Possibly related to pen jillette interviews Norman Borlaug on Huffduffer

Norman Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his work as a wheat breeder. The disease-resistant, dwarf wheats that he developed were the foundation of the Green Revolution, banishing global famine and turning India into a food-exporting nation. Many people have hailed Borlaug as a saint, a saviour of humanity. Others have blamed him for everything that is wrong with the modern global food system. The truth, naturally, lies somewhere in between, which is brought out in a new documentary about Borlaug and his work. The documentary airs on PBS in the United States next week. I got the chance to see a preview and to talk to Rob Rapley, the writer, director and producer.

Dr. Norman Borlaug was an American agronomist who specialized in wheat breeding. Known as the Father of the Green Revolution, he helped other hunger fighters save hundreds of thousands of lives in Mexico, India, Pakistan, and other countries throughout his long and varied career. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 and founded the World Food Prize to celebrate other food fighters worldwide. This episode we speak with his granddaughter and colleague Julie Borlaug and fellow colleagues Dr. Ronnie Coffman and Dr. Ed Runge to discuss the “Man who Fed the World.”

Penn Jillette (magician! Penn's Sunday School podcast!) makes it weird! Follow @peteholmes on Twitter and Like the show on Facebook! Buy YMIW shirts https://nerdist.com/you-made-it-weird-397-penn-jillette/

Penn Jillette and Michael Goudeau get Mac King to tell a couple of horrible show business stories. https://www.podcastone.com/episode/Penn-Jillette-and-Michael-Goudeau-at-the-Aid-For-AIDS-Nevada-Benefit-365834

PART 2! Penn Jillette is one of the most interesting guys I've ever interviewed. He is a well known entertainer, magician, atheist, libertarian, skeptic, best selling author, and 1/2 of "Penn & Teller", the longest running headliners to play in the same Vegas hotel at 16 years and running. Besides his star turn on "Celebrity Apprentice" he and Teller created and starred in the hit shows, "Penn and Teller: Bullshit!", and "Penn and Teller: Fool Us". His latest best-selling book “Presto, How I Made 100 lbs Disappear And Other Magical Tales” will be out in paperback June 6th”. But aside from one of the most prolific careers anyone has ever had, he is also a wonderful father to his two kids, Zolten and Moxie. We talked for almost two hours about so many different things that I had to break it up into 2 parts. You'll get Penn's view on Parenthood and how his parents brought him up. He's an amazing guy and he was funny, open, and really smart. I would've talked for hours longer but he was off to an upcoming TV appearance that I can't mention. He is truly the hardest working guy in show business. Enjoy! http://jamiekaler.libsyn.com/penn-jillette-part-2

Penn Jillette is one of the most interesting guys I've ever interviewed. He is a well known entertainer, magician, atheist, libertarian, skeptic, best selling author, and 1/2 of "Penn & Teller", the longest running headliners to play in the same Vegas hotel at 16 years and running. Besides his star turn on "Celebrity Apprentice" he and Teller created and starred in the hit shows, "Penn and Teller: Bullshit!", and "Penn and Teller: Fool Us". His latest best-selling book “Presto, How I Made 100 lbs Disappear And Other Magical Tales” will be out in paperback June 6th”. But aside from one of the most prolific careers anyone has ever had, he is also a wonderful father to his two kids, Zolten and Moxie. We talked for almost two hours about so many different things that I had to break it up into 2 parts. You'll get Penn's view on Parenthood and how his parents brought him up. He's an amazing guy and he was funny, open, and really smart. I would've talked for hours longer but he was off to an upcoming TV appearance that I can't mention. He is truly the hardest working guy in show business. Here's part 1. Enjoy! http://jamiekaler.libsyn.com/penn-jillette-part-1

