Speaker 1: Welcome to Ruthie's Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and
Speaker 1: Adami's Studios.
Speaker 2: Often when a friend prepares you to meet their friend,
Speaker 2: it feels anxious. Will he like me? Will I like him?
Speaker 2: Do I need to pretend I do if I don't.
Speaker 2: When Johnny I've told me his closest friend, Brian Chesky
Speaker 2: was joining us in southern Italy, I felt anxious about
Speaker 2: all of the above, and then he arrived. We sat
Speaker 2: together at lunch, started talking and didn't stop really for
Speaker 2: the next five days. Now. I've never stayed in an Airbnb,
Speaker 2: but then again, Brian has never been to the River Cafe.
Speaker 2: But I've experienced the impact Airbnb has had on so
Speaker 2: many lives. My children have explored the world knowing they
Speaker 2: need never stay in a hotel, and my friends in
Speaker 2: New Mexico are able to rent a house in Paris
Speaker 2: only because they host airbn beers in theirs. Brian lives
Speaker 2: in San Francisco, I live in London. The next time
Speaker 2: he visits London, he's promised to deviate, not stay in
Speaker 2: an Airbnb and stay with us instead. I'll cook for him,
Speaker 2: walk in Hyde Park and if they're lucky, we'll introduce
Speaker 2: him to my friends, no anxiety. They will love him
Speaker 2: as much as I do.
Speaker 3: My God, thank you for saying that.
Speaker 2: Okay, will you read a recipe.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, Ruthie. This recipe is whole roasted sea bass with potatoes.
Speaker 3: So it starts with one sea bass weighing two kilograms.
Speaker 3: Take half a bottle of white wine. Eight large waxy potatoes,
Speaker 3: peeled and quartered. By the way, what's a waxy potato?
Speaker 2: A waxy potatoes? Waxy? You know how fat the potatoes are?
Speaker 2: A flowery oh yeah, that you might have for baked potatoes.
Speaker 3: Makes a potato waxy? Though?
Speaker 2: Is it like a certain a certain type of potatoes?
Speaker 3: Okay, so waxy potatoes everyone. Two garlic clothes peeled. Two
Speaker 3: lemons pieces with skin. Now, these are not waxy lemons.
Speaker 2: These are not waxy because you know, lemon lemons. I
Speaker 2: could have even said a malfy lemons, which particularly good.
Speaker 3: And are those different types of lemons that they have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maffy lemons have a very much thicker skin, and
Speaker 2: so they're really they're really protects the juice. There's less juice,
Speaker 2: but it's better because it's got the.
Speaker 3: Amazing A handful of fresh oregano. So once you have this,
Speaker 3: preheat the oven at two hundred and fifty degrees celsius
Speaker 3: and then you boil the potatoes until cooked. Then drain them,
Speaker 3: add your lemon and herbs, pour over all of oil
Speaker 3: and mix well. And once you do this, you put
Speaker 3: it in a roasting tray. You stuff the fish with
Speaker 3: the lemons, and then you season. You season it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, salt and pepper. Salt and pepper everywhere, inside, outside.
Speaker 3: You just just the more salt and pepper the better. No, No,
Speaker 3: that's probably not true, but kind of everywhere. Don't be shy.
Speaker 3: Pepper in the inside, the outside, all the nooks and crannies.
Speaker 3: And you place the fish on top of your potatoes,
Speaker 3: your waxy potatoes, right, and then then you drizzle some
Speaker 3: allive oil and you roast in the oven for twenty minutes. Yeah, twenty,
Speaker 3: not eighteen twenty. Now you take your half a bottle
Speaker 3: of wine, you add it, you save the other half
Speaker 3: to drink. Then you roast for another fifteen minutes. So
Speaker 3: I'm cooking for twenty then I put a bunch of
Speaker 3: wine on on it, and then I do another fifteen minutes.
Speaker 3: Why do I do that?
Speaker 2: Because when you first do it. If you put it
Speaker 2: in the very beginning, the wine will kind of disappear.
Speaker 2: So if you put it in for the last ten minutes,
Speaker 2: you'll still get the juice.
Speaker 3: What is the wine? The alcohol burns, right, but it
Speaker 3: gives it a flavor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it doesn't. It just gives it another fruity, interesting,
Speaker 2: dryer flavor that flavors and we do.
Speaker 3: Have to be some people wine it.
Speaker 2: It has to be nice wine. The idea that you
Speaker 2: can use cheap wine for cooking is really not the
Speaker 2: right thing to do. It's better to use a little
Speaker 2: bit less wine. It doesn't have to be expensive expensive wine.
Speaker 2: But you want to be able to, you know, drink
Speaker 2: the wine that you would put in cooking. You don't
Speaker 2: like cooking wines.
Speaker 3: So I think really important everyone to use nice wine.
Speaker 3: Unless you're drinking by yourself and you're saturd on a Friday.
Speaker 3: You stick to nice wine. And then when it's ready,
Speaker 3: filay the fish and you serve with the potatoes and
Speaker 3: the juices from the pan.
Speaker 2: It's a very Italian way of cooking.
Speaker 3: Yalient an Italian way. What does that mean?
