#417 – Kimbal Musk: The Art of Cooking, Tesla, SpaceX, Zip2, and Family

The following is a conversation with Kimbal Musk, a long time entrepreneur and chef and author of a new cookbook called The Kitchen Cookbook, cooking for your community. You should check it out. It is in fact the first cookbook I've ever owned, I've already made stuff from it, and it's delicious. And now a quick few second mention of each sponsor, check them out in the description. It is the best way to support this podcast.

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Check them out at BetterHelp.com slash Lex and save in your first month. It's BetterHelp.com slash Lex. This is Alex Friedman podcast to support it. Please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Kimball Musk. Growing up in South Africa, you said it was a violent place. What are some formative moments that you remember from that time? South Africa was, so I grew up in part, I said Africa, but more specifically the full of apartheid.

So it was the 80, I was a teenager in the 80s. Our community would, part of our social, I frankly, was the anti-apartheid protests and to go be with white people, black people, kind of mixing it all together. The most formative experiences, frankly, how much I appreciate a place like America where we have a value for human life. So there was a country where human life was not valued.

It was a weird thing to come from that to hear where we think it's seriously if someone dies in a war or something like that. And we just didn't take it seriously in South Africa. People died. We were killed. I saw someone killed in front of me. It was getting off a train and it's a very violent train known for violence. We were stupid kids. We didn't really listen to our parents. We went on this train and the door was opened and I had people trying to get off the train.

In front of me, two black people, one black I just stabbed the knife and the side of the other black I had. You're like, what the fuck? And you just, I'm, I'm, I'm going to get off the train. How old were you this time? I'm probably 16 or 17. And I'm going to get off the train and everyone is trying to get me to get off because you know they're all behind me.

So I step off and I step into the pool of blood, one foot and then I just walk for about a hundred pieces while the stickiness of the blood just kind of for my sneakers is just on one foot, just like leaves a footprint behind me. And you just walk on. You just walk on. Did the others go to the pond as well? Everyone walked on. That's an interesting point you make underlying the violence is a kind of philosophy that human life is disposable. The individual life is disposable.

I mean, that underlies many ideologies, you know, I go up in the Soviet Union. The value of human life was lower there than in the United States. The value of the individual in the United States is really high. Yeah. It's probably in index you can put together like, yeah, right, exactly. A per per nation that that's a really interesting way to put it because violence is much easier on a mass scale, suffering, causing suffering on a mass scale is much easier when you don't value the human life.

I've heard this before, which I think I agree with is when someone is killed, someone who's taken from our lives, the vacuum that it creates, the social vacuum is extraordinarily painful and it truly is true. I mean, if someone in my community passes away, it's very, very sad for me.

When you go to a place where it will live, grow up in a place where that human life is not valued, there's something about the, there's a little bit, a little less of the social vacuum created because everyone is kind of expecting everyone to potentially be taken out at any moment. But then there's also a beauty to it because there's a much more of a celebratory element.

When my cousin Russ and I, we, a game of our stupid kids, we shouldn't be doing this, but we'd go into the townships where a lot of the violence would be happening. We really didn't see most of the violence there. It was in these more protests and so forth. But there's a joy that also comes from lower value of human life. There's a real joy like everyone is like, well, I mean, it's beautiful. We have dinner with black friends, friends with their family. We're still pretty young.

And there was just a real joy to it. You accept mortality. You can really enjoy life. You can really enjoy life. I mean, I think there's actually a quite a nice inside. I've never really put it that way, but I think that's right. Actually, I think you, you just chill out a bit because things are a little less seriously. Because life does end for everybody. You do. Right. And if you just head on, accept that fact.

Yeah, you can just enjoy every single moment and let go of this attachment and just enjoy the moment. I do love that we all live longer and so forth. But we should live longer with the goal of joy, the goal of happiness and peace, not some form of misery that you choose to attach yourself to. Maximize joy. Maximize joy, that's right. There's a story that Walter Isaacson writes about where Elon got beat up pretty bad and you were there.

And then you also had to watch your dad yell at Elon for an hour calling him worthless, all those kinds of things. You said it was the worst memory of your life. What do you make of such cruelty? What do you remember from that time? I mean, it was horrible. I think coming back to the point of low value of human life, they tried to kill him. It wasn't, it wasn't, it was no holding back.

I just watched someone, it wasn't just one, but there was a main person and there was a few others that piled in. They just, they try to kill him in front of me. We were eating sandwiches on a staircase at the school, outdoor staircase. I just had to, they were not coming up to me and I just had to watch and I couldn't help. It was one of the saddest, difficult experiences it was, it's just awful. Just like that, life can end. Yeah, it could have been you.

Yeah, I think, so I've had a life, a near, near death experience where I almost died. I was in 2010 and I think that, and I broke my neck and I can go to that story in a moment, but this was, this was different. This was, this was, this comes back to the low value of human life part where if someone had killed my brother, if that person had beat him to death, which he was trying to do, life would have gone on.

You know, that's like an insane thought in an American, maybe in some tough neighborhoods, but for the most part, it's, it's another thing. Yeah, the brutality of the, the, the mundaness of the brutality. Yeah. It makes you think of all the places in the world that that's happening. Exactly. And it's a beautiful people that just disappear.

I always say to people who, who have an opinion about America that, you know, this is a rebate country or whatever, and I say, look, please go try another country before you say that, not to say that America can't get better, but please go try another country because not having that perspective, or having a perspective that, that, I don't know, I don't know, that could chip on their shoulder about the country that they're in.

Okay, go try another country and then come back and tell me, pick any country. It doesn't have to be, you know, it doesn't have to be some, you know, a very violent country, you go pick any country. And, and you just realize that actually the world doesn't think the same way that America thinks. And you're going to just to learn a perspective that I think gives you a better way to critique where we live in America. Yeah, it's humbling.

You said that your dad was a roller coaster of affection and then verbal abuse while there are Isaacson quotes Barack Obama who said someone once said that every man is trying to live up to his father's expectations or make up for his father's mistakes. And I suppose that may explain my particular malady. It's part of that ring true for you. What I thought you were going to say was, we thought you were going to end the sentence was live up to my father's expectations.

This is what most people say. But then you said the second part which is make up for his mistakes. And I think that's actually, that one is, that one rings true for me. He was really, he's still alive, but he, but I don't, I'm not connected to him, but he's very, he taught, he taught me the phrase I used to have was he taught me what not to do. So I still actually learned a lot. What kind of human not to be, what kind of actions are not to take.

And so that kind of closer to living up to his mistakes, but it's, but I've also such a train wreck that it's not really mistakes. It's like intentional actions of what not to do. Okay, don't do that. But there's still the trauma of that. You know, it has an effect on the human psychology and can permeate their time. So it has probably complex indirect effects on who you are. The good and the bad.

Is a critique that my friends give me, which is when they're talking to me, I kind of just drift away. That just, I'm still looking at them, I'm still nodding, might even respond to their, to their, to them in their conversation. But I'm actually not there. And I, I've realized that actually that grew up because my father would just verbal, abuse as one way to say it is abuse, but it's more just verbal diarrhea for you for hours. And constantly saying, do you understand?

Like he wants to make sure that I'm paying attention. So I train myself to look like I'm paying attention, but I'm not to disappear to some place, disappear to some place. Wherever that is. Yeah. And I do that less and less of a time, but I, but that path has been paved somewhere in your mind at childhood. So it could be easy to walk down it. You and Elon were close, growing up. You're still close. What did you learn from each other? How did you compliment each other?

Yeah, I think we are, we're a good compliment. I took from myself first. My, my strength is definitely on the social side. I love, I love the gathering place. And I love put people together in person. And I love to have vibrant debates and conversations between that forever, including some fun parties and stuff where I bring people together and I really kind of want people to have fun and be, but be vulnerable in a, in a, not just like silly party, but actually luck lets us all connect.

And the definition for me of a good party is people laugh and cry. I want to have people have an emotional connection. But a burning man every year and that is, there's no question. You will cry at some point during burning man. No small talk. No small talk. Yeah, exactly. No small talk. You're totally right on like most parties, not parties, but most events you go to are like clubs, these sort of nightclubs.

And I never go to those and my joke is it's, why would I want to go to a place where I pay it a shout small talk in the dark? That's a good line. So it feels like the only reason I enjoy those places is the full absurdity of exactly that. Right. Totally. What are we doing? What is this? What is this like? But I have, so my compliment for my brother was just bringing joy and social connection. And he's truly, he's an, he's an engineering genius.

I work with him forever and we do compliment each other. You just came out with a cookbook. By the way, thank you for giving me my first cookbook. I feel legit. I love that. I've got a first cookbook. I'm going to keep it on the counter and it's going to give me a legitimacy. I think when it comes over, listen, I'm basically a chef now. That's right. Exactly. When did you first fall in love with cooking? I started cooking when I was 11 years old.

My mom is just, she's wonderful, but she, she's self-admittedly a bad cook. But at the time, it was, it was, I think anyone with kids that goes through this, your kids just want like something that, like spaghetti, bologna is a burger or something. And my mom would do brown bread, plain yogurt, and boiled squash. You know, like the absolute most disgusting things that a child could imagine eating. And so I said, can I cook? And she said, yes, if you want to cook, no problem.

So I went to the grocery store and I, I, I'm back in the, there's a butcher, separate to the grocery store, and I went to the butcher and I said, what kind of cook? And he, he pulled out a chicken and he said, this is the easiest recipe for you. You just put it on a pan in an oven, a hot oven because back then, the ovens weren't necessarily like 400 degrees or 50 or whatever, and put it in a hot oven for one hour and enjoy. That was it.

