---
title: 'The (bad) way people and dogs eat (LIVE PODCAST, E56)'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=1bvXYjktdZI'
video_id: '1bvXYjktdZI'
date: 2026-06-29
duration_sec: 5007
---

# The (bad) way people and dogs eat (LIVE PODCAST, E56)

> Source: [The (bad) way people and dogs eat (LIVE PODCAST, E56)](https://youtube.com/watch?v=1bvXYjktdZI)

## Summary

In this live podcast episode, Adam Ragusea explores the ethics of pet ownership, arguing that modern house dogs may be living lives of quiet desperation due to being prevented from acting on their natural foraging instincts. He draws parallels between canine behavior and human food psychology, and discusses the complexities of meat consumption and environmental ethics.

### Key Points

- **The Case Against Pet Ownership** [05:04] — Bioethicist Dr. Jessica Pierce argues that house dogs are probably not as happy as we imagine, and may be among the most miserable animals on Earth due to being restrained from their basic impulses.
- **Feral Dogs' Best Life** [08:55] — Adam describes a pack of feral dogs in Macon, Georgia, that seemed to live a fulfilling life scavenging for food, contrasting it with the comfortable but constrained life of a house dog.
- **Dogs' Foraging Instinct** [15:39] — Dogs are scavenger hunters, and their mental energy is set aside for foraging. When they can't do this, they turn to destructive behaviors like chewing.
- **The Feral Childhood Analogy** [18:49] — Adam compares the feral childhood he experienced to the constrained lives of modern kids and dogs, noting that the environment has changed, making free-roaming unsafe.
- **Humans as Scavengers** [29:23] — Adam argues that humans are also born scavengers, with stomach acidity suited for eating old dead things, and that our constant food obsession is a leftover from our evolutionary past.
- **Beef and the Carbon Cycle** [44:47] — Adam discusses the complexity of the environmental impact of beef, noting the difference between the closed carbon cycle of grass-fed cattle and the introduction of new carbon from fossil fuels.
- **The Perils of Certainty** [79:10] — Adam warns viewers to be critical of science communicators who speak with absolute certainty, using Peter Zeihan as an example, and advises to 'trust but verify'.

## Transcript

Hello beautiful community.
He said doing his best Vlad Wexler.
Can you hear me?
Can people at chat hear me?
Give me a thumbs up or a thumbs down,
please.
Can you hear me?
All right, I see one person saying yes.
I see only one person saying no.
Got it.
Okay, I think we are rolling and that is
terribly exciting.
Thanks everybody for your patience. So,
the problem if you care was that I had a
I had another camera app open on my
computer just to get a preview
um and it was interfering with the
routing to YouTube.
If you care.
But you probably don't.
So, let's start talking about things you
do care about.
Oh, Pop-Tart. No, no, no. Hey, come
back.
Hey, this is this is your show. Hey,
come on. Pop-Tart, come on.
Oh, yeah. I prepared for this. Come on,
you got to be here for the beginning.
Come on. Up, up, up, up.
Okay.
All right, sit.
Thank you.
Okay.
You feel good?
You ready for this? All right, I'm ready
for it.
All right.
Sh- sh- sh- sh- sh- sh- sh- sh- sh- sh-
sh- sh- sh-
Good seeing y'all.
All right.
How you doing? You ready? You ready to
do this? All right, let's do this. Okay.
It's the Adam Ragusea podcast episode 56
coming to you from the couch in my
wife's home office, which is one of the
spots where we usually hang out with
Pop-Tart, the Labrador Retriever. She's
here on the couch with me right now.
She's uh
not quite a year old and yes, her name
really is Pop-Tart.
We let the kids name her and I do think
that Pop-Tart is a great name for a dog.
Though it puts me in a fraught position
vis-à-vis the Kellogg's company, maker
of the toaster pastry product marketed
as a Pop-Tart. Right here. You want
another one? Come on, dog. Over here.
You guys stay in the camera frame. Over
here. Come on. It's right in front of
you, dog. Aw, there you go. Sit.
So, I feel like someone in my position,
if I was going to have a dog named
Pop-Tart,
I I really should have tried to get some
like fat corporate dollars for that.
Like I should have unleashed my agent,
Colin the Best West, to see if he could,
you know, shake some money out of the
C-suite up in Battle Creek, Michigan
for uh you know, naming rights for Adam
Ragusea's new dog. Or at the very least,
we could have uh secured some
permissions.
Cuz yeah, I don't know if Kellogg's is
going to sue me for using their
trademark in reference to a dog in
published works such as this. I'm not
sure if they could legally sue me and in
our defense, we do style the name
Pop-Tart in reference to the dog as all
one word, capital P at the beginning.
And that's all. In contrast, the name
of, you know, Pop-Tart brand toaster
pastries is styled as two words,
hyphenated with the first P in pop
capitalized and the first T in tarts
capitalized and
the name of the product itself is
pluralized. They are officially
Pop-Tarts plural.
Pop-Tart the dog is singular, all one
word and only the initial P is
capitalized the way that we style that
around here. I mention that so that
everybody in the live chat can style
Pop-Tarts correctly, which I'm sure you
all will. We are recording this episode
of the Adam Ragusea podcast live on
YouTube. So, there are people in the
chat box right now. Hi, everybody.
I'm going to talk about dogs and food
for like 20 minutes before I start
engaging with folks in the chat
for the remainder of the episode. Uh I
will read audience questions and
comments from the live chat, but
hold your fire. I will not be looking at
anything in the chat for another 20
minutes or so.
So, if you're there, you know, feel free
to chat with each other, but don't say
or ask anything expecting me to like see
it and respond to it. Yeah. So, anyway,
dogs and food. It's okay, you can go.
You can go. You're done. You did your
job.
Okay. What what?
I have nothing else. Well, that's a lie.
I've got something else if if necessary,
but uh
dogs and food. This is not going to be a
rap about uh
you know, dog food. It's about food and
uh and dogs.
Hello. Oh my goodness. Yes. Is it so
interesting to you? Okay, here. I've got
another one.
Here, come on up. Come on.
So, you may have seen lately a
bioethicist
named uh Dr. Jessica Pierce talking
about pet happiness in the news. Dr.
Pierce writes a blog about pet-related
issues for Psychology Today, which is a
magazine that I grew up around because
my dad is a clinical psychologist, so we
always, you know, got Psychology Today
at the house.
But, uh Jessica Pierce has a number of
books and, you know, scholarly articles
and stuff out there talking about the
ethics of pet ownership. Oh, you're
going to be over there? Do I have to
reframe the shot for you, dog?
See, these these are my placards for the
sponsorship segments. Okay, come on.
Here.
I'll move everything over here, okay?
And you can just stay right there.
Right. You good?
You good? Okay, let's proceed.
So, uh Jessica Pierce, Dr. Jessica
Pierce, uh scholar, ethicist, uh
bioethicist, has a number of books and
scholarly articles about the ethics of
pet ownership and how those ethical
questions kind of intersect with the uh
you know, animal cognition and
interspecies communication stuff that
people study. And uh Jessica Pierce, Dr.
Pierce, was the primary source for a Vox
article that you may have seen published
recently called the case against pet
ownership. Uh that article was by a
fella named Kenny Terrell. Hope I'm
saying that right. Uh Kenny writes about
animal issues for Vox with a focus on
like meat and meat alternatives. And I
gather that Kenny's piece was a big hit.
And so, Dr. Jessica Pierce, the primary
source for that article, has been making
the rounds lately, right? She's I heard
her on uh an NPR show called Here and
Now, which is uh that's US public radio,
you know? I used to work on the other
side of the cubicle wall from where Here
and Now is produced in Boston.
And I always loved how the show's
producers used to just like yell and
scream at each other in order to get
their show on the air every day because
a daily live legacy broadcast program
only persists as a result of just a
series of minor miracles simply willed
into being by the producers and the
editors who make the show possible.
Anyway, I loved listening to Here and
Now scream at each other in the lead-up
to showtime. Here, you want this dog?
Come on.
One one I've got one more. Come on up.
Used to love listening to the Here and
Now folks
scream at each other in the lead-up to
their show. And then immediately after
showtime, they would go back to loving
each other like siblings again.
