119 Hungry Ghost transcript (Anthony Bourdain)

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Michael: [00:00:00] Famous and gravy listeners, Michael Osborne here. I've got two things to say before we start today's episode. First, we could really use your help growing the show and there's a very simple thing you can do. Leave a review for Famous and Gravy on Apple Podcasts. If you're listening on Apple, you just scroll down on our show page, tap the Stars, and write a few words.

These reviews help feed Apple's algorithm and help new listeners to find our show. The second thing is if you yourself are interested in starting your own podcast and you wanna learn about how we built Famous and Gravy, we would love to have a conversation. Our email, as always is hello@famousandgravy.com.

So two things. Please write a review, and if you're fantasizing about your own show, please reach out. That's it. Thanks again. Let's get to it.

Alice: This is Famous and gravy biographies is from a different point of view. To participate in our opening quiz, email us at [00:01:00] hello@famousandgravy.com. Now here's the quiz to reveal today's dead celebrity.

Michael: This person died 2018, age 61. He never stopped marveling at the unlikeliness of his own success. Quote, I should have died in my twenties. I became successful in my forties. I became my dad in my fifties. I feel like I've stolen a car, a really nice car, and I keep looking in the rear view mirror for flashing lights.

End quote.

Archival: Nope. Don't have anything on that one. I'm supposed to guess from that.

Friend: I feel like you gave me a hint with the Marvel tidbit there, and it might be Stan Lee,

Michael: not Stan Lee. We actually just did an episode on Stan Lee, but great guess okay. He emerged as a leading male voice in support of the Me Too movement.

Archival: I don't remember any man coming forward on the Me Too moment in particularly. When I'm listening to these, I'm like, oh, it's this person. And now I'm sitting here going, I have no idea.

Michael: He was open in his writing about his past addictions to heroin and cocaine.

Friend: [00:02:00] Ooh, heroin and cocaine. So it was pretty interesting.

Fellow Then,

Archival: ooh, let's just throw a wild card out there. Carl Reiner,

Michael: not Carl Reiner. Good guess not Carl Reiner. No. All right. He ate noodles in Hanoi with President Barack Obama sucked on soft boiled turtle eggs at a market stall in Columbia, and stopped to appreciate handmade spring rolls in Cambodia on route to interview a member of the opposition government.

Friend: Oh, Anthony. We do, of course. Freaking Anthony Bourdain. Yeah, I know who it is now. It is, um, Anthony Bourdain.

Michael: Today's dead celebrity is Anthony Bourdain.

Archival: I've been treated so well in places that I never thought I'd be treated well. I, I've felt a kinship with people who I, with whom I have almost nothing in common.

There's this tremendous tradition, chances are of hospitality built around food everywhere people respond. Positively to someone, a stranger who shows up and says, listen, I don't wanna talk politics. I don't [00:03:00] wanna give a shit. I'm sure we have some differences. What did, what do you eat? What did your mom make you?

What do you eat around here?

Michael: Welcome to Famous and Gravy. I'm Michael

Alice: Osborne. And I'm Alice Florence Sar.

Michael: And on this show, we choose a famous figure who died in the 21st century, and we take a totally different approach to their biography. What didn't we know? What could we not see clearly? And what does the Celebrity's Life story teach us about ourselves today?

Anthony Bourdain died 2018, age 61. Okay, so before I introduce Alice, I do think it's probably worth saying in this episode we are unavoidably gonna get into some really tricky territory. So if you are not in a good place to listen, then maybe take a pass on this episode. Okay, so Alice is the managing editor of Podcast Review.

If you're not subscribed to that newsletter, I highly [00:04:00] recommend it. Alice is also a writer. She's at times written a lot about Anthony Bourdain. And I would say also above all else, you are an advocate for excellence in audio. Is that a pretty good introduction?

Alice: Perfect. Sounds better than my own mother.

Okay.

Michael: Okay. That's what I'm going for. So Alice and I chat a lot and you kept asking me, why haven't you done a Tony Bourdain episode? And so I finally said, you know what? It's time think it is safe to say that he meant more to people than your average dead celebrity. But how are you feeling going into this conversation?

Alice: I'm really glad that we're doing this now. 'cause I feel like if we had done this even two or three years ago, I would've been. An unstable mess. It must be every six months that I will meet a stranger. In some random context, I think the last time this happened to me, I was getting a tattoo. I remember saying to somebody while I was waiting to get this ink done, and I said, oh, you know, I, I would love to get a Tony Bourdain tattoo.

But I just can't think of what to get. And he just [00:05:00] immediately locked eyes with me and went, I have a Tony Bourdain tattoo. Do you know what I mean? And just immediately that psychic connection of, oh wow, I've met another person who is unflatteringly. This is obviously a very parasocial connection, but I don't think it's uncommon.

I think it's one of the most common, and it really, really resonates with people.

Michael: Uh, I could not agree more. I do think at the heart of this is a great mystery around his death. I think you and I both have things to say, but we'll never know. I think the second thing I wanna say is that despite the fact that Famous and Gravy is a dead celebrity show, it's not really a deathly show, but to your point, his memory lives on, it's been seven years and we are still grieving Absolutely.

This man. Right? And part of it. Does feel like the shock, the senselessness of it, but it's also, you know, what his life represented. You know, it's sort of like hard to capture. Okay, let's get to it. Category one, grading the first line of the [00:06:00] obituary, Anthony Bourdain, whose darkly funny memoir about life in New York City, restaurant Kitchens made him a celebrity chef and touched off his second career as a journalist, food expert and social activist.

Was found dead on Friday in his hotel room in France. He was 61.

Alice: I had written down a six, but as you're reading this again, I'm so tempted to give it a four.

Michael: Okay. So yeah, walk me through your thinking.

Alice: I'm familiar with his work quite intimately, and I would on no level describe him as a journalist, a food expert, and a social

Michael: actor.

I mean,

Alice: I just think,

Michael: who are you talking about? I, I had the exact same reaction. I feel like the first half of the sentence, great darkly funny memoir about restaurant kitchens made him a celebrity chef. Second career, I'm like, yes, second career, like that's part of the Anthony Bourdain story. But then journalist, food expert and social activist, like where is the word travel.

Alice: Or creative mind or writer. It sounds [00:07:00] more like somebody like Jose Andreas. When you say social activist, it makes me think of somebody that's out there in soup kitchens or something like that. And I'm not saying that he doesn't have that aspect to him, but that is not his impact.

Michael: I do think that there is a message of, you know, equality.