Speaker 2: Well, I think that you go for the ingredient. If
Speaker 2: you have a great sea bess, you don't have to
Speaker 2: do much to it. If you have a mediocre fish
Speaker 2: or a mediocre piece of meat or mediocre vegetable, then
Speaker 2: you have to think of adding more things to it
Speaker 2: and cooking it longer, of doing this and doing that.
Speaker 2: But if you have a fantastic sea bess, then really
Speaker 2: what you want is a sea bass with lemon, with
Speaker 2: some herbs and a bit of wine and you're done,
Speaker 2: you know, So it's very simple. Everybody thinks, you know,
Speaker 2: Americans myself included, growing up here, thought Italian food was
Speaker 2: spaghetti and meatballs and very heavy food. And in fact,
Speaker 2: what we know is that as you and I spent
Speaker 2: some time together in a Malfi and that's why we
Speaker 2: thought this would be a good recipe for you to read,
Speaker 2: because it does bring back memories and food is about memory,
Speaker 2: isn't it.
Speaker 3: I think it's really great. You're right. I mean, I
Speaker 3: think you're right. Food is like I mean, when I
Speaker 3: think of food, I think of a couple things. It's
Speaker 3: one of the only things in life that we consume
Speaker 3: that we need to survive. Number one. Number two, I
Speaker 3: think food is rooted in culture, and I also think
Speaker 3: you're right. Food is something you share. Maybe it's a
Speaker 3: primorial thing from fifty thousand years ago and people were
Speaker 3: around a campfire eating and talking, and there's something about
Speaker 3: food connection, family conversation that all go together.
Speaker 2: So just tell me your early days of growing up
Speaker 2: in your home. Who cooked? What did you remember about
Speaker 2: being in the cheske household and food.
Speaker 3: I think for me, I kind of had a foot
Speaker 3: in two different worlds of food growing up. On the
Speaker 3: one hand, you know, my parents are social workers. We
Speaker 3: were on the go. We were middle class, and we
Speaker 3: had a lot of like just quick to go things
Speaker 3: that probably in hindsight, weren't that healthy, you know, going
Speaker 3: to like fast food and like kind of packaged foods.
Speaker 3: And then my mom would cook my Mom's Italian and
Speaker 3: she would make very simple things, you know, pastas and
Speaker 3: you know, really basic meats with like mashed potatoes and vegetables.
Speaker 3: You know, we try to make sure we have dinner
Speaker 3: every night together as a family. And then I have
Speaker 3: a lot of memories of like kind of holiday gatherings.
Speaker 3: It was really interesting, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter. The centerpiece of
Speaker 3: every one of those memories that I had was food.
Speaker 3: There's something premortal in us. That makes sense that you know,
Speaker 3: there's we want. I think we want to have a
Speaker 3: connection to things. I think one of the challenges of
Speaker 3: modern life is that we get abstracted from the things,
Speaker 3: and one of the things we get abstracted from is
Speaker 3: our food. I mean, fast food was like an amazing
Speaker 3: innovation at the time, but I think that, like a
Speaker 3: lot of innovations, many years later, you look back and say, well,
Speaker 3: there's probably a price that we paid. But yeah, those
Speaker 3: were those your grandmother.
Speaker 2: You say you had an Italian grandmother and a Polish grandmother.
Speaker 3: I had Italian grandmother and a Polish grandmother and grandfather.
Speaker 2: Did they cook and did they cook the food at
Speaker 2: their homes?
Speaker 3: My grandmother on my mom's side cooked and I think
Speaker 3: she was pretty good. My grandmother was Polish, my dad's mother,
Speaker 3: and she actually lived with us and she would help cooking,
Speaker 3: Like I remember peeling the potatoes with her and stuff
Speaker 3: like that. But I'm still trying to understand. I think
Speaker 3: they were waxy. They didn't crumple right, like you know
Speaker 3: those flaky baked potatoes. Yeah, yeah, they were kind of
Speaker 3: flower They were kind of wet. Yeah, wet is waxy.
Speaker 2: What well, what is more? What be more towards the
Speaker 2: WAXI because of the very dry.
Speaker 3: But if you're going to oil potato, waxy potato sound
Speaker 3: better than wet potatoes. I want to open a restaurant.
Speaker 3: I want to call it Wet Potato. Ladies, gem welcome
Speaker 3: to Wet Potato. We're just down the street from River Cafe.
Speaker 3: Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the stage. Wet Potato. I
Speaker 3: love wet potato. I've been following him on tour all week.
Speaker 3: So yeah, So I had my waxy wet potato. My
Speaker 3: grandmother made it. And here's the story. When I was
Speaker 3: a kid, I was very small physically growing up. I'm
Speaker 3: like average person sized person. Now I'm like one hundred
Speaker 3: and eighty something pounds. But my parents are worried, like
Speaker 3: there's maybe something developed me wrong, and we want to
Speaker 3: enter Cachnology said, no, he's just like his growth is
Speaker 3: development is behind about two years. But I was really
Speaker 3: skinny growing up. I was probably when I entered high school,
Speaker 3: maybe one hundred pounds, right, yeah, fourteen maybe. And I
Speaker 3: went to a school like I basically a sports academy
Speaker 3: to play ice hockey. And then I ended up breaking
Speaker 3: my leg. I had a spiral fraction on my leg,
Speaker 3: and I ended up going to like physical therapy, and
Speaker 3: I decide at that moment, and by the way, you'll
Speaker 3: learn as we go that I'm a bit of an
Speaker 3: extreme personality. Any entrepreneur is extreme, especially people like us
Speaker 3: that run these big companies. I'm forty one, so it's extreme.