And that's how you know the the the
leaders of the program have fostered
like a really good, you know,
team-building environment so that
people, you know, love and trust each
other enough to yell at each other like
they're family
when necessary. Though certainly,
yelling is less necessary and less often
necessary than most of us tend to
imagine that it is in the heat of the
moment. That's an important thing to
keep in mind. Anyway, dogs. Dr. Jessica
Pierce,
her basic argument, if she'll forgive me
for summarizing it crudely, her basic
argument is that based on everything we
know about like animal cognition and
emotions and social structure and
instincts and all of that, her argument
is that our pets, and particularly our
dogs, are probably not as happy as we
imagine them to be. They may in fact be
among the most miserable animals on
Earth for the bulk of their lives. I
mean, we imagine the life of a house dog
to be exceptionally sweet.
Who would not want to laze on a couch
all day with their best friend?
Hey, that's you and me.
Seems like a much nicer life compared to
the violence and deprivation, no doubt,
suffered by a dog out on the street.
But I remember back when we lived in
Macon Georgia
which was one dog ago. That was your
forerunner, Pop-Tart, lived with us in
Macon.
I just used to drive through this very,
very poor neighborhood near my house in
Macon where there were just legions of
street dogs.
Like if you've if you've only ever been
to the northern United States, you don't
know how bad the stray dog problem is in
the southern US and in cities
specifically, especially poor poor ones.
There's just more people poor poor
people in the south and there's more
rural people in the south and, you know,
even when they live in cities, they are
often in the south generationally closer
to life on the farm, where people are a
lot less precious about their dogs. You
know, you may own a dog,
but the dog lives like a free life,
roaming around and doing whatever dog
stuff the dog wants to do most of the
day, which may include making puppies
with another dog. Poor people may be
less likely to sterilize their dogs,
spay and neuter them, because that, you
know, costs money.
Oh, did I say the bad word?
Sorry, it's still a fresh memory.
Mhm, close your ears.
There's uh there's just more poor people
in the South, more rural people in the
South, and, you know, it affects these
things and
and uh you're just more likely to have
stray dogs leaking out of the human
systems here in the South. And once
they're out, their odds of survival are
pretty darn good compared to the odds
faced by a stray dog in, say, like
upstate New York or something. That dog
is not going to survive the winter,
and not going to live to make puppies
with some other dog. But in Macon, that
dog absolutely will survive the winter
and live to make puppies with some other
dog. And in parts of Macon, you just
have like packs of wild feral dogs
roaming around. And when I would drive
in this really poor neighborhood near my
house, there was a street called
Columbus Road, where a lot of the
buildings were abandoned and
dilapidated. It's
rough area, but there was
uh an auto junkyard where this
absolutely lovely guy uh I recall his
name was Caesar, if I'm remembering that
right. Um
it's a nice guy, collected like dead
cars and mined them for parts, um or or
or that's what his business appeared to
be to me. And he always had a bunch of
like stray dogs lazing around in front
of his shop, cuz he put out food for
them sometimes, and he put out like
blankets and old mattresses and stuff
for them to lie on. I imagine that they
provided a valuable service in return,
right? They probably scared away any
potential thieves, which is basically
why the wild ancestors of dogs first
started hanging around human encampments
in the first place, 1 or 200,000 years
ago. Cuz you know, cows and pigs and
sheep and such, um you know, people
started domesticating them with the
agricultural revolution about 10,000
years ago, which really was not that
long ago in the scheme of things. In
contrast, they keep pushing back the
date on the domestication of the dog
because they just keep finding older and
older evidence of dogs and humans living
together. Um the domestication process
starting,
you know, at least 100,000 years ago
with dogs and potentially much much
earlier. With farm animals, it only
started about 10,000 years ago. Anyway,
I would drive by these
feral,
you know, miscellaneous brown and black
mutts hanging around in front of this
guy Caesar's uh bone yard, and at first
I would feel really bad for these dogs.
I would think, oh, these poor guys, you
know, they don't have any shelter. They
don't have any flea and tick medicine.
They don't have steady, high-quality
feed or vet visits or baths or walks or
snuggles or anything like that. That's
what I thought at first.
Then I kept driving by these dogs day
after day,
and I kept thinking, you know,
for a dog, that could be an awfully
sweet setup. And then one day I was
coming down Columbus Road, coming up on
the dogs, and one of them gets up off of
Caesar's little front stoop, and the dog
just darts across Columbus Road almost
right in front of my car. Like I barely
missed hitting this damn dog. And as I
drove past, I looked in my rearview
mirror to see what was so important
that the dog had to spring across the
road at that particular moment, risking
its life and limb.
Why did the stray dog cross the road,
right?
So, I look back in my mirror
and I see the dog emerge from the tall
grass on the opposite side of the road
with a giant, apparently full
McDonald's bag in its mouth. Like,
probably full of trash, this McDonald's
bag, but I would bet that there was like
a piece of bun soaked in special sauce
or something in there, or some spare
fries, or a half-eaten McFlurry. I mean,
probably not a half-eaten McFlurry
because
we all know that ice cream machine is
still is not working, but
there was probably like a wealth of
scraps in that bag. That dog had struck
the jackpot, and he knew it, and he was
not going to wait for me to drive past
before claiming his prize. And at that
moment, I wondered, you know, is this
the life that my dog wishes she was
living?
And indeed, Dr. Jessica Pierce, pet
ethicist,
an ethicist who concerns herself with
pets. She's not a pet herself. So,
Dr. Jessica Pierce, ethicist working on
pet issues, argues that yeah, like feral
dogs probably are living their best
life, or they're living something much
closer to their best life than the lives
that we provide dogs inside our homes.
And she's not just like arguing from her
gut. She has data to back this up. She
looks at behavioral and physiological
markers of stress recorded by
veterinarians and such, and she
concludes that most house-kept dogs,
like the kind that was right here on the
couch next to me until she decided that
she wasn't ready for her close-up
anymore,
Dr. Pierce concludes that most house
kept dogs are going completely batty
these days and acting out and chewing
everything in sight because we are
restraining them from acting on one of
their most basic impulses, which is to
forage for food.
Dogs are scavenger hunters. They'll
chase down some live prey, but they'd be
just as happy nosing around for an old
dead whatever in the grass to eat,
right? It's just something they were
born to do, to roam around with their
pack combing the ground for something
disgusting to lick up.
Dogs have a lot of mental energy and
sensory capabilities set aside for doing
exactly this. And when they can't use
those capabilities, they have to turn
them to something else, like finding
socks of yours to destroy. And when you
take those socks away and the dog
eventually just plops down and goes to
sleep, it might not be the peaceful,
contented sleep that it looks like. In
fact, for the live audience here, let me
show you where Poptart is these days.
There she is.
You're welcome to come back up, Poptart,
if you ever want to rejoin the program,
okay?
All right.
Glad we talked about that.
So,
there's reason to think that most of our
house dogs are leading lives of quiet
desperation, and Dr. Pierce says it
wasn't always this way. This is a unique
feature of contemporary
canine husbandry. Cuz back just a like a
generation or two ago, most people who
had dogs like didn't dote over them as
much as,
you know, maybe we do today, and they
didn't contain them so much. They didn't
worry so much about where the dog goes
when the dog goes outside, right? This
is how it was in my family uh growing up
in a rural Central Pennsylvania, we had
two Labrador retrievers in succession.
We had Bess, who died when I was I think
in second or third grade, maybe. And
then we had Sophie, who died the day
before my wedding.
She made it real long. Uh we lived out
in the woods
and when we let the dog out, we let the
dog out. Like there was no rope, there
was no chain, there was no fence. She
would just wander, probably like a mile
or two away sometimes, cuz sometimes
we'd go outside and we would call her
back home and it would take her a long
time to come home and sometimes she
wouldn't come home, you know, for hours.
And
sometimes she'd come home smelling of
the rotting deer carcass that she'd
found,
which is what she was born to do, for
God's sake. Indeed, us kids grew up the
same way.
All of us
in our little neighborhood in the woods
in Central Pennsylvania, there was like
four or five families out there who all
had kids around my age, which was a
miracle in retrospect. And we grew up
leaving our houses and getting on our
bikes and riding miles and
literally miles away from home with no
cell phones, no maps, no money.
Um and doing this like as young as my
kids are now, this the older one. Like
we would just vanish into the wooded
mist, like the kids in Stranger Things.
I mean, Stranger Things is about my
childhood
up to and including all of us learning
how to play Master of Puppets on our
guitars. I am filled with so much
gratitude for my feral childhood and I
am filled with sorrow knowing that mine
was among the last generation of at
least American kids to grow up with that
kind of laissez-faire parenting. You
know, lots of kids still get neglected
these days, of course, but that is not
the same thing. Like, my parents were
not neglectful in the slightest. They
were boomers, right? They were ex-hippie
boomers, all into feelings and positive
reinforcement and Mr. Rogers stuff, you
know? They were really very involved in
my life.
