Episode 517
with Cecily Wong & Andrew Bird
Host Luke Burbank and announcer Elena Passarello dish out some yums and yucks from our listeners; writer Cecily Wong chats about her book Gastro Obscura, which features fascinating food stories from across the globe, including psychedelic honey that was once used as a weapon; and Grammy Award-nominee Andrew Bird explains how he balances painful shyness with being a public figure, before performing "Make a Picture" from his new album Inside Problems.
Cecily Wong
Author
Cecily Wong is the author of three books. Her debut novel, Diamond Head (Harper, HarperCollins), was a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection, recipient of an Elle Readers' Prize, and voted a best debut of the 2015 Brooklyn Book Festival. Her second novel, Kaleidoscope (Dutton, Penguin Random House), will be published July 5, 2022. In 2021, Cecily co-authored the New York Times bestseller Gastro Obscura: An Explorer’s Guide to Food (Workman Publishing). Her work has also appeared in the Wall Street Journal, The LA Review of Books, Bustle, and elsewhere. She has spoken at book festivals across the country, and was a keynote speaker at the Hawaii Book and Music Festival. A graduate of Barnard College, Cecily spent 13 years living in New York and now lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and daughter. Website • Twitter
Andrew Bird
Singer-songwriter
Andrew Bird is a multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter who has been steadily releasing critically-acclaimed albums since 1996. His genre-spanning music is known for its wistful melodies, hyper-literate lyrics, virtuosic violin-playing, luscious loop-pedal soundscapes, and crystalline whistling. His 2019 release, My Finest Work Yet, earned him a Grammy nomination for Best Folk Album. Bird has also worked in film and TV as a composer and actor: he wrote music for the series Baskets, and appeared as Thurman Smutny in the fourth installment of FX’s Fargo. His latest album, Inside Problems, came out in June 2022. Listen • Website
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Luke Burbank Hey, Elena.
Elena Passarello Hey, Luke. How you doing?
Luke Burbank I'm doing well. I'm not sure if we're going to get through this broadcast because I'm in my home studio, and this cat that I got is trying to chew through the Internet cable.
Elena Passarello Not a fan of public radio.
Luke Burbank If the show goes down, I need you to just, like, handle it from your end. Are you ready to play a little "station location identification examination"?
Elena Passarello I am.
Luke Burbank Okay. We're talking about food on the show this week with Cecily Wong. So I wanted to ask you about a food related place. Of course, this is where I quiz Elena about somewhere in the world where Live Wire is on the radio and she tries to guess where I'm talking about. Now, this place has a population of just over 5000 people, but approximately 1 million people visit a cheese factory located in this place every year.
Elena Passarello Is it Tillamook, Oregon?
Luke Burbank [Bell rings] It is exactly Tillamook, Oregon.
Elena Passarello Yay! The only cheese factory I know.
Luke Burbank I know, right? KTMK radio is where folks can hear us in Tillamook. I've actually done that tour.
Elena Passarello Yeah, me too.
Luke Burbank Which was really, really fun.
Elena Passarello It's a real ace in the hole when you have people visit and you say, "you want to go to the cheese factory?" and they look at you like, Oh, you poor thing, that's the only fun thing in your region. And every single time, they're like, Oh, wow, that was the best part of the trip.
Luke Burbank Absolutely. Where else could you see a cheese factory located less than ten miles from the ocean?
Elena Passarello Yeah.
Luke Burbank I feel like the cheese factories are usually much more landlocked with their geography.
Elena Passarello And good ice cream, too.
Luke Burbank Yeah, absolutely.
Elena Passarello Yum.
Luke Burbank All right. Shout out to everyone listening on KTMK in Tillamook, Oregon. All right, Elena, should we get on with the show?
Elena Passarello Let's do it.
Luke Burbank All right. Take it away. [Music plays.].
Elena Passarello From PRX it's Live Wire. This week, writer Cecily Wong.
Cecily Wong We as Americans are doing some of the most bizarre stuff with food. Like, you know, if you apply a lens from another country, I mean, the amount of cheese that we eat is really grotesque. Like people people find that very, very strange.
Elena Passarello With music by Andrew Bird.
Andrew Bird I'm interested in things that might tell us what we're made of. I think that they just make nice metaphors for what it is to be human.
Elena Passarello And our fabulous house band. I'm your announcer, Elena Passarello. And now, the host of Live Wire, Luke Burbank.
Luke Burbank Thank you so much, Elena Passarello. Thanks, everyone, for tuning in from all over the country, including in Tillamook, Oregon, which now I'm really hungry, like, as soon as we're done with the show, I'm bee-lining it for a grilled cheese sandwich.
Elena Passarello Dairy time.
Luke Burbank We asked the Live Wire listeners a question, as we do each week. This week we asked, What's a "yum" for you that's a "yuck" for most other people. In other words, what's something you like that a lot of other people seem to not be fans of? We are going to hear those responses coming up in a bit. First, though, of course, it's time for the best news we heard all week. [Music plays.] This, of course, our little reminder at the top of the program that there is some good news happening out there in the world. Elena, what's the best news you heard all week?
Elena Passarello I've realized something in our pursuit of best news about myself. Well several things, actually. One of the things that I've learned is that I love graduation news.
Luke Burbank Is that because of your association with academia?
Elena Passarello Maybe. You know, this year, by the way, I'm doing the live commentary for the streaming of my university's graduation, like the Macy's Day Parade.
Luke Burbank Oh, my gosh. Yeah. You're like the Katie Couric of the...
Elena Passarello Yeah. Or the Al Roker, whoa, and now...
