David Page | From Dictators to Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives | Ep. 64

David Page once asked Gaddafi about cross-dressing. He’s been in bunkers during revolutions. And yes — he created Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives (the one with the spiky blonde hair guy).

In Episode 64 of Mosaic Minds, we talk to the man behind the madness. From NBC war reporting to pioneering food television, David shares how storytelling shaped his path — and how he continues doing it today through his podcast Culinary Characters Unlocked.

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https://culinarycharactersunlocked.com

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Transcript

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Look, I asked Moar Gaddafi if he crossdressed. Um, you you remember him? He was a dictator and a terrorist ran Libya. The New York Post had recently mocked up a picture of him. The whole front page was this picture of him wearing women's clothing. They had him in a dress wearing pumps. I think he had a handbag. I think the dress was floral, but and they they cited a story quoting intelligence sources, which presumably was a CIA disinformation leak. And the gist of the story was that Mo liked to dress up in women's clothing and he also took a lot of drugs. So, as my last question in the interview, I said, "The New York Post says, "You like to crossdress in women's clothing and you're taking a lot of drugs." Is that true? But his interpreter, nothing. There was this pause and I looked over and his interpreter had this horrified look on his face cuz he wasn't going to say that. I mean, this is a country where you you piss off the leader, you get killed, right? And in the middle of this pregnant pause, Gaddafi starts to laugh cuz obviously he spoke English. He knew exactly what I asked. Um, and what you said. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. And you know, his answer was it was the Zionists. Mosaic lines. We're here to explore. With every exchange, we crave even more. Diverse perspectives are guiding in the realm of ideas we play. It is going to be a good day. It is going to be positive. The sun's rising today. You know, we're going to have a great day regardless of weather, attitude, or anything else. Where dreams interwine. Uncover the layers. Let the realness shine. Each tale a treasure. Each question the guide in this space of connection. Let's take the ride. Moments of wonder with good reason. Welcome back to another episode of Mosaic Minds podcast. I'm Nick. This is Jason. And tonight we are joined by the man who invented one of the most addictive food shows on TV. This is the OG creator of Diners Diveins and Dives. Two-time Emmy winner, world traveler, journalist, author, podcast, and the only man who's ever made Guy Fury's hair look subtle. So, let's welcome David Paige. David, thanks for being on the show tonight. Thank you for having me. That's quite the introduction. Yes, Guy's hair was a continual challenge. So you you reported from uh war zones it looks like from our research you guys I rep I'm not going to claim to be a war guy. I I I've been in a few circumstances that were hairy but I was not one of those guys who spent his entire life dodging bullets. But Gotcha. I've been to some dicey places. Okay. Well, since since we're talking about that, let's start off with that. Like give us uh one of the craziest experiences you had in one of these dicey places. Well, let's see. First time uh I ever came under gunfire was in the Romanian revolution. I put together an international convoy of journalists and and led them across the border from Hungary where I had set up a bureau for NBC, pardon me, knowing that the communist revolutions were were about to occur. We busted through the the border because the border that was Transylvania on the Romanian side and Transylvania had been part of Hungary and the border guards there were ethnic Hungarians even though they were Romanian. So they waved us through without visas or anything. Anyway, we got as far as on the first night we got to a city called Timishwara which was the scene of active fighting and my correspondent with me was George Lewis who had a lot of experience in Vietnam. And as I said I I had not had the joy of being shot in the direction of until then. And just as we get out of the car in front of this hotel we're going to go into AR-15 gunfire erupts and before I know it I'm lying on the asphalt. I I don't know how I got there, but instinctively, and George is next to me, and I I looked at him. I said,"Well, George, you've been through this before. What do we do now?" And he reached behind him into his backpack and pulled out a bottle of booze and said,"We do this." Wow. I thought you were about to say he pulled out another AR and he No, no, no. You don't shoot back. You don't shoot. I mean, I've had You tell these story. Look, I asked Moar Gaddafi if he crossdressed. Um I I Wow. Okay. You You remember him? He was a dictator and a terrorist and he ran. Okay. He was the one that like shot the fat into his neck or something, right? Like to make his neck bigger. Like that that was the story. Like I've heard that story before, but I'm about to tell you a good story. In uh in retaliation for his role in a disco bombing in in West Berlin, the United States bombed Libya and and in the process, whether on purpose or not, did some serious damage to one of his houses. I was the first American journalist, I think, of any kind. Certainly the first TV journalist who got an interview with him after that incident. And so they, you know, it was all the the bells and whistles of when an authoritarian wants to show off and they picked me up at the hotel and blindfolded me and all that crap. And we show up at his, pardon me, at his bombed out house and they take me in and they give me a tour and including his bedroom which looked like U Hefner had designed it. I mean, he had this round bed and in the arms on each side of it, they they were like blue velvetine and there were like remote controls, I assume, for the hi-fi stereo, you know. So, I saw that and then they took me in to do the interview and they wouldn't let my crew come. They recorded it and gave us the tape. So, it's just me and his security guards and in comes Mo, uh, who I had seen on other occasions, but not in a one-on-one like this. And he sits down. Now, you got to understand, he speaks or spoke. He's dead. He spoke perfect English, but for a number of reasons, he would often refuse to engage in English and he would have a translator. One of the reasons was he gave him more time to consider his answers, I think. But the other was it was a political statement. He wasn't going to bow to the will of West and speak. Anyway, we we go through this whole interview and he's giving me the same old crap he always, you know, there's nothing new newsworthy or or interesting in any of this. It's, you know, boilerplate. And we get to the end of it. And again, we're doing this through a translator and I've got nothing that that's of any particular value. So, I figure, well, what the hell? Let's try this one. The New York Post had