Oh! My Compliments to the Test Tube!

Ooh, my compliments to the test tube. It's one more thing. I'm strong and getty. One more thing.

Now the chef the test tube, I got it. I have no guess what that's going to be. But first they joke from Saturday nine Live, a.

Newfold shows that since twenty sixteen, support by black voters for Democratic candidates has dropped from ninety two percent to seventy eight percent.

Or don't make this our fault. Seventy eight percent is.

Still a lot for contact. Seventy eight percent black people is enough to make white liberals leave the county be grateful. The only other people to get seventy eight percent of the black vote was the North and Kendrick lamar All thought, if it wasn't for black voters, y'all wouldn't even be a party anymore. You'd be the Democratic small get together.

So we were talking a little bit earlier on the radio show about some of the joe that were being made on Saturday Night Live, and somebody made the point that on the text line that they can make those jokes because Michael Chase a black guy, and you can make joke about your own circle, you can't joke about somebody else's circle. I can complain about my mother, but my husband cannot complain about my mother, or I'd kill him, right.

Sister, you just gotta listen to them. You can't join in at all, don't. Don't fellas if you're young, young enough to have avoided that bullet, trust us when we say that's let her vent all you want do not add a syllable.

It's interesting because you can understand why you'd make that mistake, because usually when somebody's bitching about something, they're asking for you to join in with the pitching. That's, in fact, like always that's the case.

And if you both bond more quickly over what they don't like than over what they like.

Yeah, yeah, so they're complaining about the way they got treated by United Airlines or their uber driver or the restaurant or whatever your boss. You just join in because it makes them, you know, a bonding experience. But man, you can't do that with somebody's with a woman's sisters or or mom.

Yeah interesting, yeah, uh so, uh this is not surprising. I guess I love this headline lab grown meat is proving to be a grotesque misadventure.

I am amazed at how many restaurants I go to who have who have that as an option?

Lab grown? Well, I don't know what. No, Now, the like impossible burger that's vegetable based, spiced, it has the consistency of me. So that's different.

I see that places, and then I see what would they call lab grown? Would they call that something?

Would? Uh? Some supporters, including Bill Gates and Richard Branson, prefer the euphemism cultivated meat. I don't actually know.

I just I just see a lot of places where they're often fake meat burgers or fake.

Meat veggie burgers. You think, yeah, bean bean, Jed. I've had some of those that are terrific. Anyway, the lab grown meat revolution looks like it's over, says Julian Mellanton, food consultant. News Company is advised to alternative protein companies. Are you about to explain what lab grown meat is? Uh? Yeah, that's part of it, okay, because have you? I think we've talked about this, but I don't remember the first Well, the first lab grown burger was demonstrated more than a

I want to catch up and salt on the embryo whatever you just said.

Yeah, yeah, cultivated meat, said this food consultant. It's going to go down as one of the biggest failures in food history. Business schools will be presenting lessons on lab grown meat. No kidding, I didn't know that. That came and went without me. I don't know if I've ever had it. I don't think I have.

Uh.

We were told that this innovation would transform how we eat and farm, but this month leading industry figures admitted the game was all but up, which is where you come in.

Well, of course it would be a very very big deal if you could grow meat that in it, So it wouldn't be it wouldn't be like the impossible stuff is just as it's not meat at all, but it's designed to taste like, Yeah, this would actually be meat in theory. It would be exactly like you know, the the hip of a cow, whatever that is, flank steak or hamburger steak or whatever. I'm guessing it tasted horrible, Is.

That what it did it in No, actually, I'm told it was decent enough, but people were just horrified by the idea of it. It is a bad idea. Well, I was disgusted the first time I heard it, and I have no reason to reject science or alternative means of getting something. It was an instinctive, tenth of a second reaction. Yeah, that's interesting.

No, I didn't finish what I was gonna say, is obviously this would be such a huge revelation because you don't need gazillions of cattle around the world. I used to work in feed lots with tens of thousands of cattle. That I mean, when you got the fact that they flatulate and what that is doing to the environment.