(Photo Credit: J. Kenji López-Alt.) Our latest Freakonomics Radio episode is called “Food + Science = Victory! (Rebroadcast).” (You can subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts or elsewhere, get the RSS feed, or listen via the media player above.) A kitchen wizard and a nutrition detective talk about the perfect hamburger, getting the most out of garlic, and why you should use vodka in just about everything. Below is a transcript of the episode, modified for your reading pleasure. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, see the links at the bottom of this post. And you’ll find credits for the music in the episode noted within the transcript. *      *      * Hey there! Our last episode was about sugar — how much is too much? And if it’s really as bad for us as some people say, what should be done about it? This week: another episode about things that go in your mouth, this one from the archives. It’s called “Food + Science = Victory!” It too looks at the friction between eating for pleasure and eating for nutrition. That’s coming up in a sec. But first: a few weeks ago, we put out an episode about a fascinating new project called “Making Behavior Change Stick.” It’s run by two University of Pennsylvania researchers, Angela Duckworth and Katy Milkman, who’ve put together a dream team of colleagues from a variety of academic disciplines. They’re getting together next week in Philadelphia — and we’ll be there with our microphones, so that episode will show up in your feed not too long from now. While we’re in Philly, we’re also putting on a couple nights of our live show, Tell Me Something I Don’t Know, and that too will feature Duckworth, Milkman, and their crew. The live tapings are May 8th and 9th at the Trocadero in Philadelphia. If you want to come tell me something I don’t know — or if you just want to get tickets — visit TMSIDK.com. And then in June, we’re back in New York City for four tapings of Tell Me Something I Don’t Know, at Symphony Space. And now: “Food + Science = Victory!” *      *      * Stephen J. DUBNER: What does it say, Kenji, that there are so many conventional wisdoms about something as basic as cooking food, which we’ve been doing for thousands of years, that are, if not wrong, at least misguided? Isn’t that strange? Kenji LÓPEZ-ALT: It is strange but it’s precisely because we’ve been doing it for so long and because everybody does it. It’s an essential part of everyday life. It’s one of those things that rarely gets a second thought. [MUSIC: Louis, “Rewind to Play” (from Louis)] Today we’re going to give a lot of second thoughts — to what we eat and how we eat it. LÓPEZ-ALT: My name is Kenji López-Alt. I’m the managing culinary director at seriouseats.com and I write about the science of food. Uh-oh. “The science of food.” Doesn’t that sound kind of … unnatural? LÓPEZ-ALT: People think of science as the opposite of tradition, or the opposite of natural. It’s not. Science is just a method, right? It’s a method of thinking about the world and it can be used for many different ends. All right, then! I’m on board — how about you? Would you like to know whether the secret of New York pizza really is the water? LÓPEZ-ALT: What we ended up finding was the water makes almost no difference compared to other variables in the dough. Would you like to know how Freakonomics Radio listeners do things in the kitchen? JANE: If we can pick it up with chopsticks, then that means it’s completely cooked on the inside. And would you like to know the true nutritional value of one of America’s favorite vegetables? Jo ROBINSON: Veterinarians don’t even recommend it as rabbit food. *      *      * His full name is J. Kenji López-Alt. The J. is for James, his given first name. He’s always gone by Kenji but he didn’t want to totally lose the “James.” “Alt” is his last name; his father is of German descent. His mother is Japanese — that’s where the “Kenji” comes from. And the “López” is the last name of Kenji’s wife; she’s Colombian. When she and Kenji got married, they both became “López “hyphen” Alt.” So: J. Kenji López-Alt has just published a big, beautiful doorstop of a book. LÓPEZ-ALT: It’s almost 1,000 pages, it’s pretty big.   [MUSIC: Soundstacks, “Stay Stomping”] It ’s called The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science. The first line: “I was never meant to be a food guy.” LÓPEZ-ALT: I came from a family of scientists. My father is a microbiologist and my grandfather is an organic chemist. I had a very science- and math-heavy childhood. I was one of those kids that would wake up at 6:30 in the morning to go and watch Mr. Wizard on Nickelodeon. Still one of my favorite shows. Honestly, on a conceptual level, everything I learned about basic science all the way through college I learned from that show. DUBNER: Really? You’re not joking? LÓPEZ-ALT: I’m not joking. DUBNER: You were way into science as a kid. Were you into food as a kid? LÓPEZ-ALT: No. My family liked eating. But I was one of those kids who hated fish until I was in my early 20s. When I went to college, I had no idea how to cook. DUBNER: What would be a typical family Sunday night meal? LÓPEZ-ALT: My mom is Japanese. She moved to the U.S. when she was a teenager. She did all of the cooking at home, for the most part. My dad would occasionally cook a special meal, when he felt like cooking. He would cook Mexican or Chinese food, and those were always nice nights. But my mom cooked our daily food and it was always a mix between Japanese food and Betty Crocker 1970s staples. A lot of the recipes in The Food Lab nod toward those 70s staples — but are improved upon, through science. DUBNER: I’m about to make an assumption. Tell me if the assumption is right or totally wrong: as a kid, you were science-obsessed. You went to M.I.T. and at the beginning, studied biology. You come from a family of scientists. My assumption is that all of that got baked into you to some degree; this appreciation for, at least familiarity with, the scientific method. Then, when you fell in love with food and cooking, that you naturally parlayed the scientific method into the cooking method. Is that at all true, or not? LÓPEZ-ALT: That’s remarkably accurate. I found, when I was working in restaurants, that I did have this natural curiosity about why things work. He first found his way into the kitchen during college. It happened by accident and also — important life lesson here — by lying: LÓPEZ-ALT: The summer after my sophomore year, I decided I wanted to take the rest of the summer off from any kind of academic work because I was getting burned out on biology. I decided to go get a job as a waiter. I walked around Boston trying to find a job as a waiter and nobody wanted to hire me and then, one of the restaurants I walked in to, they said they didn’t have any waiter positions available. But one of their prep cooks didn’t show up that morning and if I could hold the knife, then I could have a job as a cook. I lied and I said, “I know how to use a knife.” I don’t think I’d ever cut anything with a chef’s knife in my life before. [MUSIC: Mokhov, “Water Magic” (from Revel Revivial)] He was hooked. LÓPEZ-ALT: From the moment I stepped into the kitchen, I was like, “This is the life for me.” This is great. He did graduate from M.I.T. … LÓPEZ-ALT: I switched majors to architecture. I finished with a degree in architecture, structural engineering. But then he spent the next eight years working in a bunch of different Boston restaurants. LÓPEZ-ALT: That first restaurant job was at one of those Mongolian grill type places. I was a knight of the round grill. I would do things like flip shrimp behind my back and stuff like that. From there to big chain restaurants, a Mexican place, a pizza place. Worked my way up the chain. I started working full-time. I could get a job at one of the nicest restaurants in town. Barbara Lynch was my first really great chef. I worked at her restaurant, No. 9 Park, B&G Oysters and a butcher shop doing charcuterie… Ken Oringer who also has a number of really good Boston restaurants, modern restaurant, Spanish place and a modern sashimi bar … But as López-Alt writes in The Food Lab, “I discovered that in many cases — even in the best restaurants in the world — the methods that traditional cooking knowledge teaches us are not only outdated but occasionally flat-out wrong.” This was, of course, his science background talking. LÓPEZ-ALT: Why are we cooking it this way? Would it be better to cook it this way? Why are we doing this? That’s something that is actually not very easy to work with when you’re in a restaurant, because it’s such a fast-paced environment you don’t really have time to ask those questions or investigate them or answer them. That was also one of the reasons why I felt this desire to get out of restaurants and go into writing because I thought it would give me more time to actually think about these things and answer these questions that have been building up for so many years. His first writing job was at Cook’s Illustrated magazine. LÓPEZ-ALT: They have a big kitchen in Brookline, Massachusetts. It has 30 ovens, 25 burners. It’s a big test kitchen. That was pretty much perfect for me because they sell magazines by asking questions and spending the money and the time to answer them. First at Cook’s Illustrated and later at Serious Eats, López-Alt began to refine a methodology: LÓPEZ-ALT: The first step is always research. I’ll go look to as many sources I can for the history of the dish, many different recipes to see how different people are making it. Then he starts to reinvent a recipe, or at least rethink it. LÓPEZ-ALT: I try [to] find areas where there might be problems for home cooks or areas where it can be improved in efficiency. Often this means taking a step backward. Not thinking just in terms of ingredients and texture and flavor but scien

Ask Me Another rises from the ashes in Phoenix, AZ with Penn Jillette! He pulls back the curtain on his distaste for magic, his strictly working relationship with Teller, and his love of being fooled. http://www.npr.org/2017/04/28/526036885/penn-jillette-fool-us-once