You could even call them helicopter
parents at times, but I would still get
to be a latchkey kid who came home from
school alone when I was really little,
and I'd wander into the woods with no
real restrictions as long as I got home
for dinner at 6:30.
And to do the same with my kids now
seems
completely insane. Like,
if they didn't get hit by cars
or shot by armed neighbors enacting the
castle doctrine or whatever, there's a
chance that they would just get picked
up by cops, and we would be charged for
reckless endangerment or something, you
know, child neglect, child endangerment.
I'm sure there are still places in the
United States and in countries like the
United States where kids do get to grow
up beneficially wild, but those places
are few and far between nowadays, or at
least they're they're thinly populated,
which is why the feral childhood works
there but
you know,
in that situation, not very many
children can grow up in a thinly
populated place because if a lot of them
get there, it would become thickly
populated. Thick-er. Um
you know, most most US kids these days
grow up in suffocating suburbia, where
automobile-oriented development creates
an environment where cars are just
whizzing by around your ears at speeds
that virtually assure death in a
vehicle-on-pedestrian
collision. It's not safe to walk, and
there's nowhere to walk to because
there's no woods, there's no wild land
where kids can just like throw rocks
into ditches or do whatever they want to
do without some grown-up hassling them.
Every inch of ground is owned and
protected by someone with a ring camera
and an AR-15. So, the environment is not
wild enough to get lost in, but at the
same time the environment is too wild
for actual urban living. You know,
suburban kids can't walk down to the
corner store to buy candy like city kids
can because there is no corner store in
suburbia. Or maybe there is. Oh, hey
dog. You want to come back?
Or maybe there is a corner store in
suburbia, but it's like an
automotive-oriented convenience store,
and there's literally no safe way to
walk to it. There's no sidewalks,
there's no crosswalks. It's just an
endless moat of parking or whatever.
This is in contrast to how like true
city kids grow up in actual city centers
with dense mixed-use development and
pedestrian infrastructure.
So, what I wonder is like is the world
really more dangerous for kids now or
have we just gotten more sensitive to
the dangers that were always there,
right? Cuz we're not having eight or 10
kids like our great-grandparents did.
We're only having one or two kids, and
therefore each kid is way more valuable
to us. We can't afford to have one kid
hit by a train or something while he's
out wandering. So, we protect the kids
that we have
to a fault, I think. I mean, maybe we do
that. Maybe we've just gotten more
civilized and therefore softer.
Um more sensitive to
the injury of a child, right?
Hey, dog. Stop eating that. Hey,
Pop-Tart. Hey.
Hey.
No chewing.
That's a pen, you ding-dong. No, come
here. Hey, you donut. Come here.
Hey.
Come on.
I don't have time for this. I got to do
my thing. You're eating a pen. Got it.
There's the pen. Okay.
Maybe we've gotten more civilized and
therefore softer, right? Soft is the
goal. Most of us don't want to live in
the kind of environment that makes
people really hard.
I'm guessing that it's all of the above,
right? The reason why I don't want to
stick my kids out the front door the way
that my parents did to me when I was
little. Regardless, I absolutely do not
feel safe kicking my kids out of that
front door and I definitely don't feel
safe kicking Pop-Tart out the front
door.
Pop-Tart, the new dog in the Ragusea
house if you're just joining the live
stream late. Here she is. She's right
there looking for trouble. Mhm.
So, in our neighborhood in Knoxville
dogs do get out all the time
and the neighborhood Facebook group is
on it. Like the second a dog gets out,
you're going to see a whole bunch of
just like blurry phone photos
that say, "Oh, this poor baby is is lost
near Sycamore Lane or whatever."
So, if I just kicked my dog out the door
to wander and if she didn't immediately
get flattened by like an oversized SUV
on the road, well, all the neighbors
would freak out and eventually get mad
at me, right? They'd tell me that I'm
abusing my dog. They'd tell me that it's
only a matter of time before the dog
attacks someone, you know, attacks a
cat, attacks, you know, just jumps
good-naturedly on an old lady and knocks
her down or something. And those are
valid concerns, right? So, this is why I
bought a house with a large fenced-in
backyard.
Or it's one of the reasons I bought a
big fenced-in backyard. Brits would call
it a back garden, of course.
So, I've got a fenced-in yard and yet
I won't put the dog in the yard by
herself
because I've seen what she gets into out
there.
Like, I've seen what she destroys.
I put a lot of work into the landscaping
at my house and I don't want all my
flowers dug up. I don't want her eating
the mushrooms or the groundhog poop or
the rocks or the dirt. This dog
literally chews rocks unless I stop her.
Now, in her defense, she is she has
shown something of a preference for like
old chunks of concrete or blacktop that
she finds as compared to, you know,
naturally consolidated rocks. I'm
guessing the concrete is a little more
crumbly. It's a little easier to chew.
Is that what it is?
Pop-Tart has standards. You have
standards. Yeah, you do.
That's what she does with me standing
right there next to her in the backyard.
Lord knows what she would do if I left
her out there alone to engage in the
scavenging behavior for which she was
born, right? Like, even if I didn't care
that much about her well-being, I
wouldn't want her barfing that stuff
back up again inside the house. She's
still a big puppy. She'll probably chill
out in a couple of years and then I can
start letting her go out back by herself
a bit, I'm sure. But, most other like
urban and suburban dog owners make very
similar calculations in their own heads
and now our dogs rarely get to wander.
Right? We take them for a couple of
walks a day. Don't eat the computer.
We take them for a couple of walks a
day. I run with Pop-Tart sometimes just
to tire us both out, but you know,
physical exercise is not really what she
needs. What she needs is the mental
exercise of looking for food,
which is something she is supposed to
spend most of her waking hours doing.
And when she can't, she goes looking for
pens.
Or is this some kind of like cosmetic
device from under Lauren's
desk?
I don't know.
Anyhoo,
Dr. Jessica Pierce, noted pet ethicist,
says that when she takes her dog for a
walk, the dog is in charge, right? She
lets the dog sniff out a trail in any
reasonable direction, and she follows
the dog, and they move at the dog's
pace, which is usually very slow cuz you
got to sniff, right? I've been trying to
do that with Poptart lately, just let
her lead the walks.
And I provide her with all the comforts
that a dog could expect, and monthly
flea and tick medicine, and heartworm
medicine, and trips to the vet. I'm sure
Poptart will outlive any of the feral
mutts hanging out on Columbus Road back
in Macon.
But,
a mature view of life and death observes
that death isn't anywhere close to being
the worst thing that can happen to you.
And comfort isn't the best thing that
can happen to you.
Like grass-fed beef cattle,
grass-fed beef cattle raised the right
way by conscientious humane ranchers,
right? Those cattle may indeed live
better lives, all things considered,
than the life that Poptart will live,
right? She's going to live longer
cuz most beef cattle these days only
live a couple of years, max,
sometimes a year and a half, right?
But, the cattle born on a good ranch
spends their the days that they do have
doing 100% what they want to do, which
is to stand in a green field and chew
grass. That's what the cow wants to do.
And pedants, yes, I know it's not
literally a cow.
Cattle.
Pop-Tart almost never gets to do exactly
what she wants to do. Her life is a
constant comfortable captivity.
And how does that sound to you,
honestly?
Cuz death isn't anywhere close to being
the worst thing that can happen to you.
And comfort isn't the best thing that
can happen to you. That's true for dogs
and it's true for people. Sometimes I
wonder if our modern highly
dysfunctional human relationship with
food
is rooted in the fact that we are born
scavengers, too. Just like the dog. I
mean, look it up. We humans have the
level of stomach acidity that you would
normally see in animals like dogs that
eat old dead things, right? We are
hunter-gatherers, just like dogs, you
know? We hunt a little, but we might or
mostly supposed to spend most of our
waking hours just wandering around
combing the ground for anything to eat.
We're supposed to have food on the brain
most of the time because we need to be
constantly looking for food just to get
barely enough food to survive, right? At
least that's how it worked on the plains
of East Africa for which every single
one of us humans
was evolved. That is home for all of us,
right?
Most of us are very, very far away from
home now. Food is everywhere. Food is
everywhere. You don't need to think
about it all the time, and yet we do
because we're born to. And usually that
ends up with us just eating way too much
food or spending way too much on food or
wasting way too much time watching food
videos on the internet.
So, with that, I think that uh I'll
start reading some questions and
comments from the live chat.