Speaker 3: And so at this point, I'm going through physical therapy,
Speaker 3: and you know, you have to do like kind of
Speaker 3: weight training, and I really start picking up weight training.
Speaker 3: And at this point the context in you to understand
Speaker 3: is my body had controlled my life because I was small,
Speaker 3: I was skinny. I was kind of like felt like
Speaker 3: my body was limiting my options in life. And I
Speaker 3: kind of knew at this point I'm sixteen, that I'm
Speaker 3: not giving a professional athlete. But I just I had
Speaker 3: this thought. It was really interesting. I said, if I
Speaker 3: can control my body, I can control my life. I'm
Speaker 3: sure I didn't say it so eloquently or simply. That
Speaker 3: was a thought. So I decided when I was sixteen,
Speaker 3: I said, I'm going to become one of the most
Speaker 3: muscular teenagers in the country by the time I'm nineteen,
Speaker 3: and I picked up bodybuilding, and that began a unique
Speaker 3: relationship for food, a relationship that was about health but
Speaker 3: certainly more utilitarian than enjoyment. And in two and a
Speaker 3: half years I went from one hundred and probably twenty
Speaker 3: five pounds to maybe one hundred and ninety five pounds.
Speaker 3: I ended up competing in what we would now call.
Speaker 2: Just pure muscle.
Speaker 3: That is, yeah, well one nive was like probably decent muscle,
Speaker 3: and then I cut back down and I competed in
Speaker 3: what you know, it was basically the the teenage mister America.
Speaker 3: It was called NPC Teenage Nationals and Collegiate Nationals and bodybuilding.
Speaker 3: And so I had this very weird duality where I
Speaker 3: went to like a private school a junior year, kind
Speaker 3: of a military bend school. So it was a private
Speaker 3: school where I had to like dressing cadet gear and
Speaker 3: do drill with rifles and all weight training. Then I
Speaker 3: go to public school the next year. It was all
Speaker 3: clicks public typical public school. And then the following year
Speaker 3: go to Risdy Art School. And by the time, because
Speaker 3: at Art school, I am now competing at a national
Speaker 3: level in bodybuilding, and I would walk around campus with
Speaker 3: half a dozen hard boiled eggs, and I would open
Speaker 3: the plastic and the eggs would stink up the entire room.
Speaker 3: And I would eat these hard boiled eggs one at
Speaker 3: a time. Everyone in the class was like staring at me.
Speaker 3: I would probably there were I would have as many
Speaker 3: as like eighteen egg whites a day. I would even
Speaker 3: drink the egg whites.
Speaker 2: I was going to ask you about eating egg whites, because.
Speaker 3: Challenge egg whites, and I would just drink them. It
Speaker 3: sounds kind of gross, unappetizing, but it really had profound
Speaker 3: effect to me because I started to realize what I
Speaker 3: ate affected how I felt. And that's when I really
Speaker 3: started appreciating food in a very deconstructed way. Of these
Speaker 3: building blocks deliciousness, no, no, I mean, there was a
Speaker 3: saying growing up, if it tastes good, it's bad for you.
Speaker 3: If it tastes bad, it's good for you. And that
Speaker 3: was the motto I had growing up. Okay, probably again
Speaker 3: this is like super countercultural to your drinking podcast, because
Speaker 3: I don't believe that anymore, but that was certainly how
Speaker 3: I grow.
Speaker 2: Up, leaving home and leaving family. There you were in
Speaker 2: Rhode Island at the Road Island School, Design, which is
Speaker 2: a great school. And do you remember cooking and eating
Speaker 2: with your friends.
Speaker 3: I had a meal Planet's risty, but I consume so
Speaker 3: many calories that the way the school worked is your
Speaker 3: parents had to prepay, Like I don't make a number
Speaker 3: of like five thousand hours a year for food, right,
Speaker 3: And every kid had a pre filled card like a
Speaker 3: meal card, but it was use it or lose it
Speaker 3: pre meal card, right, So you like, you'd have to
Speaker 3: put twenty one hundred dollars on your card each semester,
Speaker 3: and if you ate only two thousand hours of food,
Speaker 3: you wouldn't get the money back. You would just you'd
Speaker 3: use it or lose it. And if you ate more
Speaker 3: than that, you'd have to call up your parents to
Speaker 3: put more money in the card, which is something I
Speaker 3: didn't want to do. So I would find other students
Speaker 3: whose meal plans they weren't going to eat, and I
Speaker 3: would basically bump food off them because I would basically
Speaker 3: tap out my meal plan because I would get like
Speaker 3: three four chicken breasts at a time, and you know,
Speaker 3: when you get a dozen eggs and three four chicken
Speaker 3: breast at a time, you're going to your meal plan.