recently mocked up a picture of him. The whole front page was this picture of him wearing women's clothing. They had him in a dress wearing pumps. I think he had a handbag. I think the dress was floral, but and they they cited a story quoting intelligence sources, which presumably was a CIA disinformation leak. And the gist of the story was that Mo liked to dress up in women's clothing and he also took a lot of drugs. So as my last question in the interview, I said, "The New York Post says, "You like to cross-dress in women's clothing and you're taking a lot of drugs. Is that true?" Love it. But his interpreter, nothing. There was this pause and I looked over and his interpreter had this horrified look on his face cuz he wasn't going to say that. I mean, this is a country where you you piss off the leader, you get killed, right? And in the middle of this pregnant pause, Gaddafi starts to laugh cuz obviously he spoke English. He knew exactly what I asked. Um, and you know, his answer was it was the Zionists, but that that pregnant pause was was quite the moment. Yeah. And that was that was a pre-I, you know what I mean? So, Oh, yeah. No, it was it was prei, but we did have Photoshop back then. So, and by the way, he made a relatively attractive woman in the picture. So, and you know what's interesting? He was charismatic. He was charismatic as hell, and women loved him. I one time we were in Libya covering something I don't remember what and he decided one day that he was only going to meet with female journalists and luckily our editor was so um she went to the interview in in place of a producer a correspondent and Judith whose last name escapes me who later was proven very wrong on UMD in Iraq but anyway Judith Miller a New York Times correspondent she was in the Anyway they went to the group and my editor came back and said man He he is he just exudes magnetism which is something interesting that I found dictators and authoritarians when you're in the presence of them as evil as they are. They do own a room and that's how you get to that state. That's where you can get people to drink your Kool-Aid. And I saw it up close. He was terribly charismatic. Oh, so was bizarrely enough Gasser Arafat who would not strike you as someone exuding charisma but he he owned a room. I'll tell I'll tell you an Arafat story again early in my overseas tenure. Hadn't done demonstrations in the Middle East before. And we were in cartoon in the Sudan for an interview with him in the evening. They go, you

know, it's like 3: 9:07

00 in the morning, you have to go through breakfast with this whole group and then you get the interview which tells you nothing. But anyway, so I was one of many at a table that he was hosting breakfast at that evening and then we did an interview with them. The next day there were anti-American protests going on in the streets and he was speaking and I was in the crowd and again I I was kind of a a babe in the woods to this sort of thing at that point. I hadn't been overseas very long and I got separated from my crew and I'm in the midst of this increasingly angry mob shouting down with America and I'm getting a little nervous and I look up and he catches my eye because I had been uh at his the place he was staying. I was going to say his house. I'm sure it was a borrowed villa, but I'd seen him the night before. And darn if he didn't give me a wink to say, "Relax, dude. It's street theater." Nick and I were educating oursel a little bit there. Didn't you have an event in the Berlin like with the wall like Yes, I was there the night. Interesting. Or noteworthy there. Yeah. No, the collapse of communism throughout Europe was a sequence of events where one government fell after another. And I ran NBC's on the ground coverage of all of them. And now it was time for Berlin. The assumption was that something was going to go on with East Germany. So preiently enough, the grown-ups in New York decided that we should bring nightly news to Berlin, to the Brandenburg Gate, which is probably the geographical landmark of Berlin and at the time was part of the divide between East Berlin and West Berlin. And so Brokaw came in, the anchor man, and we we lit the hell out of the place with 10k brute lights, which I think helped generate the crowds and and the demonstrations. But while we were there to do nightly news, which remember because of the time difference wouldn't

go on the air until 11: 10:56

30 or midnight, depending on the time zone. Um, and one of the cameramen runs into the production trailer and says, "They're coming through the British checkpoint." I said, "Who's coming through?" He said,"Berliners." Apparently the government said if you want to leave you can leave. And I said uh it's a podcast so I can swear right. I said freaking [ __ ] And then he had one of the the first cameras that actually had a its own monitor for playback and he opened the monitor up and showed it to me and my god they were streaming across the Now it wasn't Checkpoint Charlie. That's the American checkpoint. This was the British I think maybe the French but probably the British checkpoint. and they were streaming out and suddenly we were there about to do a newscast at the exact moment that the Berlin Wall opened which was just extraordinary. And you may remember pictures of all of those Germans dancing on top of the wall. I'm responsible for that because I grabbed a ladder and ran to the wall so that my crew could climb up and get aerial shots and immediately the crowd took the ladder away from me and they all climbed up. So it was party time. That's awesome. That was so cool. Well, I'll tell you one of the coolest things. A few days later, Joe Cocker gave a concert in West Berlin, uh, celebrating the opening of the wall and predicting the reunification of Germany. And he sang as the highlight number of his set, Get by with a little help from my friends. Now, the anchor man, this was the weekend. So, the anchor man of Weekend Nightly News was a guy named Garrick Utley. One of the greatest journalists of ever and and uh someone I idolized and was lucky enough to to work with on a number of occasions, but Garrick was the straightest person in the world, certainly on television. I mean, Mr. I don't want to say this in a bad way, but he was Mr. Boring. And I convinced him. I said, "Tell you what, why don't we close the show tonight with a music video with Joe Cocker singing I get by a little help from my friends and we'll edit over it all the incredible footage from the wall opening in this first week of Euphoria." And Garrick said yes. And we actually closed Nightly News, Garrick's Nightly News with this wild music video set to Joe Cocker. It was it was a great great moment. I'm I bet that has probably played in multiple spots since then. That wasn't exclusive to that. I'm sure I was very proud of that. We cut that baby on deadline, too. That's really cool. So, before we dive into the uh Triple D and before we talk about, you know, some your podcast and some of your other things, tell us a little bit about how you got into journalism in the first place and did you is that something you always knew you wanted to do or how did you