Mm-hmm. And shared humanity that is evident in, you know, all of his work. At the time of his death, he had risen to the fore as somebody who was outspoken because of the Me Too movement and his girlfriend. And I, I think that that's what it is. A nod to journalist kind of. I mean, yes, there's some truth to that.

He did win a Peabody, but I feel like those three words mischaracterize him. I also feel like this doesn't capture his charisma, his personality, his power of, of a parasocial relationship. His ability to connect with a broad audience and tap into something really, really deep in people that doesn't feel like that's in the second half of this sentence

Alice: to speak of some of that activism.

I was thinking back recently [00:08:00] of an episode he did over his TV show where he went to Palestine.

Archival: It's easily the most contentious piece of real estate in the world, and there's no hope, none of ever talking about it without pissing somebody, if not everybody off. Maybe that's why it's taken me so long to come here.

By the end of this hour, I'll be seen by many as a terrorist sympathizer, a Zionist tool, a self-hating Jew, an apologist for American imperialism, an orientalist socialist fascist, CIA agent, and worse. So here goes nothing.

Alice: He was told not to do that and he, he still did it anyway. And I know that he was very experimental in, in how he created his show and he had a very specific vision for it.

Michael: I mean, you used the word writer and the first half of the sentence does point to his memoir. He was also a great TV writer. His voiceover on his shows, it's Great

Archival: Ride The Hadrian Villa at Caesar's Palace. A little pad they give you if your [00:09:00] credit line runs into the eight figures. How did I get it? I told the casino that Wolf Blitzer was coming, that he was expected any minute.

I suggested that Wolf might be hungry and they sent up GI savoir. Fortunately he doesn't watch a lot of television and I plan to live large till they figure out that wolf ain't coming.

I'll deal with the fallout later, but for now me live.

Michael: I will say I did have some measure of grace because of the shock of it. Mm-hmm. That this was obviously not a obit that was pre-written. This was one that they had to cobble together in a moment of grief. But I feel like there's other things we could say about him that paint a picture that this does not quite paint.

All right, so where are you landing in terms of your final score?

Alice: Are you sticking with the four? Well, since you reminded me, this obviously was cobbled together quite quickly. You know, I think I will stick with my original six because

Michael: Okay.

Alice: Ultimately it's a fine a bit. What about [00:10:00] you?

Michael: You know, I was a seven.

I think I'm coming down to a six. I think it was hard in 2018 to know that we would be in 2025 and still be grieving this man. But I don't know. I mean, that's kind of what you want a news outlet to understand is just how resonant a certain kind of person is. And I think by 2018 we knew that about.

Anthony Bourdain. So six and a six. Let's move on. Category two. Five things I love about you here. Alice and I will develop a list of five things that offer a different angle on who this person was and how they lived. I'll let you go first 'cause I imagine you have a rich list.

Alice: Um, first one I have is that he tried to seek out authenticity, a pursuit that often led him to feelings of apathy.

Michael: Oh, interesting. You know, I, I wrote down authenticity too, and I so bulk at that word these days 'cause it's so overused. But I defy you to go online and watch an Anthony Bourdain episode or interview or award speech or whatever, where you don't [00:11:00] feel like you're getting the unfiltered version of this man.

I mean, he, he just comes right off the screen and connects

Archival: to think about much less empathize with somebody who comes from five generations of coal miners in a place that looks like this is to our enduring shame unthinkable. Why can't these coal miners get retrained, maybe put up solar panels for a living?

Why would these conservative, deeply religious people vote for a th married billionaire New Yorker? Well, I went to West Virginia and you know what? Screw you. You

Michael: had this bit about apathy. Uh, say more about that.

Alice: In his memoirs, he talks about how the formula of doing these shows, and you can see this in the episodes themselves, like you can tell when he's had an encounter that has been too staged, or the people that he's speaking to are putting on a performance that he knows is ridiculous.

I think very early on there's a part where he like eats a Cobra heart. Yeah. And he just finds it so [00:12:00] performative and this formula of the fact that, you know, when you're doing a TV show and something funny happens or something interesting happens, the producer will just say, Hey, can you do that again?

But can you do it more? Can you give more? Can you be a bit funny or louder? Amp

Michael: it up a little.

Alice: Exactly. And I think he hated that. I think it was something that he really strive to avoid in his television show, which I think is why it's one of the better ones. Mm-hmm. But ultimately you can't really avoid that when you're trying to produce something at scale.

And I think it did start to wear on him over time. But it's interesting because you often wonder how can a man who travels so much and saw so much of the world ultimately come to a place in his life where he didn't see anything else that was worth sticking around for? And I think that in order to, this is a big

Michael: mystery.

Yeah, exactly. And

Alice: I, and I do think that this question of authenticity or question of, you know, searching out something that is real or, or emotional or you know, yeah. The truth. I think he was always looking for the truth, and I dunno if that's something that he always found.

Michael: I like the way you linked that with writing and really with creativity overall.

[00:13:00] He's very creatively demanding of himself, and I think early on with the TV show, he's not comfortable with the camera. It takes him a while to figure it out, but at the heart of that drive is a kind of intuitive pursuit of truth, a truth in yourself. Does that sound like what you're saying?

Alice: Oh, completely.

I find it fascinating that this came up in both of our lists.

Michael: Let me go into my thing number two, which is sort of related. There is something about his ability to walk into any room, any space, anywhere, anytime on planet Earth. Like part of what is so important about what we see in him is this sort of symbol of freedom.

You know, freedom of movement. And I do think he is filled with these contradictions. His background as a chef is a very kind of blue collar, white collar boundary. You know, working in great restaurants in New York, but working with the kind of pirate crew, the lion chefs and the dishwashers and all the drugs and all this sort of like rock and roll lifestyle.

I think he's very handsome, but [00:14:00] he's also very nerdy. One of the things my wife loves about him is his, his gate. His walk. I do think he's cynical but curious. He's stylish, very stylish. I think he had what looked like an enviable life, but it somehow didn't inspire envy and didn't inspire jealousy. And that is a kind of magic trick that most people who have this kind of, I can move anywhere.

I can go to the slums. I can be on the red carpet, I can be in the White House, I can be in red America, blue America. Like that sort of comfort with everywhere is so enviable. I find myself wanting to try and find that in me rather than switch places.

Alice: This is so fascinating what you said there about going from the slums to the red carpet.

I studied cosmopolitanism in university. That was my kind of central thesis, and what you're saying is basically this quote by cosmopolitan theorist called Kwame Anthony Apia, the apia quote is that, you know, a cosmopolitan can be as at home in the Louvre as [00:15:00] the slums. You know, it has that kind of transitional quality to it.