Speaker 3: So I would basically kind of loiter around the cash
Speaker 3: register befriending people. Yeah, smelling of hard boiled eggs. Dound
Speaker 3: Risdy at our school. So I'm at art school, carrying
Speaker 3: containers of hard boiled eggs, loitering around cash registers, trying
Speaker 3: to get people. Mostly like, I had a whole bunch
Speaker 3: of friends, these girls that were Korean. Risdy was very
Speaker 3: popular in Korea, and so a lot of kids came
Speaker 3: from Korea, and they were very thin, and none of
Speaker 3: them maxed out their meal plan. And so I kind
Speaker 3: of realized this and I became friends of them. I'm
Speaker 3: not saying I used the relationship for hard boiled eggs.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying I didn't either, So we'll let the
Speaker 3: audience understand. And so I would basically loiter around and
Speaker 3: at one point I ended up offering to train the
Speaker 3: kids for free if they would give me their card
Speaker 3: to get hard boiled eggs. And I thought everyone won.
Speaker 3: I got muscles, they lost weight, and we everyone was
Speaker 3: really happy. But this is not like a typical food thing, right,
Speaker 3: I had.
Speaker 2: No But food is different than food is that's.
Speaker 3: What food was. So for me at that time, food
Speaker 3: was a utilitarian building block for me to create the
Speaker 3: body I wanted in the life I wanted to have,
Speaker 3: and I thought about it as a fuel, as a utility.
Speaker 3: And I think, by the way, here's another theory I
Speaker 3: have because it's like, why what did I do this
Speaker 3: weird stuff? Growing up, I was a bit of a
Speaker 3: rebel and I kind of did not want to fit in.
Speaker 3: So when I was in high school, I wanted to
Speaker 3: be the artist, and when I got to art school,
Speaker 3: I wanted to be the bodybuilder. And then I got
Speaker 3: out into the real world. I wanted to be like
Speaker 3: an entrepreneur.
Speaker 2: Because you once told me that many of our conversations
Speaker 2: over food, that you saw Airbnb as an industrial designer
Speaker 2: rather as an entrepreneur, as a business person, that you
Speaker 2: saw the kind of canvas. You saw AIRBNBA as a
Speaker 2: canvas rather than a business plan.
Speaker 3: I never thought I was a business person. I remember.
Speaker 3: I remember the first week and I started Airbnb, somebody
Speaker 3: reminding me. I said, I'm not a business person. I'm
Speaker 3: a designer. Business People make money, Designers solve problems. I'm
Speaker 3: a designer. My problem isn't to make money. My problem
Speaker 3: is to solve a problem for somebody, and that's what
Speaker 3: designers do. The funny thing is that an artists are
Speaker 3: mostly entrepreneurs without realizing it, right, because most artists are
Speaker 3: sold proprietors, right and Europe and artists you have to
Speaker 3: sell your art and you don't work for somebody because
Speaker 3: most people don't employ artists. So there's something about art
Speaker 3: school which is pretty entrepreneurial. And the risky education is
Speaker 3: an invert in entrepreneurship education. And oddly enough, like most
Speaker 3: entrepreneurship programs are anti entrepreneurship. The structure is unrealistic. Entrepreneurship
Speaker 3: has no structure. Entrepreneurship requires resiliency, Entrepreneurship requires self motivation,
Speaker 3: and like, there are best practices I've done, Like I
Speaker 3: went to White Dominator, but like Rizdy, like one of
Speaker 3: our assignments was you get a piece of cardboard and
Speaker 3: you say, you have to build a bridge, like a
Speaker 3: three foot bridge with this piece of cardboard. And whose
Speaker 3: ever's bridge can hold up the most amount of bricks
Speaker 3: across two tables when or here's a piece of cardboard.
Speaker 3: You have to make a violin with no glue out
Speaker 3: of cardboard, and you're like, and you have three hours.
Speaker 3: I think that's kind of like entrepreneurship, like you have
Speaker 3: these challenges to solve.
Speaker 2: Can I just say that you also in your entrepreneurship
Speaker 2: and design because going you know, into airbnb and the
Speaker 2: culture of airbnb in terms of not just being a
Speaker 2: place where you sleep, but what you've done, and as
Speaker 2: I said in my introduction, is you've taken the world
Speaker 2: of being an entrepreneur, of being a place to stay,
Speaker 2: into culture. Because people stay in a neighborhood, they shop
Speaker 2: for food. I always say that when you you know,
Speaker 2: when you visit a city, the first thing you should
Speaker 2: do is go to the market, because you know that
Speaker 2: because the market tells you about the people who live there,
Speaker 2: the food that's in season, the ingredients they have. And
Speaker 2: you know, a market in London will be different from
Speaker 2: a market in Venice, which will be different from one
Speaker 2: in Singapore and one in Tokyo, and that tells you
Speaker 2: about the culture. And I think what you've been talking about,
Speaker 2: you know that you are combining entrepreneurship with culture, aren't you?
Speaker 2: Is that what you do? So I mean Ivy was saying,
Speaker 2: go on, ive you tell them that staying in an
Speaker 2: airbnb and you go to the kitchen, don't you go
Speaker 2: and see what the kitchen's going to be like.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we were talking about. The thing that I like
Speaker 4: with AIRB and B is that you can use the
Speaker 4: locals guides, the host guides, and so I think it's
Speaker 4: like it was reinventing how you're a tourist, right because
Speaker 4: rather than going to the tourist spots, you can be like, Okay,
Speaker 4: where are people actually eating? And how can I imagine
Speaker 4: myself living here and what would my life be like?