Luke Burbank Okay, sure. Are they gonna let you ride around in a little go-kart with goggles on, because that's what Al was doing last year.
Elena Passarello I wish. I think I'm just going to be in a studio just saying things like, congratulations, but I can't wait.
Luke Burbank Yeah.
Elena Passarello It's just a, almost an entirely positive day for people. Like it's just a day of success, which is so cool. And speaking of days of success, one of the many graduates that are celebrating this year is Sarah Merrill, who graduated this month from the Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine. She got her M.D. She's moving on to do residency in Indiana next month. And, you know, prior to this degree, she was pre-med. She got her pre-med degree at Dartmouth. But what's interesting is she got that pre-med degree 20 years ago.
Luke Burbank Whoa. That's a pretty big gap year. I believe that's...
Elena Passarello Yeah.
Luke Burbank Gap decades? Plural.
Elena Passarello Yeah, that's that's like when you go to the Peace Corps and you don't come back. Yeah.
Luke Burbank Yeah.
Elena Passarello But instead of being in the Peace Corps, she's spent the past 20 years raising nine children.
Luke Burbank Whoa.
Elena Passarello She is a mother of nine who just got her M.D., uh, which is...
Luke Burbank That is incredible.
Elena Passarello I know! When she started med school, her youngest child was two years old and her eldest child was 14. And now they're eight and 20. So it wasn't even like everybody had went away to college or anything. Like she was still.
Luke Burbank Still actively parenting...
Elena Passarello Yeah.
Luke Burbank Whilst in med school at the Mayo Clinic.
Elena Passarello Yeah. Can you imagine?
Luke Burbank No, I can't.
Elena Passarello And, and the, the article that I read tells a wonderful story of just this huge ocean, a village of support that allowed this obviously brilliant, accomplished woman to follow her dreams and make things happen and put herself into a position where she can do great work. The family voted and agreed that it was a good idea. I guess the two year old voted and they all relocated to Arizona.
Luke Burbank Wow, if only our government functioned as effectively as this family.
Elena Passarello I know! Her husband switched his work situation so he could work remotely. Her mother moved down to Arizona to help take care of the nine kids. And the kids would do things like feature homework parties, so they'd plan like a homework party where mom and then the kids that had homework that night would get together and study and finish their assignments. And she said that she really appreciated going to med school more at 34, 35 years old, taking, you know, her MCATs while her children were climbing all over her and things like that. And she also thinks that she brought—this is something that I think is really cool—he brought a lot of life skills to the process of things like going to med school and especially residency.
Luke Burbank Sure.
Elena Passarello When she had her rotation in the OB-GYN wing, I mean, she brought a lot of personal knowledge.
Luke Burbank Lived experience.
Elena Passarello Yeah.
Luke Burbank Nine lived experiences.
Elena Passarello And the other cool thing is that by the time she graduated, there were three moms getting their MDs from that same program. So I'm all for the idea of a nontraditional college experience. I think it makes for a better experience for everybody, and I'm just gobsmacked. I can barely do my job with three cats. I don't know how I would become a medical doctor with three times as many kids.
Luke Burbank If you took the MCATs, it would literally just be you trying to figure out what's going on with your cats.
Elena Passarello Yeah, it would be the M-Y-CATs. The my cats.
Luke Burbank Speaking of pets, the best news that I found out about this week comes to us from Utah, where there is this great organization called Ruff Haven Crisis Sheltering. Now, ruff is R-U-F-F.
Elena Passarello Uh-oh.
Luke Burbank Like the sound that a dog might make because what they do there is they offer free short term housing for pets while their owners are going through difficulties, whether it's experiencing homelessness or escaping a domestic violence situation or substance use disorder, which is a really big one where people are dealing with addiction, but something that keeps a lot of people from seeking treatment is, what's going to happen to their pets?
Elena Passarello Yeah.
Luke Burbank It's a really real concern. And so a lot of people stay really stuck in a place that's not good for them because of just concern about their animals. Well, that was why they founded this Ruff Haven Crisis Sheltering, where basically what happens is, you send in your information if you're somebody who is going through a difficult time, they then match your pet with a foster home and then you can check on your pet once a week via text. Also, the people that are fostering the animals will send the owners photos and videos. Sometimes they'll have playdates where the person who's dealing with whatever it is they're dealing with, they go to like a dog park and they get to hang out with their dog. Some people get to even do this every day if they want to, which I would imagine also is incredibly...
Elena Passarello Yeah.
Luke Burbank Sort of comforting. If you're, if you're going through a really difficult period and you're really trying to make some positive changes in your life, you can still go visit your animal, right?
Elena Passarello Yeah, that, I bet that helps a lot.
Luke Burbank I thought this was kind of amazing. So since Ruff Haven Crisis Sheltering opened back in June of 2020, they've helped 320 families and about 500 animals.
Elena Passarello Oh!
Luke Burbank This was from Kristina Pulsipher, who is the executive director of Ruff Haven. She said, a lot of times, owners worry that their pets are going to forget about them during the period of time that they're gone. But the pets never forget their person.
Elena Passarello Never.
Luke Burbank The reunions are why we do this...
Elena Passarello Oh.
Luke Burbank And we have many people who have been clients that volunteer with us now or foster for us. So a lot of people who've been through the program and received the services are now volunteers or they're fostering animals for other people who are going through difficult circumstances.
Elena Passarello Oh, that's wonderful.
Luke Burbank I would, I would totally share that fear, by the way, you know?
Elena Passarello Yeah.
Luke Burbank I just got this kitten, and I feel like if I'm away from her for three days, I'm going to come back and she's gonna be like, Who are you?
Elena Passarello No.