So I would say that in the true sense of the world, I, I think the reason we're attracted to him is because Bourdain is the archetype of the cosmopolitan, like somebody that everybody can relate to, but yet exists slightly apart from us in this sort of mysterious, alluring way.

Michael: This is really what was missing in the first line of the obit in terms of the famous and gravy question of desirability.

That's a quality I want, Alice, and I do feel like that's a quality that you developed from the inside. You know, your ability to be generous, be open-minded, be curious. These are words we use a lot. But I mean, he seemed to be walking around with that all the time and he pushed the boundaries of what that meant.

Alright, so what do you have for number

Alice: three? He loved being a father to his daughter.

Michael: Wow. Okay. So

Alice: I put this one because he became a father quite late in life.

Michael: Mm-hmm.

Alice: But it was something that was very important to him and I think something that he wasn't [00:16:00] expecting either. Yeah. He'd been married quite a few times and I think this was, he considered this to be a great joy later in his life

Archival: after meeting my wife, I, I think I had that thought again.

Wouldn't it be kind of cool to have a child? But with it this time came the knowledge that I'm ready. I'm actually old enough. I, I'd be good at this. Uh, I bungled a lot of things in my life. Uh. Uh, I've disappointed, uh, people in my life and this is, uh, this was something I felt very strongly about, you know, wanting to get right.

Um, it's such a wonderful thing, however, to suddenly find that you were no longer the star of your own movie. It's such a great thing to realize it's just not about me anymore. It's about. This little girl.

Alice: I don't have a more complex sort of analysis here. No, I just thought it's something that I find endearing about his story.

Michael: I do too. Although I definitely think that got lost towards the end, and I wonder about that. [00:17:00] I've got more on it later, but I'm glad you pointed it out because there's no question that for a certain chapter of his life, he embraces Daddy hood. I mean, he looks like a man with a lot of love to give to a child at a point in life where it looked like that might not happen for him.

I actually really liked that you called that one out. I think more on that later. Let me give you my number four. So preparing for this had me go back into the famous Eng Gravy catalog, and I was looking for. Part two parts, unknown, if you will, two chapters, right? And so John Prine was a mailman. Richard Simmons was a waiter.

Jerry Springer was a mayor of Cincinnati. Julia Child was an intelligence officer. Macho man. Randy Savage was a baseball player. James Lipton was a pimp. Rodney Dangerfield was a home builder, and Eddie Money was a cop. Before Anthony Bourdain was a traveler. He was a chef, and then he wasn't. It's as if he was being.

Trained for something that he didn't know was coming. Part [00:18:00] of the reason we love his story is that he spent the first half of his life up to age 42 in kitchens in order that he could break out as a writer and TV star and be given the power and support to travel the world, and it almost feels like cosmic destiny.

It almost feels like fate. One thing I didn't know before getting ready for this episode, he had to really not traveled. Before age 42. He'd been like the Caribbean a couple times. And that was it.

Archival: And it suddenly, I wrote an article, my mom actually said, you should send it to the New Yorker. And I mean, the next day I got a call saying, you know, we'll give you 50 grand to write a book.

So what was the next leap from the book? Book becomes a huge success. Everybody talks about some delusional crackpots walked into the restaurant and offered me a TV show and they showed up like wreaking of garlic with a really bad attitude. And I said, look, I got a great idea. I, uh hmm. I travel around the world doing whatever I want in every cool place I ever dreamed of.

And you pay. How's that idea? And they were like, sounds like a, yeah. We'll take 13 of those. It's nice to know who we are talking about when we talk [00:19:00] about, uh, places with really complex problems. Some knowledge of, you know, who people are when they're sitting at home with their family eating, uh, instead of just statistics.

Michael: Where this is a famous and gravy point is that you never, ever, ever. No, where life might take you. And it is so important for us all to remember that it, it's so easy to look back at our life at any stage and say, did I make the right set of decisions? And the uncertainty of the future is scary, but it's also beautiful.

His story embodies that possibility. And while his ending casts a shadow over that, I think there is a case to be made that you can separate that out from this important second half of his life. And it's part unknown, part two of a story.

Alice: A hundred percent. I think what's so beautiful about what he can offer is this insight into a microcosm, which is the cooking industry.

When Tony died, I was living in, [00:20:00] in Copenhagen, Noma was having a sort of second coming. The people I was around at that time, people I was dating, they were in that world. And I found it fascinating. You know, staying behind after service, eating the staff dinner, all that kind of stuff. Seeing all the people who are from all around the world and the difference between the people who are behind and doing the service and doing the cooking versus the people who are the consumers and the customers and the clients.

It is, as I say, a microcosm and I, I think that's something that you don't really get an insight into unless you are really looking.

Michael: Mm-hmm.

Alice: And once you do, it's fascinating. And I think he really opened that up for so many people.

Michael: I mean, I love the way he describes kitchen culture as a meritocracy.

Archival: I would like to know now, or as soon as possible, if you're gonna start crying and freaking out, you know, on the first busy Saturday night, I want to know as soon as possible, so if I have to push you a little bit.

And if the other people in the kitchen are pushing you a little bit, you know, let's be realistic. We're, we're just separating you out from the herd.

Michael: My food service experience is fairly limited. I worked [00:21:00] for a dishwasher as a period of time and which actually is a good place for me. I was, I was good. And there is a kind of camaraderie, but also a animalistic ruthlessness that that can emerge in a kitchen at at least that was my short experience of it.

And I feel like to my point number four, it was also the essential training. His being a student of that experience, his ability to write about it and document it, but also understand the universality of it. That mm-hmm. We trusted what he had to say about it. All right. So what do you got for number five?

Alice: He was a highly empathetic person and he says this himself. He doesn't need to agree with you to respect or like you. I love this because I do think that in the world of cooking there are, you know, especially there's a lot of political. Beliefs in that world. People always say that food is a great universal.

I don't think that's incorrect. I think there has been a lot of discourse over the last 10 years or so about the lack of [00:22:00] parity in food, about appropriation. Mm-hmm. You know, he, he spoke and wrote often about the way in which the kitchen is full of people from all over the world, very hard workers, valuable people.

Mm-hmm. His friends, et cetera, et cetera. And he really embodied that Yeah. In his personality, in this way, that he would go out and seek out new experiences and, and aim to meet people, you know, over the, the dining table. So he is like a hero who has this dark side to him, and yet that dark side is not something that we have to disown.

It's something that we have to accept.

Michael: Yeah. I was reminded getting ready for this, and this is such an obvious point for real foodies. And I don't claim to be that, but how many of the great cuisines in the world were really figured out in poverty? Like the, the great French cuisines for one example are mostly, you know, peasant dishes, right?