(Photo Credit: MattyFlicks / flickr) Our latest Freakonomics Radio episode is called “There’s a War on Sugar. Is It Justified?” (You can subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts or elsewhere, get the RSS feed, or listen via the media player above.) Some people argue that sugar should be regulated, like alcohol and tobacco, on the grounds that it’s addictive and toxic. How much sense does that make? We hear from  a regulatory advocate, an evidence-based skeptic, a former FDA commissioner — and the organizers of Milktoberfest. Below is a transcript of the episode, modified for your reading pleasure. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, see the links at the bottom of this post. And you’ll find credits for the music in the episode noted within the transcript. *      *      * [MUSIC: Jonathan Still, “Lederhosen”] Surely you’re familiar with the beloved autumn festival that revolves around folk dancing and lots and lots of drinking … LAYTON: Milktoberfest! The holiday for drinking milk and doing homework. Okay, not what you were expecting. Bavaria has Oktoberfest; Brigham Young University, in Provo, Utah, has Milktoberfest — Brigham Young being a Mormon university, and therefore prohibiting the consumption of, among other substances, alcohol. LAYTON: People don’t drink, but we still like to have a lot of fun. Roger Layton, communications manager at the B.Y.U. library, helps produce Milktoberfest. LAYTON: And so we thought, “Let’s just embrace that. Let’s just enjoy it.” We had a very energetic group of German folk dancers come in and perform, and we brought in cases and cases of chocolate milk. As soon as the milk was there and we said, “Go!” — it basically became a free-for-all. OLDROYD: People love it because Milktoberfest was almost B.Y.U. lite or something like that. That’s Brenna Oldroyd, a B.Y.U. student who helped put together Milktoberfest. OLDROYD: Like, “Hey, this is what we love to drink all the time!” The chocolate milk they’re drinking isn’t just any chocolate milk. It’s some pretty legendary chocolate milk, made in B.Y.U.’s own creamery. LAYTON: If you show up at a party with chocolate milk, no one’s going to complain. It may seem a little childish, but people will drink it. It’s a friendly, it’s safe, and it’s happy. OLDROYD: And one of the great things about partying with chocolate milk is if you’re smart, you’re not going to throw up later. That’s a plus. This all sounds pretty awesome, right? And wholesome, too — swapping out beer for chocolate milk. But is chocolate milk really as wholesome as it seems? Do you know how much sugar there is in your standard serving of chocolate milk? The answer is 24 grams — a bit more than you’d find in a standard serving of soda. And there are those who argue that the detriments of sugar — well, they’d argue that, from a metabolic standpoint at least, Milktoberfest isn’t much better than Oktoberfest. Robert LUSTIG: We started comparing what sugar did versus what alcohol did, and we realized, you know what, sugar and alcohol do the exact same thing. If you’ve been following health news in the last decade, you’ve likely noticed that there’s a war on sugar. (Photo credit: Jonny Goldstein / flickr) Belva DAVIS in a clip from KQED’s This Week in Northern California: An alarming rise in the rate of obesity and related health problems has prompted a nationwide movement to ban or restrict sugary drinks … How justified is that war? Today’s episode was inspired by a question we received … Saul ARNOW: Dear Freakonomics, My name is Saul Arnow, and I’m an 11-year-old listener from Chicago. I was wondering why sugar isn’t considered a drug even though it is addictive and stimulates the brain. Sincerely, Saul. Okay, Saul — we’ll do our best to answer your question. Along the way, we’ll learn some sugar history: Elizabeth ABBOTT: [St.] Thomas Aquinas,way back in the 13th century, pronounced sugar a medicine. We’ll hear from some people who fully agree with you: Robert LUSTIG: Now alcohol, tobacco, morphine and heroin clearly meet these four criteria. Some people who don’t agree with you: Richard KAHN: We have no clue, no real good evidence that it’s going to do any good whatsoever. And we’ll hear about your sugar habits. BOY: I tried to give it up once, but it didn’t work out at all because I’m addicted to sugar. I can’t help it. *      *      * [MUSIC: Paul Freitas, “Sugar Daddy” (from Salon de Cabaret)] Before we get into the nitty-gritty on sugar, let me offer a sort of caveat. KAHN: In general, nutrition studies are not very robust compared to many other fields in biological science. That’s Richard Kahn. KAHN: I’m the former chief scientific and medical officer of the American Diabetes Association. So what’s the problem with nutrition studies? KAHN: There are often no controls, no randomization, small number of subjects — it’s very difficult to conduct very robust, long-term studies on nutrition. Okay? This is a really important point. It’s the kind of thing we talk about all the time on this program — the legitimacy of data, yada yada. But with nutrition, there are a few things going on that make it particularly tough. Number one: this is about something that we all put in our mouth every day . Which means we all think of ourselves as experts. Unlike particle physics or financial engineering, this is something we all do all the time, so of course we know what we’re talking about. Number two: most nutrition science is built on survey data — that is, asking people about what they’ve eaten, or asking them to keep food diaries, things like that. If you’ve been paying any attention at all to Freakonomics Radio over the years, you know this is a surefire way to gather some not-so-realistic, or at least not-so-robust data. And so, as Richard Kahn said, it can be a real challenge to run a really convincing nutrition study. KAHN: Because people do not want to participate. They don’t want to alter their diet patterns for a long time and they don’t comply with the regimen of the instructions in the randomized trial. Now, if we could take a few thousand people, and randomize them, and then control every single thing they ate and drank for a few years — well, that that’d be great. But, absent that, we do our best. We look for data. We ask questions. Starting … here: Stephen J. DUBNER: As a public health official in New York and at the national level, you’ve tried to stem AIDS and TB and pandemic flu. You’ve tried to prepare the public for a potential bioterror attacks. How, in light of those dangers, would you rank the consumption of sugar? HAMBURG: Well, they’re very different threats. But we have to recognize that while acute public health crises really demand all of our attention and get a lot of response — how we live, what we eat, if we exercise — many aspects of our daily lives have the greatest impact on health and disease. That’s Margaret Hamburg. HAMBURG: I am a medical doctor and a public health professional who has served in government at many levels over many years now including most recently as the U.S. FDA commissioner. DUBNER: I wanted to ask you briefly about some FDA definitions. When I read them I have to say they — they are somewhere between comical and incomprehensible. When the FDA defines food, food additives, drugs and, then “substances generally regarded as safe.” So those are the categories. Which of these definitions apply to sugar? HAMBURG: You know, I have to agree with you that many of the definitions are hard to penetrate. DUBNER: I didn’t mean to slam you. I assumed you didn’t write them and that there were 40 lawyers between whoever wrote them and … HAMBURG: No, no! Congress is responsible for some of it, and the FDA lawyers for some of it. And, of course, you know many of these laws and regulations and guidances and definitions have evolved over many, many years. But it is complicated and confusing and it’s why there are almost as many lawyers as scientists at the FDA. DUBNER: For instance, the very first thing: “food.” Number one, “articles used for food or drink for man or other animals.” I can imagine that could easily fit within FDA regulation, FDA guidelines then, if it were used for food. Yep? HAMBURG: It’s really hard to answer a question like the one you just posed to me. Sugar is intrinsic to many food products. It’s not going to be regulated in the same way that a completely exogenous additive to a food product can be regulated. DUBNER: But technically, the categories under which sugar falls are “food additive” and GRAS “generally regarded as safe” and not food itself. Correct? HAMBURG: This is my point. I’m not going to answer your question because I don’t have my lawyers here. DUBNER: I see. HAMBURG: But there are sugars in fruits and vegetables, there are sugars in dairy products, there’re sugars in various grasses that people consume. It’s intrinsic to the food product itself. [MUSIC: Paul Freitas, “A Little Crazy” (from Again Spring)] For instance, let’s get back to chocolate milk for a minute. As we said, it’s got 24 grams of sugar per one-cup serving, more than soda. But regular old milk, without the chocolate, has about 12 grams of sugar — it’s naturally sweet from the lactose. And then there’s the sugar that’s added to many foods. HAMBURG: No. Products that you think are actually very healthy — yogurt — the levels of sugar are astonishingly high. Things like barbecue sauce and spaghetti sauce and soup actually have much higher levels of sugar than you would ever imagine. Not to mention, you know, the levels that are in you know pies and cakes and ice cream and things where you would expect to see sugar. So how much sugar, overall, do we actually consume? LUSTIG: Right now we are about 60 to 65 percent over our limit, and that’s average. That’s Robert Lustig. LUSTIG: I

