Moss (00:21) Hi, I am Moss. This is Going Human because robots can't. You're witness to episode five of Going Human and I couldn't be more pleased about this one because I am a person who loves to eat. and I love to eat good food and I love to prepare my own food. and I love to eat other people's good food. So I'm basically very human.

In this way. this episode is called Six Ways to Make a Cucumber Delicious. And the inspiration for this episode and theme was really some of the advancements that are happening in food science and in sort of what portends to be the future in the industrial food complex that feeds us all on planet Earth.

And just understanding some of the cool things that are happening there. I am not an expert in any of this. I can tell you what gives me the heebie jeebies about the industrial food complex and what I know to be sometimes strongly considered bad things for our bodies that we that we c have readily available. and how social

economics and socioeconomic pressures make a difference in who can have better food, better quality ingredients, whole ingredients. so I have a lot of opinions that are that are founded in a lot of years of trying to do the right thing for me and my friends and my family who I eat with and around. but I am not an expert.

The the the thing about the cucumber is that it's really a metaphor. but I am gonna still put my guest

little pressure on my guest to, you know, talk to me about some of his favorite recent cucumber experiences. when you meet him. the the idea of the cucumber though is, you know, it's a vegetable that a lot of people don't understand. Many don't like it, like them. A lot of people in America can't spell the word. It's it's a it's a it's a it's a benign little beautiful vegetable that is often under appreciated.

Greg (02:48) you

Moss (02:52) And and in my mind, when you have the essence of cucumber coming out in anything that you eat and you can really taste it, it is magic. most people think it's a throwaway vegetable and so that's that that was sort of the the the the the foil of the cucumber for for for this episode.

Okay, so quick layout of the format of the show again. We start with the stone. Stone is just a couple of things that I found over the last week in preparation for the episode that I'm I felt like sharing and that seemed to make a a point about where we're going with food and how AI might be enabling that. once we finish the stone, we go into ripples with my guest and and we'll talk a little bit about the points that we

That that I make in the stone and and how how how my guest it sort of receives and and and reflects on those things. After that, we'll go into the maelstrom, which is also affectionately known as fuckery, and we'll talk about other stories in the news that are not necessarily food adjacent, but but that just brought some headlines. we'll have a fuck yes, where it's my opinion that this is a r rad.

And a a fuck no, which is that's not rad, bad. and then and then an honest fuck maybe where, you know, I'm gonna wanna talk about the good and the bad. And then my my my website has the ability for you to go and vote on those on those fuck maybes. And my hope is that over time we'll have a library of of community led fuck maybe buckets that have been that have been decided by the people who listen who are listening.

and our audience to this to this show. And then we'll tie it up with the tsunami for the week, which is our analog answer to the digital future. just something we can do that's human. And and and then we'll and then we'll wrap the show up. So that's the format. And and and and and and we're gonna start with our stone now. So I believe that food is medicine and and that food is fuel.

And that food is soul. And you know, when I think about the power of anything like AI intersecting with something that is of such importance, I really think about the bridge again. How will we harness the technologies so that they act as a bridge to the other side, to the human side of food, instead of replacing

Greg (05:21) Huh.

Moss (05:41) the human side of food. I don't want to press a button and have something come out of a wall. I would like to I would like to have somebody understand how to make a cucumber taste delicious and bring it to me in a bowl or invite me to into their refrigerator and tell me it's on the top shelf in the plastic container and it was left over from last night's glorious meal or or whatever. But I don't think that that

necessarily means that there isn't any AI in the in the sourcing or the creation of these masterpieces. And so I'll be I'll be the devil's advocate that says, how can we do both? How can we r really celebrate the science and the delivery of new of new methods of food creation and sharing

Greg (06:17) you

Moss (06:38) But also still keep the food creation and sharing as human as possible.

I I think about the the analog core of food just sort of not being driven from technology, not having, you know, billionaires fix ways for us to learn about food for ourselves so that we only run our desires for food through their technology in order to in order to have our needs met. but I also

like my guest who you'll meet shortly, really light up about things like space travel, new frontiers, like places even on planet Earth that we haven't gone or can't go or can't be in because of food scarcity and the inability to sustain life, you know, in a way that isn't just imported from from Safeway.

And and so I get I get really excited about these technologies and really interested in in talking about some of them. so I just wanted to say if it's not obvious, this is really a hope episode. This this this episode hopes for for great things to come in food and food science. And the the whisper the whisper warning of I wanna keep the experience of it human.

is just me talking. the the the the the promise is is really is really exciting. So beat one of my stone here is sort of this idea of of ancient truths, right? for thousands of years the grandmothers across our lands really drove the heart of the the heart of the hearth

that happened where our food was made and how it was served up. And, you know, I say grandmother, you know, in air quotes, we didn't all have a grandmother that was like this, but we all had the idea of grandmother who was like this. And for me it was my mother who was a v incredible woman, but she had six kids that she was feeding every single day.

seven at one point for about four years. we had a we had a foster kid live with us. and, you know, I had gluten intolerance and, you know, if you can just imagine a mother doing that many meals a day, six kids. It's kind of like running a canteen in a in an army almost. she was she was a miracle. And she managed to keep us really well fed with wholesome ingredients and she didn't

Let us eat junk food and and she cared about what we ate. And it it it really fed me, if if you don't mind the mind the pun. But instruments are starting to catch up, right? we don't need grandmother's lore anymore to help us understand sort of what the nutritional value of food is and why we should be attracted to certain things and why we should consider refusing others. And

and and so we're just gonna talk about some of those some of those things. So in twenty twenty six, there was a nutrient study that was a six week AI d AI diet app. So and this is a perfect example of the bridge, right? The AI diet app all it did was in a structured way point a small control group toward whole foods and a Mediterranean diet. And

And that's it. It didn't it didn't send them pre made meals that were made in a factory that are perfectly balanced for anything. It just said, these are the things you need to go to shop for, and this is how you make your meals, and go eat and do it with people. And so this one little app that did this one thing had remarkable had remarkable outcomes. In in weeks, the the the gut micro microbiome the

The richness of the of the of the microbiome in the gut went skyrocketed. The app didn't cook though. The app didn't do anything but say, Go do go do what grandma would have done if she if if she was making your dinner. and so it was really brilliant. Th you know, the the call out there is that the machine didn't heal anybody. It just pointed us back at the vegetables. Which is

Funny that we have to say that, but we do. so I thought that was really interesting. Beat two is sort of thinking about new ways to heal. And this one was interesting because it's a corporate partnership. So grain of salt there, right? corporate partnership. But there's a there's a a company called Ingredient, I-N-G-R-E-D-I-O-N, and one called Shirou.