Historically. Yeah. And that's part of what he's interested in, is the kind of like joy and a state of desperation. But I also think that something that he models and displays is being a good [00:23:00] guest. The ritual of sitting down, I mean, one of his, my favorite quotes, you learn a lot about someone and you share a meal together.

It's so simple. But he also carries a real attitude of similarities, not differences, which is one of my core beliefs. I think that speaks to your point about his. It's just such a critical part of his persona, so I'm glad you called it out.

Alice: Well, I just think you should definitely read Appia. I think he's absolutely the philosopher for you.

Um, sounds like how you feel.

Michael: I'll send, I'll send them the podcast when it's done.

Alice: Well, he's gonna say, uh, she butchered the quote because it's for the slums to the Sorbonne and not slums story, because he's very clearly deliberate alliteration there. Oh, is your correction. And as soon as I said it, I was like, that's not the right, that's not what he said.

Michael: That's really funny. Okay, uh, let's recap. So number one, you said sought authenticity and possibly leading to apathy. Number two, I said freedom, ability to walk into any room, any space, anywhere, anytime. Number three, you said father to a daughter. Number four. I [00:24:00] said second chapter parts unknown or part two.

And then number five, empathy. We could go on and on, but I feel like that's a. Pretty good summation and a pretty good starting point. So let's take a break.

Okay. Category three, one love. In this category, we will each choose one word or phrase that characterizes Anthony Bourdain's Loving relationships. First, we will review what we know about the marriages and kids. So two marriages, Nancy, in 1985, Anthony was 29. They divorced in 2005. Around the moment he was getting famous.

He was 49 when they divorced no children, they went through heroin and addiction together and basically sounds like reasonably mutual, but like she saw something happening and he understood it, and they. They parted ways. I mean, it was the closing of one door. Yeah. And opening of another marriage. Number two, Octavia in 2007, Anthony was 51.

They had one daughter mentioned earlier, born in [00:25:00] 2007 when he was 51. They separated in 2016 when he was 60. They never actually officially divorced The way it's described, kind of transitioned into more of a friendship. She remained a confidant and he didn't want to put his daughter apparently through a divorce.

And then it is worth mentioning his girlfriend, aia. The last two years of his life, there's a lot of controversy around her being a problematic figure and there's all kinds of stuff about jerks out there, blaming her for his death. I think that that's unfair. This man did what he did and no one else is responsible for that.

But that controversy kind of continues, and I'm not gonna weigh in on it. No, I think out of

Alice: respect for her and respect for him, I don't think that needs to be rehashed. If people are interested, they can go and find that conversation. All kinds of stuff about it. Yeah,

Michael: totally. Yeah.

Alice: I think it's important to mention that he had a lot of what we would consider to be quite high profile friends, especially in the food industry.

So people like David Chang.

Archival: Yeah,

Alice: David Cho as [00:26:00] well, who's a, an artist. Eric Repair, like he's a, yeah. Another kind of high profile chef. So he had a lot of close friends around him. And without giving away too many. Details in terms of degrees of separation. I was good friends with somebody who worked directly with David Chang.

Michael: You know that culture a little bit and that that kind of like, I do know

Alice: that culture, the vibe. Yeah. And I asked this person, you know, some questions about Tony and it's been said quite often in kind of interviews since his death that Tony was a, a chameleon and that's the word I would use. You know, he was slightly different with everybody and it was very hard to pin down the true Anthony Bourdain.

Michael: Interesting.

Alice: I don't think that's necessarily a negative. Yeah. I was, you know what I mean? I was just

Michael: thinking like, no, I, I, I, I think, I mean that's kind of almost the point of friendship is different. Mm-hmm. People. Bring out different sides of me and the people who are part of my inner circle. I want them to be diversified in terms of personality and in terms of [00:27:00] sparks.

I, I create with different people. And hell, that's kind of the ethos of this show in a way. But to go to the previous point of, is it a bad thing? I mean, I do feel like I discover myself via relationships, you know? Mm-hmm. I don't discover myself in meditation that much, or in solitude. There's, there's some of that.

Can I get in touch with my soul, however I do that? But like that is mostly facilitated through relationships for me. And so is something being hidden or is something being sought.

Alice: I think that's the question. I mean, the other way that I would say that one can do that is through travel. And he is somebody that has been in many uncomfortable travel situations.

I'm not for one minute suggesting that he didn't know who he was. I am suggesting that potentially he didn't want other people to know exactly who he was.

Michael: That's interesting Camil. And that's good. That's really good. I went with Greek myth. There was something too big and grand about this life and, and so I was brainstorming in that direction and I came up with, uh, Tanus.

So Tanus was the [00:28:00] mythical king who was, uh, condemned to stand in the pool of water beneath a fruit tree forever thirsty and hungry. So every time Tantalus would bend down to drink water from the stream, it would slip away. Every time he'd reach up for the grapes and the fruit above him, it would go further from his reach.

This was his curse in the afterlife. This is the Greek myth that gives us the word tantalizing, which, uh, I feel like Anthony Bourdain is tantalizing. Okay, here's why. This one was kind of working for me. I've been thinking a lot the, the phrase, how does one fill one's cup as an experience of love. I think that there is an insatiability in Anthony Bourdain.

I don't have a conclusion about why he took his life. I do think that the theory that has sort of floated around that resonates most for me is untreated addiction. That he was a heroin and cocaine addict at one point, and he did not go through any kind of [00:29:00] 12 step program or anything like that. A kind of white knuckled it.

But he did become a heavy drinker. And I've met people like that who were junkies and now drink. And for them it feels like what they're saying without exactly saying it, is that it's not that big of a deal compared to fricking heroin. Right. And that, for a lot of people, I think makes sense. And I don't want to have a blanket attitude around this, but I do see his passing as.

A combination of heavy drinking, trending towards alcoholism, combined with fatigue, where the question of what is filling my cup and can I fill my cup? Or maybe to be more literal about it, how do I experience love became elusive, much like it did for Tantalus. Every time he went down to fill his water, it's gone.

It, there's also something sort of so big about Anthony Bourdain's life story. Like, I think we're gonna be talking about this for forever, you know, in a way that, uh, [00:30:00] I had to go Greek tragedy. So there's places where the metaphor falls apart, but Tanus was what I had.

Alice: I'm gonna blow your mind right now. In Japanese mythology, when you get to hell, if you've been a glutton, you become something called a hungry ghost.