Diet is always a hot topic in the Paleo and ancestral health community. There are diehard advocates on every side. Today I talk with Robb Wolf about his new book Wired to Eat. We explore how his approach to diet has evolved beyond just choosing the right mix of carbs, fats and protein and why a personalized approach is the key to understanding weight loss.  In this episode we discuss: The focus of Wired to Eat The Paleo diet 3.0 Is it really about the food? Why the concept of “cheating” is harmful How stress impacts your weight The right tool for the job: why personalization is key Show notes: Wired to Eat: Turn Off Cravings, Rewire Your Appetite for Weight Loss, and Determine the Foods That Work for You by Robb Wolf  [Note: The book has now been released, but readers of ChrisKresser.com can still get the bonus materials mentioned below by emailing the receipt of their purchase of Wired to Eat to wired2eat@gmail.com by March 27th.] [smart_track_player url="http://traffic.libsyn.com/thehealthyskeptic/RHR_-_Why_We_Gain_WeightBeyond_Carbs_Fat__Protein_with_Robb_Wolf.mp3" title="RHR: Why We Gain Weight—Beyond Carbs, Fat & Protein with Robb Wolf" artist="Chris Kresser" ] Chris Kresser: Hey, everybody, Chris Kresser here. Welcome to another episode of Revolution Health Radio. In this episode, I'm excited to welcome back Robb Wolf, a good friend and colleague. For those of you who don’t know who Rob is (I can't imagine there are that many of you listening to this podcast), but he is a former research biochemist, health expert, and author of New York Times bestseller The Paleo Solution and the eagerly anticipated Wired to Eat, which is his most recent book that we’re going to be discussing today. He has been a review editor for the Journal of Nutrition and Metabolism and Journal of Evolutionary Health. He serves on the board of directors at a specialty health medical clinic in Reno, Nevada, and is a consultant for the Naval Special Warfare Resilience Program. Rob is also a former California State Powerlifting Champion and holds the rank of blue belt in Brazilian jiu jitsu. He lives in Reno, Nevada, with his wife, Nicki, and his daughters, Zoe and Segan. I'm really looking forward to this show because I think Robb is one of the smartest people in the room when it comes to these topics, and if you’ve been around the Paleo Primal Movement for any length of time, you’ll know that Rob has done more to advance these concepts into the mainstream than pretty much anybody else. His most recent book is a deep dive into the mechanisms that lead to overeating and that govern food intake in general, and it goes far beyond protein, carbs, and fat and calorie intake. So, without further ado, let’s hear from Robb Wolf. Chris: Robb Wolf, welcome back. Robb: It has been a while. You’ve been busy. You’ve been busy. Chris: I saw you two days ago, but it has been awhile on the podcast. Robb: You’ve had a lot going, not much grass grows under your feet. Chris: I've had a few things going on but you have as well. You released The Paleo Solution in 2010, and I don’t think you’ve just been sitting on your hands since then, have you? Robb: Not completely, no. Chris: Well, you had a couple of kids along the way. Robb: A couple of kids, permaculture farm, a 90-pound Rhodesian ridgeback, which was almost the end of my and Nicki’s relationship—yeah, we’ve had some fun stuff. Chris: I think you’ve also been doing a little bit, squeezing in a little bit of work in between those major life events. Robb: A little bit. I joined a medical clinic here in Reno several years ago. I'm on the board of directors and those folks did a two-year pilot study with the Reno Police, Reno Fire Department, where they found folks at high risk for type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease and that they’ve put these folks on a Paleo-type diet, got them to modify their sleep and exercises as best they could, and based off the changes in their blood work and their health risk assessment, it’s estimated that the pilot study alone saved the city of Reno about $22 million, with a 33:1 return on investment. Chris: Whoa. Robb: Yeah, I was pretty impressed with that. I was like, “Ah, this evolutionary medicine stuff, there might be something to it.” So, I've been fiddling with that. You know this back story. I've been looking at some opportunities to scale this and hopefully take it to the masses, and that has proven to be more challenging to I thought. But amidst all that process, I've learned a lot and it kind of lit a fire under me to write a second book, which is Wired to Eat. Which looks pretty deeply at the neuroregulation of appetite and it still is very much steeped in this ancestral health/evolutionary biology template. But (and you did this in your book—you really tried not to have a one-size-fits-all approach) I may have made the disastrous decision of trying to do something that wasn’t a black-and-white, all-or-nothing recommendation. Chris: Nine steps to weight loss in five minutes with no effort at all, the groundbreaking new approach. Robb: Yeah. Robb Wolf explains why you shouldn’t use the word “cheat” when you diet The focus of Wired to Eat Chris: You're a total geek like I am, and whenever we get together, we like to nerd out and talk about all the research behind this stuff. You’ve done a really deep dive into kind of like the next level, looking at the mechanisms behind food intake and weight regulation, body fat mass, and not just using the same Paleo evolutionary kind of template, but going deeper to look at what is this big mismatch between our genes and our biology and our current food environment really all about. And how is that driving the epidemic of obesity and metabolic disease? For people who have already read The Paleo Solution, which I think is just about everyone listening to this podcast probably, what’s different about Wired to Eat, your most recent book? Robb: That’s a super-good question, good lead in. The big differences that—somewhat indirectly, I talked about this whole discordance idea within The Paleo Solution. We talk about the observations of preindustrial societies and how despite a really aggressive medical presence, like these folks are remarkably healthy, generally free of Western degenerative diseases. I think it’s really interesting, powerful stuff, but it’s maybe a bit far afield for many people, and still we see stuff devolve almost immediately into these macronutrient wars and folks really getting out in the weeds. And so in reading and thinking about this stuff, I started getting this into—and I'm really backing up a little bit, there was a paper a couple of years ago that was looking at brain evolution, and one of its catchy taglines was “the omnivore's real dilemma,” and it made this really strong case about the fundamental kind of forces that forged not just our genetics in the way that we seek out food, but any organism that moves to obtain nutrients, that there’s this basic need to get more than what you spend on the acquisition of trying to get nutrition, basic calories and also vital nutrients and whatnot. This idea really struck me because I'm like, okay, if we’re wired on a really fundamental level to need to eat more and move less to make that equation work—because we can make a super simple accounting. If you spend more money than you make, you're going to end up bankrupt at some point. From an energetics perspective, if you live out in a natural environment and you consistently burn more calories than what you consume, we’re going to have a serious problem. Wild animals, if they find some food, make a kill, and they don’t consult their Fitbit and say, “Oh man, so I just ate 600 calories, so I need to walk or jog or jumping jack for x number of minutes to burn this off.” Typically, it gets some food and then it goes and lays down and rests. This is the only way that that free-living scenario works. Whereas with humans, because of technology and because of culture, we’ve created these massive surpluses in energy, basically in the form of food, but also convenience measures, and so in a way, you could argue that we’ve pushed that optimum forwarding strategy idea to this mega and ultimate winning scenario. It’s like, “Okay, we can burn one calorie a day trying to obtain food.” We literally click Amazon and then AmazonFresh delivers food to your door and then you pop it in the microwave and you're good. We’re so good now at gaming that system that we have been developing chronic degenerative diseases for quite some time—type 2 diabetes, neurodegenerative diseases. And so this perspective on the neuroregulation of appetite, for me, it’s really almost like cutting the Gordian Knot. Is it about carbs? Is it about fat? Well, maybe. Let’s consider the context, but really let’s look at what governs the neuroregulation of appetite, what allows us to, in a free-living scenario—not being locked in a metabolic ward, but in a free-living scenario—to spontaneously eat in a way that doesn’t make us metabolically broke and then sticks us in an early grave. So that’s really the big difference between Wired to Eat and The Paleo Solution. Both of them are super-steeped in this evolutionary biology framework, but in Wired to Eat I'm really looking first at that neuroregulation of appetite story because when you start then unpacking that piece, then carbohydrates take on a certain context. It’s like, oh, cellular carbohydrates from beans and even properly prepared grains and ... Chris: Don’t say beans, or grains! You’re cut. Robb: I know I'm cut. I'm no longer getting the Cordain inheritance package. Chris: Paleo foul. Robb: But you know these things react to our physiology, and perhaps more importantly, they alter the neuroregulation of appetite and they alter our gut microbiome in very different ways than refined flours or added sugars. Everything from sleep to stress,