And so I went home and actually I also brought some french fries. I'll tell you that as well. So I was like, I'm a kid. Of course I went for french fries. So the roast chicken was french fries. And the chicken came out and it was just fantastic. It was absolutely fantastic. That's incredible. Yeah. Yeah. First of all, I think that's also kicks off the magic. Yeah. Like if you screw it up and you're like, oh, maybe this is not for me. Yeah. So for me, it really did kick it off.

You started out on a high note. Yeah, right. Exactly. But I, but I told the french fries, which was a disaster. So I cooked the french fries, but I didn't heat the oil first. So I just put the potatoes in the oil and I waited for it to heat up. And I just was throwing up later that night. You can't, your body can't ingest that much because it sucks the oil then. Oh, that was a disaster. But at the time, it tasted good. The man, the real magic, which I also found was wonderful.

It was when I cooked, brother, my sister, my mom, very, very busy, very intense people, sit down and we would have a meal together. And I was like, wow, this is a powerful, it's a very powerful thing that I've now got where in no other way could I have that connection with my family. I mean, obviously we stay connected. We're very close, it's a sector. But in no other way, can we sit down and just talk about things?

We'll talk about whatever's on our mind or just to just not even talk, just to be in the table together. And I've done that now, we threw my whole life, my kids, still for my family. And we will do gratitude to the beginning of our meal. It's just, I think what kept me cooking, what made my love of cooking so great was actually the fact that we would sit down and be present with each other. And I'm also just also hard with that too. So I also get to be present.

What is that about food that brings people together and not just together, but really together where you're paying attention? Right. What is that? Why is it food? Like what else does that? Sometimes maybe alcohol can do that, which is a kind of food, I guess. But I think alcohol is different because you're usually standing when you're doing alcohol so you're like, you're socializing, but it's kind of, you're just going to stay in more in the small talk zone. Right.

Whereas if you sit down and I see this in my restaurant in the kitchen in Boulder, where we have every viewpoint or we go to Denver, every viewpoint, when we're in Richard Wanness, Chicago, every viewpoint, and the physical presence of someone being with right there is people that just, they're just very different, absolutely different to what they are online. I think we all know the difference between, you know, you send an email to someone and they miss and understand the email.

Right. And you know, if I just to talk to the person that would have been fine, well, this is now happening at scale, you know, with all of these, these, these, what are you called, trolling or whatever. And I have, I've, I've sat at the bar and I've had a hardcore Trump supporter and I'm just, I'm just curious, just like this would tell me what, I'm not a Trump supporter bit him, but tell me more. And it's actually draws the conversation out because you're there for an hour or longer.

There's no rush to get the answer. And I think that's a big difference. I've had one time where just a couple months ago, I had someone, I was sitting at the community table, we have a community table in the restaurant and he was, I didn't know him too well, but he asked me, did I know that 9-11 was a conspiracy and it didn't really happen. It didn't happen, yeah. And I was like, huh. So I should, I was at 9-11, I was, I was, I mean, I was, I was, I was like, I was there physically there.

So it's looking up allegedly, there's no doubt in my mind. Okay. But I, but I didn't want to, but I didn't want to interrupt his, his, what he had to say. So I let him talk for five minutes, six minutes, seven minutes. And again, you're there for a while. So he's not in a rush to, to jump in and argue. And then I should that I was there. And I think because I had been willing to listen to him, he was willing to listen to me.

And he, I don't know if he changed his mind, so he doesn't change my mind, but, but it was actually a pretty cool conversation to kind of get into each other's mind. Well, I think you connect on a different level, not on the level of like the, the conspiracy, but on the level of basic humanity. Yes. You really connect on and then it's almost becomes interesting and fun that you can exchange ideas, even crazy ideas out there ideas and kind of play with them.

Like, yeah, we humans are good at that. Yeah, exactly. I like the, I like to turn play with them because what, what you're not trying to do is shut the conversation down. You're also not trying to talk down on me. Yeah, exactly like us, you know, let me just be nice while I totally disagree with this person. You can do that for a few minutes. You can't do that for two hours.

And there's something like about food that completely, I don't know, it must be evolutionary, it makes us vulnerable in a way that even just standing there for prolonged period of time doesn't, there's something about, you know, like with the animals gather to the water or whatever. Yeah, right. So experience where you're just like, all right, let's, let's just acknowledge together that we need sustenance.

Yeah. And somehow that kind of grounds us to like, we're just, we're just a bunch of descendants of apes here, just kind of like grateful to be alive, frankly and grateful to be consuming this thing which keeps us alive. And in that context, you can talk about all kinds of stuff. I can discuss flatter than enjoy. Absolutely. Absolutely.

In fact, one of my favorite things to do is, is, is you do a, like a Jeffersonian style, dinner like, let's say five or six people, sometimes you can, people will break off an individual conversation. So that's actually when things break down. So that's when you kind of go back to small talk, like, oh, I'm stuck to next to the sky, I'm just going to do a small talk. Which you need to do to really create a great conversation is one conversation at the table.

And that's where, you know, there'll be some, some, some simple questions that I'll say, I'll say, you know, what's your middle name? And you'll be amazed at the stories you get from that. But it's, it's about creating vulnerability. Yeah. So they're like, oh, no one's ever asked me that before. So then they, they become vulnerable. And then I, then something as simple as what's the most fun thing you've done recently and what is the most fun thing you're looking forward to.

And I have gotten into, with those prompts, I've gotten into, to our as long discussions on God. I've gotten into our as long discussions on love. I've gotten into our as long discussions on anger. It's actually amazing when people are just asked the question, like, what's the most fun thing you done lately? Well, why would anger come up? Well, actually, they're, they're an available place so that it'll just kind of come out of them.

You see this, you get to see this as a kitchen and you said, Boulder, Denver, Chicago. Yeah. And we're going to open in Austin. In Austin. That's what I saw. When? In October is the goal. In October is the goal. Well, I mean, speaking of characters and human beings, Austin is fascinating. I forget how long ago and a couple of months ago, I was just sitting at a bar and some, the two people were talking and they were talking about Marxism.

And it turns out that they're anarcho communists, which is the thing and I got into this conversation. Communists are like drugs. That's a good question, Anne. I think I know some of those. Anyway, there were beautiful people. I think they're local from Austin. I don't, you know, I don't know the depth of their personal experience of the different kinds of communists, like systems, but it was fascinating to listen to and then get to know them and the humanity, the weirdness, like the characters.

It's just, I mean, I love it. One of the reasons I really love Austin, I decided to be here is just the cliche thing of keep Austin weird. I mean, there's a lot of weird characters. I love it. I think that I've focused a lot of, what's nice about here forever and I'm like, man, you got to hold us accountable. We got to keep this place weird. 100%. Which makes the restaurants seem great because you have all these characters come in. It's great. So I look forward to that.

But you were saying like you get to see humans in real life interact. That's one of the beautiful things over food. In the book you write, Picasso once said, the meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away. Then you wrote that you believe food is a gift. We give ourselves three times a day. Can you explain that? The gift nature. I think it's one of my most powerful life lessons is we have to eat. So it's not like you have a choice. You have to eat.

What I choose to do is I choose to make it a gift to myself for each meal. Most of the time the best gift is with friends with family. So without to cook some scrambled eggs in the morning with my daughter or we'll have dinner with our family. For me it's a gift we give ourselves three times a day, at least for the most part three times a day. Let's make it a good one. What makes it a good one to you? Like what? What aspects makes it a good one? Well, first definitely eating with people.

So that makes it a good one. So eating is an restaurant. It doesn't have to be my restaurant. We have the energy of people around you, energy of the town. We don't know, creates a little bit of a vibe that you mentioned, the watering hole analogy that animals are like sipping at the water. But there's an energy to that because they're also like looking around going, am I just about to be eaten? So they're all in it together. But we need to have water.

But there's still a little bit of tension as well in the background. And I think that's what restaurants do. It's a very, very subtle version of that, you're in a room with strangers. And you're a little cluster, fine, you guys are connected in it. But you're in a room of strangers. And it's just something that adds that energy to the meal. Yeah, you're a little bit wondering, what does everyone else think about our little cluster? Right. Oh, we too loud.

Or just, you also, just people are random. So something random could happen. And also depending on your personality, if you're an extrovert, maybe you want to show off to the other clusters. You're exactly, yeah, absolutely, totally right. Look at the cowboy hat. I mean, actually, I'll take my hat off when I want to have a quiet meal and I believe my hat on when I'm, so you're aware of the lot that the affected hats, yeah, absolutely. Everyone turns.

And then it's back to the watering hole because when you wear a cowboy hat, you just might actually, no, I'm like, they're going to get me first. Noon, I love it. I got to tell the story. So the, the, the craziness of being, of being in the restaurant world where, you know, you're sitting at a table and anything can happen in the restaurant. So there's one time, I was like 15 years ago, the, this guy comes up to us and says, we'd like to propose to his wife, his girlfriend.

And, and so we said, okay, cool. We've done this before. We'll, we'll make sure it's all set up. 6 p.m. Kind of reservation. So she shows up and we, we give her a glass of champagne. And we didn't, obviously, didn't want to spoil the surprise. So we just doing it. But then he doesn't, then he doesn't arrive. And they were like, oh man. Now we're like, don't leave. And can we get you another glass of champagne? We're doing everything we can.