Hungry ghosts are doomed to wander the earth for the rest of time trying to eat and everything Just turning to ash. Anthony Bourdain has a novel called Hungry Ghosts. It says here that it's about a gluttonous estate owner haunted by his last meal. So to have this mirror in your, in your Tantalus mythological story, I find that so fascinating.

And I, I think it's very intuitive because I, I do think that that is kind of the, the sense that we got from him is that he travels around looking really skinny and like fit. Yeah. You know, and he is, I mean, I've kind of heard it described that basically he just wouldn't eat for the whole day and he would just start drinking.

And then eat [00:31:00] one big meal for the camera. And that would be pretty much it. And he would get up really late in the in the morning, and then he would just go out and he would do his filming and stuff. And so it does have that quality to it, this idea of just constantly searching for something, the next great meal and never quite finding it.

Michael: You know, as the show has gone on, I've gotten more and more comfortable talking about my experiences in recovery and in 12 Steps. And I need to make it very clear, I'm not a spokesperson. I just wanna speak from my own experience and my own education and understanding, but they talk about the God-sized whole and how we try to fill the God-sized hole with all kinds of material and emotional things.

Nothing seems to satiate, nothing seems to ever fill it. And I went back and listened to the interview Bourdain did with Mark Marin, who was somebody who inspired me to sober up in the first place. And they talk a little bit about Bourdain, says, yeah, I'm basically a freak. You know, drinking's not that big of a thing.

I'm

Archival: a freak in that regard. Um, I, I never stopped drinking. I drink [00:32:00] a lot on the show. Um, if I go out to a restaurant, I, I drink, but I've just, I've never had liquor at home, or I've never, I never, you know, I've never sat in front, front of a TV with a beer. It's, it's not the thing that's gonna kill you. It was just not a Yeah.

It was never my thing. Right. I like it. It's part of my life. Yeah. But for whatever reason, I. I've drank too much in my life. I mean me when, if I was in a work situation, you know, I'd come home drunk every night. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, but left my own devices. I'm not gonna be a, not gonna have a problem with alcohol.

Michael: Right? It's not my place to call him an addict or an alcoholic, but what I also looked into was his spiritual path, such as it was, and I think he had a certain kind of open-mindedness and universal humanity, but I don't think he had a belief system. And one of the great things that the 12 Steps offer is an open-ended question as to how you define the God or the higher power thing.

I was in a meeting this morning where I said, look, somebody else starts talking about God and it makes me uncomfortable. I don't want to hear about anybody else's God. But what [00:33:00] they do in 12 Steps is say no. You get to decide your own. You get to decide what that idea or concept or entity or scripture or lack thereof means to you.

And I, there's a part of me that feels like God. Damn it, Anthony, if you had just looked at that a little closer, you were right there. You were right there. And because that got neglected, this disease, whatever disease it was, alcoholism, depression, something else. That's what caught up with you. That's the great tragedy for me.

So I'm sure we'll talk more about that, but I had to get that out. I couldn't agree more. Let's move on. Yes. Category four, net worth. Oh God.

Alice: Oh, okay. Is that an awkward

Michael: transition? Okay. I know. How

Alice: much money does this man have at his time of his untimely death?

Michael: Oh, God. I've, I've, I've been going through this thing where it's like this category can be so distasteful.

It is kind of never felt more distasteful. I will say this, I didn't want to think about this at all, [00:34:00] except I have a favorite famous and gravy dinner table on the net worth leaderboard. Mm-hmm. And I went with that number and that's it. Uh, how did you think about this question?

Alice: His estate was not big and that he died with one apartment and nothing else.

So I went with a, a much lower number.

Michael: Uh, all right, so Alice Orr wrote down 1.5 million.

Alice: Michael Osborne wrote down. $20 million.

Michael: The actual number for Anthony Bourdain. 8 million. Interesting. Okay. So it's right in between. I like that number, and at least in this context, it's a lot more humble and let's put 'em on the leaderboard.

So this puts 'em in interesting company. Uh, so also with 8 million, we have Randy Savage, Neil Armstrong. Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Bill Buckner. Wow. There's a wrestler, a Supreme Court judge, an astronaut, the man who was accused of being [00:35:00] responsible for costing the Red Sox, the World Series in 1986, and Anthony Bourdain.

Alice: Well, I feel like a lot of people are always talking about like their dream dinner party, but if I turned up to this,

Michael: it's good table, it's

Archival: good. I'd be like, cool. Hi guys. I

Michael: mean, Bourdain kind of makes the whole thing work, but it's a, it's an eclectic group and we're gonna find some common ground and some things to talk about.

Alice: You would, you would immediately turn to Neil Armstrong and be like, how was the moon? Yeah, exactly.

Michael: Exactly. I wanna hear about the Congo first and then and Lau Anthony, your turn. And also Bacher man, Randy Savage passed us Lemon Jims. All right, we got past that uncomfortable conversation. Uh, let's move on.

Category five, little Lebowski, urban Achievers.

Archival: They're the Little Lebowski Urban achievers shit.

Michael: Yeah.

Archival: The achievers.

Michael: Yes. And proud. We are, of all of them in this category, we choose a trophy, an award, a cameo and impersonation or some other form of a hat tip that shows a different side of this person.

What did you have

Alice: here? I'm trolling a little bit 'cause [00:36:00] I've gone with the Roadrunner documentary. Well, it wasn't really a documentary, it was like a film that they made about four years ago.

Archival: You are inspiring so many people with a show. You have a good karma. Can't believe you said that. Yeah. Good karma.

I think so. Well.

Doesn't this concern you? This is what we budhist about. Look, we're sitting here. Yeah. In Provence. So wait a minute. We just had this fantastic meal. Yeah. Life admittedly for you has been pretty sweet. Yeah. Isn't that worrying to you? We're sitting in Provence. It's like a wine label. The next light cannot possibly be better than this.

It's probably gonna suck. Enjoy every minute of this now, Eric and pray. Pray. Pray that this is it, because if you are right and there is a next life, we are my friend, I may come back as a sea cucumber. Wow. But you're coming back as like a Yorkie or you know, if you're lucky.

Alice: [00:37:00] So, I mean, it's not the biggest red card, it's probably a yellow card, but the bits of his writing that he had never recorded mm-hmm.

They AIed.

Michael: Is that right? I didn't know they did that.

Alice: I thought it was one of those things where it kind of annoyed me, but at the same time I was glued to it. Did

Michael: did it answer anything for you though? The Anthony Bourdain we know on TV and even to some extent in his writing, is a character. What we see is not what's true.