initially get into that? Yeah. Interestingly enough, I first knew that I wanted to be in broadcasting. I remember being I don't know, maybe I was 10, 11 years old in the car with my parents listening to WEW, the middle of the road radio station, powerhouse radio station in New York City, and listening to a disc jockey by the name of William B. Williams, uh, saying just blurting out, I want to do that when I grow up. And my father, who was an academic, was horrified, and he said, oh, God, no. You you can do better than that. Okay, fine. But I never lost the dream. And I actually chose to become a day student at a local boarding school. I I we moved to Massachusetts when when I was young. And so there were, you know, that was the the world of prep schools. And I chose I asked my parents if I could go to Mount Herman, the local prep school, because it had a carrier current radio station operated by the students. So I got to do that. And then I picked up a local weekend job at the little tiny local radio station. And around that time, Watergate happened. I'm that old. And the parallels to today are pretty remarkable. The outcomes are are pretty different. But like so many people, I I just became mesmerized by investigative reporting, by what Woodward and Bernstein were doing. And from that point forward, I wanted to be a journalist, which included, you know, early in my career thinking I was Mike Wallace and, you know, all the gotcha questions and all that. But I did end up I mean much of my you end up doing a lot in your career but much of my career was investigative journalism. I actually ran the investigative unit at 2020. So that that bug stuck with me and you know in my day back in in the old days you worked your way up. You'd start at a local radio station you go to a bigger radio station. At some point if you were lucky you'd break into television. You'd work your way up. Eventually you'd get to the network. I mean now now it's different. Anybody can get a job anywhere it seems. But back when I was doing it, I mean, you you really there was a a big ladder to climb and I was very lucky. Um because there were an awful lot of good people. I I was in the right place at the literally I was working as the investigative reporter radio TV station in Atlanta. And I hated the news director. He was a complete buffoon schmuck [ __ ] idiot more so than most news directors are. and the station manager was even stupider than he was. And so we didn't get along real well. Finally, they fired me. So I figured I better look for work. So I I was walking around town carrying demo reels. I went to the other TV stations and I went to the NBC bureau in and there was no shot. I mean they were there so I might as well walk in and say hi. And I I go to drop off a tape with with in those days we called them secretaries. She was the office bureau manager. And I'm leaving and she comes running after me saying, "No, no, Tom, the bureau chief would like to meet you." And I was not dressed to meet the bureau chief. I was in jeans and but anyway, so I went in and talk about right place, right time. One of his producers had just informed him that she was going to take a sbatical to write a book with Alex Haley and he needed a freelance producer. And so that's how I broke into NBC. And from that, I mean, I I left that gig because I had nothing permanent. I ended up working on TV again in Houston, but NBC then became available to me and and I was hired as a producer. Actually, they were going to send me to Atlanta. But talk about the old days. This was long before the Me Too movement. And a prominent NBC executive was well known. He was married, but he was well known to be having an affair with a producer in the Chicago bureau. And after they offered me Atlanta, she told New York she wanted to go to Atlanta. So they offered me Chicago which being a union market paid literally twice what I would have made in Atlanta. Hell yeah. You know more power to them and you know then from there I went to Europe and all of that. So you're telling the skyscraper story so I got to tell a basement story. So 25 years ago I was able to take broadcasting. I was a part of a small you know college ranch station at WVUB out of Vincens's Indiana small town. And uh the the names that brought me into the broadcasting was uh Casey Kasem and Harry Kerry, announcer of the Cubs. And then uh the Chicago guy, I mean Harry, being in Northern Indiana, you got to be a Chicago guy because that's only only, you know, WGN was the only station you could get Major League Baseball. What a great station. Absolutely. Absolutely. So, the story that I'm going to tell you is to date me just a little bit is I'm running a radio station uh Paul Harvey and I'm recording it on a cart and I didn't realize that the cart was shorter for that segment. So, I didn't rewind the cart to its fullest. So, to make a long story short, I'm playing the station and to make a long story short, dead air, dead air, dead air, but the guy told me never to say anything to get it back off the dead air. So, then he calls and like literally almost cussing me out because I'm dead air in it. And it was just a great memory for me because I, you know, I did something different after that. But the fact that I went through it and did it, it's inspirational to hear. So the question I have to ask you is is I can only relate to sports because that's been my whole life. I've played sports, you know, for 40 years plus. Broadcasting has been a blessing because now I'm back into broadcasting. And by the way, you have the voice. So yeah, he does. I appreciate that. Appreciate that. So the question I have for you is in the sports world, I got to get picked to make a team. I got to try out. I got to show my jumping ability, my intensity. How were you the guy that got to do all those interesting assignments? Cuz I can't think of better assignments that you would have got in that era of time. So that's the question I have for you as far as why did you get to do those as opposed to maybe, you know, other people getting to do those similar positions? You mean why did I get the job or why did I get the assignments once I had the job? Why did you get those cool assignments? Like you were the guy that got to go as opposed to maybe you get to go on one of one of those three. It is just shooting fish in a barrel. I mean, the network only has so many people in so many places. So, the first pick is territorial. You know, when I was working out of the Frankfurt Bureau, then Berlin was my shot first and if I wasn't available, then someone from London. But, um, I'm going to say something horrible. I mean, it was a meritocracy and I was damn good at my job. That's what I was hoping you would say. I was I was waiting for him to be like, cuz I'm a badass. You know what I mean? No, I I was in my day, at the risk of sounding like a complete [ __ ] I was one of the best on earth. Now, you can't be that forever. And the day came when I was like an athlete who knew that his knees were going. And I asked to be returned to the states in a show producing position cuz every morning I got up every morning that I was working overseas and the first thing I said to