Yeah. Obviously, Ernest earlier, we're just, he stuck in traffic or whatever. And out coming through the back door of the restaurant, which is, you're not allowed to come through the back door of the restaurant, a marching band from the school, the university, like comes through the restaurant, you know, full on brass band and the whole thing. And, and, you know, he gets down and he proposes that it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's beautiful, sure, but it's also like, man, this is chaos.

This is insane. And we would never have said yes to this if he actually told us what he was going to do. Well, sometimes in life, you have to do it and apologize. You do it and apologize. But that toasted that kind of what's the crazy thing that could happen in a, it, it's subtle, but it's, but it's still there. So in 2004, you opened the kitchen. It's an American, uh, bistro restaurant. What was it like? What's it like running a restaurant? The good, the bad and ugly.

What's the, what's the easy, what's the fun and what's the hard? I think the thing that I absolutely love about running the restaurant, not eating, a bit of running the restaurant is the, the tangible reaction from, from people and, uh, um, you, you know, you also kind of know when you screwed it up and you also know when you got it right. So even it's kind of a weird way to say this, but even if it's a customer's unhappy, you know whether you got to write it wrong.

It's not just about the food you're making, but it's about the person's psychological state. Yeah. And you'll even, you'll, you'll do something that you're like, you know, that, that was not well. And their psychological state is, they're just in a very happy place and they love it. And you're like, huh, interesting. You know, like that's not how I would have reacted to that dish.

Yeah. And then the other way around, you'd like, and I got that right and that person's just like really unhappy today. Yeah. And it's so hard to read humans because you have to, if you got to write that, you can look a million different ways, depending on the emotional rollercoaster that human is living through. Yeah. Like I've been some very low points and I've gone to like a restaurant alone and just sitting there and be truly happy with just the Zen aspect of it.

And it was just a great, like a great state or something like this. And maybe to other people around me would look like I'm very unhappy just because I'm within myself, within myself, within myself, but I'm truly happy within that struggle. So yeah, it's interesting, but you can kind of tell. Yeah, you can tell. And what you mentioned being at the bar, one of the most gifts, the most gifts at bar tenders really understand that.

You know, it goes beyond, what's also great about a restaurant, it goes beyond the one time experience that you walk in and you have that experience is the good bar tenders, they remember you. Yeah. Oh, you were in a few months ago and this is kind of your thing. You might need a little time. And other people will come and they want a conversation. Yeah. Or other people come in and they're going through a divorce and they just want to be sad for a moment, a scotch.

Yeah. And it's like, it's amazing what you learn in the restaurant world to just be connected to humanity. Yeah. What is that about bars? That's a different experience. You said the table, the communal. The table is when you connect with people, learn about each other. Bars, you can sometimes do that. You can talk left and right, but you have the freedom to always break free. Like you can say, okay, great, I'm going to go back to my meal.

It's kind of like it's like a friend you can turn on and off at any time because at the bartender knows that they're trained. Like if you want attention, I'm going to give it to you. If you don't, I'm going to say away. If you want to be chatty, I'm going to be chatty. If you want to be completely in your head, I'll leave you in your head. But there's also strangers kind of next to you that you kind of, there's a feeling with a bar that you kind of alone together. Yeah. And you can reach out.

You can add some conversation or you can choose not to. And you can exit quickly. You can exit. You get exactly. It's a really good exit. So bars are wonderful. And I love going to a bar by myself after work. I might have a scratch, might even not even have alcohol, just have something. And I just, and maybe I'll have a snack or something before dinner because I'm going to go home and have dinner with the family. And that's that 20 minutes.

It's just an amazing state change from day time to night time. If I went straight home, I'm like still in my head and I'm just trying to get grounded. And I'm just not as pleasant of a person. So there's another powerful use of a bar. It's just like a transition time. Well, I mean, it would be remiss not to mention the other use of the bar, which is like when you go on through some shit in life and you just go. I mean, that sort of it's the cliche thing. I've been somewhere. I'm sorry. Exactly.

But like the bar makes the melancholy somehow rich and beautiful and like it's you feel heard in the silence. Yes, you feel heard. And like I said earlier, the people going through a divorce, they don't know where else to go. Yeah. This is these are mostly, man, sometimes we're going to do it, but mostly, man will do this and I'm women and I've otherwise processing it, but they just, they want a place to be sad. I'm going to place where they could feel comfortable talking about it.

If they weren't there, there's certainly not going to go into too much detail, but they just want to say something. Yeah. And the bartender is there for them. Yeah. You don't know where to go. You don't know where to go. Exactly. The bar. Yeah, you're right. Like it for a man, especially as a place to just go. Yeah. I don't know what is that.

I mean, I still do it myself where if I'm at home and I didn't, you know, don't have a work thing that I got to deal with and I don't have kids and I don't have my wife or a family around, I don't know if I'm cooked for myself. I actually love going to a bar by myself. I have a glass of red wine and I have, you know, you don't have a starter appetizer. I just made like a main meal and I just take in the energy of the space. It was my restaurant.

Someone else's restaurant just taken the energy and it's so much better than being home and turned the TV on. No, no, no, no, I want to be out in the restaurant. I want to feel the energy of the town. The other thing that restaurants teach me is the, there are the front lines of the economy or what's a bit of weird for it. The front lines of the energy of how things are going. Like of people's in general, like it doesn't necessarily mean this part of town but it could be the entire society.

Exactly. So you can go into a restaurant and I'll use a simple example and there why is the restaurant empty? Ah, there's a football game going on and they're such a large number of people want to watch that game that the restaurant is quiet or it might be like another world series or something. And you're like, wow, that's so interesting. You can actually watch America, of course, American humanity, watch them move in their patterns just by being in the restaurant. Yeah, yeah.

And then another time you might be in the restaurant and he's just jamming. It's a Monday night and you're like, what is the energy that created this on a Monday night and maybe even on a cold February Monday night? What is it? And sometimes you can't find out but you can feel it. And it's my front lines of humanity that I also just really love about the restaurants. Yeah, it could be empty. It could be full. Empty bars is a magic to those too. Yeah. You could still feel that energy.

I don't know. I actually prefer empty bars than four ones. It's just you and the bartender. I mean, some of my greatest experiences is just the quiet bar. It could be just me and the bartender and they're doing their thing. And they've seen so many. I've almost like, threw us most of somehow feel the stories that that bartender has seen, has felt, has heard, know that kind of stuff. I mean, that's not to be sort of like spiritual about it, but it seems like it's in the walls or something.

There's the histories felt. And some of these bars are actually very old and it's wonderful. So many in Europe like this, but there's a couple in New York City, a few hundred years old and they're still operating nonstop for that long and man, you feel it. Yeah. Let me ask you some questions about ingredients. What's your favorite ingredient to cook with? For me cooking is an art, right? So be like asking me what's my favorite paint color that you use?

It's not that it isn't like, there isn't one. It's more like when there is one, it really is one. You know, like there's peaches on the cover of this cookbook. Those peaches, those were in August, Colorado peaches. It just doesn't get any better than that. On that day at that moment, that was the best ingredient. That was the best. But that only lasts for a week. And then they don't taste so great.

Yeah. But damn, was they so good in that moment and you just can't stop wanting to use that ingredient? They look really good. They're so good. What's your favorite fruit? I love veggies and fruit. What's your favorite fruit? I love a smoothie bowl. So I do sort of berries, raspberries. But I use fruit more in the form of a smoothie bowl than I eat fruit in that often. Not like an apple or a banana, but for most part, I prefer like the blended. Not me.

I love the way you casually said it like an apple. A good apple is pretty great. For me it's a problem, I think. Probably cherry is number one. Probably what do they call grains with apples and the pretends? Oh yeah, that's a great. But try it when sometime come to Colorado in August and when you drive those peaches, it is like heaven has arrived in your mouth. It is so ridiculously good. But just for a week and all this. Just for a week. You can't have it all your luck.

What about veggies, you wrote that chef Hugo that you worked with the co-founder of the kitchen with, taught you the power of a good vegetable. Yeah. What's the power of a good vegetable? So I've trained in New York as a French chef. But it wasn't very much a green ingredients focus. It wasn't very much sourcing focused. He came from the river cafe in London, which was one of the nine, the OGs of the farm to table and still going strong today.

And he taught me the value of getting to know farmers and getting to know vegetables from that farm versus vegetables from that farm. And they're actually different. So it was a little different way they grew it a little different. It's the opposite of the industrial machine where everything needs to look exactly the same. And sometimes you'll get carrots that are kind of ugly and deformed. But there's much sweeter than the carrots you get for other purposes.

So you make a carrot puree out of that and then you take carrots that are more typical and shape and size. You might roast them for for for general. So it's the appreciation for vegetables in general. I probably would say carrots is my favorite, just because I've you that was an example of one where I really had to learn how to use the different types of carrots that come from around from all of our farms. And it's fun. You know, it's a fun ingredient.

If you just went to the whole freezer or just went to a grocery store and you just got exactly the same carrot every time, less fun. But go to a farmer's market and see what you get. And you'll see they're quite different. Yeah, carrot for me is probably number one. I have a rigorous detailed rankings for fruit and veggies. That's amazing. We'll get into it. No, I'm just, why am the kind of person that would have like a spreadsheet for that? But I'm mostly just making fun of myself.