And even for somebody who seems to embody all this authenticity, that this is the heart of the mystery is that what we imagined as a dream life and a dream story was not the internal reality. It could not have been.

Alice: But I think this comes back to the, the fact that he is a chameleon and is different for everybody who, who meets him.

I think that's the key to it. And what struck me in this documentary was that so many people are trying to figure it out, but mostly to just appease their own. Sense of grief and loss, and I, they have a right to do that, and we have a right to do it too. But I think that truthfully, we will just get to the end of it and [00:38:00] realize that we knew a person as much as he allowed us to understand.

And I think the fact that we were all shocked by this, you know, there's plenty of celebrities that have died in similar ways that I was not shocked by, but this genuinely shocked me, and I think it's because I was fooled. I was fooled in a way that he was fooling himself and, and that's harsh, but I think it's true.

Michael: That's interesting. I'm not sure I disagree, but I'm not sure I'm quite there either. I think that part of it's that I don't think I can or ever will understand this level of, let's just call it mental health affliction. While I do think that there are a lot of similarities between depression and the disease of addiction, and I, I believe them to be diseases, I also don't know if this dark monster in him had been lurking there the whole time, or if it was birthed and found an expression towards the later.

Part of his life.

Alice: The thing that really strikes me about the idea of working in a kitchen is that, you know, when you work in that kind of frenetic environment, it is [00:39:00] just, it's a distraction. So that as an industry and as a lifestyle, I think it was one of those things where he didn't really stop to think because he is working, you know, 10 hour shifts, 12 hour shifts, and then I suppose the thing about what he then went on to do is that when he was having these gaps between filming, like what was he doing?

Michael: Yeah. I mean, this is the title Roadrunner. I think that there is an implication that he's running for him himself, and who among us isn't, I guess. But that thing of always staying in motion in a kitchen and then staying in motion as a traveler to some extent, a workaholic. He's running from something

Alice: completely.

There was a, an interesting. Review actually, of this, uh, Hollywood reporter, which I think summarizes better than I could do, how perhaps we should feel about this documentary. Hmm. So Daniel Feinberg said that he feels I'm much more comfortable with Roadrunner as a portrait of an evolving, complicated, tragic TV personality than he is with it, as an attempt to make sense of a man who, for whatever reason, no longer wants to continue living.

Michael: [00:40:00] That is a great summation. Well, for my Lebowski, I went with something significantly more lighthearted. He was, got a special thanks in the movie Rat At Toy, uh, which I absolutely love that movie. How do you tell a good Redis without testing it now, the smell, not the look,

Friend: but the sound, the crust, the sound.

Oh, symphony of crackle

Michael: only. Great red sound this way. And one thing that he points out that I had never noticed before is that the chefs have burns on their arms. He's like, some of the details in this movie are so true to it. There's something so gratifying to me about the fact that Anthony Bourdain is signing off on that movie.

So, um, and that he got a special thanks for it. So I, you know, that's adorable. That's it. Okay, let's take another break.

Okay. Category six words to live by. In this category, we each choose a quote. These are either words that came out of this person's mouth or was said about them. [00:41:00] He's got so many good ones

Alice: I know,

Michael: but I'll give you what I got. I, I try to be literal about this category, words to live by. What nicer thing can you do for somebody than make them breakfast?

It's so simple, but. I thought about all the times I've ever made anybody breakfast. I love when I go camping or on like a guy's trip. I love making breakfast for my kids on Saturday. Like nothing gives me joy, like being the pancake guy. I'm an okay chef, but I'm great at breakfast and it is, I think the nicest thing I can do for, for somebody most of the time.

It's such a like simple observation, but I think it ties together his empathetic qualities. Food ritual and food. What nicer thing can you do? So for somebody to make them breakfast,

Alice: that was so wholesome that we can, we can put in the family friendly edition of this episode and mine, which is also about breakfast.

We can put in the adult version. I have long believed that is only right appropriate that before someone [00:42:00] sleeps with someone, one should at least be able, if called upon to do so, to make them a proper omelet in the morning. It's the same quote.

Michael: It's different. Different lens on it, but different, different context.

A hundred percent.

Alice: Yeah, I know. But look, breakfast matters. Dam it. Breakfast does matter. I was getting into. Tony when I was probably 18, 19, and this was, this was some of the, the real dark days of the anorexia, but also just I was growing up and trying to figure out who I wanted to be as a person. I always kind of really glamorized and, uh, romanticized that idea of like the cool girl.

Like I was, wanted to be the cool girl. Yeah. The one that goes out it like 12:00 PM and drinks beer and eats pizza. And it, like, all I will say about that is I think I was looking at Tony and being like, oh, I wish I could go out and eat as much as him and still be like, stick thin, like Tony, you know? Yeah.

And I think later as I got older, it was much more about this idea of building relationships through food and, and that's something that I've really appreciated as I've got older. If you're in a relationship with an eating [00:43:00] disorder, you can't be in a relationship with an actual human being. And for me, this quote just started to mean very different things as time went on.

At first it was very superficial. Then as I got older, I was like, you can't choose the ED over an actual human being because it's just not gonna work. Yeah. And so it's a projection onto a quote. Yeah. But ultimately, I think we both resonate with this idea. I think it's important to share food with people.

Michael: Yeah. And to cook for other people, and to start off your day cooking for other people. Okay. Let's move on. Category seven, man, in the Mirror. This category asks a fairly simple question, did this person like their reflection? Yes or no? This is not about beauty, but rather a question of self-confidence versus self-judgment.

I mean, this is why this is such a hard episode, Alice. Um, yeah. I think that there is no. Sugarcoating the fact that his suicide, even when I compare them with other forms of death, of despair with other figures we've done on the show, the way [00:44:00] it forces you to reinterpret the whole story is almost inevitable.

It's so confounding because it's so in stark conflict to our public understanding of who he was. Here's how I thought this one through. He talks about his addiction, but he never gets a. Diagnosis that we know of publicly about him suffering from depression. He must have, I think it's a prerequisite, but we actually don't know, and this to me kind of feels like a question of how far back we decide to map the story of his ending.

I am choosing to interpret his last two or three years as separate. This category has always been oversimplified. You know, we're averaging over the course of a lifetime, but I want to believe that his disease found him in a particularly low and impulsive moment. [00:45:00] But it was just that it was just the moment and I am actually gonna choose to say yes.

He liked his reflection. I know that stands in contrast to how we understand the story, but I think. In choosing to go that direction. It's a reminder to me that the people I am close with who suffer from mental health disorders more than anything, require at a bare minimum maintenance.

Archival: Yeah.