For the moment, I'm going to prioritize
dog-related content in the group chat
for the sake of uh you know, a smooth
transition out of what we've already
been talking about, but eventually we'll
just go with the flow. And the flow
flows to our first sponsor of the
episode,
which is
Trade Coffee,
the kind people who keep me in a
custom-curated feed of delicious coffee
flowing right to my door
as fast as I want to drink it. Yeah,
Pop-Tart, check it out.
drinktrade.com/adamshow.
If you want to support the Ragusea Pod
and also get a free bag of coffee with
any subscription purchase.
drinktrade.com/adamshow.
Trade is not a coffee store, nor are
they a coffee roaster. Trade is a coffee
subscription service that makes it very
easy to discover new coffees and to brew
your best cup at home every day. As a
dog combs the land for putridity to
devour,
Trade combs the land for independent
coffee roasters who are sourcing their
beans ethically and they are producing
fresh, interesting bags of coffee for
your enjoyment. Trade has professional
tasters who look for great new things
and they match those coffees with your
stated tastes, like what you like. I
like bright, acidic coffees, but I also
like to be surprised and that's what I
tell Trade. You know, they send me
something unexpected and delightful as
often as I want it and all bags are
roasted within 48 hours of shipping
because it comes to you directly from
the roaster, right? Actually,
fresh coffee is just so much better and
you'll you'll taste it. Have a better
year by upgrading your morning routine
with better coffee. Right now, Trade is
offering you a free bag of coffee with
any subscription at
drinktrade.com/adamshow.
That's uh drinktrade.com/adamshow
for a free bag of coffee with any
subscription purchase. Thank you, Trade.
Now, dog, that's a piece of plastic. You
can't have that to eat. Thank you.
And uh let's check out the uh
Let's check out the chat box. Okay, so
people are asking some specifics about
Dr. Pierce's research um and uh you know
how how they measure dog happiness and
stuff like that and I would simply
prefer you to you one of her many books
on the topic. Uh you know, not really
not really uh
my area of expertise.
You know, people will you know, I I
guess I could talk a little bit about
food.
Um you know, like is it is it ethical to
feed your dog uh the stuff that we
usually feed dogs, which is not Hey,
charging bricks at expensive Apple
charging bricks. We do not eat those.
No, no, no. We do not eat those.
What do we eat?
We eat kibble, right? So, the dog eats
kibble
and
you know, um the thing about kibble
mixtures is that in addition to being
like very efficiently produced, you
know, um I'm I'm sure the profit margin
on dog food has got to be fantastic cuz
it's just so
you know, they're they're just using
byproducts from other industries mostly
and which is not a bad thing. Efficiency
is good, you know. Efficiency is good.
And uh and they're they're those feeds
are perfectly formulated for the dogs.
So, if they only eat that, they're going
to be fine. They're going to get all
their macros and all their micros. And
if you diverge from that, right? Like if
you you know, every now and then give
them a
you know, some human food, then yeah,
you risk kind of diverting them from
that uh
from that perfect diet. But then again,
for God's sake, it's just a dog,
you know?
It's just a dog. And indeed, okay, so
who's asking this? So, oh, I I lost your
I lost your chat. Oh.
Oh, I'm so sad. Okay, so somebody asked
something that's really important, which
is like why essentially like how you how
I personally square the ethics of like
doting over my dog while I also like
kill and eat animals, which is a
perfectly fair question. And I'm not I
don't want to get into like all the
specifics of my
ethical calculations on meat eating. I
mean, that's that that deserves its own
very long episode that I I don't even
really want to do, but I'll do it at
some point cuz it's it's important,
right? Um you know, but I don't know if
you all saw it, but like there was um
I believe it was a sub-organization
within PETA, People for the Ethical
Treatment of Animals, did this like
viral social media campaign where they
pretended to be and forgive me, PETA, if
this wasn't you.
Um I I might I just recall that it was
you. Um but it was a it was an awesome
it was a very clever campaign. So, the
clever social media campaign, I don't
know if you saw it, was
they had like these beautiful dogs in a
picture and it's like, you know, here we
are down at Farm Dogworth or whatever
and these these uh dogs have, you know,
lived a wonderful rich life out here on
the pasture and uh now their time has
come and it's we're ready to harvest
them for meat, right? And let Let us
know how many pounds of dog meat you
want. And the intent of this very clever
kind of advertising campaign was to
point out how hypocritical it is that
some of us
dote over our dogs and yet we kill and
eat animals who are easily as
intelligent. Like like look it up. Dog
intelligence, dog cognition is not
remarkable. Like they're not that
they're not notably smarter than other
mammals about their general description,
you know, size and everything, okay?
Hey, please do not eat the brick. Come
here. Come on.
You can't eat it. It It It can't happen.
You can't be eating this.
Anyways,
and that's what the intent of the ad
campaign was,
but the funny thing was that all it did
was basically reinforce to me the notion
that the way we treat our dogs is
completely insane, right? Like Like I I
am a humanist.
Card-carrying secular humanist. I
believe that humans are fundamentally
very, very special. Um you know, quite
possibly the most special thing in the
entire universe is the human race,
possibly.
And we are more important than they are,
okay? I don't believe that they have
that they're
all that sentient.
Like I'm sure it's I'm sure it's a
spectrum or gray area, right? I don't
think that they're that intelligent or
sentient, and I'm not that concerned
with their well-being, honestly. I
didn't even really want a dog, um
another dog. Like our dog back in Macon
was was a lovely dog, but she was, you
know, a traumatized shelter dog, and we
dealt with a lot of problems. And I, you
know, the reason that I consented to get
a dog when Lauren wanted to get one was
that I do think that like kids should
grow up with animals. I think that's
important for them developmentally on a
number of levels, and I wanted to get
chickens, but Lauren didn't want
chickens, so we compromised on a dog,
okay? I or I wanted a goat. I might
still get a goat. We'll see.
So anyhoo
you know, I I I I kind of think that
like
what I try to remember is that we have
the dog for us, okay? The dog is here to
serve us.
Um that's why we have them, and so why
we invite them into our homes, even if
we think we're doing otherwise, that's
not really true. It really is about us,
and so
yeah, I don't really care. And I mostly
see the dog as like a thing
where children can practice empathy in
seeing how things that they do cause
pain to another living being or make
another living being feel good. And I
don't think that that's intrinsically
super important. Like I love Pop-Tart,
but I don't Yeah, I know. I was talking
about you. But I you know, I don't think
it's really that important if you are
well treated in the scheme of things. Um
what's more important is that like
the kids get the opportunity trying to
learn how to treat you well so that they
can then apply what the those skills to
how they treat humans later in life,
which I think is a lot more important.
But I also think it's important to treat
animals well. You know, I always say to
the kids, you never hurt an animal with
no reason. Right? Cuz kids instinctively
just want to pull the wings off of flies
and stuff like that and I'm just like,
"No. You never hurt an animal unless you
have a good reason to." And uh needing
food
is broadly speaking a good reason. Now,
is
does that logic justify like the
industrial meat making apparatus as it
has evolved in the United States and in
similar countries uh or countries that
have imitated the United States
subsequently? No, I don't think it does.
Like I I really, you know, I I I
weigh less meat now than I used to and I
get it mostly from places I really trust
and I think that that's important, but I
also don't presume to lecture you about
that because only you know about your
situation and how much money you have
and you know, what what you need to eat
in order to be healthy, what you
specifically need to eat in order to be
healthy and I That's that's for you to
kind of figure out for your for
yourself, you know?
So, um yeah. Brandon Vincent says, uh
"Nowadays we are so far removed from
what meat is. My grandma would never buy
a chicken breast or a boneless, skinless
thigh. She buys the whole chicken and
breaks it down." Yeah, that's awesome. I
do wonder if if pe- treatment of animals
was more hu- like farm animals was more
humane
back in the day when uh most people were
kind of rearing and and killing their
own animals, I wonder if
doing that actually de- de- de-
humanizes the animal more in your eyes
and you end up treating it even more
callously because you're just living
every day in the harsh realities of the
farm, which always makes me think of if
you've ever seen like st- stop watching
this right or listening to this right
now if you've not seen it, but um
the old footage of Werner Herzog, the
document the German documentarian, or is
he Austrian? I don't know. Werner Herzog
um
in the jungle making a documentary about
the jungle and saying that like it's
it's just violence. It's horrible
violent profanity and fornication and
violence. And I
but I I don't hate the jungle. I love
the jungle. I love I I love the jungle
against my better judgment.