myself is CBS is going to [ __ ] me today and I didn't want to lose. So I was motivated by fear and I went out and kicked ass and I mostly won. My batting average was very good but I knew those days were ending. I knew I was slowing down. I knew that some of that intense motivation that existed in my head, my body wasn't going to cash that check. So, I chose to get out of there on top. And I think I mean with I wish Ruth Bader Ginsburg had done the same. Yeah. Anything you're going to do if you're good at it, you should do to the best possible standard. And if you fear that you can no longer reach that standard, it's time to do something else. And I look, I I didn't suck. One of my favorite things to do on this uh this show is is to explain to people why we came up with our name. So to me, a mosaic is like I've said this 20 times, but it's looking through a church window and you're watching those interwoven colors that make color hues that you don't normally see. So in in the thread of the mosaic minds, the question that I would have for you is is when you're in that moment, I'm going to judge you as being in good health during that moment. And I'm going to say from a doctoral position that I'm definitely not. I'm going to say 120 over 80 is normally a blood pressure that I would say would be an acceptable levels might be off. Help me with the analogy I'm giving you to to kind of display to me. Is your heart rate up? Are you sweating when you don't normally sweat? Are you as cool as a cucumber? Like what is your demeanor when you're talking to those leaders, you know, and walking through balancing a little bit of a So go ahead. There was I think times have changed now because when I was doing it, we were not the targets. There was a generally accepted understanding that you didn't aim at the press and that if you did that, even the most evil person on earth was afraid of the condemnation that would come from aiming at us. And when you're young, single, and stupid like I am, on the occasion that you get into a dangerous situation, you think you're invulnerable and that nothing bad could happen to you. So, anyone who tells you they were courageous in doing most of this kind of stuff is full of [ __ ] Okay. It was They're making themselves. It was fun, dude. Yeah, I'm sure. And I that may sound crass, but it was also remember to the extent that you even see the picture the camera's recording on rare occasion when you would look through the lens when the cameraman would say, "Take a look at this." That was black and white and nobody really bleeds in black and white. So there was a sense of unreality. Now today it's different. Today the press is the target. And look, we were the target from how do I say this? If you recall the troubles in Northern Ireland, they called them the troubles. I'm not minimizing it, but it was, you know, sectarian violence between, for the most part, Catholics and Protestants, although the division went far beyond religion. And we would cover that. And generally, you you get to shoot it from the IRA side of any conflict cuz the underdog wants the coverage and the government doesn't. So, we we spend a fair amount of time on their side of the In fact, I'll tell you a funny story. Let me interrupt. Don't let me forget the story I was going to tell. were covering a confrontation between uh and I'm not even sure they were like officially IRA but probably not but a bunch of protesting Catholics who were engaged in violence with uh the British army and I feel a tap on my shoulder and a guy says hey you got a light mate and um at the time I smoke cigars and I was looking at what was happening so I reached in my pocket I handed a lighter back and then a second later I looked behind me and the some [ __ ] was using my lighter to set fire to his mole He then threw at the soldiers. Um, back back to the story I was going to tell. Look, there are times when again I was not a war correspondent. I I don't have the Beirut Lebanon peing your head around the corner as the gunfire whizzes by your head kind of guy. You know, I was in some dicey situations from time to time. And we were in Northern Ireland. It was um uh an orange parade celebration. Orange being the uh nationalist colors of Northern Ireland adopted by the Protestants who were opposed to the Catholics who wanted to be independent from Britain. Anyway, so it was a big day for the uh the nationalists to be out in force and we're covering the parade. We're walking through a vioaduct, you know, kind of an underground passageway. And I'm with the toughest correspondent on the face of the earth, Henry Champ, who's 27 feet tall and could kill you with one hand and probably has. And as we walk through this thing, a bunch of like 13 and 14 year olds come up behind us and start kicking us in the ass. And we keep walking and they're kicking us in the ass. And I finally turn to Henry. I say,"How long do we take this?" He says, "As long as we have to." So there is some sense of pragmatism. Do you feel like because of what you've been through and and what you've witnessed and the way you got started in in journalism, do you feel like that you've hear a lot of people say that journalism is dead now and it's definitely different. How do you feel about modern journalism and modern broadcasting? I mean, well, for the most part, it makes me want to vomit for a number of reasons. Look, I'm going to separate cable news from the rest of journalism because cable news which is watched by a tiny fraction of the population, but yet reverberates as if it matters, thus it does. That's all opinion [ __ ] right? That is certainly Fox is untrue. They they make stuff up. MSNBC is less untrue, but still quite slanted. I'm talking about the the mainstream outlets. Most of what's wrong with them these days is ineptitude and finance. They no longer hire the best of the best. You get promoted in those ranks because of what you look like or how you can walk on camera. You get promoted without the kind of experience that you used to have to have in the old days. And the fact is the corporations that run the networks and most newspapers in America are completely motivated by profit. Look at ABC and CBS settling. Well, ABC settled, CBS is about to settling these completely horseshit lawsuits from Trump that never should have been settled. So, those days those days are over. Now, let me be clear. There are still institutions doing a hell of a job. Whether you like them or not, whether you consider them overly liberal or not, the New York Times, for the most part, does a hell of a job. Whether you think they're too conservative editorially, the Wall Street Journal does a hell of a job. I would even for the most part uh be a fan of NPR. I I think they skew left in the topics that they cover, but I think once they're covering something straight about it. Um but no, I I I think journalism in the United States is nowhere near what it ought to be. But we're also Look, this is a country thanks to social media and proliferation of available channels that no longer gets for the most part very few people get the full picture of anything. They they live in their little silos. They get whatever reinforces