As half of the magic act Penn and Teller, Penn Jillette enjoys challenging his audiences with the unconventional. In stating his personal credo, Jillette finds liberation in believing there is no God. http://www.npr.org/2005/11/21/5015557/there-is-no-god

Penn Jillette has two words for anyone that says you're wasting your vote by voting for a third party "and they aren't Merry Christmas". https://alibertarianfuture.com/2016-election/penn-jillette-two-words-anyone-saying-youre-wasting-vote/

Click here to download PDF version of this transcript Dave Asprey:         Hey everyone, it’s Dave Asprey with Bulletproof Radio. Today’s cool fact of the day is that, a comparison of blood samples from the 1950s and then those same kind of blood samples from today show that celiac disease isn’t just a fad. It’s four times more common now than it was 60 years. There’s reasons. There’s junk food, there’s stress. There’s all sorts of environmental things we’ve done. One thing that is well-documented is that a substantial portion of people- way more than half, who have celiac or Chron’s have detectable micro-toxins in their blood. There’s a high correlation. There’s some cases where we can show causation, but we can’t show 100% causation. It’s interesting that something you breath through your nose may be contributing to gut problems. Kind of funky. Today’s guest is Tom Voltaire. Tom’s an advanced functional medicine nutritionist with 10 years of clinical experience and a couple degrees. He’s also a faculty member at the autism research institute. He teaches physicians and other practitioners about stuff like the microbiome, chemical exposures, nutrient deficiencies. He and his wife Alyssa have written two gluten-free cookbooks. They were gluten-free before gluten-free was cool. Tom, welcome to the show. Tom:                          It’s an honor to be here with you, Dave. Thanks for having me. Dave Asprey:         Of course, of course. We first met at J-J Virgin’s event. She’s a mutual friend of ours. She tends to pull together interesting people who are doing things that a lot of people just haven’t heard of. Who are really working to move the needle for big numbers of people. Tom:                          Right. Dave Asprey:         I wanted to talk to you because you’re looking at gluten. There’s been this we’ll call it the gluten-free backlash. What they say. Any time there’s a big, scientific paradigm change. The first thing that happens is they make fun of you, then they try to discredit you, then it was there idea all along. Tom:                          (Laughs) Dave Asprey:         The making fun of gluten thing, we’ve already done. It’s gone past that. A third of the country’s read a little bit of research or heard about this, and is now working on eliminating or at least reducing gluten. It has bad stuff in it. That’s a scientific thing. Bad stuff, TM. That said. There’s this recent study where people say, “Mm. It turns out only people with celiac disease should care about gluten. Everybody else should rub it on their skin. Eat it by the pound. Tom:                          Inhale it. Dave Asprey:         I wanted to talk with you specifically about, why there might be this backlash. How you would respond to that as a functional medical nutritionist. Tell me about that. What’s your take on celiac, given that you work with autistic kids and all that. Tom:                          That’s part of my practice, but I myself have gluten sensitivity reactions. I have, in fact, since 2004 recognized that, but I’ve had it pretty much my entire life. The reality is, Dave, people are down on what they’re not up on. As part of the functional medicine team, you’re taught by Dave Perlmutter. That’s a phrase that stuck with me way back in 2007 when I was learning from him. Dave Asprey:         You’ve studied with Dave Perlmutter? Tom:                          He was part of the faculty of IFM. Going through all the trainings over the years, I’ve been influenced by Dave quite a few times. Dave Asprey:         People who are listening should know, Dave Perlmutter wrote one of the two main books about gluten. He wrote … Tom:                          Grain Brain. Dave Asprey:         Grain Brain. I was confused. Grain Brain and Wheat Belly, because they’re both names that sounds kind of the same. He wrote Grain Brain. He’s a really good brain guy in general. I’ve been reading Perlmutter’s books, including his book with Alberto Villoldo for many years. He’s kind of a luminary in the field. Go ahead. Tom:                          This phrase. I’m going to take it from him, I use it all the time. People are down on what they’re not up on. When you hear someone who comes in and says, “Gluten is a fad. This is a trend that’s going to go overtime. This is not a big deal.” Whatever they’re going to say about it. Immediately I say to myself, “That’s a ignorant practitioner.” That’s a person who’s not- or a lay person- who is not looking at people daily in their clinical practice. Walking in through the door. Who are pre-gluten-free diets. Having arthritis and migraines and all sorts of skin disorders and mood issues. Perhaps in the case of children, perhaps autism or ADHD. When you take out gluten, and perhaps other foods. Like dairy or yeast or corn or eggs. Whatever it’s going to be. They turn around their entire disease process. Their entire disease process. I don’t care if they had chronic migraines or arthritis or Attention Deficit. Whatever it is, if you can take those foods out of their life for a minimum of two weeks. Preferably about 28 days plus. What happens is their intestinal tract is no longer irritated by those foods. Their immune system calms down. You’ll see this mental acuity come back in people. This energy level come back in people. You’ll see the skin clear up. You’ll see the behavioral disorders melt away, as if they were never there to begin with. When so much as this doesn’t exist- I’ve been witnessing it for over 10 years in my clinical practice- I just say, “You just haven’t seen it yet.” Who are you believing? I don’t know. The media? Are you looking at a selective amount of research studies? There’s a drastic, 20 thousand plus studies on gluten-associated reactions. Other foods as well. There’s something called cow’s milk protein enteropathy in infants. There’s a soy enteropathy. There’s all these different disorders that all you have to do is look, and you’ll find them. I just say, hey, educate yourself. That’s all. Dave Asprey:         When I hear someone say, “There’s no reason that you should avoid gluten, unless you’re one of those things like”- I just kind of shake my head. It’s so- The studies are so clear. There’s so many of them. Overcoming that gap. I just think it’s going to take time. I hope that the packaged food industry who makes a lot of money from this, really doesn’t just kind of push that message so hard that they kind of brain-wash people. I tell you, once you’re on gluten, you want more of it. Can you explain the mechanism for why people tend to not have just one cookie? Tom:                          There’s quite a few mechanisms. For the sake of time, let’s talk about one in particular. For example, I recommend elimination diets all the time in clinical practice. I ask people to take out the bare-bones minimum. The two most reactive foods for human beings. Those are gluten and dairy. Dave Asprey:         Shocking. Tom:                          Those specific foods, if you look at them, have these opioid-like peptides in them. Those gluteomorphins, casomorphins. These things that actually bind to the same receptors in your brain that opioid does. These opioid-like peptides- when you’re consuming these foods- will give you a drug response. They will sedate you. They will form an addictive pattern in your biochemistry, where you will crave more. The example I give is, you hear about Oprah. You hear about Kim Kardashian. They go out on elimination diets all the time. They’re trying to lose weight and feel fantastic. The one thing they say is, “I’m craving cheese. I’m craving bread.” The two foods that have the highest level of these peptides. In fact, it’s fascinating. We know, if you have kids- I have five. If you have kids, then when the kid is totally uncontrollable, inconsolable. What does the mom do? She breast-feeds them. They know that that milk contains these peptides that will cause them to roll their eyes back. Blup-blup-blup-blup. They fall asleep. Sure, it’s the physical cuddling and what not. It’s also this biochemical mechanism. When you take out the extra fat. You take out the extra fluid. You concentrate this in a hard block of opioid-like peptides that we call cheese. Is it any wonder then that we crave that? Literally! Dave, come on, man. I’ve seen people who have withdrawal symptoms when they take cheese and bread out of their diet. Seriously. They’ll say “I’m craving a grilled-cheese sandwich. I’m dreaming about it.” They’ll get the shakes. It’s like it’s… Dave Asprey:         I walk around like this (Claps) if I quit eating gluten. I have to stop my veins. It’s terrible. Tom:                          (Laughs) So true, man. So true. Dave Asprey:         Years ago, when I was working on my nutritional stuff. What works for me. I’d gone mostly gluten-free. Nausea was bad for me, but I didn’t understand that mostly doesn’t count. It’s sort of like, well I almost quit crack. I almost quit heroin. I only shoot it up on Fridays. Tom:                          (Laughs) You’re almost pregnant! Dave Asprey:         Friday night I would go to Birk’s restaurant which is my favorite steak-house in Silicon Valley. Morris’s the head chef there. I’ve known him for years. They have one grass-fed steak on the menu. Grass-fed filet mignon! They have also the best sour-dough, crusty French bread ever. They would use real butter. Four containers of butter and a loaf of bread. I would just have that. It was my one cheat for the whole week. That cheat-day thing? Tom:                          Yeah. Dave Asprey:         I would notice- It took me two years to figure this out. I’d be like, “If I have a whole loaf on Friday, maybe it’s Saturday if I go there again?” I would go there a lot. It would be like, maybe I’ll just have one piece. Tuesday, maybe I’ll just have two pieces. I was just like someone smoking. I’ll just have one, and then you have three!