Luke Burbank But the amount of her trying to crawl up my leg, even as we do the broadcast, tells me she remembers vividly who I am. I actually fostered a dog of my own, like, I moved to Los Angeles once and I had this very active two year old boxer and I lived in an apartment where you couldn't have a dog while I was looking for something more permanent. And some very nice person in Eagle Rock, California, fostered the dog for me for like three months, and I would go visit on weekends. And luckily I wasn't experiencing homelessness or anything like that. But like, I was kind of surprised when the person gave me my dog back. I went back out there after three months. I thought she was going to say, Yeah, the dog ran away. We haven't seen it, so I'll see you later. Because like what a great, what an open-hearted person you'd have to be to foster a pet for someone else. Just take great care of that animal and then just give them back when the person's ready. That's a really amazing, special kind of person in their own right.
Elena Passarello Yeah. And I think, you know, sometimes that works out really well for the fosters too. People who travel a lot and can't have like a lifetime dog, but want that companionship and want to help or want a cat for just a little bit of time. That can be kind of, kind of a cool way to get to take care of a pet on their end, too.
Luke Burbank Yeah. Well, as I think about it, the look in the eyes of this woman who had been fostering my highly active boxer named Flea...
Elena Passarello Flea.
Luke Burbank Was not one of sadness, but one of relief. Maybe she was ready for me to take the dog back. All right. That's the best news that we've heard this week. [Music plays.] And if you would like to get even more good news in your week, head over to the Live Wire podcast feed where we actually have a new podcast out, of just the best news that we heard all week with lots of positivity to help brighten up your day. It comes out every Wednesday. So please check it out wherever you get your podcasts.
Advertisement This episode of Live Wire is supported by Aspiration, helping offset climate change by planting a tree with every swipe of the Aspiration debit card. To date, Aspiration has funded the planting of 75 million trees. Aspiration dot com. Aspiration Financial, LLC.
Luke Burbank All right. Let's welcome our first guest over to the show. She has searched the planet in pursuit of the most incredible ingredients, food adventures and edible wonders from all seven continents, which, yes, includes Antarctica, where she can tell you where the best barbecue prawns are. Always wondered that myself. The result of all this is the beautiful New York Times bestseller, Gastro Obscura: An Explorer's Guide to Food. It is truly a feast for the eyes and the mind. So let's take a listen to this. It's our conversation with Cecily Wong, recorded in April at the Alberta Rose Theater here in Portland. Take a listen.
Luke Burbank Hi, Cecily.
Cecily Wong Hello, hello.
Luke Burbank Welcome to the show.
Cecily Wong Thank you for having me.
Luke Burbank You were born in Hawaii, but you grew up in Oregon. How adventurous were you as an eater as a kid in Eugene, Oregon?
Cecily Wong You know, I think that adventurous eating has really come a long way since I was a kid growing up in Eugene, Oregon. As a kid from Hawaii, I ate a lot of foods that other people didn't eat and didn't recognize. And so for me, it was completely normal. And for other people, it was kind of more bizarre. So I don't know, I think I, I think I got, like, my sea legs for eating strange things as I traveled, as I moved to New York and got exposed to a lot more things. But now, I mean, I'll eat anything, which is part of, yeah.
Luke Burbank Yeah. I'm wondering—this, this book is an outgrowth of the Gastro Obscura website, which is really fascinating—but I'm wondering how you keep both that website and this book from just becoming, "get a load of what people eat." Right?
Cecily Wong For sure. Yeah. I mean, that was one of our, our main goals in writing this book, launching this website, is that there was no yuck factor.
Luke Burbank Right, it was all yums.
Cecily Wong When, when choosing... All, you know, all yums, or like, "oohs." You know, like, what is that? So, yeah, I mean, there's, you know, you think, you think like weird foods, you think bugs, you think organs, you know, things like that. And, you know, they're just foods, like, these are, these are things that we are not super familiar with. But like, I, I was just down at South by Southwest and I met this amazing bug chef, and I think that we're all going to be eating bugs.
Elena Passarello Oh yeah.
Cecily Wong Really soon.
Luke Burbank I ate so many bugs on my jog today.
Cecily Wong Exactly.
Luke Burbank A generation of gnats.
Cecily Wong What did you think?
Luke Burbank Could have used some salt. But right, like, the idea being that there's a lot of food that seems odd or surprising to us, but it's just something that someone's eating somewhere because it's the food that's available to them, they enjoy it, and it's really easy to other it or be sort of quote unquote "grossed out" by stuff. But obviously that's not the goal of any of this stuff that you guys are doing.
Cecily Wong Totally. And what we found is that we, we as Americans are doing some of the most bizarre stuff with food. Like, if, if, you know, if you apply a lens from another country, I mean, the amount of cheese that we eat is really grotesque. Like people, people find that very, very strange.
Luke Burbank This is Live Wire from PRX. We're listening to a conversation we had with Gastro Obscura writer Cecily Wong. We've got to take a quick break, but don't go anywhere because we will be right back.
Luke Burbank Welcome back to Live Wire. I'm your host, Luke Burbank, here with Elena Passarello. We're listening to a conversation that we had with Gastro Obscura writer Cecily Wong in front of a live audience at the Alberta Rose Theater here in Portland. We recorded this earlier this year. Take a listen.
Luke Burbank I was wondering about the process of, of what you decided to put into the book, because there's all these posts on the website and I guess a ton of information that you then had to kind of sort through, prioritize. How did you decide what was in and what was out?