I do love carrots. So full of carbs. But I'm not, I'm just not anti-corp. You know, I think the anti-carb, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think they play a role. You know, like, I am a great friend who's an amazing doctor and he did some tests from Ian everything and turns out I have a gluten allergy. And that's like, okay. So what that means is I shouldn't eat gluten. It's like, yeah, it's like, okay. But I also have hay fever. And that means I should not go out into nature.

So it's like, now, I think I'm going to go out into nature. And maybe what I'll do on bread and pasta is like the true carbs. I'll just have it when it's really good. Because when it's really good, it's really good. And you don't want to miss that. Most of the time, okay, find some crummy bread, whatever. I can skip that part. But I find all of these diets are like, no, none of this or super this, super that.

I wonder if they're just like a, like a, people are just looking for something you'll hang on to. But these diets have been around forever. And if they work, then we would know that. I think one of the biggest problems with diets is it adds stress when you do have that perfect little pasta. If you have categorized yourself as a low carb eating person, you might be very stressed about enjoying this thing when you should just let go. Let go. That's just your cheat day or whatever.

Yeah. And I've heard that. And actually, I have friends who do that, their cheat day. And I say to them, I'm only going to hang out with you on your cheat day because that's when you're actually one. Yeah. I mean, I would say like for me, there's things that make me feel really good. But they're not rules. They're not, they're like go to favorites. Now, it's speaking, like in terms of diet and so on. For example, I've mostly been eating once a day for the longest time, but that's not a rule.

Like it's, it's completely flexible. And I've mostly been eating very low carb. But you must be eating a lot of food in that one meal. Yeah, it's not, you know, because it's usually a very sort of meat-heavy. It's not like portions throughout that big. But so everybody needs food. Yeah, but I need food. So you talk about like 2000 calories. What you find out is like that dinner is like the most social time of the day. Yeah. I mean, I have kids in the morning.

So if you have kids, for sure, a morning experience, but if you don't, then you're right. Yeah. But like you said, I, I deviate, you know, I'm more afraid of missing the perfect dessert, the perfect breakfast, the perfect bowl of pasta, pizza, all that kind of stuff. And I don't think of it as a cheat day. I think it's, um, well, if you're needing one meal a day, you can be whatever you like. Well, like I, I want to make clear that it's not one meal a day.

Always, and I'm like this very strict thing. It's, you always have to be open to the experience, to the new experience. Yeah. Otherwise, you do miss out on it, just like you said, hate fever. Like, I think if you want to be really safe, you should never leave your home. Yes. We learned during COVID, if you wrap yourself in cotton wool in your basement, yes, you're, you're not going to die from COVID. You might die from a lot of other things, if you're a misery.

Yeah. You know, well, you might live forever. I hate, we don't know. But it certainly doesn't maximize the joy of whatever, whatever makes life worth living, it doesn't maximize that. Yeah. Exactly. You wrote in a book that Anthony Bourdain was one of your heroes. Can you speak to what inspired you about him? Yeah. He wrote a book called Kitchen Confidential in the 90s. I was in cooking school at the time.

It was so, he romanticized the kitchen, the cooking in the restaurant so well, his writing is great. So he kind of got me into like, oh, that's cool. I want to do that. It was, it was, it was cool. So you know, got into cooking school, got more engaged in it. And I was like this headless, phomo feeling of I wanted to experience what it's like to be in the back of my, when you're just cooking school, you are, you're in the back of the, they had a restaurant.

We would serve people, but it's not the same thing as actually being in a, like a real restaurant. It's like you're in a submarine with, with, you know, your teammates and you got a win tonight. Mm-hmm. Like, it's a real, it's a real energy. And so that, that was a big inspiration. I followed him over to so sad that he, he, he, he chose to end his life.

But I also had met with him a few times, not, not like one on one of dinner anything, but just like met with him and, um, I just felt his love for, for food and truly his love for food. He gave the advice of don't be afraid, get excited and cook with love. Yeah. I've used that phrase, especially the cook with love one. I mean, you know, one of the things about which we talked about earlier where you get quick tangible feedback from a customer when you're in the restaurant.

Um, I know when I didn't put love into that dish. I know when one of my line cooks did not put love into that part of the dish. I know when that export person did not put love into looking, you know, double checking the dish before putting it on the table. I, you just know. And cook with love is, uh, when you do it for your family, oh, actually, especially when you do it for your family, the food isn't, doesn't that be perfect, but you're cooking with love. That's why you lost scrambled eggs.

I do that. It's that's in the book. Campbell scrambled eggs. Yes. You promised to make me scrambled eggs. I'm going to hold you to it. That's great. Uh, uh, uh, cooking school. You mentioned the French culinary institute. I heard it was a, uh, a bit of a rough experience in parts. I would call it. It's, it's not a rough experience in that in a beautiful way. Yeah. Yeah. It's exactly. It's not like I'm a victim of it. It's, uh, it's rough in that they intentionally make it rough.

So the school costs the same price as Harvard to go to. You show up. You have to, it's an 18 month program. You are a lot of dropout at any time. You don't get your money back. 25 people started. Six people graduated. And the people who graduated, I graduated with man, there were times when I'm like, I, I, I can't handle this. I mean, I would literally say to my friends, oh, I got to go to cookies. Call them to go get screamed at for the next six or seven hours.

Yeah. And I had this little French chef who was my, uh, nemesis of this. He's still living your head somewhere. He lives in my head. Exactly. He's only got five foot. Two or something. And, uh, and I remember him screaming so much at me that this, he's like the short guy. I'm six five. The spittle would land on my face. Nice. And I would just have to sit there, I stand there and take it. It was a very humbling experience. I did learn though that it is, that's, it's intentionally not rough.

So I took a little bit of the, um, edge over one day when that same chef had come over to me and said, move over a little bit and I moved over and he took my carers, whatever, and started just chopping everything. And it's like perfectly. And then he said again, he's going to come back and then he went over to someone else and started screaming at them saying that look, even Kimball can do this. And you can't do this. And I was like, this whole thing's not come. It's like a psycho game.

So it did take the edge off when I realized there was, like the guy, the guy was intentionally trying to break you down. And they do this apparently in the army. I'm not a bit of the army, but they, they, they need you to, they need to break you down. Everything you know is worthless so that then we can teach you and you can come out of it with what, what, what actually we want you to know.

Are there specific technical lessons you remember you learned from that sort of how to cut carrots or how to approach food, how to prepare food, how to think about food, how to carry yourself in the kitchen? You know, all of those things. I think that the one of the most beautiful lessons was actually scrambled eggs. So there's different layers of chefs. So they're all master chefs. They're all very well known people and everything. But Alan Sultano was one of the chief, like main, main guys.

And he just passed away from master chef and everything kind of stopped when he would show up in the kitchen. And he would teach very few things. And all of the other chefs who were, you know, the same ones that were screaming at us, just like, it was like the Red Sea parting. Like they have total respect for this human and he can do it every once. And the one of the things he wanted to teach was how do you make an omelet, a French omelet. And it's really fundamentally the same thing.

It's the soft scrambled eggs that you fold. And the love that he put into the time with us, and of course he's a legend. There were moments like that where I'm like, wow, okay. He also, he also just like the other chef didn't have any concern berating anyone. So he berated our master chefs saying, I don't trust these people to teach you how to make scrambled eggs. So I'm going to do it instead. What, I mean, can you speak to that?

Because, you know, a lot of people here in this would be like scrambled eggs. Like, why do you need to be a master chef to really make scrambled eggs? Yeah, it's a, it's a, well, first of all, for me, and it's a learning journey forever. So I make, I make scrambled eggs. I mean, I'm going to make 10,000 times or more or whatever. So it's like Joe Jones, a sushi, Kimball dreams of scrambled eggs.

Pretty much. Okay. So I will, I will wake up and be held accountable by my kids to make scrambled eggs. So it happens every morning. And it's, I, I know all the steps, muscle memory level kind of steps, I know how much while I know it. And then I'll cook it. And it's very meditated for me because you have to focus. So most scrambled eggs, soft scrambled eggs, recipes are 10, 15 minutes to get them to the, that perfect softness.

And the, the recipe that I got from a chef, chef Alan was, was something that you do in 90 seconds. But it requires total focus. Like if you, like, look up for a second, you're going to miss, you're going to miss the, the perfect moment we have to stop and get those eggs out of the pan. Those ones, because the, the eggs will keep cooking. And so it's this meditation. And it's sometimes you hit it like perfectly.

But most times, this could have been a little softer, could have been a little firmer, could have been a little bit more salt, could have been a little bit more pepper. And so, so what's really fun about the morning is my kids are kind of into it. So they're, sort of like we, we critique the eggs. Yeah. Every morning. Yeah, strawberry. Oh, mika mea you quite. You're talking about making them more styles. Yeah, really.

And even when we get kinds of왔 you go in front of us and then you know, you're, you move all over differently. So what you do is, I guess I'm going to tell you that you're actually missing people over there. So I just made some sandwiches. I'm going toale right now, and I'll drive to, I just, I just can't play in here. I'm going to learn what to spin the knees because if I do play around with my baby, you

are equal. So if you are used to working with a certain kind of salt and then you're just forced for somebody to ran out of salt to use some other salt, you actually don't know how to use it. You really want to have the same salt all the time. They have a page on salt in the book, which is fascinating. Salt is you've got to get to know your salt, you've got to love your salt, and you've got to use it over and over and over again. And it will teach you how to use that salt,

whereby your own palate will tell you how salty you like things. But if you change it up and you mix up a whole bunch of salt, you've now multiplied your learning path. So for me, my favorite salt is kosher salt. And I like to use that all the time. And if I ever change it, I might sprinkle a little bit of molten salt, just crunchy sort of a flaky salt. But it's more for that when you're actually eating it. For the texture.