them. And frankly, not to get political, but this country is becoming an authoritarian state and nobody seems to care. You know, that's been I feel like it's been slowly drifting in that direction for quite some time. But you're right. It seems like it's defined quite time. It certainly this did not happen under um anyone in my memory before Trump. And I don't mean this attack on Trump, but what's happened is, you know, look, US Marines on the streets, we were just Yeah, we were just talking about that. Look, you know, the old joke about you you turn the temperature, you put the frog in the bathtub and you turn the temperature up one degree at a time, he doesn't notice he's boiling. Well, America's boiling and nobody noticed. No, we got to we got to kind of, you know, call it something. I I'm going to call it the golden era. That's a wrestling term, actually. But, you know, being What was the golden era of wrestling? Uh that was 80s9s. Oh, okay. So that's that's I've got to call it something to give reference, but I'm talking 80s and 90s. So I remember with the limited, you know, growing up in a country and not having a TV uh tower within 75 miles, you know, ABC, NBC, CBS, I remember him being more middle of the road. So I don't I don't want to go down the politics train, but I will say this. I believe that if you if if you're on a if you're on a plane and there's three seats on either side of the aisle, I think as we separate to the far window seats, it creates a little bit of dissension. So the the point I'm going to make is back in the 80s and 90s, I think there was more um it could be a strong opinion on one side or the other and it was respected because it was more it was more golden intuitive. But I'm gonna not interrupt, but I've got to interrupt. I'm going to disagree with you so deeply. That's fair. It's frankly you say the networks have gotten more opinionated. I think they they they are doing a massive disservice to the American public by giving equal time or equal weight to various viewpoints. One of which may make sense and one of which is complete horshit. Your job as a journalist is to define what's true. And it's not fascinating this. I think the networks couldn't agree more. You know, they'll tell you they've been hard-hitting, but but they've been very soft on an awful lot of what's going on in the country and in the government. And I think, frankly, you know, I just watched CNN broadcast the stage play Good Night and Good Luck about Edward R. Marorrow and standing up to McCarthy and and red baiting. And that that play and that whole era is a good example of when on the one hand on the other hand cannot work or cannot be effective in times of a massive crisis. You you've got to have the guts to say this is horseshit and these are the reasons why. Not as Fox does this is horshit and then lie about it. But I think frankly the networks are failing in their obligation right now to be and by the way that doesn't mean just being tough on Trump. It means being tough on Schumer who hasn't shown the backbone that a porcupine has to stand up and do anything and to beat up. You know, yes, there's been a fair amount of coverage of the conflicts of interest on the Supreme Court, but there could be far more. They haven't done jack about truly exploring the failure of the cabinet to in Trump's first term. I mean, now it's a complete joke to to stand up or or during um Biden's term to stand up to their obligation under the 25th amendment and say the president is impaired. Um and from what I and look again, I was a big Biden supporter. I think his his programs were terrific. I think what he did for the country was great, but I also think that two years into his second term, he should have been bounced from office now that I know what had happened to him. But, you know, both he and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who were liberal heroes of mine, basically destroyed their legacies because they refused to leave at a time that would have allowed them to be effectively replaced by someone else of their own intellectual bent. Yeah. Well, let's let's jump into uh because I want to make sure that we talk about diners drive-ins and dives, you know, cuz anybody that is listening to this, even if they haven't watched it, which probably most of them have, they've at least heard of it. I mean, everybody's heard of it. So, so how did you go from what you were doing in journalism to deciding to create a TV show? And how did it why was it food? Like, how did that come about? The whole the whole Well, I needed to make a few bucks. We'll get there in a minute. But I do want to point one thing out. ism doesn't have to be a traditional newspaper story. Journalism is the imparting of information in an honest way. And I applied to diners the exact same accuracy and truth standards that I applied to every piece I ever supervised at 2020 when I was running the investigative unit. Now, most quote reality TV doesn't and is in many cases[ __ ] but diners was absolutely accurate up to and including if you go back and look at the episode. I I only did the first 11 seasons, but I insisted that we include every single step of every recipe on camera in the show. None of this jumping over stuff. If you were going to watch a guy make something, I was going to tell you every single thing about how to do it. Now, how did I get there? I saw the demise of network journalism long before many people. I was line producer at Good Morning America, which meant that every third week, subject to the executive producer, putting the show together and taking it to the control room and putting it on the air was my responsibility. And one morning, the hottest show on TV was Who Wants to be a Millionaire with Reges. And it was a complete phenomenon. And one evening, the executive producer came up to me and said, "There's going to be a million-dollar winner tonight. He's booked for your first half hour tomorrow." Well, the first half I I could see booking him somewhere, but not in the first half hour. That was supposed to be news. That was the moment at which I knew that the television business, the news business I'd been in was over. So, I started looking for something else to do. I got headhunted to to go to a home shopping channel and I thought, it's not news. It's a cool thing to do and I'll I'll get stock options at a publicly traded corporation. That'll be cool. I didn't like it. I left pretty quickly. At which point, I opened a production company and starved. I couldn't sell a damn thing. So I called Al Roker who had and still has a production company and who when I was co-running the Sunday the weekend editions of the the the Today Show, he was on that show. He hadn't yet graduated to the big show. So technically he had worked for me, although talent never works for a producer. I called him up and said,"Hey, I'm starving. You want to throw me some work?" He said, "Yeah, I'm doing a lot of stuff for the Food Network. Why don't I subcontract some of that to you?" So I that's how I ended up doing food television and we both knew that I wasn't going to be tremendously successful just as basically a subcontractor for him. So I was pitching