Cecily Wong Yeah, so the process took about four years. It was, it was a heavy lift. And it wasn't, it wasn't just me. I have a coauthor, Dylan Thuras, and then we have a whole edit team. And so it's basically their entire job just to kind of scour the earth and the Internet for the, you know, most obscure things they can find and then Atlas Obscura, if you're familiar with the website, has this massive community of users who are super active and they write in literally every day saying, I'm, I ate this, it's amazing, check it out. I'm from here. This is what you have to eat. And so we just got this flood of tips every day. And we just, we sorted through them and we just kind of jumped down dozens of rabbit holes every day. And we had a lot of latitude to kind of put in whatever we found most fascinating.
Luke Burbank And that was the kind of core principle was like, if it's fascinating to you, it can go in the book.
Cecily Wong If it's fascinating. We were, so I'm a, I'm actually a, mostly a novelist. And I grew up in a food family, my parents own restaurants. I've always been a very enthusiastic eater. And so they wanted to put together a book that was narrative about storytelling behind food, not just about, you know, look at this crazy food that you've never seen before. And so what we were really looking for was stories behind these foods. And so you'll also find in this book that there are foods that you know about that have these amazing histories that you don't know about.
Elena Passarello Benne Wafers. I grew up in South Carolina, and I always knew what Benne Wafers were, but I thought they were named after some guy named Benne. But thanks to your book, I now know that Benne is a Bantu word that means sesame seeds. And they're sesame seeds wafers because it's one of the many West African traditions that made its way into South Carolina cooking.
Cecily Wong Bam!
Elena Passarello Amazing.
Cecily Wong Exactly.
Elena Passarello That's so amazing.
Cecily Wong There you go. Yeah. I tell this story all the time about the pineapple. I'm obsessed with the history of the pineapple. Basically, when it first came over to England, it was like this big hit with the super rich because they didn't have any sugary fruits. They were really into this new-fangled fruit. And so it became this kind of status symbol. And in like the 17th century, there was this thriving pineapple rental business. [Laughter.] Because they were so expensive you could actually, you could rent a pineapple for a party and then just display it and then you would have to give it back and the person would sell it to someone who was like way richer than you were and could, like, afford to eat it.
Luke Burbank I'm just leasing this.
Elena Passarello Yeah.
Cecily Wong Yeah.
Luke Burbank Someday I'll be able to.
Elena Passarello Pineapple timeshare.
Luke Burbank Right.
Cecily Wong I mean, I think an 18th century pineapple was like $8,000. Like these were, these were status symbols.
Luke Burbank Wow.
Cecily Wong Yeah.
Luke Burbank I want to actually kind of jump into some of the things in the book, including one that I know is kind of near and dear to your heart. What's Spam jam?
Cecily Wong The spam jam. Yeah. So it's, it's what it sounds like: you're jamming with Spam. It's, it's like the biggest, craziest Spam party. And, and there were multiple...
Luke Burbank As opposed to the low key Spam parties, the kind of sedate ones.
Cecily Wong You would be surprised. There are more Spam parties than you, than you think there would be. This one's big. This one, it's 35,000 people. They come specifically to celebrate Spam. It's in Hawaii. Hawaii is where I'm from. And Hawaiians actually eat the most Spam in the world. It's like seven cans per person every year, which is, oh, that's a lot of Spam.
Luke Burbank Are you keeping your end of that bargain up? Would you say you put down about seven cans a year?
Cecily Wong It's kind of a lot. I mean, I could, you know, like if pressed, I could definitely do it. So you eat Spam in just like every variety. Spam fries. Yeah. Macadamia nuts with powdered Spam. There's Spam pastries. Like anything you can imagine, they're putting Spam in it. And then it's just like, it's along this, like, very fancy street in Hawaii, which I find so wonderful. Spam in Hawaii, there's, like, nothing to be ashamed of. There's, like, Spam pride. This is like fancy meat. Whereas when I moved here, Spam, it was like came as a huge shock to me that like, Spam was not a cool meat. And so, it's my people are, are in Hawaii just, you know, like getting after Spam.
Luke Burbank Do you have a favorite kind of preparation? Like for folks that have have not enjoyed Spam properly? Is there a way to, to prepare it?
Cecily Wong There's absolutely a way to prepare it.
Luke Burbank What's your favorite?
Cecily Wong Okay. So the first thing that you have to remember about Spam is that it is a canned meet. You cannot just take it out of the can and eat it. No one's going to like that. So you have to, you have to slice it and you have to fry it. You have to get some texture on there. So I think the gateway drug to Spam is probably either Spam fried rice or Spam musubis.
Luke Burbank Mmhmm.
Cecily Wong There's actually a lot of Spam musubis in Portland, which I find just absolutely wonderful. But it's like a, it's like a spam sushi. It's rice, seared spam, usually teriyaki sauce. Seaweed.
Elena Passarello Mm.
Cecily Wong Delicious.
Luke Burbank Yeah. I have to say, the first time I had Spam, it was fried, and I was like, I had heard all these jokes growing up on the mainland. It was sort of a punch line. And then I had it fried up in some rice, and I was like, Where's this been all my life? It's salty.
Cecily Wong Totally.
Luke Burbank It's like, delicious.
Cecily Wong People are eating it wrong.
Luke Burbank Yeah.
Cecily Wong I'm really glad we could have this conversation. Yeah.
Luke Burbank How about miracle berries? I read about this, and I was like, this can't be a real thing. And then I heard you actually brought some.
Cecily Wong I brought some miracle berries.
Luke Burbank Okay, what are miracle berries?
Cecily Wong They're a fruit that is native to West Africa. They kind of look like cranberries. They kind of taste like bland cranberries. But basically, the miracle of these berries is that you eat them, you kind of coat your mouth with the juices, and then everything that should taste sour then tastes sweet.