These textures, as well as salt, exactly. You wouldn't use it on scrambled eggs, but if you switch out your salts, it's a different weapon. I like how, usually there's wine connoisseurs. You're saying you're going back to a sort of farm to table when you're talking about carrots. In that same rigor and nuance, you have to consider the different farms involved for the carrots. In that same way, you have to consider the different salts. Yeah.

And also not even kosher salt is the same. It's the particular salt that you like. Get to know it. Get in a relationship with it. It's like great. You will learn so much. I like, in terms of the measurement, the proportion, the amount you put of salt you put in. Are you doing that exactly? Are you doing it by feel? So it's by feel. That's where you get the relationship. In fact, I have a, in the cookbook, I have QR codes that people can scan because when I struggle with recipes, they

don't teach technique. They can describe the technique, but they don't teach the technique. It's a technique. It's not a recipe. One of the lessons is how do you salt a steak? Because the answer is not, here's a teaspoon and you do it this way. The answer is use kosher salt so you can see with your eyes, because their little flakes, how much salt is on your steak and then taste it, we cook it and then taste it. And now do you think it

any more or you need it less? Okay. Now next time, put a little more on it because you can see it. And it's about learning the fact that you, you want to be able to see how much salt is on the steak so that you can then train yourself with the future of how much salt you want to your steak. Yeah, but then the steak and the salt kind of dance together depends on where the steak came from. That's true. That's true. All the thickness

of the steak. That'll make a difference. But for the most part, if you learn, if you're able to see it, where's this table salt, for example, this just disappears, you just can't see what you're putting on your steak. You can't really learn as a result. I think you talk about roast chickens where your love of food began. Well, what about steak? What's that? I love a good steak. So great. So in the in the in the French school, you add

sauces and all this kind of stuff. And in bowl, there's when you realize like there's a beauty to the to the basic. Yeah, like a good New York strip from a good rancher that that you know, the there's a lot of discussion controversy on how how cows should be raised. And we have a we have a very different approach, which is we know how our kettle will raise. We go to the farm. We get to know the rancher. And sometimes you do want to have them be finished

on like they'll be grass fed for the most part. But then there's some sort of cool recipe of food you're giving them that will then make them taste better. And sometimes it is actually pretty good to have a hundred percent grass fed. I've had some amazing ranchers that that show me that the flavors all there for the average person that you know, might go to a whole future grocery store. I think that simplicity of a good steak. It's it is

important to get good sourcing, but also it's just it's just it's just good. What's your favorite kind of meat? There's New York strip probably New York strip for me. Yeah, New strip. Yeah, I like the fact that it's lean. But if you want the fat, you can dive into that little strip of fat or you can leave it alone because you don't want it that

night. And it's also a great steak for adding something like if you want to you could either do a pepper source or you could do a lot of ground pepper, which gives it a peppery. It's not not sour, but it's a peppery steak. It's a really good steak for a canvas for other things. But the basic ingredients you're playing with the salt and pepper. Yeah,

it's just pretty magic. Actually, I will say there's another one, garlic. When you when you can, well, no, this is my favorite recipe for for a steak is you season it both sides salt and pepper. You saute it in in the little olive oil barely, barely anything. And you're getting a nice crisp like a golden dark golden brown on both both sides. The other trick with cooking is to take a zone touch it. You know, just one side when you're ready

to turn it, turn around. Don't touch any other any other time. But at the end, you take a dab of butter and you crush a clove of garlic. You don't even chop it. You just crush the clove and you put the two of them in the in the pan and you just roll the steak around in the garlic butter. I think that's the one. Bold move. Bold move. What do you want to do? Since you're in Austin, quite a bit opening a restaurant here. What do you

think about barbecue? It's kind of the the Texas way. Well, I would say there's an Austin way, which is an awesome, which is an actually even Austin would say there's a suburb of Austin way. I think that actually the the adventure of food is wonderful. I would absolutely say that that Austin is is one of the great food cities of America and barbecue is one of its gifts that that it gives the city. But you go to one and the other and you'll have

a different approach. And that that's the part I love is where there's a real celebration of the artisan. So you might go to one and they have a they have a style that they love and they've been doing it for years. And then you'll go to another and they have a style that they love and they've been doing it for years. And it's it's not there's still barbecue but they're actually different. And it's really beautiful to see that. And that's I think

that's what that's what food culture is. Like it's just builds up over time by people who love this style of cooking. Well, I especially love the communal like how they structure restaurants usually or I don't even want to call it a restaurant because it's a it doesn't feel like a restaurant. It feels like a tavern or some sort like Terry Blacks is like that. Yeah, they also like paper towels. Yes, messy as you like. And it's a whole roll of paper

tell them to give you a napkin. They know what you're getting into. Yeah. And there's just wood everywhere. And it's kind of has this feel like this place has been around forever. It's not changing. I know it's the 21st century with the internet and all this kind of nonsense that you people are building. But really, this is all about the same.

Yes. It's been the same for generations. We're doing it the same. That kind of feel like if you want to escape the world in that way, and then truly connect with people. One of the other things that will happen in the town like Austin is there'll be a barbecue joint that is just legendary, right? And then out of that will come someone who wants to do their own barbecue joint. And they'll take the learning from that barbecue joint.

They'll open up a new one. But it won't be the same as the other barbecue joint. Part of it is like dude, like don't just do the same thing. Like do something. What do you have to say? But also part of it is if you're in the world of food as an art form. And you want to go open up another barbecue joints. You kind of want to prove yourself. Like I deserve to have a barbecue joint in this town. I know this is one of the holy grills of

barbecue. And people will follow you like they're following a musician or they're following an artist and they are excited to see what your version is and how well you can pull it off. It's like it's actually that's what I love. That's what I mean by like a city with a food culture that Austin has that. There's also like a legend to certain places. Certain

places are more than just the food they create. It's like that could be a burden. They have to like live up to the legendary legendary nature of the name. Our restaurant in Boulder, the kitchen is 20 years old. We're very well known, very well respected. And we do have to live up to the name. I think that our restaurant lives up to its name in not just the food. It's like you walk in and you feel the restaurant.

And that is also something we've just done naturally. The space is a 120 year old building. Just be a brothel. It was a bookstore. Like story history. This was a mining town. Right. So back in 1800s, this was built late 1800s. That sort of brothels were that was a thing. And so there's an actual tunnel under an basement that goes to the local hotel that would be used for going back and forth between the hotel and the brothel without

people knowing. And the tunnel is now concrete it up. But you can go about 20, 30 feet into the tunnel. But you go into the, you know, the space and it's actually an old space. So you feel like it's been there forever. Yeah. In 2010, you had a life threatening accident that changed the way see life, the world, also the way you see food and cooking. Can you tell me the story of it? Yeah. So 2010, I was 37. I had opened the restaurant in 2004.

And I had loved the restaurant world, loved it. But I didn't really want to grow a restaurant company. That wasn't my goal. And so I got went back into technology and I had gone from something that I love to something that I like. For me, it was like, it was like chewing soda every day. I just couldn't believe that I had gone from that had changed my life. I had gone back into technology. And now I do do work in technology. And I do love it.

But I found a better relationship with it. But I was really, really unhappy. And from the outside, I was a sort of CEO of a part startup. But from the inside, I was just, just very unhappy. And I was in Jackson Hole and I was doing these very aggressive snowboard runs. And I'm at the time a pretty, pretty good aggressive snowboarder. And I remember saying to myself, look, I've got kids. I need to chill on this. I'm next day was Valentine's

Day. It's next day. It's the next day. It's the next one is Valentine's Day. I'm just going to have a nice day with the family and my life at the time. And we went to a children's run. You do the inner tube run. And the tubes are small. But everyone uses the same tube. So I'm six foot five and the my kids are four years old and everyone uses the same size tube. It should have been a message to me not not to get on this thing. But I went and

got on it. And the first run and I went down and you're going super fast, 35 miles an hour. And the tube hit the breaking mats. And it stopped. It's a little tube. Just stuck where it was just through me. I was my head was facing downhill. So that's created the wrong center of gravity. So instead of breaking it just through me. I landed on my head. My head went into my chest like compression into my chest. I don't like that. I ruptured

my spine at C6 and C7. And in like the blink of a second, I was paralyzed. I was like, like, like what? You know, just like impossible to impossible to comprehend. And they take me put this, put this big thing on my halo on my head and they take me to the hospital, which is more medical clinic. And I'm just like, what was it going on here? Do you remember your thoughts from the moment it happened to like the way to get to

the hospital? I remember being. So this is one of the things that actually the doctor said caused the most damage was I was thrown from the tube and I and I hit this big crunch sound in my body. And I knew that I was hurt. But I didn't feel any pain. Just like that's also like why wouldn't you feel pain? Because you don't have paralyzed, you don't feel pain. And I'm face down on the snow. And the snow is burning my face because you can't

do that. You need something. And I found a way to turn myself around so that my face wouldn't be on the ground. But I knew I couldn't move. And they said actually caused more damage than well, obviously the accident created the opening. But once you move your body, the blood goes into the spinal column at a faster rate. And that is what caused my paralysis. But I remember that. And I remember getting into the ambulance. Did you think you were going

to die at that? Like in those seconds minutes? It was a different feeling of death. It was more. It was more of a what is going on here? Like it just was it was more like I can't make sense of what's going on. It was a there was a moment I got to the hospital and they they did this MRI. And the doctor comes up to me and says we've done this MRI. And so I'm now now I'm in the hospital and I'm like I can't move. But I also never feel any pain.