They in 2026 they announced a partnership. Shiro's AI screens can look at millions of proteins in a microsecond. so in months, not years, we can create and forecast new prebiotics that will do that same thing that that a that a solid, heartfelt Mediterranean diet could do.

Greg (12:21) Thank you.

Moss (12:38) so that's a pretty cool bit of science because you know, we all have food deserts, right? Where where where and around we live. If we're lucky, we have access and and the resources financially to get good food, but it's just not the case for a lot of people. So when I hear about these kinds of technologies, I get excited that we might be able to get better guts in more people.

And better guts lead to a a much a much happier much happier biome generally. there is a good use trap here, right? Like we don't want to just give people pills that make them healthy. there's

There's problems with pills and and we often don't know those problems until until they've created problems that are intractably difficult to to back out of. So, you know, the idea here is what we can do to create these new things, but then figure out how we can get them in real food and from real food so that we're we're carrying on the legacy of our of our human biological ancestry.

So I think about this one as kind of like a telescope pointed at the pantry, right? Like we've got this high fidelity view of of things at the microscopic and you know genetic level that is that is very exciting. so the other last little thought that I have is this, you know, are we gonna still cook?

with this? Or are we just gonna swallow the printout? Right? I don't I don't think we wanna swallow the printout I think we wanna I think we wanna cook something yummy and maybe it has a cucumber as an ingredient. okay on beat three today food from thin air and this is this is where this is where my guest is gonna is gonna chime in in just a minute too. I love this one because this is literally Star Trek

and and the future. I mean talk about New Frontier. NASA's Deep Space Food Challenge closed in 2024. The Air Company is what they're called. they they were awarded the the prize for CO2

Being able to fuse with microbes to create edible protein. So literally, these people are figuring out how to make nutritional protein out of thin air. Thin air. Now, is it gonna taste as good as a cucumber that's been

lightly seasoned with salt and had a wave of lemon barely

waved over it. I don't know. But how cool could it be to be able to create technologies that will allow us to go further into space than we've ever gone, and understand our universe and our galaxy more. It's the the the adventurer within me gets really turned on when I think when I think about about this one. And it's it's it's this one that

That tells me I need to bring my friend, Greg Enos, into the conversation. Greg Enos is a dear friend of mine. He started being buddies with my with my dear brother Eric boy. Like how old were you guys, Greg?

Greg (16:44) We met in kindergarten, so five.

Moss (16:47) Kindergarten.

Yeah, a few a few years back at least. so yeah. Anyway, Greg was a fixture in our home growing up, and one of my earlier memories of Greg was I think I was maybe ten or eleven, and you know, he was in his early teenage years and he was hanging out with my brother. And I remember in our kitchen one night

Greg (16:52) A few years back.

Moss (17:20) You know, it was a school night, I think, or a weekend, I I can't remember. But I just remember Greg interacting with my mom. And I was thinking to myself as a little kid, why are they talking to mom? It's so dumb. And and then I walk out of the room and I come back in the room I d I've never told you this story. I walk out of the room, I come back in the room and he's got a knife in his hand and he's chopping something and he's still talking to my mom. And I'm I'm thinking to myself, this is not natural.

or normal and WTF and and so you know from a very early age I recognized that Greg, the human, had a had a a heart and a hand for food and and feeding people. So Greg, what do you think of this NASA thing? Is that crazy?

Greg (18:15) Making food out of nothing or air.

Moss (18:18) Yeah. Air and microbes.

Greg (18:21) Well, food is all created. Well, first of all, thank you for having me and thank you for giving me an opportunity to speak about something that has been a guiding principle of my life and that I'm passionate about and have always been passionate about food. So I think that if we look at the chemistry, everything is basically atoms anyway.

If we can, if they can come together, they can be taken apart and put back together. So it doesn't surprise me if possible. I mean, I understand the possibility of it, but it's not nearly as, it's not as easy as one might think. It's taken quite a bit of time for these molecules to wander around and to create a few covers. The fact that humans can do it is.

Moss (19:15) Right.

Greg (19:17) The fact that humans can do it, that's the shocking part. But we're of course at the very beginning stages, beginning stages of these.

Moss (19:26) Right. yeah, I I love what you just said. Kinda like, you know, all these molecules had to figure out the the right dance to go to, right? So that so that over

Greg (19:40) Yeah, and what's the difference between

a zucchini and a cucumber? mean, they could be in a dark room, they could look the same, but they are definitely not.

Moss (19:53) They're very different lookalikes, aren't they? And taste alikes or non-taste alike, yeah. yeah, I just thought that was kinda crazy. It's kinda like this idea of like this isn't science fiction anymore. It's more like a federal grant, right? Like now we're at a federal grant level to to advance this science instead of, you know, some movie producer in Hollywood putting a weird Starship Enterprise up on a screen and and

Greg (19:56) They could be, yes. Yep.

Moss (20:23) having us all fantasize about what it would be like, you know, it's it's it's really, really, really interesting. So Greg, I'm gonna probably do you as much of a service as I possibly can, but it'll never be enough. I I'm such a fond fan of yours. Greg started cooking, I think with your grandmother, right? You know, at a very young age, interacting with your that's my cat. I'm sorry. I'm human. I have a cat.

Greg interacted with his with his with his close ancestors at a very young age o over food and and as I c I c I always sort of thought of him as a a tween cook, right? So like before most of us had jobs, he had one, you know, doing food stuff at at at a little restaurant in downtown Mill Valley where we were born and raised. And

And then it just went on from there. He went on to to be an assistant chef at the Fairmont Hotel at a very young age, which was, you know, not a likely thing back in the day, to be his age and and and to have access to some of the best chefs in the world. But you know, that whole idea of of of the cooks that were working in in in these restaurants.