Elena Passarello Whoa.
Cecily Wong So that's why I have...
Luke Burbank That's some Wonka stuff.
Cecily Wong Yeah, exactly. We call them tongue drugs. And there's, this is the better one, there's another one, actually, that removes the sweetness from everything you eat.
Elena Passarello Awww.
Cecily Wong Which is, ugh, why would you want that?
Luke Burbank Wow. Okay, so can we try one of these?
Cecily Wong OK. So take one of those. These are actually, these are freeze dried.
Luke Burbank Thank you. And do you just like, just chew it, or suck on it, or?
Cecily Wong Chew it. It says chew it for 30 seconds. And then the third instruction is: enjoy new flavors.
Luke Burbank All right. Just take the mic for 30 seconds, uh, Cecily.
Elena Passarello It looks like a pomegranate, and it tastes like popcorn at the bottom of the popcorn bucket.
Cecily Wong Mmhmm.
Elena Passarello You know, just like the, like the kernels.
Luke Burbank Oh yeah. It's like, kind of, the one that'll go up, like.
Elena Passarello The one that'll go on your gums.
Luke Burbank On your back teeth and your gums and you're working on it for, like, two weeks. Okay. What do you think, Cecily?
Elena Passarello OK, I've masticated it.
Cecily Wong All right.
Luke Burbank Okay.
Cecily Wong Take your lemon.
Luke Burbank So now. Okay, so now we've got a lemon. So we have, for those listening at home, we have chewed up a miracle berry, and...
Elena Passarello I don't trust the miracle berry. I'm afraid to eat this lemon.
Cecily Wong Give it a go.
Luke Burbank Do you just bite right into the lemon? This is supposed to make the lemon taste sweet. [Eats lemon.] Sweeter. [Crowd laughs.]
Cecily Wong Not a miracle?
Luke Burbank Like a lot of miracles, I think it depends on who the miracle is being done on.
Elena Passarello No, it does, it tastes like lemonade.
Luke Burbank It did, yeah definitely.
Elena Passarello It's like lemonade.
Cecily Wong Did you need more miracle? Before you...
Luke Burbank Maybe like a little bit more miracle. But I can see the effect that it's having.
Elena Passarello No, I got it. I'm there.
Luke Burbank Speaking of hallucinogenic properties, can we talk about Mad Honey? By the way, this is Live Wire Radio, allegedly. We're talking to Cecily Wong, the coauthor of the Gastro Obscura book, A Food Adventurer's Guide. Let's talk about Mad Honey from Turkey. This is a wild story.
Cecily Wong Yes. So Mad Honey from Turkey. It's called deli bal. This is something that only grows on these like high mountains that surround the Black Sea. The rhododendron grows on these mountains and then the bees eat the flowers, and, basically this special flower contains a special toxin called grayanotoxin. And it makes honey psychedelic, essentially. It causes hallucinations, it causes paralysis. In smaller doses, it's taken as folk medicine, and so it can treat more minor things: diabetes, hypertension, stuff like that. But if you eat too much, which is actually not even that much, it's like a tablespoon, that's when things get kind of wacky.
Elena Passarello Whoa.
Cecily Wong And we know this partly because of this amazing war story from 67 B.C.. Emperor Pompey and the Romans were invading what is now Turkey and King Mithridates and his men were trying to fend them off. And then they had this, like, great idea, which was that the Romans were going to be tired and hungry and they should just like place these mad honeycombs in their path. And so they did.
Luke Burbank So they left out, basically...
Elena Passarello Spiked honey.
Luke Burbank The LSD honey.
Cecily Wong Absolutely.
Luke Burbank So that the Romans would find it and be like free honey.
Cecily Wong I mean, genius, right? I mean, it worked.
Luke Burbank Yeah.
Cecily Wong And so they, so they eat the honey and they lose control of all their limbs. They start hallucinating. They're all falling along the side of the road. And then Mithridates and his men, they come back and they just, they slay 'em. It's like one of the great sacks of history, and it's like honey-related death.
Elena Passarello That's great.
Luke Burbank I don't, I don't want to die at war.
Elena Passarello At war.
Luke Burbank But if I had to, that's how I want to die. Just high as balls on honey.
Cecily Wong It's not bad.
Elena Passarello Yeah.
Cecily Wong They probably didn't even know what was happening.
Luke Burbank Just lying by the side of the road, like, vibing as my last thought.
Cecily Wong There are worse ways to go.
Luke Burbank Right?
Cecily Wong Yeah.
Elena Passarello Yeah.
Luke Burbank Let's talk about Cornmeal Mush Entrapment Competition in South Carolina, in Elena's old stomps of South Carolina.
Elena Passarello Oh yeah.
]Cecily Wong Okay, so South Carolina, there's this small town called St George. I think there's about 2000 people, but their, like, big claim to fame is that they eat the most grits per capita out of anyone in the world. And so to celebrate this vast accomplishment, they have the Grits Rolling Festival. And so it's a competition. They fill a kiddy pool with 3,000 pounds of prepared grits and they have a competition to see how, how many pounds of grits you can trap on your body. You have 10 seconds to roll in this kiddy pool and collect it on your body, and so...
Luke Burbank We could have had it all.
Elena Passarello Yeah.
Luke Burbank Rolling in the grits.
Cecily Wong Exactly, exactly.
Luke Burbank I've had a lot of miracle berries, okay?
Cecily Wong Uh-huh.
Luke Burbank I have, I can't speak for what's going to happen for the rest of the program. So they're trying to balance as much grits as possible on their physical body.
