out, is it a good time of year because of weather, because of holidays?

1:58:04Is there Ramadan during that time? That type of thing. From there, we have a main producer and a support producer who work together on looking up topics and doing research for that country. At the same time, we're looking for a fixer. So we get that fixer or local producer who has the local knowledge and hopefully a network or connection, especially when it comes to food. from there we build out a schedule so people might think we go to countries and kind of hang out we're like let's shoot here but especially for our main channel everything is figured out hour by hour weeks before we get there like each day is completely scheduled to the minute and so we get there we do the production i have two camera guys guys i've worked with for years um now you were talking about the quality later or earlier you were talking about the quality of the show um and for me it's very important that we try to have the highest quality standard possible and to continuously improve it as we move forward um these guys are incredible and they they keep getting better they keep improving but for me my background before i got in front of the camera was directing and doing videography so i like to get involved with giving feedback on the edit or the shots or composition and so on so we do the shoot on the ground um food making interviews tasting and all that footage then goes to an assembly editor so the assembly editor will take all that random footage and they'll put it on a timeline so it all makes sense for the editor we the intros in the beginning everything is all the b-roll is in order um is in story order So from there, the editors get to it.

1:59:48Now, the editors do a brief with me where I tell them my thoughts on the video, what I thought was important. Maybe there's some notes I took while I was on the ground because in one eating scene, we might talk about 10 different topics, but really just two matter to me. Then they'll also get a production document from the producer that goes through all of the food we made and the recipes and ingredients for each food. because we talk a lot about the process. You know, I'm a huge fan of Anthony Bourdain, but he didn't often get deep into the actual making of every single dish. He would kind of, you know, poetically describe it with a couple flourishes and then it would just be on the table.

2:00:29But we like to get a little bit deeper into the actual making of the food. I find that people seeing a process really engages them. That's why, I mean, there's so many cooking videos where no one even talks and people are just seeing this transformation before their eyes. So now the editor is equipped with all of that. From here, the editors are the ones who write the voiceover. So they write the voiceover draft and they send me the voiceover and then I can rewrite it or adjust it as needed. I voice it, I send it back to them and they have between, let's say, two and a half to three weeks to get an edit complete.

2:01:08An edit, that's usually 20 to 25 minutes long. From there, we have a mastering editor and he would take the full video and master the color and audio. And then that takes about a week. And we have somebody who's also doing titles and animations and stuff too. And so all those elements come together at the end and then render is ready to post. So that whole process from shooting to actually getting onto the internet is, you know, two to three months. That's crazy.

2:01:39Graham Stephan:to me that seems so like intimidating for me because i like for the podcast we'll just film this upload it to mikey i'll do he'll do a review clip it down a bit i'll do my review sometimes jack will do a review i put little notes of like put b-roll here cut this out move the segment earlier and then he boasted and sometimes it'd turn around to like three to five days wow or my main channel. I just script, film, and then I edit within like three hours and sometimes just post same day. Well, it's interesting because we have our own, you know, control and variable. We have the main channel, but we have a second channel too.

2:02:16And the second channel is just the phone. And so we don't have two cameras at the same time. We don't have all this extra footage and coverage. And so the edits for those videos take more like eight days. Usually there's no voiceover and it's a much more vloggy kind of fast-paced fun video yeah not but not as deep and not as thoughtful so i just like that we can do both i like that we can do a fun silly state fair video it's not going deep into the culture of anything but then we can also take on very serious topics too do you ever just live stream it would i ever yeah it seems like that's a way

2:02:55Graham Stephan:to double dip on the content you're already doing and live stream everything. Yeah. Without adding more work. I think I'm much better when I'm edited. Okay. And I don't know, like everybody, I would say, has their own insecurities around themselves as a host or entertainer. Sure. And for me, my big weapon when I started this whole game was I know editing, I know production. so whatever weakness i thought i had as a host i just like doubled down on overproducing it yeah and then i've certainly gotten way better as a host but i'm like well why not both why not hopefully i can carry these scenes well as a host but why not have the production value there too yeah i would love to see you host like a fear factor where people have to eat sure like really gnarly food it would be interesting if you brought youtubers along on certain journeys and took them through like local cuisines that might be intimidating to eat sure who do you think would be a good candidate for that all the well sure yeah i mean if you go like any of that but i also think if you were just to grab the other food youtubers i think that would be kind of fun or just other youtubers in general i'm sure you have a like a catalog of youtubers that watch your channel and you don't even have to like advertise them in the thumbnail but you could just kind of like bring them along for the journey so not only you have you as an expert with trying out a bunch of crazy different foods and unique things, but you have someone that might be a lot more uncomfortable with it, stepping out of their comfort zone and trying something more reflecting the perspective of your viewers, maybe, because I think at this point, you're probably so adventurous that nothing really is, you know, scary to you.