Um
yeah. Anyway, the point is is that like
nature like like the nature is cruel.
Like we are the least I I would guess
that we are the least cruel as a people
than we've ever been at this very moment
and it's because prosperity has made us
soft in a number of ways. And you know,
in general, I think it's good. Like no
one no one people think they don't want
to be soft just like people think they
don't want to be old, but as they you
know my
uh physician says as I get get older is
uh you know, old is the goal. Old is the
goal, right? You want to live long. Soft
is the goal cuz you want to live the
kind of lifestyle that makes you
soft, morally soft, right? Like
sympathetic. Living an easier lifestyle
is what leads to that to some extent,
you know? Cuz you have the you have the
time, you have the latitude, you have
the privilege of being able to consider
lots of things other than your own
immediate needs.
Oh, thanks. Are you okay?
How are your immediate needs over there?
Come here. It's all right. Just get out
from underneath it. She She collapsed
the uh stepstool onto her, which sounds
way worse than it is. Would you just
come over here?
I'm not going to get up and lift it off
you.
All right. What else is saying?
Uh So, Lemonhead says plant-based meats
like Beyond and Impossible are touted as
being more environmentally friendly than
beef, but they have their own
environmental costs, too, with the land
use, water use, and GMOs, et cetera.
Thoughts? Thank you, Lemonhead. I
boy, that is so complicated and it it
really depends on the specific meat
alternative product you're talking about
and you know, and compared to what? Like
you're eating the Impossible meat
compared to what? And so, there's it's
You cannot give an accurate blanket
answer to a question like that. And I
Personally, I think you should be really
suspicious of anyone who does, right?
Cuz it it it Any content creator or
whoever, I mean, unless they're like an
actual freaking scientist with
credentials. If it's just a dude like
me, and they say that clearly this one
product is environmentally better than
the other, unless they've really
interrogated that and they give a lot of
detail to that assessment, I would be
suspicious of them.
You know, cuz beef I mean, even the case
against beef, the environmental case
against beef, is really complicated, and
that's something I will do a whole video
about at some point if I feel like I can
wrap my head around it and find the
right experts. But, you know, the basic
thing is you know, the biggest
environmental you know,
in most experts' opinions, and certainly
in my opinion, for what it's worth, like
the most The biggest hazard
environmental hazard that the beef
industry poses is its contribution to
global warming, which is, you know,
cows, as they are digesting their grass,
they burp uh and to a lesser extent,
toot. Um
Uh oh gosh, what is the hydrocarbon that
they toot? It's called
Oh, who Somebody in the chat knows.
Methane, right? So, methane.
You know? Oh, thank you. Uh Dank Dank
Jeb. Oh my god, is Dank Jeb like Jeb
Bush, but he smokes?
That's awesome. I love that image. Okay.
Uh methane. So, methane is like an
incredibly powerful greenhouse gas. It
has a much stronger I think it's
something like a six times the
greenhouse effect of an equivalent
amount of just carbon dioxide, right? Um
and that's that's real bad, right? But,
on the other hand, what you could say is
that when cattle are grazing off of
grass especially
um they're contributing to
a closed carbon cycle, right? There's
surface life stuff. There's surface
carbon-based matter on the planet that
we mostly organic material, right? And
life forms on the surface are constantly
eating that carbon and then putting that
carbon into the atmosphere and then it
gets sucked back out of the atmosphere
into the plant that the cow is going to
swing back and eat again the next day,
right? Like the grass cannot grow
without taking carbon out of out of the
out of the atmosphere to contribute to
its own growth, right? So, what like the
beef industry apologists will say, and
it's not the argument is not totally
without merit,
in my opinion. Um
take it for what it's worth cuz I'm just
a dude on the internet.
Um
what the beef industry apologists will
say is that cattle are not contributing
any new carbon to the environment.
They're participating in the closed
surface and atmospheric carbon cycle.
Um and the the reason that, you know,
fossil fuels are so incredibly injurious
to the climate is that that's that's not
surface carbon. That's what they call
sequestered carbon. Carbon
that has been trapped for millions of
years under the ground and to bring
bring all up to the surface at once,
which is what we've been doing since the
dawn of the industrial revolution, and
that, you know, the last 200 years
counts as all at once in geological
time right?
Um,
so when you bring it all up at once,
then yeah, you have the potential to
like introduce a lot of new carbon to
the atmosphere, and that could really
mess things up, and seem it seems like
it is really messing things up.
Uh,
cows are not part of that. They're part
of the closed surface carbon cycle.
That's what the beef industry apologists
will say. Now, the counter argument to
that is that the cows are not just
burping carbon dioxide, they're burping,
oh, I'm so Would you just get out from
under the the ladder if you don't like
it? Like you could literally just walk
away right now.
Like just make it
All I'm asking is that you own your
choices, dog, okay? Just own your Can
Can you own your choices?
Thank you.
See, barely sentient. Anyway,
uh,
the counter argument to that is that the
particular kind of methane that dog that
that cattle cattle
uh, burp out, the particular kind of
carbon is methane, which is far more
powerful of a greenhouse gas than the
carbon dioxide that would be released if
you simply burned that grass instead of
feeding it to a cow. And therefore,
that's why, you know, very smart people
think that the beef industry is probably
contributing very substantially to
global warming, and that ain't great.
Um, I find myself increasingly when I do
eat meat, eating beef,
um, because I have fewer animal welfare
concerns with beef. Um, beef that's, you
know, that's where I get it from guys
that I trust, like that that that that
cow has lived those cattle have lived
incredibly, you know, cushy, nice lives,
and were killed quickly and humanely,
and I have no problem with that. Um, but
I still worry about it chiefly from a
climate perspective. But you can't
answer the question
is beef bad for the environment without
first dealing seriously and
realistically with what you're comparing
it to. What would people eat instead of
the beef? What would they grow on that
ranch land instead
in other than beef? Would they grow
anything? A lot of ranch land is really,
really, you know, dry and semi-arid in
the United States, certainly, right? You
really can't do much else with most of
the land that we use for grazing. Or at
least that's that's what the ranchers
like to tell us. Don't know how it true
it is. I imagine it's somewhat true,
right? Uh, you know, what So, what would
we grow instead? And where would we grow
it? If we were if we weren't growing cow
meat there. We'd probably be growing
another thing somewhere else, and it
might be just as bad for the
environment. We It's I doubt it. So, I
generally encourage reducing meat
consumption, and that's what I'm doing
in my own life, cuz I think it's
probably the safest bet, you know? And
maybe I'll stop eating meat entirely one
day. I don't I don't know. I certainly
don't don't really need it anymore, you
know?
Okay.
So, I should go ahead and answer some
more questions in the chat. Uh,
buh buh buh buh. Okay, so Blood Alchemy
says, "Question: You've talked about
YouTube sponsorships before. Last year
video started showing the white graph
with what parts of a video are popular
or unpopular, and did that change my ad
contracts?" Uh, no, it didn't, cuz if
you look at the what I think is the
graph that you're referring to, which
shows the like most viewed parts, which
mostly is an indication of either
you know, you you would be able to see
some drop-off with that if people are
just leaving, but mostly what you see is
the parts that people repeat. And if you
look at it in videos like mine that have
like in-video sponsorships where I'm the
one delivering the the
the most viewed um
spot in the video is always the end of
the sponsorship.
Because people are checking back in to
see if they got past it, if they forward
if they were able to fast forward past
it. And when they can't, they have to
sort of, you know, watch the end of the
of the ad a little bit and then they get
back into the show. And
you know, to me it it's up to my
sponsors to decide how best I can help
them, you know, move some product,
right? And if they are concerned about
that feature or want to respond to it in
some way, then I would be happy to work
with them. But what I imagine is that
it's probably not hurting their business
cuz, you know, when people
rewind to find the spot where the ad
ended,
they're going to be watching for the
call to what they call the CTA or the
call to action, which is where you say,
you know, go to this website to save
this money and get your buy your widget,
whatever it is. And that's like the most
important for them part of the ad for
them to watch, and it seems to be the
most popular part of every video that I
put up for the reasons that we have
discussed, and I would imagine that
that's just fine for my fine sponsors,
which of course includes
Indeed, other sponsor of this episode.
Go to uh indeed.com/ragusea
to go ahead and get yourself a $75
sponsored job credit so that you can
heart start hiring now with Indeed.
Indeed is a job board, but the best one,
right? Oh, that offer is good for a
limited time, I should say.