Speaker 4: And that's why I think young people like IBNB especially.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's exactly right. And I also say
Speaker 3: that just to bring to bring a little bit of
Speaker 3: story to kind of more present day. Until I started
Speaker 3: and in travel very much, and I did not have
Speaker 3: a passion for traveling when I started BINGB. And actually,
Speaker 3: here's the other thing I did not. I did not
Speaker 3: start arbing me as a traveler. I started as a host.
Speaker 3: So Airbnb has guests and hosts travelers and people hosting
Speaker 3: those travelers, and I wasn't a traveler. I was a host.
Speaker 3: AIRBINGB started because my room and I couldn't afford to
Speaker 3: pay rent. We turned our house into a bed and breakfast.
Speaker 3: Wouldn't have any beds. We waited through your beds. We
Speaker 3: called the airbedan breakfast dot com. So I started as
Speaker 3: a host. And I didn't really have a big desire
Speaker 3: for traveling growing up, but I will because I didn't
Speaker 3: wasn't exposed to a lot of it. Now I love
Speaker 3: traveling by the time. I remember once a year we
Speaker 3: would travel. My mom was a star shirker and there
Speaker 3: was an annual conference that she had to go do,
Speaker 3: and so should get a flight in a hotel room.
Speaker 3: And my family realized, this is a really good racket weekend.
Speaker 3: Basically freeload off her and get a free vacation every year.
Speaker 2: And would that be in the United States.
Speaker 3: I've brought always in the United States. So my first
Speaker 3: time I was at airplane was seven. We went to
Speaker 3: Saint because she had a conference there.
Speaker 2: Do you remember the food when you traveled?
Speaker 3: I have more memories of eating while traveling than not traveling.
Speaker 3: Funny enough, I have more memories just traveling in general.
Speaker 3: I remember somebody once a few years ago came up
Speaker 3: to me said, Brian, I use because I wanted my
Speaker 3: life to seem longer. And I said, what does that mean?
Speaker 3: He said, the thing I noticed about my life, and
Speaker 3: I realized about myself is we generally don't remember our routines.
Speaker 3: To give you example, I probably rode the school bus.
Speaker 3: I don't know twelve years from five to seventeen, and
Speaker 3: I can't remember two thousand times the memory of me
Speaker 3: being on a school bus. I'd maybe six, seven, eight
Speaker 3: faint memories. But I remember every trip I took. I
Speaker 3: remember the trip to Saint Louis, the trip to Dallas,
Speaker 3: the trip to Seattle, the trip to Chicago. And so
Speaker 3: what I learned when he told me is that when
Speaker 3: you travel, you have distinct memories. And when people say
Speaker 3: time go by quickly, I think one of the reasons
Speaker 3: they're saying that is because they're falling into routine. Some
Speaker 3: routines really good, but you got to be careful about
Speaker 3: your routine being so much that your memories collapse. And
Speaker 3: then one day you wake up and your life has
Speaker 3: kind of passed you by. And there's so much of
Speaker 3: the world, And so I think a great way to
Speaker 3: remember the world is through travel. I hope to live
Speaker 3: in a world where the idea, the word travel and
Speaker 3: the idea traveled almost dissolves into our idea and it
Speaker 3: blurs with living. We talked about like you know, going
Speaker 3: to a supermarket and living like a local. There was
Speaker 3: a guy in Paris. He's no longer alive. His name
Speaker 3: is I think his name was Jim Hymen. Have you
Speaker 3: heard of this person? Jim Hyman said, I believe the
Speaker 3: Guinness Book of World record for hosting more people at
Speaker 3: dinner parties than anyone ever. He hosted one hundred thousand
Speaker 3: people in his house in Paris for dinner parties. And
Speaker 3: you could ask how to maybe challenge that? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: maybe you challenge that. But he apparently was up there
Speaker 3: and he had a secret for traveling. He said, the
Speaker 3: secret to good traveling is to participate in the daily
Speaker 3: life of locals. And I thought that was profound because
Speaker 3: what happens is most a lot of travel. Like Conrad,
Speaker 3: like modern travel. Probably one of the major pioneers of
Speaker 3: modern travel or twenty century travels, Conrad Hilton. Conrad Hilton
Speaker 3: started Hilton Hotels in nineteen nineteen in Texas, and he
Speaker 3: was very Christian and made it a point I think
Speaker 3: maybe some of Hilton will be listening correct me to
Speaker 3: have a Bible next to the bed. It doesn't matter
Speaker 3: what you were in I believe so, and maybe I'm wrong,
Speaker 3: but I think I think that's and I think he
Speaker 3: was famously one to export an American travel experience anywhere.
Speaker 3: There was a famous episode of mad Men that I
Speaker 3: think is representatively correct, like how do you say blah
Speaker 3: blah blah and Tokyo Hilton? How do you say hello
Speaker 3: in Germany? Hilton? So it was really about an American
Speaker 3: travel experience. It's about mass tourism, it's about bringing your
Speaker 3: culture with you to this environment.