Cecily Wong Yes. And so over the years, they've kind of come up with new styles of grit-entrapment clothing. And so they'll have...
Elena Passarello Like overalls or something.
Cecily Wong Exactly. Overalls.
Luke Burbank Oh, so you can put it in your pockets and things.
Elena Passarello Maternity pants.
Cecily Wong You can put your pockets, yeah, they'll like duct tape their sweat pants at the ankles.
Luke Burbank Cargo shorts.
Cecily Wong So it won't fall through. Cargo shorts. I don't know if that's worth your time.
Luke Burbank Okay.
Cecily Wong But, you know, whatever.
Luke Burbank They rarely are. Just as a fashion. Elena, as a Southerner, what's your take on grits? And also, is there a preparation of grits that you find particularly tasty?
Elena Passarello Never instant, and for me, never sweet.
Luke Burbank OK.
Elena Passarello I like a savory grit. I'm a butter and salt grits purist and I like a lumpy grit. What about, what about you, Cecily? What's your grit portfolio, your grit profile, your grit profile?
Cecily Wong I think it's polenta. Is that blasphemy?
Elena Passarello No. I mean, polenta is Italian grits.
Cecily Wong Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Elena Passarello As a Southerner with the last name Passarello, I think I can just sort of decree that it's okay.
Cecily Wong Alright.
Luke Burbank What about champagne as an energy drink? Where is this going on?
Cecily Wong I actually asked to talk about this because I love talking about this. Yeah, I just think it's wild that up until, like, the 1980s, they were giving, like, endurance athletes alcohol to to hydrate them. They thought that it hydrated them as well as water, if not better. And so this is like on full display at the 1908 London Olympic Marathon. Like 57 runners start out and only half of them make it to the finish line because they're all so drunk. And it's just, it's so bonkers. Like there's this front runner, this young Canadian runner, he's going to win. Everyone knows who's going to win. And then, like Mile 17, he accepts champagne because he's got like a cramp. And of course, he, he's, he's out. He falls down, he's out. And then the next person, like, takes the lead. He's got, like this epic four mile lead, he should win. And then he also is like, okay, champagne. And then he's out. And then the winner is this Italian pastry chef. He had a ton of champagne, and in the last mile, he's running the wrong direction. His, he has his heart massaged by a medic and he's actually helped across the finish line by a doctor. And so that led to a redistribution of the medals because that's not allowed, I guess, in the Olympics. And so, yeah, it's wild that the 1924 Paris Games, they stocked their rehydration stations with wine.
Elena Passarello Wow.
Cecily Wong Beautiful.
Elena Passarello That's gorgeous.
Luke Burbank I would run more marathons.
Cecily Wong There's actually a marathon for you. There's one in the wine region of Médoc in France. You run a marathon, classic marathon, but you stop, I think 23 times to drink a glass of wine.
Luke Burbank I would win that. The Venn diagram overlap of being kind of okay at running and really okay at wine drinking. That's me. Cecily Wong, everyone. The book is Gastro Obscura.
Cecily Wong Yeah.
Luke Burbank That was Cecily Wong right here on Live Wire. Her book, Gastro Obscura: A Food Adventurer's Guide, is available now. Also, Cecily has a forthcoming novel, it's coming out this summer, called Kaleidoscope. It's getting fantastic reviews, so make sure you check that out as well.
Luke Burbank Live Wire is brought to you in part by Alaska Airlines. Alaska Airlines offers the most nonstops from the West Coast, including destinations like Hawaii, Costa Rica and Belize. And as a member of the OneWorld alliance, Alaska Airlines can connect you to more than 1000 destinations worldwide with their global partners. Learn more at Alaska Air dot com.
Luke Burbank This is Live Wire, of course, as we do each week, we asked our listeners a question inspired by Cecily Wong's very cool book about food from all over the world. We asked the Live Wire listeners, What is a "yum" for you that is a "yuck" for most other people? Like what is something that you like that you commonly find other people maybe don't like as much as you do? Elena has been collecting up those responses. What are people telling you?
Elena Passarello What do you think about this one from Dana? Dana's "yum" that everybody else "yucks" is "my dog licking my feet." Hmm.
Luke Burbank Oh, yeah. People yuck that?
Elena Passarello You like it, too?
Luke Burbank Oh, my gosh, it was great. I felt like, you know how you can go to one of those places and get a pedicure? Where the fish...
Elena Passarello The fish? Yeah.
Luke Burbank The fish munch on your feet. That was like the low rent version of that, when my dog, Rudy, would just go to town. I was into it.
Elena Passarello Whenever I eat, like, a little thing of yogurt, when I'm done, there's that residual yogurt around the plastic container and I run my finger around it and my cats lick it off my finger. And I do love their little sandpapery tongues.
Luke Burbank Absolutely. These dogs are living with us for free. Put them to work. Get them on a pedicure project. All right. What's something else that somebody likes that most people don't like?
Elena Passarello Highly controversial answer from Mel. Mel's "yum" is going to the dentist because, quote, It's like a tooth massage.
Luke Burbank Whoa.
Elena Passarello What kind of dentist does this, Mel?
Luke Burbank I don't know if they're doing a good job or not.
Elena Passarello Yeah.
Luke Burbank Actually, I don't know. I mean, maybe the reason we fear the dentist is because they go so hard on the teeth. Maybe a little bit of gentleness wouldn't be the worst thing. I mean, I assume it has to be a somewhat unpleasant experience, but maybe I'm just not going to the right folks.
Elena Passarello Or maybe like if you have really great teeth, they just rub your gums and send you home. I don't know.
Luke Burbank Yeah. I got three words for you. Sub gingival scaling.