We're all from Chinatown. These people had these this great rich heritage of of of real ingredients and alchemy and food and and Greg was right there at the ground floor as a as a young man witnessing it. he parlayed that into later in life into a career in Chinese medicine, which really was an extension of food as healing and

for which he he had a very successful career in practice in Klamath Falls where he where he just recently rode into the what do you say the retirement sunset or sunrise the retirement sunrise he he rose

Greg (22:34) We call it,

instead of retirement, we call it preferment. I've entered preferment where I wake up every day and I do whatever I prefer to do. some days I'll cook, some days I'll dabble in the garden. But it's not the rigor and responsibility of patient care, which is rigorous. I care for my people just like I care for

sprouts in the garden. so I don't need to tend, you know, everyone else's life. I can just kind of bring it back and focus a little bit more on my own. I still enjoy cooking. I cook multiple times a day. it's still as passionate about food now as I ever was.

Moss (23:23) Yeah, yeah, and I can attest as a guest in your home, you have one of those refrigerators where where somebody like me opens it up and goes, Wow, this is just a lot of shit. There's nothing in here. There's it is so full that it's overflowing, but I can't grab one thing. And then in swoops, Superman with food cape on Greg, and before you know it, he's whipped up.

Greg (23:33) There's nothing to eat. Right?

Moss (23:52) A six-course meal from 19 different containers, and it is the most amazing meal you could you could imagine coming out of containers that didn't look like food when you open the refrigerator. So so great great to have you, Greg. I love you so much, and I really appreciate your your leg up and coming and being my friend here today. so

Is there any do have any other reflections of of any of the other things in the stone that that I brought up before? The you know, we talked a little bit about the the proteins that can be that can be identified to to improve prebiotics for for the gut and the nutritional profile of what we eat. Any any insights or thoughts there?

Greg (24:46) Well, I always think about it from the historical perspective. And when you look back over time, we have kind of a very deep knowledge of nutrition and food now. We have a knowledge that comes at the chemical level where we have testing, have, you know, we can look at vitamins. mean, I remember my grandmother was a very early adopter of Adele Davis. And Adele Davis was a person who was

very interested in cooking nutritious food. Now I will tell you that not all of her food was very tasty, you know, but it did have that nutritional, that was her goal to create nutritional food because they had just discovered vitamins. So this was in my lifetime, that putting vitamins or niacin in flour to prevent, you know, illness, the reason they put these things, put vitamin D in milk,

so that people will get the vitamin D to stay healthy. This is all within my lifestyle. But when we look historically, people have been eating for a long, long time before they ever knew anything about this necessarily healthful quality. These were recipes that were based on ingredients in the regions. These were recipes that, or they ate based upon the seasons, seasonal food. You know what they ate? Some people ate a lot of meat.

Some people ate very little to know me. So the human form is incredibly adaptable to what fuel it takes in. We can survive. Now, we may not survive as long as in other cultures based upon the diet we have in such as like in Okinawa in Japan, people live some of the longest lives possible based upon the things that they eat.

you know, there is better and worse ways to eat, but as far as the capacity for humanity to survive, we can literally, I mean, you can probably put trash, in fact, a lot of people do, you know, trash and you can still, the body will survive on it. So I think that we have to always have that historical effect or perspective that it's, we can look for the perfect diet.

But I see a lot of people in search of the perfect diet, that what they're doing is they're eating foods that are so isolated and so particular that they're not getting the broad spectrum of what existed in the past. And I think part of this came from Mas was that restaurants as we use them today did not exist in the past. I mean, I know people who go out to eat at least once, maybe even twice a day.

When we were growing up, going out was an exception. You rarely went out. wasn't fast food, didn't exist. This whole concept didn't exist. So for us then, food was something that went home. When you were hungry, you didn't go out. You went back to the house and hit the fridge and raided the fridge. So I think that when we look at the nutrition aspect,

I'm less concerned about that because the body has, I mean, I'm less concerned about whether it necessarily came from

manufactured proteins from air and carbon dioxide and bacterial processes and things that you can grow organically in your garden. I think that, I mean, I'm not saying that there's not a judgment or an evaluation on the spectrum, but as far as the human form, people go and live in prison and eat prison food and still, you know, survive. So,

the form has a tremendous capacity to eat a variety of foods. Now, none of that has to do anything about the fun of cooking. Cooking is a whole nother art. And I'd love to talk to you more about this aspect of the tradition of food. Because for both of us, food was not just the nutrition, it was the social nourishing environment.

And I think that's more at risk than the nutrition part. The human body will survive, but the coming together and the sharing of humanity that comes around meals is something that is far more fragile.

Moss (29:20) Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. I think they're you know, it's it's it it it sounds like I'm putting words back into your mouth. You just said it so beautifully, but I know so many people, Greg, who don't think about food with people. It just doesn't come up for them. And you know, knowing that is f I shouldn't say frightening. It's sad to me.

that you know even eating a mediocre meal with somebody across from you and exchanging and having a conversation, there's something very nutritive for me about about that moment and that shared that shared that shared meal. And so I'm with you there. I I th I think the the the biggest crime of of of

humanity isn't necessarily Costco. It's it's it's it's buying Costco and then n not sharing it with people and not enjoying it with people. yeah.

Greg (30:45) There's

Moss (30:49) Take away.

Greg (30:50) There's a series of videos, Japanese posts, of they live their lives basically in isolation. They live in society and they move through society and they have jobs and pets and houses and everything else, but they don't interact with people at all. Now, Japan is a much more self-contained society anyway, but where they will just not really

communicate, they're more likely to communicate to a bot or to communicate online than they are to actually speak and interact with people, with other humans. So when they go out, they go out for lunch every day, but they go out and sit at the counter and have a table for one. So I think that that is part of, I think that there's a tremendous amount of humanity that comes from this getting together.

And so I'm sure that there were the frontiersmen who, there's always been the lone wolves who haven't wanted to be a part of the pack. And those people would go out and forage and wouldn't see people for days, weeks, months. But I think for most of us, that family structure of the coming together, having family meals, the classic Italian stereotype of the coming together is,

something that the future can create nutrition, but the coming together and the sharing of humanity is one that I think that's one we share, that's one that humans share. And I think that people are nourished by that experience in many ways, as much as they are by the nutritive quality of their food.

Moss (32:44) Yeah. I agree. And I think it's on us to reinforce that, right?