If you're hiring for your own business
all on your own, you're doing something
that's really much harder and more
consequential than the live podcast
hosting that I am doing right now, which
is really quite hard, especially when
the dog is acting up for reasons
previously discussed on the program.
What you're trying to do, trying to hire
people for your business, that's even
harder than what I'm doing right now.
You just need to breathe, you got to
take it easy, you got to keep it simple.
If you're hiring, you need Indeed, and
here's why. You can attract, interview,
and hire people all in one place instead
of spending hours bouncing between
multiple job boards. Indeed delivers
four times more hires than all other job
sites combined, according to TalentNest.
Job seekers are there on Indeed waiting
for you, and Indeed gives you a powerful
suite of tools to help you find the
right person with the right
qualifications for your job. With
Instant Match, Indeed Instant Match, you
are
over 80% of employers get quality
candidates whose resume on Indeed
matches their job description the moment
that they sponsor a job, and that's
according to Indeed's US data. Thank
you, dog. I know you're so interested in
this
advertisement, an advert as the Brits
would say.
Let's say that Indeed spits out exactly
the right person for you.
What you can do then is message that
potential employee through Indeed. You
know, invite them to apply for your job,
invite them to take one of the Indeed
assessments that allows you to test
skills and knowledge, invite them to do
a virtual interview with you through
Indeed. If you reach out to them, they
are three times more likely to actually
apply for your job. It's a big
difference.
Even better, Indeed is the only job site
where you only pay for applications that
meet your must-have requirements. 3
million businesses worldwide know what's
up. They find great talent with Indeed.
Start hiring now with a $75 sponsored
job credit to upgrade your job post at
indeed.com/ragusea.
Offers good for a limited time. Claim
your $75 credit right now at
indeed.com/ragusea.
indeed.com/ragusea.
Terms and conditions apply. Need to
hire? You need Indeed.
Question for you, Adam, from TK. TK
says, "I love your deep dives into food
history.
What is your approach when going down
the rabbit hole of investigating the
origin of food or a food custom?"
So, he TK is not
asking about my research process
generally, but but specifically as it
applies to food history videos, which I
don't do enough of. I would like to do
more of those. Usually, that involves
for me finding a scholar, a specific
scholar who is working on that topic.
Like and usually, I can find someone
that's their whole life's work is, you
know, for example,
where did the modern concept of the
restaurant come from? Right? That's a
video we did with an Indiana University
professor, uh Dr. Rebecca
something German, Speer something. I
don't know what it was. But, she did a
great job. Um and I I just, you know, I
find the right scholar, I go put a
camera on them, I help them sell a few
books as a courtesy, and that's usually
what I do. And that And that works.
There's a couple of tricks there,
though. Um one, you got to make sure
that the scholar you're going to talk to
about a historical topic, or really any
topic, is not like a fringe figure,
okay? And if they are a fringe figure,
that doesn't necessarily disqualify
them, but it requires that you're going
to have to add a lot more context to
yourself, and you're probably going to
need to interview some more mainstream
scholars in that field, unless you have
the ability to really tell um BS from
non-BS, which I I don't in in most
things, right? I I I defer to expertise
excitedly, willingly, you know? And
that's
Is that an appeals to authority fallacy?
No, I don't think so, but maybe me and
Vlad Vexler could talk about that
sometime on the channel. I'm going to
call you, Vlad. Anyhow,
um
so, you got to make sure that the
scholar you're interviewing is not is
not a fringe figure who's going to be
representing the the history really
differently than the way everyone else
in the field would represent it, right?
And that can be tricky
um because sometimes you're I'm after
doing something that's so niche, a
historical topic that is so niche that
there's really only like one person
who's written a book about it or
anything like that and they're kind of
the only game in town and I just kind of
have to hope that they're not crazy, you
know? And I try to rely, trust in the
systems of university tenure review and
you know, peer review for publication
and stuff to make sure that nothing
completely insane is going to get um you
know, boosted by my channel and I'm sure
sometimes it does. And then the other
thing you got to be careful for is to
see
look at the sca- I have to be careful
for is when I look at the scholar or the
expert that I'm interviewing for that
food history video and I have to ask
myself is this person an outsider
when it comes to what they're talking
about? Like are they inside the
community that is being written about or
are they viewing it from the outside?
And if they're viewing it from the
outside in some way, I have to make sure
I get some kind of inside perspective
and when I don't, I always live to
regret it. So an example, and this is
this is not an expert screwing me, this
is just me screwing myself as usual,
would be a podcast episode recently
where I talked about the wonders of
Brazilian steak houses, which are
awesome and I love that and I I liked
that episode and I don't think I said
anything really wrong or anything. What
I messed up was I was giving the history
behind um the Brazilian steak house
institution and the particular
geographic area that birthed it, which
is called the Pampas.
Uh you know, a an area of
perfect for cattle ranching that's
around uh Buenos Aires in in Argentina
but uh the southern province of Brazil
is part of it other other countries have
parts of it. But anyway, so I talked
about sort of how the Pampas got
populated by cattle and and by cowboys
called gauchos. And what I didn't
mention was the indigenous people of the
Pampas who were driven out by that
activity. And apparently, like it's not
a mistake that I missed that. Um the,
you know, uh powers that be in Argentina
and elsewhere have worked really hard
apparently to kind of expunge that part
of
their history from the record. And so
and they succeeded. And they they they
fooled me. They duped me. I just didn't
I didn't When I was reading up on
Brazilian steak houses, I I did not read
up anything about any indigenous
population of the Pampas. And I guess I
assumed that there was very little if
any. Which you know, which is not crazy
for me to assume because I believe the,
you know, indigenous population was much
more concentrated on the uh western uh
west coast of South America pre-Columbia
um pre-Columbian exchange. Exchange
Columbian exchange. That's such a benign
way to describe
mass murder. Um
Anyhow, I guess I should just go ahead
and move on. But anyway, sorry to the
indigenous people of the Pampas. Uh
that's the way that I screwed up because
I didn't I didn't consult an insider,
right? The way I should have for that.
And I guess I didn't think I needed to
cuz it was just kind of an offhand and
casual podcast where I was just talking
about how much I liked my dinner at a
Brazilian steak house. Um but it I I I I
it suffered because I didn't look it for
somebody inside.
So, uh let's see. Smiliest Prid,
Smiliest Prid is asking, "Would you ever
have Vsauce on the pod?" I'd love to.
Vsauce is awesome. Uh lovely, lovely
guy.
Um and
we There's a I don't know if I should
tell you.
Well, I can alert you to the existence
of it as long as I don't throw you a
keys. But there's like a Discord server
where a lot of um us, people like me,
you know, food tubers hang out and talk
and you know, we talk shop and help each
other out a little bit, you know, give
each other
thumbnail feedback, whatever. And uh and
Vsauce is there and is awesome. Um I the
trick
the trick with the podcast I have found
is that very rarely do guests draw
audience. Topic is what draws audience.
Um something that you can say in three
words on your thumbnail that is going to
pique people's curiosity and make them
want to click. And even a big get
interview
has not historically done that for me
when I've tried it. Now, my gets are my
idea of a big get is like Vsauce, right?
And and maybe if I thought a little
bigger, if you know, the idea of my my
idea of a big get was Gordon Ramsay or
something, like I bet a lot of people
would click on a video that promised a
conversation between me and
Gordon Ramsay, right? But it's never
going to happen cuz I for any number of
reasons. Like he's like he's like I try
to be really happy and smiley in my
public persona, but like
Gordon Ramsay is pretty much the only
like food world personality that I will
consistently talk crap about in public
cuz I just think he is so he's been such
an overwhelmingly negative force on the
world. Like his net effect on the world
has been really negative, I suspect. Um
and I just
Anyhow,
um fun fact, got another email from like
a casting agent who is looking to cast
the next victim for a Gordon Ramsay
reality show and they were very they
they saw my channel and they're very
impressed by my content and they're
curious if we could get on the phone to
talk about me giving up, you know, four
months of my life or whatever it is, you
know, to live in uh
an isolated bubble, which is what you
have to do when you do those reality
shows. if you didn't know. Like to have
to give them your phone maybe, you know,
cuz they don't want people
they don't want people uh
breaking the news about who won who win
the show. Who won who don't people doing
spoilers for the show. So, you have to
live like a sequestered juryman for like
for a few months while you're filming
the show while Gordon Ramsay abuses you
and humiliates you no matter how good
you are at what you do. And uh
yeah, I I no. I can think of many things
I would do before Gordon Ramsay program.