the network directly and they kept saying no no no no. Finally I had done a documentary for him for the Food Network on diners and I was on the phone with a Food Network executive pitching and she was saying no no finally out of frustration she said don't you have anything for me? Aren't you doing anything about diners? And I said, "Oh yeah, I'm developing a show called Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives." And I told her all about it. And for a change, she said, "You know, that sounds interesting. We have a meeting Monday, uh, a meeting Tuesday. Give me a write up Monday." Now, this was late Thursday evening. The the sun was already down. And I got off the phone excited that she was interested, but but kind of I'd screwed myself cuz I was not developing a show called Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives. I had just pulled the the name out of my ass and the detailed description I gave her and and that gave me a few days to, you know, call around to restaurants and such and I submitted a pitch and it turned into a show and off we went. So that's the accidental way I became a food television guy. I love that. Kind of a random question. I know you've been a lot of places, but have you ever heard of a place called the Tamalei Place in Indianapolis, Indiana? No. It was It tell it was on It was on the show. It's a Nick. They're famous for for their tamales. Yeah. But what kind of what kind of tamales? Traditional Mexican tamalei. Yeah. Traditional. They also have dessert tamales. They in like Mississippi tamali are a whole different they're they're spicy and unlike anything you'd get in Mexico. So So the show was actually there. That's why I was asking that. That was long long after me. Yep. But you went to went to all over the country and stuff. Um, talk to me a little bit about uh my judgment of the show from my side of the desk would be I really liked how it was not you couldn't go into a commercial place. I I get the impression that these places were not making it in a 5gallon drum. Uh it wasn't a when I was doing the show it was legit. I had no idea what they do now or what they did starting with my departure. But no, as I said earlier, it had to be true. And by the way, 5% of the time the crew and guy would walk into a restaurant and guy would call me back and say, "I got a problem with this place." And I'd say, "Can it leave?" And the network when they found out about this thought I was crazy cuz the budget that they approved did not include eating the costs of 5% of the shoots. But I wasn't going to. If it wasn't true, we weren't going to do it. Yeah. Let's uh let's segue and turn the page just a little bit and let's talk your podcast. All right. Let's talk Andre. We got Culinary Characters Unlocked. Available on Spotify, Apple, Amazon, YouTube, and wherever you get your podcast. Your fingers up. What did I miss? Did I miss something? No, I'm That's where That's where I'm going to put the T. Okay. Right up there. Just going to point at it. Right there. It's uh I'm very proud of it. It is. We drop once a week and each episode is a conversation between me and someone I consider to be important in the world of food. You just won a James Beard Award. I don't know what to say. Where are you going next? Well, Culinary Characters Unlocked, of course. Winner after winner on recent and upcoming episodes, wherever you get your podcast. Thank you. It doesn't mean they're famous, although they often are. It doesn't mean they're legendary, although they often are. It's anyone from Michelin star winning chefs, James Beard award-winning chefs to the upandcomers who will one day have those awards to folks you'll never hurt you'll never hear of who run phenomenal local restaurants to a few other people who are not actual chefs or restaurant tours. Adrien Miller, for example, known as the Soul Food Scholar, who has researched the history of black and southern food in America. I've had him on, but I've I've had some of the most well-known people in well, Adrian's wellknown, but Dan Barber, who is perhaps the most innovative thinker in all of American food today. He's done the show, Nancy Silverton, one of the pioneering chefs in America. And the woman that you can thank for creating the sourdough bread boom. I've had her on. I show I'm editing right now is with Jordan Khan who has three Michelin stars across his two restaurants in LA at the moment. I interviewed Jake Dell who owns the Carnegie Deli which in my view is the ultimate example of a particular genre of food. I talked with well recently two actually pit masters both women from two different phenomenal establishments about the barbecue they make. So it it covers it it covers wide range. But the idea is to have thoughtful, deep, intelligent conversations about the world of food from how you got into it to how you make what you make to where we think food is going in America. And by the way, the fact that these are thoughtful and deep doesn't make them the broccoli that you have to eat before you get dessert. These are absolutely entertaining, charming, delightful characters. And that's the essence of storytelling. They're often funny. These are these are good time hangs for anyone who's ever had a meal. How do you keep the conversation so fresh after doing this for so many years? Because you asked me earlier how I succeeded as a journalist. I possess the essential quality to be a journalist. I'm curious. When I hired people for my production company, when I was doing diners and other shows, I really didn't care if you'd been in television or even journalism before, I cared about two things. Were you intelligent? And were you curious? Because unless you're the kind of person who wants to ask the next question because you really want to know the answer, don't bother. a random story that I want to tell you that's applicable to what you're saying because first off, I want to compliment you for the fact that you're selective in the projects and the people you have, the stuff you're able to do. You know, my dad uh visited Sagal. He spent a lot of time over there. You know, we we got a drum that was unique. We got a turtle that was unique and we brought a young man over there and uh he fished in a retention pond that's a mud hole. I can kick a football from one end to the other behind my house. This young man takes bread with all 10 of his fingers and rolls a perfect bread ball, throws it out in the water, and I'm sitting there laughing at him like, "Bro, like, are you serious right now?" 15 minutes later, a perfectly matted bread ball is still on the hook with no flakes off. It was like something out of a movie. The reason I'm telling you that is is that guest at that time was the greatest fisherman I'd ever seen. And he points out in the water and he says, "Don't you see where the water breaks?" and he had a unique perspective of that water that I've fished thousands of times. And if I'm I'm giving myself cold chills as I tell you this, but man, I'm almost in tears to see that I'm coming alive and my voice is more in flection and I'm moving more. But like I sat behind a m, you know, a microphone and didn't get to scratch the itch for 25 