Michael: I was talking with a close friend who suffers from chronic depression, and one thing he said to me that really sort of resonated was, it is so frustrating to try and share how involuntary all of this is.

And I do think that our minds need maintenance, our soul needs maintenance, and I think that what happened here was that there was neglect around the need for that maintenance. It [00:46:00] all culminated in one awful hot moment. But I do think that for me, it doesn't cast the long shadow. And so I'm saying yes, he likes his reflection.

Alice: I agree with everything you're saying without caveat. I think the only area we do disagree to an extent about the segmentation.

Archival: Mm.

Alice: I don't think that this was an isolated couple of years at the end of his life. I think that there's a pattern, there's definitely evidence that he experienced depressive episodes much earlier in his life.

Yeah. My sense of that, as I mentioned before, is that the frenetic energy of the kitchen offered a, and the drugs and whatnot offered an antidote to that

Michael: or, or a distraction from it. Yeah. Distraction.

Alice: Exactly. I guess from my perspective, I would agree with you that he did like his reflection, because I think anybody who goes through recovery or addiction believes that there is something redeemable in oneself.

I mean, yeah, I, I believe that there's inherent redeem ability in everyone.

Michael: Yeah.

Alice: But I think [00:47:00] it's the hardest person to find that in is often yourself. Yes. And I do think that he found that,

Michael: I think that's where the, the, the maintenance piece was not in place. I don't believe that 12 Step has a monopoly on what recovery looks like, but I do think one of the things that is absolutely core and fundamental is community and the participation with others, his journey of recovery.

Was largely a solitary one. And I think that there is a oversight for him about the need for a certain kind of relational support, and it comes out sideways in some of his marriages and perhaps in some of his chameleonlike tendencies. And God, I wish he'd just seen it a different way.

Archival: Yeah.

Michael: But, but I think you're right in that you do hear him, certainly in the early phases of his celebrity rise, talk about.

There must have been something redemptive in me and worth sticking around for

Archival: a lot of other addicts. Looked in the mirror every day and did not see somebody worth [00:48:00] saving even at my worst. There was a level of vanity, I guess. I looked in the mirror and saw somebody who, somebody deep in there, regardless of how low I was, my circumstances, I had a high enough opinion of myself that I thought, um, it's worth going forward.

I think a lot of people in a similar situation, for whatever reason, look in the mirror and see somebody bad, unworthy of good things, uh, and allow themselves or excuse a downward spiral because they don't really believe in their basic work I did,

Michael: but it oscillates this, this pendulum goes back and forth through throughout his life, you know,

Alice: and often I think.

Is really, I know we didn't wanna talk about his relationships too much, but [00:49:00] I do think that the ends of his relationships are connected to that.

Michael: I think that's true. I think that that actually, that's pretty self-evident.

Alice: Yeah.

Michael: Okay.

Alice: Uh, we got through that.

Michael: No, we got through that one. Uh, let's get to a more fun category.

Coffee cocktail or cannabis. This is where we ask which one would we most want to do with our dead celebrity. So easy. Was it All right? What'd you have here? I'm dying it. Oh, well,

Alice: I mean, this is kind of a similar thing with the Joan Didion situation. Like the obvious choice is a cocktail, but then are these people a little bit?

Too reliant

Michael: on on cocktails, right? Yes. No. Right. Is this bad for him if we sit down and have a drink? Although having a beer in Hanoi sounds pretty awesome. Exactly.

Alice: That's the thing is if you're going for this sort of archetypal experience cocktail, if it's, if you're actually concerned for this man's wellbeing, potentially it's more the coffee.

And I, yeah, I was, I was kind of thinking at the end of that last segment that it is actually encouraging that, considering that he is the kind of person that sort of exemplifies that troubled poetic writer type, just how uncomfortable people are with his. Tragic [00:50:00] poetic end. There's no romanticization of his last days.

And I, I think that maybe we are finally getting to the point where we are not gonna choose the cocktail because we do actually care and we think maybe the cocktail is not the best option for you right now. Maybe we are just gonna have coffee and see where that goes. So maybe I'll say coffee.

Michael: That's exactly where I'm going.

Mm-hmm. I'm going coffee. I don't want more of the same with him. What I feel cut off from is the next chapter. Yeah. I wanna have coffee with him. In a fricking AA meeting. I had the same answer with Betty Ford because I think it'd be interesting to look up, but there is a part of me that just feels like had somebody presented the case to him in the right moment at the right time, I would have loved to have seen a deeper awakening in him because I actually believe that was possible.

But I do think that his celebrity complicates that experience, but he's not the first celebrity to suffer in that way. I mean, I understand alcoholism to be a progressive [00:51:00] disease, and I don't know that he was exhibiting alcoholic behavior earlier in life, even earlier in his celebrity. I do think people are commenting on it towards the end of his life that his drinking was outta hand, and now I, I think that that doesn't necessarily mean he was getting in bar fights or driving drunk.

I think it was turned inward. But again, you know, I don't mean to have the final word on this. This is the whole thrust of famous eng grave view is what does this life story say about us? And one of not, the big lesson here is that I got sober to live a life like this. Not, I lived a life like this and was looking for enlightenment.

It's the, it's the other way around. I do think he falls short of enlightenment. That's what I most want for him, that we didn't get to see.

Alice: I think that's why it troubles people, because you would think if anybody's gonna find it, it's gonna be Tony. And he did. And so what does that say about the rest of us, like myself, that [00:52:00] idealized him and created him as this hero in my life?

Like when I say that he was instrumental in my recovery, I wrote multiple short stories about. Imagined meetings with this person, which sounds mental, I have to say

Michael: it. It doesn't sound mental to me, the depth of connection that we felt with him. I mean, we see these stories that are available to us in the public conscious that we connect with, and to understand them on a deeper level teaches us about ourselves.

And what you were talking about a second ago sounds to me like what you were doing at a critical moment in your life.

Alice: I wrote these stories embedded in a larger novel about my experiences of being in New York and Denmark and things like that. And it was fictionalized, but only, only slightly.

Archival: Hmm.

Alice: When an agent was interested in it, they were interested in it for the opening sequence, which is this imagined experience with a personality who's supposed to be Tony Bourdain, like meeting them in a, in a noodle bar in in New York.

And then when I sent the full manuscript, they were like, can you give us more of that? Yeah. That was the [00:53:00] best part. And I was like, right. Doesn't that just speak so much to the way in which people latch onto him as a personality?

Michael: Maybe the flip side of his symbolism is that we get to keep turning this one over and over again.