This message appears as a chapter in The Romantic Rationalist: God, Life, and Imagination in the Work of C.S. Lewis. Last night we heard from Randy Alcorn that we will eat and drink in the new earth. He quoted C.S. Lewis that this is not unspiritual but designed by God. Here’s the longer quote: There is no good trying to more spiritual than God. God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why he uses material things like bread and wine to put the new life into us. We may think this rather rude and unspiritual. God does not: he invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it. (Mere Christianity) That’s true. And my point in this message is that we don’t have to wait for the new earth — we dare not wait for the new earth — to begin eating and drinking to the glory of God. I invite you to turn to 1 Timothy 4:1–5. Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy (sanctified) by the word of God and prayer. Verses 1–3a describe the apostasy of people who are buying into demonic teachings about the evils of sex and food. Then in the middle of verse 3, Paul begins his response to these teachings, and gives his positive alternative for the right use of creation — in particular, the right use of food, and by implication sex in marriage, and all other pleasures that come from this material world. So let’s look briefly at the demonic teachings of verses 1–3a, and then focus most of our time on Paul’s positive alternative, with C.S. Lewis giving insights along the way. The Magnitude of This Issue But first make sure you feel the magnitude of what we are dealing with here. The issue is: How are we to experience the material creation (which, of course, includes our bodies, and everything we encounter with our five senses) in such a way that God is worshiped, honored, loved, supremely treasured in our experience of material creation? You can feel the magnitude of this issue in two ways. First, as far as your daily experience goes, there is no more pervasive issue than this. And second, as far as God’s original purpose in creating the world goes, this issue is essential to that purpose. Unlike many issues, this issue meets you every minute of your day — at least your waking day. In your waking hours, you are always seeing or hearing or smelling or tasting or touching some part of creation that is giving you some pleasure or pain, or something in between. And therefore, the question of how this becomes part your continual worship of God is pervasive. And when God contemplated the creation of conscious human souls in addition to angels, he faced the question of whether these souls should be embodied, and whether they should live in a material universe, and how those bodies and that material world would accomplish his purposes to glorify himself in creation — because the Bible is unmistakably clear that the communication and exaltation of the glory of God is why God created the universe (Isaiah 43:7, Colossians 1:16; Ephesians 1:6)? So I hope you feel some measure of the magnitude of the issue we are dealing with here in these verses in 1 Timothy. The devil certainly feels the magnitude of what we are dealing with here, and he is behind the apostasy in the churches, especially in the last days, Paul says. Christians are leaving the faith, Paul says in verse 1 (“some will depart from the faith”). But they probably don’t know they are leaving the faith. They think they are the truly faithful. We’ll see this in a moment. The Roots of the Apostasy So let’s look at the roots of this apostasy and see where it’s coming from. The first source Paul mentions is “deceitful spirits.” Verse 1: “Some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to (or giving heed to, believing in ) deceitful spirits.” So the devil and his demons are at work in the church to bring about this deception. The apostle John calls Satan, in Revelation 12:9, “the deceiver of the whole world.” And when John tackled the heresy of denying the physical incarnation of the Son of God, he said in 2 John 1:7, “Many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist.” So all along the way, leading to the last day, the deceiver is at work in the church. Demonic Teachings The second source of this apostasy is that these deceitful spirits produce teachings. They don’t just work subconsciously in the mind or in the heart. They produce teachings in the church. Verse 1 at the end: “devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons.” So there are teachings circulating in the churches to the effect that true godliness, or superior godliness, involves renouncing marriage and certain foods (verse 3). Evidently the teaching of demons was that physical appetite for sex and physical appetite for food as defective. They are inferior to a kind of asceticism that sees in the physical world not God’s ideal for us, but something second-class, something for the weak, who don’t have the wherewithal to renounce sex and foods. This was not just a deceitful spirit, but an actual teaching in the church that came, Paul said, from hell. It was demonic. Coming Through Real People The third source of this apostasy was real people. Not just a spirit, and not just teachings, but people who were filled with this spirit and who advocated these teachings. Verse 1b–2: People were giving heed to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons “through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared.” The word “insincerity” is “hypocrisy” (Greek hypocrisei). In other words, these are professing Christians who presented themselves as teaching a higher godliness, but they were, Paul says, “false speakers” (“liars”). They may or may not have known they were speaking falsely. All we know is that they were teaching the teachings of demons and not the teachings of God. They were hypocrites. They presented themselves as one thing, when in fact they were another thing, whether they knew it or not. Their consciences had been cauterized. Which may mean they were too callous to know they were speaking falsehood, or so callous they didn’t care. Satan’s Deadly Subtlety It seems to me, the most pressing question here is: Why would Satan seek to spread this kind of asceticism among the churches? At first glance, it seems odd to us. Isn’t Satan’s specialty, when it comes to sex to entice people to want more, not less? Isn’t pornography the issue today, not celibacy? Isn’t his specialty, when it comes to food, to entice people toward the destructive forces of gluttony and obesity, not toward moderation and abstinence? Doesn’t Ephesians 2:1–3 describe our spiritual deadness in sin as “following the prince of the power of the air. . . carrying out the desires of the body . . . and by nature children of wrath”? Oh the subtlety of our great adversary! Of course, he wants you to do pornography and fornication and adultery and gluttony. But do you think he only has one strategy for using food and sex to bring about rebellion against the true God? Whispers of the Fall Compare his strategy in 1 Timothy 4 with his strategy in Genesis 3. His very first question to humankind was about food. It went like this: “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” (Genesis 3:1). What had God said about eating from the trees of Eden? Genesis 2:16–17: “The LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”” So what was God saying? He was saying: “I have given you life, and I have given you a world full of pleasures — pleasures of taste and sight and sound and smell and feel and nourishment. Only one tree is forbidden to you. And the point of that prohibition is to preserve the pleasures of the world. If you eat of that one, you will be saying to me: ‘Your will is less authoritative than mine, your wisdom less wise than mine, your goodness less generous than mine, and your Fatherhood less caring than mine.’ So don’t eat from that tree. Keep on submitting to my will, and affirming my wisdom, and being thankful for my generosity, and trusting joyfully in my fatherly care. There are 10,000 trees with every imaginable fruit for pleasure and nourishment within a two-hour walk of where we stand. They are all good — very good — and they are all yours. Go, eat, enjoy, be thankful.” And what does Satan make of that? He made of it a tightfisted God. He took the prohibition of one suicidal tree and treated it as a prohibition of all: “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” (Genesis 3:1). Now, we could linger long here to see how this seed of distrust in God’s generosity took root in Eve. But that’s not the point here. The point here is Satan’s strategy and how it compares to 1 Timothy 4. His strategy was to portray God as stingy, withholding something good of his creation from Adam and Eve. And in Genesis 3, Satan wanted Eve to believe that God is a withholder of good, and he wanted her to rebel. And that’s what happened. The Deceiver Uses Gluttony and Asceticism Now, in 1 Timothy 4, Satan again wants us to see God has a withholder. For those who want to know him best, and rise to the level of the really spiritual, they should realize God prefers if they not experience sexual pleasures in marriage, and he prefers that they not experience the pleasurabl