Speaker 2: We lived in Paris for years and I used to
Speaker 2: see a tour bus that went around the plastic version
Speaker 2: where we lived, and people never got off the bus.
Speaker 2: And I thought, you know, there is a sense that
Speaker 2: people really hate traveling because it takes effort, It takes
Speaker 2: you know, fear, it's fearful, you have to understand a language,
Speaker 2: all the reasons we want to travel. There's a group
Speaker 2: of people that would rather stay in Hilton and neat
Speaker 2: American food and be in a bus, because he explained
Speaker 2: to because they can say they've been to Paris or
Speaker 2: Rome or Florence or Venice and yet never have to
Speaker 2: experience any discomfort or.
Speaker 3: I think that's a very typical way to be introduced
Speaker 3: to travel that you want to go to a farm environment,
Speaker 3: but you want to be comfortable, so you're more like
Speaker 3: a stane hotel, go on a dicer bus, get a
Speaker 3: selfie in front of them.
Speaker 2: Change that with Airbnb. You're saying to be uncomfortable. I
Speaker 2: think cook for yourself, be in a neighborhood. I'm packing your.
Speaker 3: Bank in the daily life of locals. You know. Joseph Campbell,
Speaker 3: the late mythologists. He wrote a book, I think in
Speaker 3: like the nineteen forties called Hero of a Thousand Faces,
Speaker 3: and his book based sickly surmised that every character of
Speaker 3: every movie, whether it's Star Wars or Wizard of Oz
Speaker 3: or Grapes of Wrath or whomever, they're really the same character.
Speaker 3: A hero is in an ordinary world and there's something
Speaker 3: like dissatisfied about their life incomplete, and they get this
Speaker 3: called adventure to cross this threshold, to go this new
Speaker 3: magical world where they're at their comfort zone. They have
Speaker 3: the slay dragons, they have this ultimate challenge, and the
Speaker 3: person they are dies, maybe metaphorically or in some movies
Speaker 3: actually physically, like snow white, and then they're born. They're
Speaker 3: reborn a better version themselves, and they have atonement where
Speaker 3: they go back to the world they came from. And
Speaker 3: I always thought that travel great travels like the hero's journey.
Speaker 3: You just want to be a little out of your
Speaker 3: comfort zone to learn something. And I think that's what
Speaker 3: we try to do, to get people a little out
Speaker 3: of their cultural comfort zone, to go to the market,
Speaker 3: to participate daily life of locals, to understand people. Travel
Speaker 3: can bring the world together, but you're not going to
Speaker 3: understand another culture in a double decker bus, staying in
Speaker 3: a hotel with other tourists. You know. I'll TV a
Speaker 3: funny story. People sometimes come to San Francisco and describe
Speaker 3: what San Franciscans are like, and I'll ask them, what
Speaker 3: are San Francisco's like, And the first thing they say is, well,
Speaker 3: they dress like this, and they're this, and they're that,
Speaker 3: and they all like bread bowl soup. And what I'm
Speaker 3: realizing is they're not describing San Franciscans. They think they're
Speaker 3: describing San Franciscans. But they went to Fisherm's a wharf,
Speaker 3: which is like going to Times Square. It's like going
Speaker 3: to Times Score in New York and describing New Yorkers,
Speaker 3: except that no one in Times Squares in New York
Speaker 3: except for those working in Times Square, because regular New
Speaker 3: Yorkers don't go to Times Square. And so I think,
Speaker 3: if you want to understand travel, look at how people
Speaker 3: travel then in your own city and ask would you
Speaker 3: do that? And most people in New York don't go
Speaker 3: to Times Square. But Time Square was until the pandemic,
Speaker 3: the most instagrammed landmark in the world, clearly very popular.
Speaker 3: But most of us who spent a lot of time
Speaker 3: in New York don't want to go to Times Square.
Speaker 3: When I was eight years old, I did want to
Speaker 3: go to Times Square. I thought it was cool. And
Speaker 3: so I think there's landmark travel, and then there's people
Speaker 3: driven travel, and people driven travel is culture. But how
Speaker 3: do you meet other people if you're in a hotel
Speaker 3: on your double ducker bus. That's the premise of Airbnb.
Speaker 2: We have a lot more to talk about. One of
Speaker 2: the things I would like to talk about is Obama,
Speaker 2: President Obama and Michelle first Lady Obama, who really brought.
Speaker 2: She particularly brought a sense of food and the importance
Speaker 2: of feeding our children and the investment that society makes,
Speaker 2: you know, in children and so your engagement with the
Speaker 2: Obamas has been massive, and at a very very basic level,
Speaker 2: I would like to ask you what food was like
Speaker 2: in the White House. Did you eat in the White House?
Speaker 2: Because I've eaten the White House once at a state dinner,
Speaker 2: and I had a meal with President Obama the residents
Speaker 2: of the American Ambassador in London, and he seemed to
Speaker 2: be someone who did like his food and was interested
Speaker 2: in food.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I met President Obama late in his presidency, and
Speaker 3: so the reason I met at him was because there
Speaker 3: was a thing called Global Entrepreneurship Summit where they had
Speaker 3: this like honorary ambassador program where your own ambassador for entrepreneurship.