So I'm like it's very confusing. Your body looks like you can move it. Like look see how I'm moving my hand. Like it looks like you can do that. And then it just doesn't move. It doesn't there's no there's no feedback loop that it's not moving. You will brain even thinks it's moving, but it's not moving. It's like the worst, like the most terrifying thing. So the doctor says the way you broke your neck really that is zero degree angle.

That is so rare. But as a result, there is no twisting of the spine. We think that we can get the blood out of your spine. I'll call them and you should get some or maybe all of you move it back. And I was like, Oh, okay, I think I'm going to be fine. I guess I'm going to be fine. And then I realized I had tears just streaming down the side of my face. And I was like, Oh, man, I have no idea what's going on. So this kind of intense state of confusion. I wonder if it's a, a weird psychological

defense mechanism of like taking your way from the obvious possibility of death. Yeah, it was for sure all the defense, all of the defenses were up. I also described it, but there was, there was denial. Yeah, there was, there was this curiosity of like, why is there no pain? Like that's that when they did actually repair me and fix me. There was three days later, the pain was indescribable. How much pain I was in, but there was no pain for three days. It's a human body is fascinating.

Man. Wow. So they were able. Yeah. So they did this surgery, but I had this, I had this very clear voice in my head that kind of determined that it's God. I'm not religious, but I don't know how else to describe the voice. And this voice is very clear. I, you're going to work with kids and food. Okay, where did that come from? I'm like, taxi, I have a restaurant and I know we were working with some kids in schools with like some, you know, helping

out local nonprofit and like, no, you're just going to work on kids and food. And my good friend and Tony and my brother were in the hospital and I was like, I'm going to work on kids and food. You know, because they're like, he's crazy. He lost his mind, but not that they were already, no one was arguing with me, but I was like, I'm just going to do that. I need to say it out loud. And I remember resigning from my, to my job as a CEO

from the hospital. And that was it. It was just clear. It was a clear voice. It wasn't for a moment. It wasn't like a flash of light or anything. It was probably two weeks of clear voice of clarity. Clarity. Exactly. Clarity. No monkey brain. Nothing. No monkey brain. Just clarity. So you're not a religious person, but you do call it the voice of God. Who is that God? Do you think like, who is that? Yeah. Where did that come from? Well,

I've done I wasca. And I've spoken to what they call mother, Ia, which is another version of God. It's a, it's a divine presence. It's maybe I think it's a better way to say it. I've also had this debate in my head. And I, maybe it's just me. I'm talking to me. And it's my, my peaceful, more kinder, more, less caught up in the emotion of the day, per version of me. Maybe it's me. Okay. Maybe it is, but it's there. But who are you? Like

how deep does it go? What does you mean? You could be, you know, first of all, like the depth of what the human mind even is. Is it a gigantic mystery? Consciousness, all of it. Yeah. Who are you? So like, yeah, maybe it is you. But then maybe in order to build you, we need to build the universe. Yeah. The entire like you are actually a fundamentally a part of this whole human society. So the peace, the pieces of humans that you've interacted

with are all within you. And then maybe the history of the humans that came before are also in there. And maybe the entirety of life on earth is also in there. Yeah. And whatever the, whatever brought life about on earth is in there. So that's all you. Yeah, all of the, the, which is really true evolution is, it literally is true that that we all are the photons from the sun. You're in a part fish. We all came from, we all came from

that. I think this one, you know, so one of the, one of the things I do is meditate. And this was, I've been meditating for many, many years. And what way I meditate is I sit and I listen to my thoughts. And I simply just do that for 15 to 20 minutes. And it's just calm as the calm is a nervous system. And I might, I might breathe and just be breathed through because it's been a stressful day. And it's just a beautiful way to kind of do

it around. I mean, I said, I used to do a squat at the bar after work. Now I go meditate for instance, it's a little bit better for my, sure, for my, for my health. But, um, meditation, I was taught, um, was a Sam Harris actually taught me this, uh, was not so much just about watching your thoughts. But realizing that you're a watcher, you're actually a watcher. You're not just like who is the person watching that? That's you actually. Your thoughts

are, are floating through your mind, but you are the watcher. And I was like, Oh, that's really interesting. Okay. So I'm going to learn that. I'm going to, I'm going to be the watcher. And what I learned was I'm watching these thoughts go by. And there's a consistent other presence. And I'm like, what is that consistent other presence? It's not a thought that is not a, it's not a, not something I can kind of let it float away. And it doesn't

even want to float away. It isn't, it's just, it's just a consistent other presence that I can watch and feel. So you're, you are the watcher watching the feelings and thoughts. But there's also another presence next to you almost. Yes. Yeah. That's how I feel. And it's a beautiful presence. It's not, not a presence that is trying to intervene. It's not a presence that is trying to tell you what to do. It's just a beautiful presence.

And that might be the, the thing part of the thing you met when you took I wasca. I learned about Mother Iowir. You have this experience of talking to, actually, I would say the closest thing to breaking my neck, that feeling was I wasca. Can you go through that experience because I'm actually traveling to the Amazon jungle in a, in a month. Probably do I wasca for the first time. Okay. So I need a preview on official instruction manual.

Yes. Sure. So first of all, I think many, many, many different ways to do it. Right. So I have done, I've done many, many, many different ways. There's a very Western medicine approach where you have doctors that look after you during the day, you know, put an eye mask on you on, on a futon and you, you really are in a Western medicine setting. And it's frankly for me has been the most powerful experience. I feel the most comfortable

because I'm part of Western medicine in my upbringing. The other extreme, but they're kind of in between would be very, probably a Peruvian certain areas where you're probably going to go very much about you doing a community, you do it with others and you, you feel people go through their pain and they're processing. So I know the whole gamut, but the thing that the thing that I found most powerful about it and profoundly powerful,

I would say, for visitors, it's non-recreational. So no, no one should do this for a good time. This is not a good time. This is a, this is a very almost traumatic, but again, a beautiful way. It's actually going to say that way, but it's not, it's not traumatic. It's profound. So it's, it's more like you don't have, you, you, you, you, you, you really leave who you were before behind and then you become the person you will be afterwards. And that, that's never an easy thing.

Yes, exactly. And sometimes what, what I recall was arguing with, but I, and saying, no, I'm fine. Like what, what was he talking about? Like leave me alone. And yeah, it did, how did that work out? But before 2010, the accident and the, the, the two transformational experiences you had, you were a very successful tech CEO. Maybe go back to the early days with Zip 2 in 1994, you and Elon started Zip 2. Tell me a story of that.

Yeah. So 94, we actually did a road trip around the US to brainstorm about what, what we wanted to do after college. What was the road trip? Like, what is it? That was awesome. So we went from Silicon Valley to Philadelphia, my brothers, old, like a really, really cool, you know, it's one of those very old BMWs, not, not, not ones, out from the 60s or 70s. But it wasn't, but the car didn't work. It would break down

all the time. But we had made a blast. You know, we just, I remember going through needles on the border of California, Arizona, it's a town called Neales. It's the hottest place in America. And the engine was not cooling. So we had to put the heat on. So we've had the heat blasting to cool the engine, keep the engine cool and we keep the windows down because that we can't stand the heat in the car. But actually the outside heat is harder

than the inside heat sphere. You're just, you're just in a, in a furnace. Yeah. You're driving through the water. Even I can't imagine doing it. Oh, wow. In the day. Yeah. It was, it was a wonderful, we took us a few weeks, I think three weeks, maybe first time across America. First, like a road trip like that, yeah, for sure. But it was really not a road trip for tourist sites. We went to the weirdest places. And actually, I would say we didn't,

we didn't go down. We broke down in the weirdest places because that's what, that's when we stopped. Yeah. Do you mean any interesting people? I remember, we broke down on the badlands of South Dakota about an hour from Rapid City and there, that road is empty. And so we actually slept in, in the car because there was a phone, there was just no one around the cell phones in those days. And eventually a trucker picked us up. I was like, man,

you guys, the dumbest kids on the planet, it was like 21, he was maybe 22. And, but he was so cute, so nice to us and so kind to us and found us a mechanic in Rapid City and then found us a tow truck. And yeah, you find, you find the most wonderful people when, when you're in a place of distress, people, people do want to take care of other people. They help you. Yeah, I want to help. And especially when you're on a road trip, I've,

because I've taken a road trip across the United States. And there's a part of people where they, they really love that. They think part of them wants to do that also wants to go and escape whatever the local, the struggles, just whatever the mundaneness, the struggle of life are a road trip is a kind of thing where you're like, you know what, I'm going

to get away from it all. And I'm going to experience life in the full, the epic sort of Jack Kerrack way of seeing America in the people, not the tourist sites, just the human stuff. Yeah, exactly. We, this was not tourist related. We did, of course, when we stopped at Mount Rushmore at night, which you can see nothing. Yeah. Yeah. We thought there was hilarious. You couldn't see Mount Rushmore. That's great. It was so well. We, we physically

were here. Yeah. Photo of us in the dark. You could just say you went to the Grand Canyon to just at night and just visit different places when the car broke down. I love it. So yes, you took the road trip before Fawning Ziptoe. Yeah. So, so I had a experience in college running a house-painting business that for me was my first experience with success. It was very, very hard. It was a franchise where they teach, you know, students how to paint houses and, but I, I was

good at it. You know, I built a team of 30 people within after about two years. And so I was like, I had a taste of, hey, I'm not, I'm not unable to do this. In fact, my most vulnerable place, and I remember as an entrepreneur was I had, I had, I had, I just loved the idea of Wall Street and Finance. It was kind of a lured by it. This is in late 80s. I'm in high school. There was a lot of these books, Lyra's poker and others that came out and I was like, oh man, this is awesome.