But just to the poop, my god, the poop.

Yeah, the amount of poop, and then feed that you've got to give them, and water that you've got to give them, and all the employees you need to have, and then the injecting all the various chemicals in them that everybody does that may or may not affect the meat. This would get away from all of that. But you're saying it didn't work.

One executive at one cultivated meat company. Uh uh, there's a valley of death. We're not going to cross is in an industry without a massive infusion of public investment. The chief executive of Impossible Foods, which only creates plant based arizonts meat products, acknowledge that the political mood has changed for everyone. Food security and competitiveness are now back on the agenda. The alternate protein bubble has burst.

It's funny that nobody is hitting on what you said. You just had kind of an instinctual.

They do, they get to it. It never stood a chance. The economics are always stacked against meat bioreactors. The process requires pharmaceutical industry level lab conditions, very expensive nutrients which amount to about two thirds of the cost, specialized labor, and long time scales. Optimistically, producers would be doing well to hit sixty three dollars per kilo, so that'd be you know, two and a half pounds thirty you know, thirty bucks a pounds roughly has a break even price

It's funny that we have a knee jerk reaction to meat grown in a test tube. But that living thing standing out there with you know, a heart and lungs and kidneys and everything like that, and hopes and dreams and hopes and dreams. You kill it and cut it up and drain the blood out of it and cook it. I'm fine with that, But we've been doing it. It's an evolution thing.

I suppose as you load the cown and the truck is thinking I never went to Europe, right, Sorry, um, yeah, yeah, that's you know. I wonder if it'll come together at some point. Although most of the representations of alterna foods, whether it's eating bugs or alternative proteins. So we were kids, that was a big eating bugs. Oh yeah, we're all gonna be eating bugs by the time you're an adult buyer reactors.

All of it was based on what was the worm craze? Were we gonna eat worms?

Yeah, something like that. Yeah, my god, this conversation is making me sick.

For some reason, I got involved in the worm craze for a while. In what sense My shop teacher in high school went all in on worms, So this would have been late seventies, early eighties.

I guess he.

Went all in on worms when he thought that was going to be the craze and converted his whole basement into a worm farm and had uh tens of thousands of worms and boxes wow, and the right lighting and humidity and everything like that. And one time they went on vacation and I fed the worms. There's like fifty thousand head a worm that I was I was taking care of ed.

I love it.

I was going in their basement, I was feed in mine. I had to like dig up the dirt aerate it, and then put the warm food in there and get them.

The right water, good gig. And he just thought that this was going to be the thing. Wow, people were gonna switch.

To worms, and then it never panned out, And I remember they just let them all loose in their garden after like two or three years of.

All this work and effort, waiting for the great worm and craze to catch hole. Note to self play Pink Floyd's waiting for the worms. Uh. Yeah. What I started to say was, I think all of these alternate food you know, or they're not crazes, they're like crazes talking about how it's going to be a crazy Yeah, they're all based on the assumption of never ending population growth.

At least in part, we'd all be starving and you just couldn't come up with the food. And that hasn't been the problem.

Oh yeah, And in fact, I was hoping we might get to and probably will in the next couple of days. A survey of all the countries around the world where their governments are trying desperately to get people to have babies, and how there's not a single program that's showing any significant success.

And I would hope not any any trip or dollar amount or whatever that could convince you to take on the task of being a parent, right, not good?

Well, and more significantly, I think even than that is that if you have, for whatever reason, suppressed the most fundamental urge there is other than you know, breathing food and water to reproduce.

Government's not gonna be able to talk you into it. I can't believe people think they can. I just yeah, I just think that's nuts.

I get why they're trying, but man, it's a long shot at best. So you take a girl out to have some nice lab grown flesh, take her back to your place. Gross.

So why isn't there a bigger movement towards smaller ports and restaurants that that's practically like, you know, the way the culture change was around drunk driving and smoking. Why isn't there more of a push for smaller portions?

I think because we're a fatter country than we are a drunk one. I think a lot of big, heavy Americans don't want to hear it. They want giant portions.