Speaker 3: But the reason I really got to know him was
Speaker 3: because he worked with a Treasury department to lift embargo
Speaker 3: with Cuba. And then Airbnb opened in Cuba, and President
Speaker 3: Obama went to Cuba with a bunch of business leaders,
Speaker 3: myself and other people. We were actually the only company
Speaker 3: had any business in Cuba. So I got to know
Speaker 3: Obama a little bit. And before he left office, probably
Speaker 3: July of twenty and sixteen, I get a thirty minute
Speaker 3: lunch at the White House in the Presidential Dining Room,
Speaker 3: and I ate basically, I think the same thing he did.
Speaker 3: So I think it would have been fish. I think
Speaker 3: I had like a white fish a I think I
Speaker 3: had a old roasted sea bass with probably a waxy
Speaker 3: potato ji garlic closes and a Malthia lemons. I feel like,
Speaker 3: maybe that's what I would have had. And no, it was.
Speaker 3: It was probably like a fish like this, but it
Speaker 3: was like steam vegetables or a salad. I recall that,
Speaker 3: and I remember I'm leaving the White House. So here's
Speaker 3: a cool funny story because this is the other time
Speaker 3: I ate at the White House. And okay, so we're
Speaker 3: in the Oval Office now, because you have to walk
Speaker 3: through the O office when you leave the President of
Speaker 3: the dining room, which is kind of just like nondescript room.
Speaker 3: So when you get your photo and Pete the Suez
Speaker 3: that's a photographer, he takes his photo of me and
Speaker 3: before I leave, goes Brian. I go yeah, He goes,
Speaker 3: do you like dancing? And it's my bad impression and
Speaker 3: I go, I'm like, what do you say to a
Speaker 3: president Nited States in an Oval office? And they say
Speaker 3: do you like dancing? So I said, uh yeah, He
Speaker 3: goes well, I have a birthday party at the White House.
Speaker 3: It was fiftieth birthday party. It was like in a month, right,
Speaker 3: so this is like July or something in his birthdays
Speaker 3: in like August, and so he invites me like to
Speaker 3: his birthday party at the White House, which is crazy,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, and i'd been the West Wing, but
Speaker 3: I hadn't been the main residence, which is what most
Speaker 3: people think of the White House as the residence. It
Speaker 3: was kind of like a very fancy buffet, you know,
Speaker 3: but not really a buffet, but like I help yourself
Speaker 3: family style, but you would win to like these kind
Speaker 3: of lines where you'd get food. Was very like nice, fancy.
Speaker 3: I don't remember what I ate then, And those were
Speaker 3: my two experienced the White House. But there was oh
Speaker 3: I danced. Yeah. So it was good and I got
Speaker 3: to know him, and obviously we've built a relationship ever since.
Speaker 3: He became a bit of a mentor to me once
Speaker 3: he left office. We kind of had a standing phone
Speaker 3: call for a while, you know, where he mentor me,
Speaker 3: and then you know, I think the story kind of
Speaker 3: turned into him going from him mentoring me to also
Speaker 3: me wanted to help him with his efforts in particular
Speaker 3: philanthrop by and so I created with him one hundred
Speaker 3: million dollars scholarship for rising juniors in college to help
Speaker 3: them pay for their college education for those who wanted
Speaker 3: to go to public service. So the basic idea is
Speaker 3: like Obama said that when he was going into publics,
Speaker 3: he graduated Harvard Law and he had a lot of
Speaker 3: offers to become like a corporate attorney, which is totally cool.
Speaker 3: We have a lot of corporate traiers the ever NB,
Speaker 3: but we also need people to go in to public service.
Speaker 3: The problem is college is getting so expensive that some
Speaker 3: people feel like they can't afford to go in commote
Speaker 3: service because if all is college debt. And he said
Speaker 3: like it was a hard decision for him to be
Speaker 3: a community organizer, and it took him a long time
Speaker 3: to pay off his bills. He didn't actually fully pay
Speaker 3: off his bills to I think the book o'dacy hope
Speaker 3: came out, so he was like, maybe my age before
Speaker 3: he was able to pay off his college loans. And
Speaker 3: I thought we should be able to pay off people's
Speaker 3: college debts so they can afford to go into public service.
Speaker 3: But I had one other thought with him, I thought
Speaker 3: I would shamelessly want my public service leaders, whatever the
Speaker 3: fields are, to have travel the world and taken all
Speaker 3: the best ideas from every country and bring him back
Speaker 3: to the United States. And we bring food from all
Speaker 3: the other countries. Don't we like to shamelessly appropriate food
Speaker 3: from other cultures bring it here? Shouldn't we appropriate the
Speaker 3: best ideas of governing and connection and other things. And
Speaker 3: so we had a travel component where it would be
Speaker 3: a ten year travel scholarship. So we'll pay off your
Speaker 3: college loans and we'll pay for ten years of travel,
Speaker 3: including between your junior and senior year of travel two
Speaker 3: thousand dollars a year for ten years, twenty thousand dollars,
Speaker 3: and then I think ten thousand dollars for one summer,
Speaker 3: like a little like summer voyage between junior and senior
Speaker 3: year where you do kind of like a work trip.