Greg (32:46) So, pass, pass it to, carry on.

Well, that I see.

Moss (32:52) I was just saying I think it's

on us to rein to reinforce that.

Greg (32:55) I would hope that people would be able to share that experience. So in my, my kids live in Spain and in Spain they have a much different culture. Your house is very small. Your house is so small in fact that you really can't even have guests over to your house. Cause there's no, there's not an extra chair. They have to bring their own chair if they want to come over to your house. But there's a cafe society where you'll see the same people in your neighborhood.

and say hello to your neighborhood friends and share these experiences in a cafe setting that we don't have in the United States. We don't have that same kind of system. So even though there they don't necessarily all cook in their kitchen, they do share that community aspect at the local cafes where they'll see the old people, they'll see the young people, they'll see the people with kids, there'll be kids running around.

They have kind of an absorbed family of local people in their area. So they're still getting that social nourishment. They're not isolated. Whereas I think that that isolation is one that affects, I mean, if it affects stress, stress releases cortisol, which affects metabolism, which can affect your nutrition. You can affect your gut through excessive stress. So when we look at nutrition, nutrition is really

the holistic aspect of being nourished on many levels. And of course, this is one of the things that my Chinese medicine background, it's all about looking at things in connection with each other and not in isolation.

Moss (34:39) Right. Right. Yeah, Spain. my gosh. Your your kiddo is so fortunate to be there. It's it's just amazing. My my personal memory of Barcelona was, you know, my hotel room was probably about as big as most apartments there. and you're right, the the three or four cafes that I went to almost

exclusively were all within one block of my of of my hotel room, which was right in the middle of a neighborhood. And each one of those, they only had two or three things on the menu. It's not like they had these, you know, California Pizza Kitchen, you know, Bibles that you have to leaf through nineteen pages to decide which thing you want. y it says they had to they just did a small handful of things really sweetly.

And they were always good. Always good. It was never like, this you know. and you're right. You know, you go there three or four times and they start to say your name and you know their name. And you're waving to people that you've been eating alongside of, you know, for the last week and a half and and they're treating you like you're part of their human experience and you're just, you know, just it's it's very different and

Greg (36:03) you are a part of their human experience.

And the other aspect of Spain, right, the other aspect of Spain is that there's no tipping in Spain. So when you go as Americans, this is just like my modeling that you don't have to tip the people. They work there, this is a social democracy. So they have their job and they're taken care of. They don't have to generate.

Moss (36:09) Right, right, right.

Greg (36:31) know, relationship because they're going to make more money off you about it. So it's a much more authentic relationship than waitstaff who that you know at a certain point they're going to come in and check in with you and have their little howdy time when they give you the check because they know you're going to have to write for the tip. So it's much, much different. But I just I think we have some tremendous things. And I think we also in this country, have

reasonable food quality. I don't think the food quality is necessarily bad, but I am concerned far more with the capacity of people, young people, to know how to go to the store and be able to look at the produce and see things that they can cook for themselves. Look at the dairy and know what, I mean, maybe they know how to cook an egg, but maybe they don't.

You know, maybe they don't even know how to cook scrambled eggs. You know, I mean, so I feel that this is more threatening than, you know, that our food supply is adequate, certainly probably superior in many ways to what existed ages ago just due to the fact that we have plenty of it. But the technology and the knowledge about it, if people go out every day for meals, where are they going to learn to cook?

I mean, in my case, I learned because that's what we did every day in my family and I was much more into participating than going in the other room and waiting till someone rang the dinner bell. You know, I wanted to be in the mix. I wanted to be creating it. And I was also very hungry and I would always sneak some on the side. Eat whatever I could on the way, you know, I could. I was very hungry when I was a kid growing up. So food was where

Moss (38:01) Right.

Peace.

Yeah.

Greg (38:28) food

was. The kitchen was where the food was, Moss. That's where the food was.

Moss (38:32) That's right. That's that's where we went. That's where we went. And we both enjoyed or were fraught by larger families too. We we neither of us came from the one kiddo family. I had six. How many kids were in your family?

Greg (38:49) I had three sisters, so there were six of us. Yeah. Yeah. And I was very tall and big, much bigger than my sisters. So even though in our family, we would kind of divvy up the portion, but the portions were not proportional based upon body.

Moss (38:52) Yeah. So for you. Yeah.

Yeah, because

just for body body weight alone and and height, you were literally two times the human volume of any of your sisters.

Greg (39:22) I was, I was.

Yes, I think I was over six feet when I was 12. Always the tallest one in my class and usually taller than the teacher.

Moss (39:29) Yeah. I remember.

Yeah, I remember I remember making my first comment to you about that one w when I was quite a young little boy. I was the opposite. I was the little runt and the smallest in my family I was the youngest, but also the smallest just generally 'cause I was a runt. so you've you felt you felt particularly tall to me.

Greg (39:43) I'm sure.

I would want to sit next to you because if you... I

would want to sit next to somebody like you because if you didn't eat all your food, hey, are you going to eat that?

Moss (40:07) Yeah. I love it. I love it. Well, the the beauty of of of food never lost on you, obviously. Still very passionate about it. you know, I'll share with the listeners that my recent tear on sourdough bread baking,

was met with you as a confidant and partner with such elation because I have books and I read and I I bake better bread from books. but some of the little secrets that you gave me, and in the visit that I did one of the visits that I did with you where we where we focused on making bread at my at my begging request, where I where I just learned

How to think about the act and the art of this alchemy, bread, water, and salt. And that's it. And and how to turn those three things into something that is so marvelous that you just can't stop talking about how good it is is a miracle. And it's it's it's a gift that that

I gave to myself that I learned how to do this in a way that is really good. I'm good at it now, but I'm really good at it now because of you. And so I I thought I would just first of all thank you publicly, because I haven't done that yet. So everybody knows how much I worship you. But I know, right? but I th I thought I just asked you for any anecdotes you have there about sort of your your life in

Greg (41:43) Send me a load.

Moss (41:56) Not just sharing the food that you make, but also just sharing time in the kitchen with people and and and the generosity that that I experience from you. Sort of if you could just talk a little bit about your about your orientation around that.