These people must be amazing. So I went to business school and I busted my ass to get like a kickass summer job and I got a job in one of the main banks and it was in Toronto, but it was like the original Wall Street. And I was so disappointed with the people that I was around. I was just, whoa, I totally misunderstood what, what, what the banking world is. It was very large bank. I'm sure if I go into a more aggressive one, maybe I would have had a better experience when I say aggressive,

meaning someone was paying attention. Like this was just a, just people kind of showing up and not doing much. And actually, this is funny. So this is great. So 1991, 1992, so this is one of those summers. The, the, the, the summer job was literally you go to the, the, they print out the sales for all, for all brokerage houses for all the whole company like pile of papers that's maybe four or five feet tall. And you have a pencil and you add things up using your pencil and a calculator.

And I, I'd known about Lotus 1, 2, 3, forever. Excel was coming out and I was like, hey guys, you know that is a different way to do this. And they're like, don't talk to us, just, just a job. Yeah, do it. Use the pencil. So I went to the head of the data, I just asked, you know, because those those days you had the Manila envelope where you can, you know, you just write the name of the person that you want this to go to and it'll go to them. It's like email, I guess, but you,

you, there's no, yeah, there's no filter. So if you feel I, I, I, I, there's no, no, I'm not. I'm not a fan filter. So I said, I know, I wrote a little nice letter to the, to the database administrator who I didn't re-know. And I said, would you be open to me, saying, hi, and maybe I can get access to the file rather than print the damn thing out and use a pencil. And she could respond right away. And we hit it off. I mean, she was great. And so

she's like, of course, you can do that. I can't believe the guys are doing what they're doing. So if it was a couple of weeks, so that was a summer, I wrote a, I wrote code in Lotus 123 that would, it's going to sound crazy, but you type in the date range. You type in the geography and you type in the, you know, which part of the bank you care about. And it will literally just create a, a news spreadsheet. And it was just the macro would print it out. It was like a magic trick for

these guys. And incredible. No, no, no, it's like, it's a sounding that that's, I mean, for me, I was like, guys, this is so obvious. And so I got all that done. And this job was supposed to take three or four months because it's really doing this with a pencil. And now I'd created this macro that you could not just, not just do it. You could do it. You could tweak it and say, I want this, this area of the world or this area of, well, this, this month or, you know, that month compared to

that month, you know, all the normal things you could do with this spreadsheet. And the software was on a floppy disk. And I was like, here's a software and just put it, put it into your computer. Or right now, now, open one, two, three, and, and it just pops up with a little box that type in your dates and, you know, the whole little, I could do a little thing like that. And, um, what I, what I was astounded by was not, not so much that it was a magic trick. It was the lack of

appreciation for innovation. They just looked at it and they were like, oh, that's nice. And I was like, you just, we're going to have someone spend hundreds of hours doing something. And now it's something you can do in a minute. Yeah, if that doesn't, if you were, you're with excitement. Yeah, like that doesn't move your needle. What the heck? And so I was really disappointed with, with the banking world. Anyway, so that was, but that was also a fun,

I had such a good example though. Yeah. And then also see the possibility of where that goes. Yeah. And then, so then I, I got back to business school and I, I canceled all of my business classes, like, possibly could, but I was actually in business school. So I couldn't cancel them all. All finance courses, I was like, I'm, I'm done with that industry. I'm not going back. So the vulnerable part for me was my whole family is full of entrepreneurs. And there was,

there was this franchise to do house painting. And I genuinely was afraid that I wouldn't be good at it. And I was like, wow, I really am afraid of failure. It's very easy to avoid entrepreneurship. But if your whole family's entrepreneurs, you, and you go in and you aren't good, I was really afraid. You're going to have to face that failure every time you meet your family. Yes. And it's, it's, I'm fairly wonderful. I don't have anything, but they,

they, but pretty much everyone's an entrepreneur. And, and of course, not everyone's perfect. And everyone's doing it successfully all the time. But when you're, when you're young, and you want to prove yourself, it really was putting my heart on my sleeve. I started the, the, the business in this part of Toronto. And for the first, the, the, the paint houses in the summer, but you do all your sales pre before the summer. And for the, you know, all the way until April,

I was just not succeeding. And I said, oh, I'm like, oh my God, I'm just, I'm just going to fail. And I, I remember that I was like, my, my whole nervous system was like, I'm a failure. And I remember had this general manager who, who, you know, he was like, look, you seem like you know what you're doing. Why are you not making any sales? And so, so he actually went with me on a few sales calls. And I was like, and I said, oh, you're, he, he was great.

You're doing this wrong. You're doing that wrong. You're doing this wrong. And change those three things. And it was like a, like a, like a watershed moment, just like all of a sudden, and I, and I just followed the instructions of what this guy told me, all of a sudden, every single sale I would make, I was like, well, I can't believe that I, it was really my, my, um, lack of humility to learn from someone else. I was like, no, I'm going to prove that I can do this without your

teachings. And I, I was going to fail. So to you, that humility is essential for the entrepreneur, especially young. I would say if we, if we have an openness to learning, which does require humility, um, you, you, you course correct, you help get other people to help you course correct. But it does start with humility because if you, if you try and pretend you have all the answers, you don't. So you went from that to finding zip two. That was an interesting time in the

history of tech. Yeah. What, I mean, what was it like you mentioned, uh, the first people to look at a map, uh, basically a directions. Yeah. So mapping had been on the internet, but vector-based mapping did had not. So that's the ability to zoom in or zoom out and it's really data versus an image that comes across. And we, we can't, we went to this company called Navtech, my brother,

and we just asked for the data and they, this is Silicon Valley. They wrote us one page letter that we had to sign and said, it, here's all of our data that we own it, you don't own it, but you can use it on the internet. And if you ever make any money on it, you have to call us. That was it. Yeah. All right. Okay. That sounds great. And so we put it up on the internet and back in those days, it might take 60 to 120 seconds to actually give you an answer, right? But

it was amazing. The door-to-door directions, the ability to take a map and zoom in and zoom out, uh, we used these things 10 times a day now. Um, it was amazing. We were the first two humans to see it on the internet. Like this stuff didn't even exist to the world. Like the Navtech was building it for never-laught for Hertz, never-laughts, which would come out a few years later. This was not something that people knew existed. This was something we discovered that it existed. Everyone

called, let's put it on the internet and share it with the world. What did the two of you feel like, do you like to see that magic? Did you know? Amazing. It was like, what? Like, did you, I mean, the amazing, just that it's cool, but also that you could see the future that this could transform. I don't think, I don't think people understand before this moment,

you could not be told your directions. Yeah. You just could not. Like today, we live in this world where you're told our direction, before this moment, you could not be told your directions. And all of a sudden, you could. Yeah. It wasn't like a little thing. Yeah, there's a bunch of things that we once we have, we take it for granted and that takes like a day for people. Transitionally. It's like, oh, okay. Exactly. Exactly. And it's when you see maybe when you're

one of the first humans to see that thing, you're like, holy shit. Holy shit, this is going to be used by everyone all the time forever. So zip to was a success. I would say it was a success, but it was also a very hard company to build. And I mean it because the internet in those days was a boom time. We were being funded, but it couldn't make any money. And so it was actually really hard. The constant outside criticism that we aren't for real, this is not going to survive. This is not

going to end. It started to feel that way. We're like, wow, man, we are doing something that is great that people are using. And we were top 100 website. Most of our work was to focus like the New York Times. So we had even even much, much busier than that. But the, but the, there was just no money at it. And even today, go to Google Maps. There's no money at it. It's just a, it's just local search that is needed for everyone. And so it became an add-on to search. But

even remember in those days, you couldn't make money at search either. No one had figured out ad words or anything. They didn't realize how big of a business this was. But we all knew this was a thing. And everyone was using it. But didn't quite know how to make money. When we got acquired, it was a bittersweet moment because compact that owned ultra vista wanted to merge. So that's sort of regular search with the best search engine at the time. Pre-Google with zip two,

which would be the best local search. And it would be a Yahoo Killer. And the, the compact just wanted to make money by taking the company public. But they wouldn't give us any stock. They just, they paid us cash return out actually very well for us. But because the whole internet bubble burst, we didn't know that at the time. And so it was bittersweet because they essentially wanted our company. And we were welcome to stay. But you don't have to. And that feeling was pretty,

that was pretty rough feeling. But in retrospect, it opened the door to. It set us up for an incredible platform to go do beautiful things. You invested in x.com that eventually merged with PayPal. That's a fascinating story there. Also, fascinating on many levels, including the fact that the current social media company formerly known as Twitter is now called x. There's a history has as a rhyme to it. Like it's kind of all hilarious in a certain kind of way. You invested in and

helped sell a lot of the initial products for Tesla. Yeah, I still saw in the board of Tesla. Tesla is 20 years now. That amazing years. Yeah. From the roadster, the initial roadster to. I still have the the poorest business plan. So I didn't join as a founder. I joined as a founding board member. And so I actually, I didn't write the business plan that I got to read it. And I still have that. I still have it as a part of history. Did you see the future at that time? Like the

company that Tesla is today, could you possibly, could you kneel on, imagine it? No, no, I certainly didn't. What I saw in it was a real for me personally, I was really upset that the general motors had killed their EV car. There's even a movie called Who Killed the Electric Car. And I knew that the physics of electric is perfectly fine. I mean, there's no reason why you

couldn't use an electric car to drive around. What I would resonate with me with the business plan was a taken electric motor, which is really a high performance motor and put it in a sports car and sell it at a high price as a way to enter into the market. But what others had been doing, these general motors had done is you put it into a really crummy car and you sell it as a commuter vehicle. That doesn't really work that well. And it looks ugly as well. They really did

everything you could to make that thing. It's ugly as sin. And then I was like, okay, I get it, we're going to take an appropriate technology and put it in an appropriate car so that when you because electric motors that constant torque, you get incredible power, put it in a car that that looks like a sports car. So the idea was to put it in the Lotus Elise, redesign it a bit. And even at that point, I was like, this is theoretically good. So I'm going to join and help build it.