Speaker 3: And that was what we did. So we still work together,
Speaker 3: and I'm sure food is going to be a big
Speaker 3: part of it for a lot of these students, because
Speaker 3: I think food is a way to understand culture, and
Speaker 3: culture is a way to understand our shared history and
Speaker 3: our shared connection.
Speaker 2: You said about food is you know, political it's cultural,
Speaker 2: it's love, and it's comfort. So for my last question,
Speaker 2: what if food is all that? What would be your
Speaker 2: comfort food?
Speaker 3: With my comfort food? Not her boiled eggs anymore?
Speaker 2: Okay, I don't think it was.
Speaker 3: Then, was No, The whole point back then was never
Speaker 3: be comfortable. Probably chocolate chip cookies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, chocolate. How do you like them? Do you like
Speaker 2: them thick and dowe or do you like them thin
Speaker 2: and crispy?
Speaker 3: Can I tell you my recipe before we go? Because
Speaker 3: the only there's flotad recipe, there's only one.
Speaker 2: Does it have a waxy lemon in it?
Speaker 3: It does not have a waxy lemon? Is the only
Speaker 3: recipe I know? Or I think I could tell you
Speaker 3: at the top of my head. And I know that's
Speaker 3: how little I know about cooking. I can you put
Speaker 3: a gun in my head. I can tell you one
Speaker 3: recipe and one yeah, and it's a proprietary recipe that
Speaker 3: I got off of Google. Google, So not that proprietary.
Speaker 3: I like to say. It's been the family for a
Speaker 3: long time, since three months.
Speaker 2: Not the one on the backs of the chocolate chip.
Speaker 2: You know, the chips?
Speaker 3: Okay, I don't like those are wrong because they don't
Speaker 3: use enough brown sugar, and they don't use enough in
Speaker 3: all extract. So what I would do is one step one, okay,
Speaker 3: step one flour. I would do two and three quarters
Speaker 3: or two and two thirds cups flour, So a little
Speaker 3: two thirds and quarters. Let's do two and three quarters
Speaker 3: cups flour. Then I think it's eight.
Speaker 2: Cups of flour.
Speaker 3: Yeah, go on.
Speaker 2: These are the dry ingredients.
Speaker 3: Dry ingredients would be one teaspoon baking soda in a
Speaker 3: teaspoon of salt. Okay. Then you got your sugar, which
Speaker 3: you mix your wet. So here's the key. This is
Speaker 3: where it gets interesting. So one and a quarter cup
Speaker 3: of light brown sugar.
Speaker 2: What about the dark brown?
Speaker 3: No dark brown, just light brown? And then white sugar.
Speaker 3: I use three quarters of a cup.
Speaker 2: Oh interesting, okay.
Speaker 3: Then two large eggs, and then you take a stick
Speaker 3: of butter, two sticks.
Speaker 2: Blend the butter and the sugar.
Speaker 3: Blend the butter and sugar. You what's it called when
Speaker 3: you cream? You cream the Then you add two eggs,
Speaker 3: two eggs, and then finally the single most important I
Speaker 3: guess vanilla. Yes, but what's the secret?
Speaker 2: More vanilla?
Speaker 3: Yes? So most people, yes, very good. So most people
Speaker 3: would say one teaspoon. I say, too teaspoons to teaspoons. Okay,
Speaker 3: so here are the core innovations, the core innovations you like?
Speaker 3: How like I'm a tech found and I use innovation
Speaker 3: by googling it.
Speaker 2: In what there's a difference between innovation and innovation.
Speaker 3: That's that called blaxea lemons.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the difference between a Blaxi potato out.
Speaker 3: Of leod if you if we have thirty minutes forty
Speaker 3: five million minutes, because it's that's how about a lot
Speaker 3: the difference core innovation guess part one? And then I
Speaker 3: use not many chips, so you know, the whole bag,
Speaker 3: the whole bag.
Speaker 2: Wet about the chips.
Speaker 3: I only use one third of a bag of chips.
Speaker 2: Oh interesting?
Speaker 3: And then I heat the ove into three seventy five
Speaker 3: fahrenheit for about twenty minutes, and then I go to
Speaker 3: what's golden brown? Core innovations more vanilla, extract more brown sugar,
Speaker 3: slightly more flour. That means that everything else it's like
Speaker 3: fewer chips. Okay, Vanilla's gentle. It's a very gentle idea.
Speaker 3: You take anything vanilla, you add a flavor, and the
Speaker 3: flavor search a power that vanilla. So people are overpowering
Speaker 3: Vanilla across this country, and I have a mission to create.
Speaker 2: Is that why the Democrats did so well?
Speaker 3: Exactly. Yes, people take advantage of it. Oil more vanilla.
Speaker 3: If you elect me, I will give you more vanilla.
Speaker 2: Got my vote? Yes, Okay, Well let's do it. I'll
Speaker 2: be your host and we'll make chocolate chip cookies.
Speaker 3: Let's do it.
Speaker 2: Let's do it, Brian, Thanks, thank you.
Speaker 3: Ah nice, I've never heard. I've done a lot of
Speaker 3: interviews in my life and never won on food. Yeah,
Speaker 3: well there, I never talked about hard boiled eggs and
Speaker 3: an interview like almost everything we talked about Ted never
Speaker 3: said before because no one ever asked me. Everyone asked
Speaker 3: me all the same questions.
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