Greg (42:14) So for me, cooking is a contact sport. It's not something that is done strategically with significant planning. It's not done in isolation where, I mean, people often do sit around and watch me cook, but when I'm cooking in the kitchen with other people, because I come from a professional background, when you work in restaurants, restaurant kitchens,

are extremely small because if you can fit another two tables in the front, you're going to make more money. So having a big kitchen means less places to generate the income. So kitchens are usually quite small. And as such, when you're working, especially in a high volume kitchen, you know, you're reaching over bumping into each other. You know, I mean, it is not something where you worry about any of that. We're using the small space together.

We're getting in and out. You're in a hurry, a high pressure situation. And so when I work with people in the kitchen, they often think I'm pushing them around or something. And what I'm really is I'm not pushing, I love them there. I just don't feel like I need to give them a lot of space. I'm not talking about taking the knife out of their hand. I'm just talking about moving around the kitchen and that we

we just can all work together. And if you can clear the counter enough to just get a little space, then you're welcome to get in there and do something. And there's always something to do. There's always the prepping or there's always something to peel, to chop. When I started at the Fairmont Hotel previous that I'd been working at, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and I was a...

Moss (44:06) That's right, I

forgot about that.

Greg (44:09) I was 17 and was the cook, cooking the chicken two, days a week at Kentucky Fried Chicken. And so I went from there directly to the Fairmont Hotel. And when I showed up, they gave me my uniform and I was gangly 17 year old. And I showed up, the first thing they did is gave me a 50 pound sack of carrots and a peeler. So that was...

I thought I was going there and I was going to learn to cook. Well, guess how you learn to cook? With a peeler and a 50-pound sack. And after I finished the carrots, it was a 50-pound sack of onions. So, you know, this is how you learn to cook. You don't learn to cook by stepping up to the stove and putting oil in a pan. The way you learn to cook is you learn your ingredients. You learn all about it. You develop the skills. And of course,

while you're in the kitchen doing these things, you're also looking and observing. So cooking is, you can look at books to learn how to cook, and many people do. I see a lot of people who wanna make a specific recipe. For me, it was observing the techniques, the process, what these things are, and then you can go directly to once you know how to do it,

If you don't have all the exact ingredients, can still execute it because you know where you're headed. And that's how it was with the bread. The bread was to understand the variables of temperature, humidity, making bread at your house closer to the coast and making bread at my house at 4,000 feet in the high desert. There's going to be a lot of variables.

based upon the humidity. The bread is going to behave differently. don't follow the timer. You're not going to follow the timer for this. What you really need to do is understand how it's supposed to look when it gets to the next stage. And we also have to remember that the Egyptians made bread. They didn't have steam-injected ovens. They didn't have proofing boxes. I mean, the Egyptians made bread. In fact, they say that their teeth were heavily worn down

They had stone grind the wheat and there was a lot of grit in their bread. you know, mean, they we I think we over complicate things, over complicate things and undervalue just the act of cooking itself. You know, just get steaming cucumbers, cucumbers, you know, a simple thing. But there's so many things you can do with a cucumber once you understand its nature, you know.

Moss (47:04) Right. Right. Yeah, the the humidity and moisture tricks that you taught me were you know, they're still seared into my brain. And and the th the other thing that you kept doing when we were making the bread on that trip was that you kept smelling your your material. You used your nose a lot to understand the the the level of of

or the readiness of your leaven, which I just thought was brilliant. And and you know, a couple of things you said to me which which which would make a wallflower kind of shrink up a little bit is like you'll just know when it's ready. And and of course, you know, if you don't know

what it is when it's ready and somebody like you says that, you sort of roll your eyes, right? You're like, really, dude, that's your answer. Like, you can't just tell somebody that they're gonna know something that they don't know. But what happens when somebody as lovely as you says something as lovely as that to somebody like me is it never leaves. And what what happens over the next four to six loaves is I learned.

what it smells like. I learned what to smell for. And now I can create variably h more sour or less sour loaves because I can tell what it's doing. I can tell where that yeast is on its rise. literally, no pun intended, but it's its rise to its rise. and and also where that leaven sits in terms of its spectrum of sourness. And it's just

Such a it's like one of those things, you know, Greggy taught me like I I I'll never, I'll never it's just one of those things I'll never be able to replace. And I have friends now who are learning how to cook sourdough and I'm teaching them you know, it seems dumb that I'm teaching anybody anything about cooking, but but you know, I do know more about this now. And I make a mean ass loaf of bread and and it's

Wonderful to pass that on. It just feels so good to give people these these little tricks, you know.

Greg (49:33) Well, and I think that this is where we learn more from our mistakes than our successes. So if you under bake, if you under rise, if you don't allow it to ferment enough, you're going to get a brick. At that point when you smell the bread, because when you mix flour and water and salt, it doesn't smell like fermentation. It smells like wet wheat.

And as that starts to grow, changes its character. If you bake a loaf and it's under baked, it will be too dense. If you bake, if you wait too long and it's the other side, it will be super sour, but it may fall. You know, so we learn by our mistakes what's too much, what's not enough. And as you dial that in, you finally realize, you know, you understand what what you're looking for.

Moss (50:03) Or Elmer's glue.

Greg (50:31) and you understand what's perfect. So I've gotten into actually with some of my loaves adding some commercial yeast to the loaf. So I get the rise faster, but it doesn't get as sour. because I preferred the light loaf that was somewhere between a sourdough and a French. So by adding commercial yeast, which doesn't contribute any particular flavor.

you can get a lightly sour sourdough as opposed to a 100 % sourdough. So I could see, I see you're going, wait a minute, now I'm gonna have to think about this. I thought we were there. I thought I had perfected my loaf. And now.

Moss (51:15) No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

This is the beauty this is the beauty of bread making is that, you know, I nothing is less interesting to me than a bland French baguette. I'm not interested. Not interested at all. I love sourdough so much and I like a distinctly sour bite. I just really do. I like the way the crust crunches with the sour together.

Greg (51:19) Yeah.

Moss (51:44) And it's something my mom taught me to love. bread was her heroine. She she was she w she was the person who'd go to a restaurant, she'd be like, I could just eat their bread and that that would be everything.

Greg (51:57) So do you think that robots will be able to create... I mean, we be able to get robots to create a great sourdough loaf?