But I was not convinced that it would work because because general motors had done such a terrible job of making everyone think that these things are terrible. But I was curious. And the time that I fell in love with the company and this mission was I was driving in a, it was called a mule where we take a car and we take the engine out and we put put an electric drive train. And I drove it, you know, even the dashboards, there's no dashboards. It's just like you've got to get a steering

wheel and it's just like wires and everything around. And I remember this street we were running the Bay Area called Bing Street. And I was just like, no, no, no traffic. So I'm just going to drive this. I'm a florist to what happens. And it was, it was a feeling I'd never experienced before. So it's not gasoline cars have an inertia to them. So you're, yeah, this is just was like being shot out of a cannon. And okay, this is going to be real.

It's a very spaceship like feeling. Yeah. It's like, whoa, it's like the G, the G4, it's full of you bag. So I was like, okay, this is, this is going to be great. This is going to be an interesting, we're going to create something interesting here. I think the real transformative thing for Tesla was the Model 3. When we were able to get the price down for the world. No, and that was also one of the most challenging. Oh my god.

Periods for Tesla. And you were, we were, we were borderline bankrupt like two or three times that year. I mean, there's just every and everyone was hating on us about whether we get that done. The Model 3 today is incredibly affordable car like a 300 bucks a month kind of lease and $3,000 down. That's where you get the scale. That's where you get people who, and by the way, it's a great car. It's even a better Model 3 now than it was five years ago. We don't function

the way car companies function, right? We function more like how an iPhone company, how Apple works. So our Model 3 today is, it's this year is better than last year. It's like way better. And it's like, it's, and we just keep getting better. And the software is a fundamental part of the car and the software keeps improving. Exactly. And we can, we can upload over the air. Which was one of the things that people don't often acknowledge. It's the, over the air

updates. It's like a revolutionary thing. It's not just the autopilot. To me, it's like the over the air updates is even bigger thing than the autopilot. In this moment of history, because you basically turn the car into the iPhone. Exactly. It's an iPhone with wheels. But actually talking about autopilot, right after this interview, I'm going to go test out the latest Model 3. You're going to get driven around by the robot. I'm going to get driven around by the

car. I'm going to say, I want to go to this barbecue joint. Take me there and park me there. And I'm going to see how it is. And this is our, the latest Model 3 that we have out, since a production, anyone can buy it. And it's super affordable. And it's like, okay, it's not, you know, full start driving is a journey, right? It's, it's not like there's a destination. It's a journey forever. So let's see where we are on the journey today.

And there's been a bit of a push and pull between you and Elon in terms of levels of optimism about deadlines and so on. Timelines about when we'll arrive at the destination. I like that you said it's a journey. Yeah. For Elon, there's a destination. Exactly. And that destination is tomorrow. We're yesterday. I think that's a really good insight. I actually live with this concept of a growth mindset, versus a fixed mindset. And it's a philosophical term where where fixed mindset is

about the destination. And growth mindset is about learning on the journey. And I think that I'm a happier person because I take that learning on the journey approach, where it's just really frustrating if you're always, it has to be about the destination every time. The nice thing about destination, at least for my personal perspective, as like a programmer engineer, is like it's, it puts a little fire under you to get shit done. Like if there's clear deadline of a destination,

you feel the idea. I would say that I still do that, but I call those forcing functions instead of destinations. Sure. Because you're just forcing people to crank on some code or cookbook or whatever, because you have a date. And sometimes there's a reason, I mean, it's 20th anniversary, you want to get the cookbook out. We have a reason is we didn't make this up out of thin air. And so yeah, that does push you. But just because we have the cookbook, it doesn't mean that's a

destination. It means it was a forcing function to get it out there. Now we're on the journey. Speaking of journeys, I have to ask you about SpaceX. I mean, the journey that all of humanity's all. Seriously. That is the book about it in a journey. That is incredible. It's an interesting moment in the history of humanity that perhaps hopefully will become a

multi-principatory species. But SpaceX is also a company. You invest in SpaceX. You were side by side with Elon through through the highs and the lows to the lows and the highs. So what were some memorable challenges? What were some low points? Sure. From the history of SpaceX. One of the hardest times in SpaceX was we were in the mid-Pacific in Quasolin. And my brother had sold PayPal. He'd done well financially. But in the rocket world, that money goes away really quickly. And we're in this

military base in Quasolin. And I think it was the second rocket that blew up. I'm not sure. But we didn't have infinite resources. I certainly didn't have the resources. I mean, I'm there to support. But the so-so every rocket launch was a lot to or die. And the first one had blown up. And so the second one, I think it was the second one blew up. And it was so depressing. It was just like, oh, there's nowhere to go. There's no distraction. You're just

you're on this military base. You don't re-socialize. So it's just we were all together. And I had gotten to know, you know, for me, I'm not part of the team. I'm just there for emotional support or whatever because it's cool. And so I got to know this a couple of people locally and got to know this one guy who had a mobile home. Best view in the world. But it's just a mobile home next with a good patch of grass next to it. And I was just desperate to find food

that wasn't from the cafeteria because the worst food you can imagine. And so he showed I met him and he showed me this little tiny little grocery store which had a few things I can tomatoes. This is again, you're middle of nowhere. It's just nothing fresh. And I made this dish that was kind of a version of an Italian version of chili, you know, just baked beans and and to sweating onions and tomatoes. And it was a big pot of food because it's a group of people.

We didn't even have a table. And we just put the big pot in the middle and we had our little paper plates and took a scoop as we needed it. And it was, did you need the gathering place of like food brings people together in the most difficult times. And it was one of my favorite memories because I was able to bring my gift to this group of incredible people that their hearts were broken, you know. And to sit there and share a meal and feel the life kind of come

back into us and the bite into the night we're actually having a good time. What a fascinating contrast of rock is kind of representing the peak accomplishment of human beings as a society and then returning to the thing that is the foundation of human society, which is that communal experience. Immunal vulnerable connection, like we mentioned vulnerability earlier, the most vulnerable place. Actually, that's when you have some of the most beautiful meals.

Yeah, the descendants of Apes gathering around some baked beans. After wiping our rocket explode. Yeah. What gives you hope about the future of this whole thing we got going on humanity. If you look at how things have changed over the past, say 50 years, you can clearly say, oh wow, poverty rates have gone down, infant mortality has gone down

dramatically. All these things have gone down a lot. So if you look at it on a daily basis, you can tell that life is very dramatic, you know, whether it's some, some things blowing up on X or on some of the newspapers or whatever. And you can really get caught up into it. But if you look back over the past few decades, things are getting better. At the fundamental level, like are less people hungry? Are more people,

are there, I mean, there is war going on, of course, but are there less wars? Yes. And so I think that if we all just step back a little bit, it's less about hope, it's more perspective and reflection. And if I do see a problem, like in case of the obesity epidemic, I work really hard to help with that. I work with nonprofits called Big Green.

And we work with 150 nonprofits around the country to help Americans grow food again, get connected to their food, because I really believe growing food changes your life. And so, okay, let's go do that. So then, so I'll help out where I think we really can make a difference. But if you step back a little things are actually getting better, it's just a bumpy ride. And for those of us watching all of this, I think I would love to see more celebrating

with the people that are helping. The people that have found their way of helping and just celebrating those people. Yeah. Well, I would also actually just a really nice point. I have learned that you really want to celebrate your successes, because even in the greatest scheme of things, I've done this in the startup world where you're constantly facing death. You know, like just why should you even exist? Do your customers want your product or whatever? And then something will

happen where you're like, wow, we really nailed that. That's really great. We got a product released or got some good kudos from something. Right, everyone, we're going to go celebrate. And actually, everyone's still like, no, no, we've got all these other problems. Nope, we're going to go celebrate and then we'll go back to the problems. But if you don't do that, then it's just that's building on this kind of you never really get to celebrate. And be grateful. Well, I think this is a good time

to go celebrate the very fact that we're alive today. We get to live and enjoy this incredible life. The two of us and have this great conversation and we'll get to celebrate over some scramble legs. I'm going to hold you to it. Beautiful. Kimball, thank you so much for talking today. Thank you for having me. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Kimball Musk. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave

you some words from Anthony Burden. Your body is not a temple. It's an amusement park. Enjoy the ride. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.