2:04:32Whereas a lot of your viewers are like, wow, this guy's eating maggots or like whatever, you know, like something that reflects their perspective a little bit more. That's funny. Yeah. Cause as time goes by, I become harder to relate to and i caught myself the other day eating something and i was like oh the texture is kind of like between a cow spleen and a cow lung and i'm like this is not relatable it was funny the video

2:04:53Graham Stephan:that i watched yesterday that i really liked um it was one of your most viewed videos but they were saying your tour guide was more of a um what do you call like a visitor than you were like your tour guide of there was really like grossed out of of the rats yeah that they were Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's in Vietnam, right? Vietnam. Yeah. His name is Lam. Yeah. I related more to him in that video because I saw his reaction and like he was looking away and he was like, oh, I don't want to eat that. I'm going to try it. And like, to me, that seemed more relatable than you like just look, you know, desensitized to it.

2:05:30Graham Stephan:Yeah. I think that's a super fun element when we are able to do something like that. When we have the local person who doesn't necessarily like the local food. I think that's super interesting. And, you know, he was still willing to try it out and to do his best, but it was very clear that he was completely uncomfortable doing it. It would be cool if you got like an Indian American, took them to India to try local Indian food. Or the same thing goes for like a, you know, Vietnamese American. You took them to Vietnam and then tried like, you know, street food. So we did something like that. There's a gentleman named Yia Vang, who is part of the Hmong community in Minnesota.

2:06:07and the Hmong community comes from Southeast Asia, especially across Laos and Vietnam. And after the Vietnam War, a huge population of them moved from camps in Thailand, refugee camps from Thailand to Minnesota. And so he was born in a refugee camp, but at a young age moved to Minnesota and his parents grew up in Laos. And I said, hey, I want to do this Laos series, but I would love to have you with me and you can kind of like, he grew up with all their cooking and all these stories, but you can go and see this place for yourself. And we did it. And it was, it was amazing. So I would love to do more stuff like that.

2:06:50Graham Stephan:Yeah. I would also like to see you bringing American food to places like this and have them eat like a big Mac and just get their reaction. Or they're probably looking at the culture bridge. Sure. You know, I just think the cool thing is like the difference in like, you know, Mexican food here in America versus Mexican food in Mexico. Right. Like, I think that's, that to me is really interesting. Mm-hmm. People get mad when I give, like, indigenous people American food or American candy. I get a little bit of backlash for that. Why is that? Because they're like, oh, how dare you? You know, now they're going to get cavities and it's so unhealthy.

2:07:22And how dare you share our unhealthy diet with them? It's like, it's a bit of candy. It's a treat. They're treating them like children. It's just like another, you know, adult human. I agree. but um i'm i other people have done that concept they've gone to you know mongolian tribes deep in the middle of nowhere deep in the step and they'll bring them a big mac or a burger and they'll pick up just the top bun and eat that first and uh i mean that kind of that kind of content is out there you know i'll tell you we did it one time there's this tribe in northern thailand called the Karan people. And they have, you've seen them before.

2:08:04They have the brass rings around their neck. So there's a woman, we shot with her for a couple of days in her village, experiencing her food, but she wasn't that far from the city of Chiang Mai in Thailand, maybe 30 minutes. So I said, if you're interested tomorrow, how about I bring you to try a bunch of American food? she's like okay let's do it so somebody helped us translate but this very you know exotic looking woman with these brass rings permanently fixed to her neck was eating mcdonald's and pizza and tacos for the first time and she great gave great reviews so it was very it was very intriguing

2:08:42Graham Stephan:be funny if you have them rate youtuber foods like you have sour strips you have ryan trahan's candy of Mr. B and just have them pick. Like who is the best candy? That's good. I like that. That's funny. Sounds good. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I stepped on your audio. Do you want to do it again? No, no, no, no. It's totally fine. We're keeping this raw. Guys, thank you for watching. George, George Mavrakis, Coralfish 12G. He was listening to this entire podcast. So shout out to him. Go ahead, George. Say something. Thank you so much. Also, by the way, I know you don't like this, Jack, but we ended up cutting out a lot of this podcast.

2:09:19Graham Stephan:So if you want to see the entire thing that's uncensored, we're going to put that for the members. So feel free to sign up for that as well. And it's probably 30 plus minutes that are just a bit too gruesome to post on YouTube. Of course, his channel linked down below. Also, is there anything else you want to shout out? No, I've never made it this far into an episode. There we go. Just kidding. Thank you, guys. Thank you. Until next time. See ya.

2:10:10We'll see you next time.

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