And uh that list of things that I would
rather do includes hitting myself in the
face with a hammer.
All right. Uh we can take like a couple
more questions and then we got to we got
to go ahead and wrap this one up.
Um Hannah Dow asks, "How come in your
oven fries video, you instruct to add
vinegar to the boil water to cook the
potatoes slower? Why don't you just cook
them for less time?"
Is that what I did in that video?
I don't remember doing that in that
video, but that sounds like the kind of
thing that I would do. Um so, Hannah um
so, pH affects the breakdown of lots of
the chemicals that kind of glue plant
foods plant foods together. Um and for
example
acid, low pH will inhibit the breakdown
of pectin, which is one of the reason
that we use pectin in like sour fruit
preserves and such. It's so effective
there. The acid essentially protects the
pectin.
And it's it's way more complicated than
that, the chemistry. And you know, so
don't don't quote me on on that
in my show that I'm going to publish.
That is being broadcast live right now.
It's almost like it's radio or
something. Anyhow,
um
the
Oh god, what was I talking about?
Hey, people in the chat, what was I
talking about? Oh, the the vinegar,
right? The vinegar for potatoes. So,
what vinegar will do in your boil water
for potatoes is that it'll inhibit the
breakdown of pectin. It will sort of
kind of keep the potato together, but it
will allow for the breakdown of other
things. And what you end up getting with
potatoes, for example, is um
cell sloughing, I believe is the
technical term for it. Like, the cells
of the potato will will break apart from
each other, but they the cells with
themselves will remain more intact and
spill less starch into the solution,
which would make things gummy and all
kinds of things. And I I forget what
exactly advantage it would have for the
oven fries. But, the other the reason I
took your question
um
is that I I want to emphasize that like
I I I do not stand by my earliest
videos, of which that is one. Like, the
videos I was doing in my first year,
basically, are just filled with all
kinds of things that I would love to
take back if I could, but the internet
is forever. And even if I delete the
video, it's just going to get reposted
by somebody. So, it is what it is. You
know, what's done is done, and you have
to just improve and and and move on.
But, I was so green in my first year
doing this that I made all kinds of like
technical mistakes and culinary mis-
it's just so culinary mistakes, all
kinds of things, and you know,
uh bits of wisdom that I had absorbed
uh you know, chef wisdom that I absorbed
uncritically that I just kind of
parroted uncritically in the videos,
which is my early videos, which is not
what I want to do. I'm kind of the
opposite of that, you know? So,
everything I do in an early video,
please, for God's sake, take it with a
grain of salt. Uh I don't even remember
the oven fries video. I will never watch
that video again because of how
overexposed some of the shots are. I
just can't live with that again.
A human with a name says, "Goose,
you're easily my favorite YouTuber.
Because of you, I want to be a chef and
maybe get a food science degree. I am
writing a paper on your autolysis video.
Will you bring back the Q&A's in
comments?"
Um so, thank you, human with a name, and
that all sounds great. Uh I would
absolutely encourage studying food
science in college. That's got to be one
of the just perfect undergraduate
degrees.
My god, awesome. Do it. And it it'll it
would set you up so well for work as a
chef. It would set you set you up well
for
you know, uh
steadier and probably higher-paying work
in the food industry, the kind of work
where you get to like go into your
office and then leave at 5:00, and
that's it, right? So, I would encourage
you to keep following your your heart in
the direction of food science, and maybe
it'll take you to some a better job than
working at a restaurant. Working at a
restaurant is really hard, and I tend to
kind of consider it something like being
a musician, uh which I
was before I, you know,
failed at it. It's where my life
started.
Uh the only reason to be a professional
musician is if you're you're so good at
it, right? That it's effortless, and
people just lap it up. Like the the
effortless stuff that you pump out
there, people just love it, you know?
Paul McCartney is
in in that category, right? It's just
it's just easy for him. It's so easy. Or
in the case of like classically trained
musicians, people like orchestral
players, you know, there's people who
can practice for 10 hours a day,
and then get ready for the concert, and
they kill it, and they sound beautiful,
but they live a miserable life compared
to the people who can who are so
talented they can just show up with
their violin and sight-read the thing,
and they're they play it beautifully,
and they're done, right? Um you get the
same product in both result in both
situations, but only one of those people
had a good time that day.
You know? And that was mainly one of the
biggest reasons why I quit quit music
was just it was just like I'm not I can
be I can make really good music, but I
have to work so hard at it. And there's
people who do things just as good and it
they just toss it off. It's just like
breathing to them. And I should leave it
to them. The other reason to like be a
musician a professional musician is if
like you you can't do anything else. You
love it so much. You have so much music
in you that you have to let it out or
you will die. Right? That's that's a
great reason to be a musician, too. I
mean you're still probably in for a
world of hurt in terms of your life,
but you have no other choice. So you
have to you have to do it, you know?
It's like loving someone so much who
Well, that's a bad example. I don't want
I guess I I don't want to be a
I don't want to be advancing abusive
relationships. So forget I started that
thought.
What I really want to compare compare a
music professional music making to is
professional food making, especially in
restaurants, right? Restaurant work is
is so killer. It hurts people so much.
Even the most successful people in the
business
are exhausted and their knees hurt and
their restaurants usually don't make
that much money. Even successful
restaurants don't turn much profit. Uh
and it's a rough life. And the only
reason to do it is if it's
easy for you and the public laps it up.
Or if like you can't do anything else.
It's what you have to do to actualize
yourself.
Any cost be damned, you know? You're
going to live with the pain of working
in a restaurant. So awesome. Do that if
that's your calling, but otherwise,
yeah, I'd say study food science and
maybe you get a corporate job.
Now, what Human With a Name also asks is
will I bring back the Q&A's in the
comments. So what he's
what this person is referring to is
I used to
do like a an FAQ, like a fact, like a
frequently asked questions. Do people
say fact or FAQ? Or do people even say
that anymore cuz that's like an internet
1.0
term.
Uh from the early days. But anyway, I
used to do like an FAQ in the pinned
comment underneath every video.
I don't do that anymore, um human with a
name.
I consciously stopped for two reasons.
One, I got better at anticipating
what people would ask about. Or what
their criticisms would be. Or you know,
whatever they would say that would need
to be addressed by me. I got better at
anticipating what that would be through
experience. And so what I try to do is
do the Q&A that I would do in the pinned
comment. I try to do that in the video
now or the pod, right? I try to
anticipate what people are going to talk
about. And usually, you know, the big
things that I would want to address, I
have addressed now in the show. And
that's why I just don't need to put in
the Q&A most times. the FAQ. Um and then
the other reason I stopped doing it is
just I needed to
I I I needed to stop engaging with my
audience for my own
good. For any number of reasons. And I
had to like kind of go cold turkey on
audience engagement and reading comments
and stuff. And then I was able to kind
of gradually rebuild that in my life in
a way that was that was more healthy.
Um and still isn't super healthy.
But I've kept it reasonably healthy
largely by ignoring most of it. And
trusting certain people that I have in
my life to surface audience complaints,
comments, whatever that I I really
should hear.
Um but I just can't cuz I I don't want
to look
cuz it's just bad for me. And probably
would be bad for you too if you were
ever in the situation. People like to
they'll say things like, "Oh god, these
YouTubers, they have such thin skin." Or
these politicians, "They have such thin
skin." Like you you try it. Like you try
you exposing yourself to that kind of
mass public scrutiny even in the case of
like relatively inconsequential micro
celebrity like the kind that I enjoy.
It's really rough and it takes it takes
a lot of learning to to figure out a
productive way to do it and maybe the
best way is to ignore it. So
I can answer I'm going to answer two
more questions. Okay.
Uh
Ceiling fan asks Adam given that you're
humanist how do you weigh animal welfare
against human economic benefit of
maximally efficient meat production IE
factory farming?
Yeah,
you said it ceiling fan. What a smart
ceiling fan you are. Oh, he's such a
smart ceiling fan. He's so smart.
Yeah it's
uh
I I certainly value
I value human life and I value the
continued
sustenance of the biosphere as we know
it way more than I value
animal welfare. It's you know, that's
not to say I don't value animal welfare.
I do.
But I think what happens to people is
more important and I think what happens
long-term to the whole biosphere is much
more important. And if you can make meat
and when meat production is more
efficient when you when when farming in
general and food production is more
efficient
there are benefits to be realized
there.
Not necessarily. There's all kinds of
you know, conventional agriculture that
is tremendously injurious to the
environment among other problems.