Mm-hmm. I'm not forsaking food, I'm not forsaking travel, I'm not forsaking a lot of the ideal that he represented just because of the way he died. But I do think that the way he died forces me to ask questions about those deeper desires in a way that can yield something. All right. I think we've arrived the final category, the Vander beak named after James Vander Beak, who famously said in varsity blues, I don't want your life.

In that varsity blues scene, James makes a judgment that he does not want a certain kind of life based on just a few characteristics. So here Alice and I will form a rebuttal to anyone skeptical of how Anthony Bourdain lived. The counter argument's obvious. I think that there is pain here that we didn't see and understand, and that somehow [00:54:00] was never quite exercised or processed or understood even by him.

What's so unbelievably frustrating is that there does seem to be a fair amount of catharsis through creativity. What's missing for me is something that I will call in the broadest sense of the word spiritual. It's not about. Adhering to any kind of belief system, but it is about greater purpose. What's even more frustrating there is that I do think that he understood some of his opportunity in life to be one of service, that he lost sight of that, or that he couldn't feel that all the way down to the bottom of his soul and into his bones.

Mm-hmm. That it's never gonna stop hurting. That is the counter argument if you ask me. I suppose you could also say a consequence of that are some of the troubled relationships in his family life, less with his friends, but maybe there's a chameleonlike tendency where he never really discovers who he is in community and in relationship, or where he belongs.

This is hard not to be really somber in [00:55:00] this episode, but I kind of knew that was gonna happen. It's,

Alice: it's extremely difficult.

Michael: I mean, I guess this is how grief works. It never goes away. It diminishes. Oh, when I think about him,

Alice: I'm miserable.

Michael: So is is, so is it possible to do the other thing? I mean, actually that's exactly what we ought to talk about in this category.

Can you still celebrate what this was all about? Not his own redemption, but our, our memory here. Like, can you still watch the show or read the books and be taken to someplace important, or is the whole thing corrupted?

Alice: You can, but you have to accept that he is the person that he is now. The thing that always resonated for me was that I wanted to emulate the way that he lived, which was the way that he went out and took life by the balls and tasted everything communed with everyone.

Went for adventure. One of the things that I really envied in him was the fact that he had such a high creative output. Mm-hmm. Now thinking onto my own experience, I prioritized healing [00:56:00] before I prioritize my creativity. And that's something I struggle with all the time because I, I get annoyed at myself that I haven't written more or done more with my life creatively.

But then I think about somebody like Tony and I think, you know, I've spent the last 10 years figuring my shit out so that I can have a long fulfilled life full of people that I love and who understand me.

Michael: Yeah. I think you've got the order in the right place. And this is almost my point number two about all the second chapters parts unknown, that you're young.

Totally. We both are still young. Yeah. There's a lot of time left and order of operations really matters here.

Alice: And it saddens me. But on the other hand, he did express himself very creatively.

Michael: Yeah. And well beyond the kitchen. I mean Exactly. He even downplays his, his culinary contributions. He was never trying to be a cutting chef.

Alice: Exactly. He didn't, he didn't care about being a

Michael: chef. Yeah.

Alice: That's what it said. Food expert. I was like, he's not a food expert.

Michael: Right. But I, I think, I think as an eater, he's trained and has the vocabulary. He has [00:57:00] the palate, has the palette, definitely. But what this category is about is why would you want this life?

I would not dismiss the lifestyle he modeled as something undesirable just because of what happened to him. I think it gives me caution with my travel lust and my desire for new and exciting sensory experiences, particularly around food, but also around culture and also around, you know, the opportunity to connect.

That's just sort of the, the sort of material physical experience. I do think. His ability to sort of idealize a kind of universal humanity. I like God, we need that. You know? Yeah. I, I need people to show me what that might look like and all the contradictions he carried around with him as he did that, felt like it, it, it is an important and universal idea.

Even if part of the consequence was his soul and his story and his life, I think he tried to

Alice: live well

Michael: and I, I think he knew that we were all [00:58:00] watching. I think he did fall into a very easy trap where we mistake attention for love. If there's anything he never quite put together, it was how to allow love in and how to sustain that.

Is there anything else you'd add to the why we should want this life, Alice?

Alice: I think that he lived big. I think he lived. In the moment. I think he embodies a very much a pre COVID mentality, which is the idea of being tactile and having these new experiences and travel has come back. Absolutely. But it is much more curated and people want, they wanna know what they're gonna get before they go, whereas I don't think he ever went into a situation with expectations.

I think he met it where it was and that I really admire.

Michael: I think that that's a really spot on observation, that history is going to regard him as the figure who helps us understand a particular moment in history that his death marks the end of in some ways, but [00:59:00] that is also a contribution. And your point a second ago, that there are worst lives and worst contributions is very well taken.

Okay, with that, James VanDerBeek, I'm Anthony Bourdain and you want my life.

Before we close, if you enjoyed this episode and you're enjoying our show, and if you've got your phone in your hand, please take a moment to share it with a friend. We want to grow our podcast, one listener at a time speed round plugs for past shows. Alice, if people enjoyed this recording of Anthony Bourdain, what episode from the archives might they check out?

Alice: I really enjoy listening to Alan Rickman's episode recently. Oh yeah. Also a sad one. Yeah. But I think if you got through this, you can get through that. Do you know, I think he's, um, he's also an incredible writer and also I think a lot of the things that we've said about, about Tony, we could probably apply to Alan Rickman in terms of, you know, take him before [01:00:00] his time.

Yeah, you know, really inspirational. Um, and also I have to plug the Joan Didion episode, which is the last one we did together, which I thought was great.

Michael: I was gonna mention Joan Didion as well. So episode 79, likable villain Alan Rickman, as well as episode 1 0 2. Magical Thinker, Joan Didion. I'm gonna plug episode 1 0 8 not too long ago.

Gonzo Troubadour Hunter s Thompson. He was such a model for Anthony Bourdain, and I do think that we would not have Anthony Bourdain were it not for Hunter s Thompson. Okay, here's a little preview for the next episode of Famous Eng Gravy. He became a radio disc jockey at. 14 and formed his own band. Not long afterward, he played earthy music with a spirited hard edge.

Ooh, that's a hard one. Famous and Gravy listeners, we love hearing from you. If you wanna reach out with a comment question or to participate in our opening quiz, email us at hello@famousandgravy.com and our show notes. We include all kinds of links, including to our website and our social channels.

Famous and Gray View is created by Amit Kapur and me, Michael Osborne. [01:01:00] Thank you so much to Alice or for guest hosting. This episode was produced by Evan Scherer with assistance from Jacob Weiss. Original music by Kevin Strang. Thanks. See you next time.