Elena Passarello Oh. Ouch. Yeah.
Luke Burbank Yeah. I once went to the dentist and he just said, okay, first of all, this is a two-parter. I'm a very regular brusher of my teeth and flosser, I would have to say. But this was years ago. And the dentist said, okay, first of all, this is, we're not gonna knock this out in one session.
Elena Passarello Oh, my god.
Luke Burbank And two, I'm going to actually, like, numb your teeth and gums because of the amount of cleaning that we are about to embark on. It was like, when they like, power wash down Mount Rushmore or something, they built scaffolding. It was a situation and I've never let it get that bad again, I'm happy to report.
Elena Passarello Did it reveal hidden carvings in your teeth that [unintelligible] or whatever his name was.
Luke Burbank It did not, thankfully, but it was close to that. All right. What's something else that one of our listeners really likes that is unusual?
Elena Passarello I actually share this "yum" with Karen. Karen's "yum" is, quote, my landline.
Luke Burbank I have been...
Elena Passarello I don't have one anymore, but I really want one back.
Luke Burbank I have been trying to get a landline now for years, like an old school, in the kitchen, phone with a long cord that you go hide from your parents, where you go around the corner because you're asking someone on a date, but you don't want everyone in the household hearing it. I really want that phone. And it's actually like, they don't even, a lot of places don't even have phone lines. If you have something like that, it's still coming out of your computer. It's still Internet-based.
Elena Passarello Yeah. It's not a la—there's no land involved. Two, no, three summers ago, I was in Paris for a month and a half, and the place where I stayed not only had a landline, but the phone there was one of those hamburger phones from the eighties. Remember those?
Luke Burbank Of course!
Elena Passarello I had nobody to call because I didn't speak French, I couldn't even really order a pizza. But I think I managed to make one like, like transportation-involved, like, rental car phone call from the burger phone.
Luke Burbank The irony of you ordering a pizza while using a hamburger phone also would have been kind of weird, but anyway. Okay, what's something else that one of our listeners really likes? That's kind of not the norm.
Elena Passarello Okay. Most of the responses that we got were food-oriented, just kind of like, the kinds of things that on TV a pregnant lady would order her husband to go get.
Luke Burbank Okay sure. The stereotype of somebody...
Elena Passarello Yeah.
Luke Burbank Going through hormonal stuff.
Elena Passarello It's hard to pick a favorite "yum" that I certainly yuck among these food entries. But this one's pretty, pretty up there. Cal enjoys Kool-Aid powder mixed with potato chips.
Luke Burbank Oh, no thank you for me.
Elena Passarello Cal, no.
Luke Burbank I mean, again, the terminology we're using, we don't want to yuck anyone's yum. We, you know, everyone gets to like what they like, but that...
Elena Passarello That sounds dangerous.
Luke Burbank Yeah.
Elena Passarello Maybe it's okay.
Luke Burbank I mean. I feel like, potato chips in the current state of things are already, like, covered in so much flavor blasting dust and, you know.
Elena Passarello Flavor-blasting.
Luke Burbank Sodium and the caloric vanishing point, you know about the caloric vanishing point?
Elena Passarello No. Do I want to know?
Luke Burbank This is this engineered thing with a lot of modern junk food where basically, our tongues are originally wired to kind of help tell us when we're full, when we've had enough of a particular thing. But they've engineered a lot of this food now so that your tongue doesn't realize what the caloric vanishing point is, and so you can just kind of, I mean, if you've ever just mindlessly.
Elena Passarello Yes.
Luke Burbank Killed an entire sleeve of chips as I have.
Elena Passarello Yep.
Luke Burbank It's, it's thanks to some pretty engineered things, meaning I don't know if I personally would need Kool-Aid on top of that.
Elena Passarello Yeah. No, gosh. Wow. I learned a lot of yucky things just now.
Luke Burbank All right. Thanks to everybody who said in a response to our question, we've got another question for next week's show, which we will reveal at the end of the program. Stick around for that. In the meantime, this is Live Wire Radio. I'm Luke Burbank, here with Elena Passarello. Our next guest is a multi-instrumentalist and singer songwriter who's been steadily releasing critically acclaimed albums since 1996. His genre spanning music is known for its wistful melodies, its hyper literate lyrics, its virtuosic violin playing, and also some really amazing whistling. His 2019 release, My Finest Work Yet, earned him a Grammy nomination for Best Folk Album. His latest album, Inside Problems, just came out. Andrew Bird, welcome back to Live Wire.
Andrew Bird Good to be here.
Luke Burbank The title of the album is Inside Problems, but you're going on this tour this summer, which you're calling outside problems. Is is that basically like you're externalizing your odd thoughts to a bunch of people that are going to come watch you?
Andrew Bird Yeah, that's one one way of putting it. It's also most of the shows are outside.
Luke Burbank I see.
Andrew Bird So there's a literal reason for that. But yeah, I also made an instrumental companion album that I often do that goes with the song album that's called Outside Problems because it was recorded outside. Yeah.
Luke Burbank Right. You launched this album with kind of a short film that I was watching on YouTube, and again, it's talking about inside problems with his outside problems. And you kept saying this line, I want to know what you think, but not really.
Andrew Bird Mm hmm.
Luke Burbank But is that kind of how you feel?
Andrew Bird It's like the pretense of wanting to know what you think. Or when I play a show. I adopt a certain posture of, like. Of a dialog with the audience. But actually reading the suggestions in the box on the way out of the theater is not something I'm inclined to do. It's just the, you know, just setting it up as if it's a dialog or feeling like it's a dialog is all part of the songwriting process for me. Sometimes I'll try a song out before it's finished in front of an audience and I'll be like, I don't know, it could go this way or this way. It's like, I feel like a comedian when I'm doing that on stage. It's like I shrug of the shoulders, like, I don't know. What do you think, folks? You know.