Moss (52:13) Yeah, I think they already are. We I mean it's machine learning, but you know the the ten thousand loaves of sourdough that are in every single safeway of every in Kroger or wherever, you know, insert your mega store here, you know, that stuff is not handmade. And and it's it's down to a science. They're they're creating a consistent product that's exactly the same.

The first unit to the ten thousandth unit. There's zero difference between the two. and if they wanted to make a great sourdough version of that and have it be more sour, they could do that too. so I don't I don't think that that's that's even a far off dream. I do think though that that I don't buy bread anymore. I haven't bought bread for about f four years, three years.

But I eat bread constantly and and I don't wanna buy bread. I don't wanna. It's it it used to be really hard to make bread because it's like kind of like almost a two-day process and it consumed my life and I'd be like, I can't go anywhere 'cause I gotta build. And then I go visit you and you're like, Yeah, yeah, it's out and it's out on the it's it's chilling out on the out on the porch right now 'cause it's twenty eight degrees out and it I need it to st

I needed to s rise slower right now. So I threw it out on the porch and it's out there. It's snowing. And I'm like, What the Sam hell is he doing? and then he's he's smelling things. He's like going, Yeah, you can tell can you smell this right now? See how it's a little sharper than it was before we went? I'm like, How who are you? Why are you? And but here I am, you know? And I don't even I I get rough measurements now at the gram level.

Greg (53:49) What?

Moss (54:10) But now, after I get my rough measurements and my my you know, I'm I'm heading into my bulk rise, Greg, I'll I'll go, you know, I need a little bit more moisture and I don't measure how much more moisture I give it. I I give it more moisture and I mix it, I go, that feels right. It it I can tell this is gonna do I can tell what this will do now 'cause I know what it needs to feel like for its next stage. You know, it's it and it's you've just you gave me the art of feeling it rather than

The science of following a procedure, which was just the biggest gift you've ever given me. Thank you. Thank you.

Greg (54:46) Well, is,

you're welcome. And this is where part of my concern for future generations comes from. The inability to be comfortable with the raw ingredients that come in the store to be able to prepare food for yourself. Because I really feel, especially, I attribute a lot to when, when I grew up, my dad was the one who went to work and my mom.

stayed home. She did volunteer at the school. She was a math tutor, things like this. But she didn't have to leave the home in the same way as two people now go to work, where it's two working families. And still, there's two working families and maybe even someone has a part-time gig that they're running on the side to get by. So where in this mix is there time for people to cook?

You know, people don't have the time, or parents don't have the time to cook. And when parents don't have the time to cook, that means that the kids are fending for themselves or we're just throwing some together or phoning it in or picking something up on the way home. So we're not raising the generation of people who have those same skills to be able to prepare food for themselves. When my nephew went to college, he lived in a four-plex, four students.

Moss (56:02) Yep, yeah.

Greg (56:13) four students in one little apartment. And the three other people in there did not know how to cook, and he did. And what they were doing is they were just eating ramen, and he was cooking real food. And after a while, they made the proposal. They said, how about we give you our food money? We'll give you the budget we have for our food. And if you'll cook, how about we

can eat what you're cooking because what he was eating was so much better than what they were eating. And so it did not take long till he was cooking the meals for the entire apartment because they just were sick and tired of burgers and burritos and takeouts. so mean, cooking in his case, he never cooked professionally unless you consider that cooking professionally.

Moss (57:03) Yeah.

Greg (57:11) But having the skill to be able to create and cook for yourself, I think this is the key to nutrition also because as we understand, most restaurant food or prepared, pre-prepared food, it's not the ingredients that are poor in nutrition, it's the added ingredients that add to poor nutrition. And I was thinking about, we talked about AI and AI's effect on nutrition and food.

And I actually think it's entirely possible that AI will do a better job and prepare healthier food than what people currently are getting. Because they'll be able to create and manufacture food that does not require the toxic chemicals, the antifungals that they put on their cheese. mean, currently, if you get grated cheese, it's got vancomycin in it, which is the antibiotic.

that antifungal, it's an antifungal that they put in shredded cheese along with cellulose to prevent the cheese from clumping. They put these things in our food to preserve them so they don't go bad. If someone's able to manage the flow as an AI would be and there were robots to prepare the food for us, it's entirely possible we would get healthier food than we're currently eating.

than many people are currently eating, if they're just eating from microwavable things, things that they, poor boiling water, cup of noodles, you know, I mean, so I don't see that this is necessarily a bad thing. And we talked about this how for me, I see the cup as half full and not always as half empty. So I think that there can be improvements. Someone was telling me that if you created an app that told people how to eat,

Moss (59:00) Yeah.

Greg (59:07) a more Mediterranean diet that they saw an increase in gut health just by AI suggesting or the app suggesting that they make food choices. I believe that person was you. So I think, so, you know, I see that the future might be, I mean, only

Moss (59:23) It was in this it was in this very episode. Yeah.

Greg (59:34) because we're so pathetically poor right now in the nutrition we eat. It reminds me of there was a period of time when people would get what they called government cheese, which basically when the US had excess milk supply, they would just make pasteurized cheese out of it and then give it away to people who low income folks. And the variety of things, I mean, this was still a dairy product. Now I think American cheese,

is made more from oils than it is saturated oils than it actually is from dairy products. But at that time, people would come up with multiple, multiple recipes to use this cheese, whether it was cheese soufflés, whether it was fondues, whether you stuff it, make mac and cheese, whether you're stuffing chicken breasts with it. I mean, however you want to...

that even this product which they practically consider to be a throwaway, you can still, you can figure out ways to use it using your mind and if you have the knowledge and that's one of the things I wish is that there were more classes in school to help people figure out how to forage. We learned this from our families, we learned this from going hunting or from having a garden.

being on a farm or having an Italian family dinner once on Sundays where everybody got together and the whole family created these things. And I see that with society we're losing that link. And I think that that is equally as important as the nutrition in our food is this capacity.