(photo: Andrea Nguyen) Our latest Freakonomics Radio episode is called “Food + Science = Victory!” (You can subscribe to the podcast at iTunes or elsewhere, get the RSS feed, or listen via the media player above.) On the menu: A kitchen wizard and a nutrition detective talk about the perfect hamburger, getting the most out of garlic, and why you should use vodka in just about everything. Below is a transcript of the episode, modified for your reading pleasure. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, see the links at the bottom of this post. And you’ll find credits for the music in the episode noted within the transcript. *     *     * [MUSIC: Louis, “Rewind to Play” (from Louis)] STEPHEN DUBNER: So what does it say, Kenji, that there are so many conventional wisdoms about something as basic as cooking food, which we’ve been doing for thousands of years, that are, if not wrong, at least kind of misguided? Isn’t that sort of strange? J. KENJI LÓPEZ-ALT: It is strange. But I think it’s precisely because we’ve been doing it for so long and because everybody does it and it’s sort of an essential part of everyday life that I think it’s one of those things that rarely gets a sort of a second thought. Today we’re going to give a lot of second thoughts — to what we eat and how we eat it. LÓPEZ-ALT: My name is Kenji López-Alt. I’m the managing culinary director at seriouseats.com and I write about the science of food. Uh-oh. “The science of food.” Doesn’t that sound kind of … unnatural? LÓPEZ-ALT: I think a lot of people think of science as sort of the opposite of tradition or the opposite of natural. And really it’s not. Science is just a method, right? It’s a method of thinking about the world and it can be used for many different ends. Alright, then! I’m on board. How about you? Would you like to know whether the secret of New York pizza really is the water? Would you like to know how Freakonomics Radio listeners do things in the kitchen? And would you like to know the true nutritional value of one of America’s favorite vegetables? *     *     * His full name is J. Kenji López-Alt. The “J.” is for James, his given first name. He’s always gone by Kenji but he didn’t want to totally lose the “James.” “Alt” is his last name; his father is of German descent. His mother is Japanese — that’s where the “Kenji” comes from. And the “López” is the last name of Kenji’s wife — she’s Colombian. When she and Kenji got married, they both became “López-Alt.” J. Kenji López-Alt has just published a big, beautiful doorstop of a book. LÓPEZ-ALT: It’s almost 1,000 pages, it’s pretty big. [MUSIC: Soundstacks, “Stay Stomping”] It’s called The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science. The first line: “I was never meant to be a food guy.” LÓPEZ-ALT: I came from a family of scientists. My father is a microbiologist and my grandfather is an organic chemist. I had a very science- and math-heavy childhood. I was one of those kids that would wake up at 6:30 in the morning to go and watch Mr. Wizard on Nickelodeon. Still one of my favorite shows. And honestly, I think, on a conceptual level, everything I learned about basic science all the way through college I learned from  that show. DUBNER: Really? You’re not joking? LÓPEZ-ALT: I’m not joking. I’m not joking. DUBNER: So you were way into science as a kid. Were you into food as a kid? LÓPEZ-ALT: No. I mean, my family liked eating, but I was one of those kids who, you know, I hated fish until I was probably in my early 20s. When I went to college, I had no idea how to cook. DUBNER: What would be a typical family Sunday night meal, let’s say? LÓPEZ-ALT: Well, my mom is Japanese. She moved to the U.S. when she was a teenager. And so, her food is — she did all of the cooking at home for the most part. My dad would occasionally cook a special meal, you know, when he felt like cooking. He would cook a lot of Mexican or Chinese food, and those were always nice nights. But my mom cooked our daily food. It was always sort of a mix between Japanese food and Betty Crocker 1970s staples. A lot of the recipes in The Food Lab nod toward those ’70s staples — but are improved upon, through science. DUBNER: OK, so I’m about to make an assumption. Tell me if the assumption is right or totally wrong. As a kid, you were science-obsessed. You went to M.I.T. and at the beginning, studied biology. You come from a family of scientists. So, my assumption is that all of that got kind of baked into you to some degree, this kind of appreciation for — at least familiarity with — the scientific method. And then, when you fell in love with food and cooking, you naturally kind of parlayed the scientific method into the cooking method. Is that at all true? Or not? LÓPEZ-ALT: Yeah, that’s very accurate. Remarkably accurate. I found, when I was working in restaurants, that I did have this sort of natural curiosity about why things work. He first found his way into the kitchen during college. It happened by accident and also — important life lesson here — by lying. LÓPEZ-ALT: The summer after my sophomore year, I decided I wanted to take the summer off from any kind of academic work because I was kind of getting burned out on biology. So I decided to go get a job as a waiter. I walked around Boston trying to find a job as a waiter and nobody wanted to hire me. And then, one of the restaurants I walked in to, they said they didn’t have any waiter positions available, but one of their prep cooks didn’t show up that morning and if I could hold the knife then I could have a job as a cook. And so, I lied and I said, “Yeah, I know how to use a knife.” And literally, I don’t think I’d ever cut anything with a chef’s knife in my life before. [MUSIC: Mokhov, “Water Magic” (from Revel Revivial)] He was hooked. LÓPEZ-ALT: So, yeah, from the moment I stepped into the kitchen, I was like, this is the life for me.  This is great. He did graduate from M.I.T. LÓPEZ-ALT: I switched majors to architecture. So I finished with a degree in architecture, structural engineering. But then he spent the next eight years working in a bunch of different Boston restaurants. But as López-Alt writes in The Food Lab, “I discovered that in many cases — even in the best restaurants in the world — the methods that traditional cooking knowledge teaches us are not only outdated but occasionally flat-out wrong.” This was, of course, his science background talking. LÓPEZ-ALT: You know, why are we cooking it this way? Would it be better to cook it this way? And that’s something that is actually not very easy to work with when you’re in a restaurant because it’s such a fast-paced  environment; you don’t really have time to ask those questions or investigate them or answer them. That was also one of the reasons why I felt this desire to get out of restaurants and go into writing because I thought it would give me more time to actually think about these things and answer these questions that have been building up for so many years. His first writing job was at Cook’s Illustrated magazine. LÓPEZ-ALT: So, they have a big kitchen in Brookline, Massachusetts. It has like 30 ovens, 25 burners; it’s a big test kitchen. And that was pretty much perfect for me because they sell magazines by asking questions and spending the money and the time to answer them. First at Cook’s Illustrated and later at Serious Eats, López-Alt began to refine a methodology: LÓPEZ-ALT: The first step is always research. So, what I’ll do is I’ll go look to as many sources I can for the history of the dish, as many different recipes to see how different people are making it. Then he starts to reinvent a recipe, or at least rethink it. LÓPEZ-ALT: I try and find areas where I think there might be problems for home cooks or areas where I think it can be improved in efficiency. Often this means taking a step backward — not thinking just in terms of ingredients and texture and flavor but scientific basics, like temperature. LÓPEZ-ALT: There’s a difference between temperature and energy. And that’s a concept that I think a lot of people have a difficult time wrapping their heads around. But the really quick and easy way to demonstrate it is, if you think about a pot of water that’s boiling, the temperature of that water is 212 degrees Fahrenheit, 100 degrees Celsius. And if you stick your hand in there, you’re going to burn your hand. At the same time, you can have an oven at 212 degrees Fahrenheit or 100 degrees Celsius and you can stick your hand in there for like a minute and you’ll barely feel it. It can feel hot, but you’re not going to burn yourself. And the way this could bear itself out in cooking is, for instance, if you’ve been used to cooking your pizzas on a baking stone, which a lot of people have in their ovens, a stone is not particularly dense compared to, let’s say, solid metal. There are now things we call baking steels, which are solid sheets of steel that you heat up in your oven and they transfer energy to your pizza much, much faster than a stone can, even if they’re at the same temperature. So, you can have a steel at 450 degrees and a stone at like 550 degrees and the pizza that’s placed on the steel will  actually cook faster than the one that’s placed on the stone. DUBNER: Tell me something I don’t know about the geometry of food. You refer to that a few times in your book. Why is that important? How should I think about it differently? LÓPEZ-ALT: The geometry of food is important because one of the big things is surface-area-to-volume ratio. DUBNER: Yes! LÓPEZ-ALT:  I like to think about it this way, where if you’re looking at the edge of a piece of General Tso’s chicken. And say you’re looking at it from about two feet away. You try and trace the outline of that General Tso’s chicken and you say, “Alright, the perimeter of that piece of chicken is two inches.” And then you look at it a little bit closer