But you know, the constant fight between
the organic farming crowd and the
conventional farming crowd is really
which is better or worse for the
environment and there's
as I understand it the science on that
question is kind of inconclusive mostly
because it it depends a lot on which
specific food you're talking about and
which specific eaters you're talking
about and it's and how you're counting
it right like what what how how wide are
you drawing the circle around the
knock-on effects of that food that
you're examining.
It's really hard.
But there's a strong scientific argument
to be made that like the more efficient
the food production is, the better it
probably is for the environment in most
situations.
And that could include factory animal
farming that is unimaginably cruel um to
animals and that's not great.
So as a humanist, yeah, um I value these
things more than I value animals, but I
do value animal welfare and I am not
down with modern factory animal farming.
Though it has made tremendous strides,
like a lot of the really horrific, you
know, Upton Sinclair type practices have
been reined in considerably and that's
not a matter of my opinion. That's like
that's been researched. Like go Google
Scholar that Like um a lot of the
worst abuses have been reined in, but
terrible abuses still happen and you
could argue that the system itself is
inherently an abuse.
So that's why I increasingly buy meat
from people I know who are raising
animals, you know, out in the grass
somewhere. I'm not sure if that's better
for the environment.
It's probably worse for the overall
economy and the you know, the the
of availability of sufficient material
things for everyone in the world, right?
Probably not great for that, but at
least I'm pretty sure it's good for
animal welfare, so that's what I why I
do it and that's the best I can do.
Uh and that's that's what I have to say
about that.
Uh David McDermott asks, "Do you ever
wish that you had gone into food science
as a career?"
Uh no. No, I think that my the food
science job that I have, which is kind
of a food science job, is like way
better than like anybody else's food
science job. Like this is freaking
awesome. It certainly pays more than
most food science jobs.
Um
because ultimately it's not just a food
science job.
So no, I think I would not have done
that. I do regret I really regret not
taking more chem in college. In fact,
did I even take chem in college? I
didn't take o-chem in college. I took
chem in high school I took like good a
really good high school chemistry class
that helps me a lot to this day.
But I wish I had taken college-level
o-chem at Penn State. Like I think so
many things would be so much easier for
me right now. Um
but coulda woulda shoulda. It's hard to
be mad about the choices that you made
in your life when your life turns out as
well as I feel like mine has.
You know, what I regret is who I hurt on
the way here.
Um and that would include some animals,
no doubt.
Um so I'm going to take one
more question.
Bop bop ba.
Well, here's a comment from Martin
Raymond saying science communicators
do a lot more to advance science than
scientists do sometimes. Appreciate
that, Martin, and I appreciate you
qualifying that at the end, giving
yourself some wiggle room, little weasel
word by saying sometimes at the end.
Good call. I would have done the same
thing.
Yeah, I mean there's science
communicators that do incredible things
and have done incredible things. Um but
there's science communicators that have,
you know, done a lot of harm, too. And I
I hope I'm not one of those. Um
it is remarkable to me how science
communication is a radically different
job than science. And I deal all the
time with really, really gifted
scientists doing incredible work who
cannot express what they're doing to
save their life.
And that's okay. That's my job. That's
what I'm here for, you know. I'm I'm
thrilled that there's a job
available for me to do and that's mine.
You know, but at the same time, I think
you and this is probably a good place to
end this. Um,
you, the audience,
you need to be extra careful
when you're watching, you know, science
communicators or any kind of person who
communicates esoterica for a living on
the internet.
Because you got to ask yourself, like
does this person really know their stuff
or are they just really good at talking
about it? Because unless you are a deep
subject matter expert,
you have very little way to tell the
difference, right? So, I ask myself this
all the time when I watch Peter Zeihan's
videos. So, Peter Zeihan, for people who
don't know, is like a
an international relations consultant or
something. Um,
and he has a YouTube channel. He does
these absolutely delightful, very
simple, first-person, you know, holding
the phone camera up uh,
to talk to it with a beautiful
background behind him because he's
always traveling cuz he's a consultant
and that's what they do.
They travel.
And he'll, you know, say something about
geopolitics in 10 minutes that sounds
freaking brilliant.
But like I'm not totally sure it's like
right.
And I'm not a subject matter expert in
any of the things he talks about, so I
don't know. I know lots of subject
matter experts are often critical of his
lens, his highly deterministic lens, his
highly, um, geographic deterministic
lens, which is a problem that I have
myself. I've been accused of geographic
determinism, so of course that's how I
found Peter Zeihan. Birds of a feather,
right? Um,
and you know, but at the same time he's
also respected by a lot of people. But
for me, it's just kind of like, dude,
you're just so good at this. You're so
Peter Zeihan is so good at talking that
he could be completely full of it.
Have nothing real to say.
And people would still watch him. I
would still watch him because it just
sounds so
right and smart.
And maybe it is right and smart and
that's why it sounds right and smart,
but
it's also part of it is certainly just
that the guy is a very gifted
communicator.
And
I know sometimes he said things that I'm
like, "I'm pretty sure that's not quite
right."
You know? Or or or it's like it's a red
flag where I know from my experience
that people who express thoughts like
that with that level of certainty
cannot be trusted.
Or or or or you or you should
it should be a red flag for you. Like
you should you should trust but verify,
right? When someone is really certain
about a very complex topic and Peter
Zeihan is
10,000% certain about most things that
he talks about on the internet. And that
might be because he reserves the most
the things that he really knows about to
talk about on the internet and that's
awesome but
my viewership of Peter Zeihan has made
me really worry and wonder like do I
actually know what I'm talking about or
am I just really good at talking?
I'm not even that good at talking as you
can see. Like I'm good at writing. I'm a
writer. I'm not quick. I'm not good off
the cuff, right? Like this sucks.
The second half of this show is freaking
terrible right?
Um I'm not good off the cuff cuz I'm not
quick, but I I'm good at writing and I
worry is that all I'm good at? Is that
all I'm good at? You know? And how would
you know
if that's all I was good at? You you you
unless you were an expert in these
fields I'm talking about, you wouldn't
know.
So I only thing I can do is try to
maintain humility and to try to defer to
expertise and you know, when I say
something like
be carrying a lot of body fat is almost
certainly really bad for your health
um or it at least is strongly correlated
with bad health.
Like that's not my opinion.
And people will challenge it as though
it's my opinion. It's not my opinion. I
You don't You shouldn't care what my
opinion is about that stuff. All I'm
doing is articulating the consensus
scientific view, you know? Um, and I try
to present it as such whenever I
remember to. So that you know, that's
all I'm saying. Like you should not care
about my scientific opinions.
Uh, unless it's like an experiment that
I do myself in my kitchen and maybe you
should care about what I think there.
But even then, remember it's not a
scientific experiment. It's for
infotainment purposes only. And
you know,
it's awesome. The best thing about the
social internet, which is what we're
doing right now, is that it does I do
think it helps keep people honest. Like
I What I see is that when I screw up in
a video factually on something, the
correction rises to the top in the
comments. And I try to help it there.
You know, I'll I'll pin it often or I'll
I'll like it or respond to it to boost
it and try to get it up higher. Most big
oopses I've had get caught by the
audience really quickly and they float
right to the top of the comment section.
And that's
that's good. That's a way in which, you
know, YouTube's magic algorithms seem to
be working right. And uh, and with that,
I will thank you all very much for being
here on the first highly experimental
Ragusea live chat podcast. Um, I I don't
know how well this went. Let me know how
well you think this went and I might try
it again. If you're wondering why you
didn't hear about it in advance, it's
cuz I wanted to keep the pool of people
in the chat small and even that
completely failed. Like there was It was
just going by really, really fast. So I
think if I do this again, I might do the
super chat thing where people can pay
like five bucks or whatever to get your
question or comment in the in the chat
like surfaced um so that I'm more likely
to see it. And I would not be doing that
to make money at all. I don't I don't I
don't need your money. I appreciate your
money, but I don't need it. Um thank
you. I need your viewership or and or
uh but I don't need your money. Um but I
would do the sort of paid question
posting thing as a way of managing
demand. As a way of making sure that
only the people who really want to ask
the question are asking the question. Um
and and and as a way of just limiting
limiting demand, you know, so that I
there's it's there's less there for me
to have to comb through as I'm also
talking off the cuff, which I'm not good
at as we just discussed cuz I'm not
quick. I'm slow.
How slow were you to like stick out
through this entire Adam Ragusea
podcast? Oh my gosh.
Where has your day gone? What poor
choices you have made.
Make better choices and I will talk to
you again next time.
Phew.
Ooh.