Moss (1:01:24) Fair enough. Yeah. I'm a big fan of you know, I forget where 'cause I'm a bit of an airhead as you know better than anybody, but you know, there's there's a movement afoot in some in some of our states in America and certainly in other countries that says in high school you should have four full years of home economics. Everything from

you know, all the way through high school learning how to understand and source and cook food, how to how to clean your bathroom, like how to live your life. What are the tools that you need to to manage your own life? cooking among them. So I'm a big fan of you know, where where a family is falling short, you don't just sort of say, suck it up. You say we have to have a response to this, which is we have to take

the mantle so people leave high school knowing how to cook for themselves and they're not in college just heating up top ramen and saying you know what the what what the Sam Hill. Well anyway, incredibly engaging conversation. I just adore you so much. We're gonna zoom through our maelstrom right now, in the interest of getting you on with your beautiful day. so w

W we w the fuck yes that I'm gonna bring up is AI wildfire detection. So, you know, wildfires no bueno. You know. especially wildfires that are wild and kill people and or decimate communities, they get out of hand real fast. And and science says

That the sooner they're detected, the higher the likelihood is that they can be controlled. but we haven't really had a very good clear method. You know, the the little watchtowers that are on the top of the tallest ridges in America that, you know, to this day still have some men with binoculars standing out on porches, you know, looking for smoke signals. It's a little nuts. Well, now we have AI.

wildfire detection from satellite photography that's able to pinpoint wildfires really early on and dispatch dispatch people to it. So we we got these cameras on satellites. They're watching the ridge lines. They're flagging an ignition within minutes, which is kind of crazy. And and we get the alert early and we save homes. You know, we we we we save people's

Hearths. It's just a it that's such a fuck yes to me. I just it makes me feel so great that we're doing stuff like that with AI to to to to bring to bring beauty and greatness to the world. So now my now my fuck go ahead.

Greg (1:04:35) So, but there's a second part to that and that's once you detect where the fire is, someone has to get there. And you can have early detection, but these fires, I mean, there's two kinds of fires, ones that are set by humans and one that are set by nature. The ones that are set by humans typically are close access because humans are there, but you know, where I live, we get a lot of fires that are set by nature, typically in the form of lightning strikes.

And that can be thunderstorms in summer or it can be storms in winter. The worst are the ones in summer. And often there's no rain even involved in those storms. So human beings still have to get to these locations and they are often extremely remote. So this is where if you, so somebody or some crew of people has to go all the way out there and hike up the side of some slope to get up there. And then how much

Moss (1:05:20) They

Greg (1:05:35) How much gear can you bring? How much can you access to these areas? So what if drones, what if flying robots can carry the retardants or the resources or whatever necessary to be able to go address those? Because identification is one thing, but some of these may take two, three, four hours just to get a human being there.

who says, yeah, you better call a helicopter because this thing's already a fire. Because some of these lightning strikes that they have in these areas, it can take three or four days before it actually turns into a visible fire. So maybe with this AI and satellite tracking, they can monitor all those different, every single spot that the lightning went. AI can track that and then monitor it for the next seven to 10 days to see if it actually turns into something. Because many of these strikes don't.

Moss (1:06:19) Right.

Yeah.

Greg (1:06:33) Most

don't. So this is where I think that we need to take it to the next level, just not identification. But it's actually the capacity to get there, which takes human beings. And what is the cost to send a human being in a truck? Two folks in a water truck, three hours out to somewhere, and drag a hose. I don't think you're dragging a hose. How long does your hose have to be?

Moss (1:06:35) Yeah.

Greg (1:07:02) yeah.

Moss (1:07:03) Right. But I love your I love your idea that that you know you got it you got a monitor on it, you you're like, Okay, that spark is now aflame and then you you press a button and a fleet of Hoovercraft drones go and race towards the thing and you spray a little retardant on it and like, man, we didn't have to send any humans out there. We we th our humans are safe and we put out the fire and

Greg (1:07:24) Boom.

Moss (1:07:31) Yeah, I I like I like where you went with that one. That's awesome. Our fuck no this week is is really gross, so plug your ears if you are grossed out by gross things. But there's these nudify apps that are literally targeting minors. They've they've been told, you know, it's illegal to do this to minors, but they're you know, they're taking they're taking images of minors and stripping them naked and then sharing them.

on the internet with each other 'cause they're gross people. you know

Greg (1:08:05) So they're

not actually, people are not actually exposing themselves. They're using AI to alter them and then putting that to create a nude body. And then they're just putting their faces on. Is that what you're saying?

Moss (1:08:22) no,

AI AI can can get eerily close to the exact image of what somebody looks like naked by looking at what they how their clothes are hanging off their body. So they're they're essentially stripping people naked and then sharing their nude pictures. it's just and it's non consensual, right? 'Cause these are minors that are you know, they're they're they're doing it with l little children.

so it's just really gross. so it's it's sort of turning real kids into abuse imagery, which is just gross. It's non consensual. there's no upside to this. There's it's only a fuck no. You you can't argue any any beautiful outcomes here. So so there's that that one doesn't need much discussion because it's just a fuck no. Our fuck maybe this year this this week is is around

schools and teaching and tutoring. there are some US school districts that are piloting classrooms with no teachers in them. So especially in rural areas where it's difficult to to attract and retain talent in teaching staff. we've got we've got kids that are growing up with shady ass educations and

And we have to figure out how we close that gap. One of the ways they're doing it is to give these kids dedicated AI tutors who are solely focused on just those kids because that's what K AI does best. It's, you know, sucks up to anybody who will spend the time with it and will never let them go. so you know, you think if you want that in anybody, a teacher would probably be good, a good, a good exercise of it. I

I I'd love to know where you are on this, Greg, because from my vantage it's stupidity isn't an option and and we have to stop starving the brains of our children in in the interest of whatever political gain we're we're perceiving that we're getting. And and I'd really like I'd really like to see these rural areas answer this call.

Greg (1:10:48) So,

two.

Moss (1:10:48) But I also

I also think that humans learn from humans and and when when we're touched by a human and and we learn how to be humans from humans. Go ahead.

Greg (1:10:56) So I have two points of view on this.

One is

that, I have a close friend who was homeschooled and he had been in school up to a certain grade but then he was homeschooled for most of his educational life. And it wasn't his parents that taught him. What it was was that, I mean there was a curriculum but he was the one who had to do the research himself. He was the one who had to go find out about those.