Well, how about all the you know, this is usually driven by often by people I don't like, But like, why isn't the academic lefty already skinny you know, Manhattan based media crowd pushing for smaller portions everywhere? It just seems like that would be a good idea.

Wow, that's a really interesting question.

I would I would like that. I'm even though I have no self control, most of us don't. When when Applebee's or whoever brings out the burger that's the size of your freaking head and enough French.

Fries to choke a horse, it's just like, what is this?

Why?

Yeah? Yeah, I just I now, I'm at the point in my life that I appreciate it when they have less.

Absolutely, I'm just surprised there wouldn't be a craze for shrink Flation is happening everywhere. Shrink the portion sizes instead of up in the price, make the portion smaller.

Yeah, but graying talk show hosts don't drive that market. It's hungry young people. I don't know, Hanson, where do you fall? Are you pleased when you get a giant whatever? You think? Awesome? This place is great. Look at that Breedo. It's a sizement Folkswagen. No, not at all. I had one the other day and I just knew. Now I just cut it in half. Yeah, the other part goes home and then I end up throwing that away.

Yeah.

I've had friends where we've decided, let's remember for the future, let's always order one thing and split it from now on always because they're way too big. Yeah, but maybe we're not representative of most people, like you're saying. Given my brother, who's quite the eater, I don't think he gets excited about giant portions the huge mountain French fries is.

It's so cheap and so easy for them to do. And if you're the hungry type, but you you love that.

Yeah, but from a free market standpoint, if there were much fewer, would you stop going there? Like you just if Chili served small portions of fries, I would stop going in there and go to Applebee's because they have enough French fries to push out in a.

Wheelborrow me personally, or am I a two hundred and thirty pounds thirty two year old just about most people? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I'd say, hey, fry miser, what is this the depression? Bring me out some fries. I'm gonna wreck the place.

I have had a few experiences, especially this French rest height at a French restaurant in San Francisco one time. At the time, it was an incredibly expensive meal and I think it was one hundred dollars a person, which now is what it costs to you everywhere practically. But anyway, it was a very expensive meal. And they brought out these.

Little thimbles full of things and I was like, what is this. This is a tasting menu, what is this? This is my meat?

This a little tiny little thing of meat, I know, and bring you a like a little tiny little screen thing.

It was your salad. Oh yeah, that reminds me. Hey, remind mister Armstrong to bring that up during the radio show tomorrow. I have something I know you'll love, the tiny portions at French restaurants. Yes, oddly enough.

That's gonna be our topic tomorrow. That was the only time in my life though, that I've been disappointed in a portion, and it was ridiculous.

I mean it was it was over the top. You get the taste, you get the texture, you're done, moving on. God dang it. I wit that.

The other day we got burgers and they were just they were so enormous, just insanely enormous.

Yeah, yeah, you had a French restaurant like that. You're thinking, I'm hungry, order in a pizza, send a message, have it delivered right to your table. Anybody, you want any food to your meal? Half a pizza delivered your table. I'm all great, What am I supposed to do? I went out to eat, all right?

And the thing they did at this expensive French restaurant in San Francisco, it was like a different waiter for every brown.

Oh good, that's important.

And the plates were so huge they were like the size of a car tire. So I was part of the presentation, big giant white plate with a tiny little thing, and then like a sprinkle of some sauce that was a different color over a ear.

Right right, fantastic? What am I supposed to eat? Then the dude who brings that can't possibly be the guy to bring the room temperature soup that I'm supposed to appreciate? One half a spoonful of soup. Ooh, fennel and watermelon. So you say your professor had you go into his basement to feed the worms. Correct? Little did you know that the worms were plotting your demise? That's true. They're waiting for me to die.

I have no idea what he thought. Was I think we were going to eat worms in the seventies. I think that was the thing.

Or was it that they would be sold for fishing? No? No, no, no no.

It was some new age craze thing where the rocks were going to be really worth a lot of money. He only had like three fingers left. Shop teacher, he said, yeah, yeah, yeah, I guess that's it.