Penn Jillette is a famous magician – he's one half of the duo Penn and Teller. He has made a career out of sleight of hand and tricks. http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2015/09/ep-130-penn-jillette-the-brilliant-idea-can-kill-you/

Beck Blitz: Atheist Penn Jillette speaks on Rand Paul by The Glenn Beck Program published on 2015/04/21 16:31:21 +0000 The Glenn Beck Program is Live Monday - Friday from 9am - 12pm ET, only on TheBlaze Radio Network and Blaze TV. www.theblaze.com/radio, www.theblaze.com/TV Download Beck Blitz: Atheist Penn Jillette speaks on Rand Paul Users who like Beck Blitz: Atheist Penn Jillette speaks on Rand Paul Users who reposted Beck Blitz: Atheist Penn Jillette speaks on Rand Paul Playlists containing Beck Blitz: Atheist Penn Jillette speaks on Rand Paul Groups containing Beck Blitz: Atheist Penn Jillette speaks on Rand Paul More tracks like Beck Blitz: Atheist Penn Jillette speaks on Rand Paul License: all-rights-reserved https://soundcloud.com/glennbeck/beck-blitz-atheist-penn-jillette-speaks-on-rand-paul

Magician Penn Jillette has been the vocal half of duo Penn & Teller for more than 40 years. Jillette joins us to talk about his life as a magician, his new crowd-funded movie 'Directors Cut' and his strong atheist and libertarian views. http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201502031000

Penn Jillette frames his new book, God, No!, as the atheist's Ten Commandments. He joins NPR's Neal Conan to discuss the humility of atheists and his respect for believers. http://www.npr.org/2011/08/16/139676171/magician-penn-jillette-says-god-no-to-god