years. We've now been doing this about a year and a half. And then I told Nick, I mean, I'll say it verbatim to you and I want you to hear this. I was like, this guy is a badass. I was like, he's done this, he's done this, he's done this. And the cool thing about it is is Well, that's very kind of you. Thank you. You you're humble with it. You're selective with it. You know, I'm not going to go back to the politics, but I also like the fact that you are here. I can't say I'm on opposite ends of the spectrum, but we're we're far apart there. However, you kind of came back to the middle and you said, you know, what's right is what's right. What's wrong is wrong. You know what I mean? And I think I think I think I'm proud to hear the guest that you have and I think we were spot on. I mean this is this is an easy conversation for us and hopefully you well on your end too. So I'm I'm enjoying it because it's a conversation. You know so much of interviewing is read a question don't listen to the answer read the next question. You got to go where the conversation takes you. Exactly. Yes. Yeah. Well we I think a lot of people too es I mean because everybody's got a podcast now, right? So, I think I think a lot of people they they jump into it and they're like,"Okay, we're going to be these YouTube stars, you know, we're going to have, you know, this amount of downloads, but that's not why we did it." You know what I mean? We started doing it because, like you said, we were curious, you know, we've met so many cool, great people, you know, fun people to talk to. And that was really kind of the whole the whole purpose behind this that along with having a little com cuz we work together. So, having a little camaraderie outside of work. I mean, I got to be brutally honest with you, man. I'm not a small guy. I can defend myself and I'm not bragging, but at the same time, man, being in a foreign country that gives me cold chills because I remember some military people. Um, I got to be careful because I don't know the laws and stuff and it's nothing crazy, but here's a name that you'll remember. Uh, Ted Cppel. So, I don't know what I can say, and I'm not trying to be ridiculous, but I I know a guy that was in the office that did a procedure on him. I think I could say that. And nothing weird like just a just a basic pros, you know, but I'll just leave I'll just leave it at that. But I thought that was interesting because Coppel is legitimately a god. And by the way, you know, he's still working. He does pieces for CBS Sunday Morning. Great. Great guy. He said he he said exactly what you said. Classy, nice, just just real great guy. I never had the opportunity to work with him, which is uh I regret. But no, CoppP was the gold standard. Now, I did have the opportunity to work with someone who's taken a fair amount of heat lately, who I also consider in many respects a gold standard. I was one of the first to work with George Stephanopoulos when he came to ABC. I I edited several of his first scripts, and I cannot say enough nice things about him. I've always heard good things about him. I don't know, maybe I just haven't been paying attention, but like I don't know what what kind of heat he he took heat for asking Trump for saying to Trump in an interview that that he'd been found liable for rape when in fact it was sexual battery or something like that, even though the judge had said that was realistically the same as rape. CPPell took a lot of heat for that and ABC paid 15 million bucks to settle that case, which is a shocking act of cowardice. But but so for for trying to be a journalist. Yeah. Well, and and you know, George George is, by the way, I'm not claiming that we're we're dear close friends, but George is the kind of guy that I can send an email to and say, "Hey, would you read and if you like it, would you blur my book?" And he said, "Sure." And he did. That's so cool. That's the kind of guy that he is. And there's not a whole lot of guys who are famous who are like that. See, my names growing up would be like, just to throw them out, would be like Bob Costas for sports. Agreed. I know. I know. Marv Albert had some challenges, but I mean he was great on the mic. Marv Albert's challenges were about his personal sexual behavior about which I don't I probably shouldn't throw great voice. Let's just leave it at that. Billy Packer and then there was Howard Coell. Yes. Yeah. Coell was was the man. He was a little bit before my era, but I've done enough of my research and just is phenomenal. And then I like Michael Buffer as an announcer, you know, the boxing announcer at all the good fights in Vegas. you know, he's just a you're leaving out human character. So, John Facenda, the voice of NFL films. They set the whole standard for the stand historian battlefield approach. You know, his voice was far lower than mine. And and I should tell you, I have a Noyman mic and I still can't get my voice down to where he was. He was Yeah. No, look, there are people who eternally stand above based on their talent and their achievement and what they were able to do and in many cases what they had the balls to do. You know, to go back to Kppel, he's the guy who first set up a joint interview between Israelis and Palestinians live on television at a time when it was unheard of, you know. So no, he there are there are walking among us some gods in various lines of work, just not a lot of them. Do you think it's possible for for journalism to ever get back to where it was or like would there be any kind of I I'm I'm hopeful about the growing Substack movement of journalists leaving legacy or large organizations and developing an individual paid following for what they choose to do. Now, that that's so tied to commerce that innately it has its problems, but it's one of the few good things to come out of technological change for journalism as I've known it. Anyway, now look, the people don't read anymore. It's, you know, uh, Tapper's book last week, uh, sold 100,000 copies, and that's a huge success in a in a country of 340 million people, right? Now, does that count the audio book? Uh, who knows? Who knows? You know, it's funny. I I didn't get to read my own audio book. They don't No, they for the most part, the publishers don't like authors reading their own books because they don't think they sell it well enough. So they hired some guy who was famous for audio books who read so slowly with such fake concern about whether or not Louis in New Haven truly invented the first hamburger that I wouldn't have listened to my own book. But anyway, I like to hear the author read the book. So do I. It's a hard story to hear, but it it also defines who I am and why I'm on the podcast. I was filming a house fire. Come to find out it was actually a drug lab and a six-month old child had passed away in that drug lab. And the guy was reading me the riot act right in my face and I'm just this little punk college kid that's a little scared that I'm going to get my face beat in and all I'm doing is completing my final project for broadcasting. Well, 25 years later comes by and then man, it's like, man, you're telling me I get to be behind a mic. You're telling