Now, I think it was a combination, you know, he's of an age where it was probably a combination of computers and books. So books were involved. But by setting goals and challenges, he would then research those things. he would, so I'm not saying he was self-taught, but the follow-up was him actually studying things of interest.

self-directing, whereas I think that in a lot of schools, it's more of a social experiment and less of an educational one. Clearly, because people are able to get through all those 12 years of school and still can't read. you know, a school is often a huge distraction where the teachers have to teach to the lowest individual. The last ones are the ones that they have to bring that person up. And what about the smart ones? What are they doing? Well, they're just, you know, nothing. They're waiting around.

Moss (1:12:29) Rotting,

Greg (1:12:29) They did their

Moss (1:12:30) yeah.

Greg (1:12:30) work already. So in many ways, I feel that AI, especially if we control or control the teaching of AI, I think that it's going to be something that could give a superior education in many areas, in many of these areas, not socialization, not running around on the playground and just playing with other kids. You know, that's something that has to happen.

that we need to learn about. That goes back to my concerns with the family environment and with the food experience, the relationship and the sharing. So there's that part. But we also have to understand that we're living in a technological time. And if you're over 30, you may not understand how much the world has changed. And there are, I have a five,

six-year-old grandson and his adeptness at technology is Amazing. I mean he's able to make he Before he could read he knew how to operate tablets and find everything he wanted to find he could play games He knew how to operate a joystick you look at the Ukrainian War They're operating so much with drones. Where do they find these people who operate these drones? Well, these guys all were playing, you know video games

That's where they learned the technology that has a direct translation to real life application. So to have a judgment about computers, to have a judgment about technology is to deny the fact that the world is changing and it may be, honestly, for the better. So you cannot resist the wave. What you got to do is surface. And I think it's much better to look at using these tools that people are

Moss (1:14:03) Yeah, yeah.

Greg (1:14:25) You show a kid a book and they're not interested. You show them a tablet, they want to play on the tablet. And if you can come up with an educational curriculum where they're being able to do deep dives into these deep dives into these things and learning about history and science and nature, I think that literature, I think that we may be able to access youth to educate in a way that traditional education

is not reaching. All you have to do is look at the product. And I think that some people may excel in a native school environment, but other people are just being left behind. hopefully at some point in their life, they'll be able to remediate and to gather the information they missed in school. But just because you completed school and got a degree, there's no guarantee that you're educated or have any interest.

in knowledge. So I see this, I give this one a thumbs up. I see that this, especially in rural areas, otherwise those people have to move or ride buses for two hours a day. know, so I see that this one could be a plus. It's all in the management, Moss. It's all in the management and the design and guidance of the people who put the input into what the teaching tool is.

Moss (1:15:34) Exactly. Fair enough. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And and you know, the more I hear you talk, the more I the more sort of access orientation my brain takes this. And you know, for the adults that can be around, rather than them giving a lackluster version of algebra one because for whatever reason they're not the best teacher or whatever,

You know, you can you can give that task to to to an AI, and then you could have that that same person teach home ec. Right? You could have somebody who was really passionate about home economic, you know, h home home you know, home ec and and and and and and part of the community and you know, you can you can give the here's how to be a human kind of lessons to the humans who can be

guides to these kids in these in these rural areas. So th there's there's there's both it's it's it's both and I think if if to your point it's it's it's carefully carefully managed. I love that. Okay. we are gonna zoom through our tsunami for the week. Tsunami is is the last segment of the show where I ask you to go totally analog as a challenge. And the idea here is

Greg (1:17:17) Analog

Moss (1:17:17) You know, if each of

Greg (1:17:17) as a challenge? Explain what analog as a challenge.

Moss (1:17:24) it means there's no glass with light behind it that takes that plays a role in your tsunami for the week. We're putting all technology away, and my challenge is always gonna be something very human, physical, visual, sensory, something that your body experiences, feels, touches, kind of thing. So and the idea is that

You do it for yourself and you get to have a little, hmm, what was that like? Right. But someday, if I'm not boring people to tears, by then, I might have a following, a a critical mass that are appreciative of the messaging the and the and the s guests and the subject matter of this show. And you know, the idea is that, you know, one drop in a bucket is barely makes a sound, but

A million drops in a bucket overflows and can create a movement. And so the idea of the tsunami, or my idea of the tsunami, is more people touching themselves in intrinsically human ways can bring more humanity to our communities is is is the way I I I think about it. So our tsunami for this week is

Daydreaming. many of us do this naturally and we and we call it

Greg (1:18:47) Day, day, day, did you say daydreaming

or day drinking?

Moss (1:18:53) Daydreaming. Daydreaming. You can daydrink you can daydrink before, during and after. I I wouldn't recommend all of those because then I think we're talking about other human problems. But but have at it. But no, daydream. Give yourself take yourself

Greg (1:18:55) I thought you said day drinking.

Moss (1:19:23) Some place where there's nothing yelling at you. There's no alerts. There's nothing there's nothing asking you for your attention or telling you you forgot something or reminding you something so you don't forget. There's your wife isn't in the room saying, What should we do for dinner tonight? Like there's just nothing nothing around you. And just let your brain drift. Just just go. Just go. Let your brain go and see what happens.

And see if you rein it in. See if there's something in you that goes, come on, snap to it. You got things to do. but just try and notice your reflex around daydreaming. It's a lovely space to be in when it flows and when you can appreciate it. And we're often left to feel that it's wasted time or that it's not healthy, and it's actually

a cleansing important cognitive function that we should harness and and find sips of where we can. So that's the tsunami. Take five minutes, do a little daydream, and then just ask yourself how it felt. I think you might find some curious some curious input and feedback there. So you know

The one thing they can't grow from thin air is a daydream. And I want you to to just remember that, you know, all the microbes and CO two in the world on a spaceship going to Mars.

Really interesting stuff, but it's not a daydream. Give yourself a chance to daydream. Okay. That is that's our tsunami and that's our show. Greg Enos, thank you again, you dear person. I really appreciated all of your insights and I knew that you would just rock this. I know, get out there and cook, everybody. It's it's the most important thing you can do. I I would say get out there and cook because robots can't, but

Greg (1:21:20) Well, that's my pleasure.

And get out there and cook.

Moss (1:21:37) I can say get out there and cook like a human because robots can't. Because sadly we do have robots that are that are cooking already. anyway, like, subscribe, follow. Those are all very important to me and the podcast growth. We appreciate you. Thank you all very much for listening, and thank you for being here for going human because robots can't. Be back in a week.

Greg (1:21:42) the friend.