me I get to have cool guests. You're telling me I get to meet you through the networking and channels that we have. And man, it's just uh it's inspirational. And and quite frankly, I don't know that if I review my last 10 episodes, it wasn't that I was monotone, but I've actually come alive and I'm excited. And this is this is excitement is good. You need you need to have something to be into, dude. Yeah. Well, it's like you said, if you know, if if you What is it they say? Better to better to burn out than to or it better to fade away than to burn out. Which Which one's better? I think it's better to burn out than to fade away. I think that's how the line goes. But isn't it kind of opposite, right? called a burnout, but we won't but see there's there's an interesting correlary to that which is fear of failure. You can't fear failure. I I created a series called Beer Geeks that I am immensely proud of that went nowhere that cost me a fortune in syndication that I couldn't sell to enough stations to monetize. It was a total abject failure but godamn it was good. Yeah. And that and that that failure is only the failure to the people that you know that see it in that way. Oh, into my bank account. into your bank account. Yeah, exactly. You know, they say in fish in the fishing world, the best way to come in become a millionaire is to start with $2 million. Absolutely. Absolutely. So, I got to ask you this. I got to ask one more thread question in the spirit of Mosaic Minds. You've kind of understand why we do what we do. Great conversation. I've complimented you. I put that on the table. But now, I'm just going to whiteboard everything that we've talked about up to this point. Talk to me for five minutes or so about experiences you've had. Nothing to do with anything we've talked about. So, this could be life, where you like to travel, what you like to do, nothing to do with production. I know that's a big part of your life, but you know, give me a little glimpse into what you're doing on a Thursday afternoon away from everything we're talking about up to this point. Experiences from earlier times in my life. Well, let's see. Unfortunately, many of them are tied to what I did professionally. But getting to know Felipe Gonzalez, who was the prime minister of Spain back in the late 80s, mid80s, when we traveled with him around the country for a week as he was stumping in a referendum about whether or not Spain should pull out of NATO. But I got to see up close a very charismatic individual who cared very deeply about what he was doing. And in the process, I got to experience a country that I came to love, Spain. And not that long ago, my wife and I went back there and and had the most remarkable vacation, including spending the Jewish high holidays in Valencia, attending a synagogue in Valencia, amid a culture where the Jewish population is so concerned about anti-semitism and violence that my attempts to get get approval to attend the service on Yum Kapor was an extended and lengthy back and forth of emails really until I until I could prove to them that I was legit. And the synagogue was basically just two small rooms in an office building unmarked. There was no not even a plaque telling you what was there. And yet when we and I'm not particularly religious. I'm I'm deeply Jewish. I'm far from orthodox. I'm reformed. But it's important to me to be part of the Jewish world. And we were accepted and invited into that service that day as if we were long lost relatives. And there there's an honor at at a Jewish service called an aliyah where a limited number of people get to come up and bless the Torah. And they actually gave us an aliyah um while we were there. It was one of the finest experiences of our lives. Another experience that that stays with me is um is food related and and it also occurred on the job, but we had been shooting in Luxembourg. Uh it was a long dusty day. We were exhausted. We were covered with mud. And we were heading back from the French border to our hotel in Luxembourg City. And we passed a sign for a restaurant. So we we went in and it was a humble looking facade except when we opened the door we realized we were in we were way underdressed. Let me put it that way. This was a hoidy toy European gastronomic palace. and we felt tremendously out of place and were just about turning to leave when the owner comes barreling out of the kitchen. He turns out to be an expat from Tucson and boy was he glad to see us and boy did we get treated well and I cannot tell you what we had for dinner. I can't remember the meal but it was one of the great meals of my life was was just truly tremendous. Yeah, that that that one that one will stay with me for quite a while. Those are events, they're occurrences, they're chapters, experiences. Yeah, pe people, you know, you can sit on your couch and watch TV all you want or you can look at your phone, but actually experiencing things is a wonderful turn of events. What project do you have or what would you like to do? You've done a lot. You know, I I I look at that as spanning multiple generations, but like um what's a project maybe that you haven't done or the the documentary that I can't sell? I've been trying to sell a particular documentary for six years now and for some reason I can't. But it is the maternal mortality crisis in America. We have the worst maternal mortality and infant death rate of any western country. We know how to fix it. We don't. It mostly impacts people of color, but it is not behavioral related. Is you know much of it is structural racism. And for some reason I can't sell it. And you know, I don't know why it gripped me. You know, I'm a basically I'm a white Jew from New York, but this one got under my skin and it bugs the hell out of me. Both as a problem and is the fact that I can't sell it. No one will pick it up. Well, you guys are great. It's a real pleasure to talk with you. It has been an absolute pleasure. It's been a fascinating conversation. David, can you one last time, can you tell uh for for our viewers and our listeners where they can find your your podcast and any place else you want to be found? If you want to be Culinary Characters Unlocked, we're obviously on X and Instagram and Tik Tok. But the show itself is available on wherever you get your podcast, Spotify, Amazon, Apple. We do it in video as well as audio, so YouTube. It drops every Tuesday. Give it a listen and tell your friends about it, too. Yeah. And and and like you said, it's not you don't have to be there to learn about food or anything like that. It's all about the characters that you This is Look, this is all about spending time with someone you want to spend time with. I'm not talking about me. I'm talking my promise to you is you're going to enjoy a fascinating conversation. Great. Can't wait to listen to it. Accomplish. Absolutely. Well, thank you, gentlemen. Be sure to check out David's podcast, Culinary Characters Unlocked, available on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or anywhere that you listen to your podcasts. You can also visit culinary charactersunlocked.com. All this information will be in the show notes. Thanks for listening.