Luke Burbank You strike me as a as a fairly private person and as somebody who is not clamoring for the spotlight or attention, which is, I guess, ironic considering your line of work. But like, what is it like for you to be a person who is a public figure and who plays these shows? And thousands of people come and kind of want to talk to you and sort of have a piece of you. What's that like for you?
Andrew Bird It's a strange thing because ever since I was a little kid in school, I was painfully shy, what they called quiet. But as soon as I would come up in front of the class and give a book report or something, I would be completely self-possessed and comfortable and at ease to the degree that it was kind of alarming to the teachers. It's a strange thing, but I, I feel safe on stage until I get to the stage and like, I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what I'm doing. As soon as I get in front of the mic and like, I know what to do. This is my job, you know?
Luke Burbank This is Live Wire Radio. We're talking to Andrew Bird, whose latest album is Inside Problems. Speaking of your career, it has been really varied over time with doing a lot of different things. I know that you're doing soundtrack stuff now and you also you acted in Fargo. You were great in that show. Were you an actor before that?
Andrew Bird No, I had never given it a thought. Noah Hawley, who started the whole Fargo Post Coen Brothers Enterprise, saw me play a show in Austin and just cast me on the spot for the funeral director, and he kind of had to reassure me that I was going to be okay and I wouldn't make a fool of myself. He knew that I had never done it before, and what was cool is like I got there and all these amazing actors like Jessie Buckley and, you know, and I'm in the company of people that really know what they're doing. And everyone just treated me like another actor, you know?
Luke Burbank Did you ever, like, break out your violin or do something to demonstrate to them what you are really, really good at? Like, kind of like, okay, maybe this my first time acting, but check out this.
Andrew Bird Yeah, I was desperate for something, some sort of security blanket at some point. So in the script, it had me whistling right after I, you know, pay off the gangster and think I've I've saved everybody. And so I'm pretty proud of myself. And I'm walk in the door whistling and dancing. And I was like, Oh, thank God, I can do something I know how to do. But it got it got sticky because I sort something from Sisyphus and I wasn't I wasn't really allowed to do my own music.
Luke Burbank So, wait, there was a rights issue to a song that you had written.
Andrew Bird Yeah. And then they brought that up and I said, okay, I'll whistle some, as if I'm just whistling. I'd like a jazz solo of a tune. So it's and even that was too much because I was inventing it myself. So they're like, Can I just beat Camptown Races or something? You know, something public domain. Anyway, we we resolved it. It was fine. I don't think that they were looking for me to showcase my whistling skills so much as just move the storyline.
Luke Burbank Yeah, this is Live Wire. You're listening to a conversation that we recorded recently with Andrew Bird. I'm Luke Burbank, by the way, here with Elena Passarello. We've got to take a quick break, but don't go anywhere because when we come back, we'll have more with Andrew, including a very special musical performance just for our show. So stay with us. This is Live Wire.
Luke Burbank Welcome back to Live Wire from PRX. I'm Luke Burbank. We are talking to Andrew Bird. One of the things I love so much about your music is the intersection of science and and your music. And you just have this really beautiful way of kind of posing a scientific principle or questioning something in the world of science in the midst of a song. I'm curious, do you. What's your relationship with like science? Do you have a formal background in that? Did you studied that in college or something?
Andrew Bird No, not exactly. I really don't have any science science background at all, but I like phenomena. My approach to science is like big picture kind of crackpot theories. I'm interested in things that might tell us what we're made of, whether it be dark matter or I'm trying to think of some other examples. There's a lot. I think they just make nice metaphors for what it is to be human.
Luke Burbank And when you're writing a song, I mean, are you reading an article in like Scientific American or The New York Times or wherever? And you see some sort of large principle about the universe or whatever. Do you like, underline it. You make a note and think, Oh, I could probably work that into a song later.
Andrew Bird Yeah, it's kind of it's really the, the, the popular headlines in science that, you know, I'm not.
Luke Burbank Maybe that's why it works for me because I'm not a big deep diver, but I feel smarter after I don't want to use it.
Andrew Bird But yeah, like someone says, hey, check out this article about, you know, how baby birds practice their their songs in their sleep or something. And I think, oh, that's, you know, I used I was also a big fan of what's still going this magazine called Cabinet, which kind of based on a theme they would talk about kind of archaic scientific experiments from the Victorian era or something. That's the kind of stuff that would draw me in that has like a science based but kind of a literary bent to it.
Luke Burbank Like phrenology or something.
Andrew Bird Exactly.
Luke Burbank One of the songs off of this new album is called Atomized, and I was watching it on YouTube and there's a sort of quote from you beneath the video that says, It's not just about society getting atomized, but it's that the self is being broken apart and being scattered. I'm wondering, was that your version of trying to work out, you know, the pandemic or our weird relationship with technology or just like the strange moment of life that we're in right now?
Andrew Bird I mean, all of that, you know, the first verse is talking about being sort of unsettled, like sort of shaken from your comfortable perch by that algorithm or whatever it is. Just some modern life kind of trying to disrupt you and divide you for profit, basically. Hmm. And then the the chorus was I happened to have Beethoven's Seventh Symphony going in my head one day, and it was like, I wonder how that would work as a bridge or chorus to this song. And then I was thinking about, you know, an issue that that keeps coming up with me, like the self versus the group or like are do we live in a society or like America is so confused about what individual freedom really means. And so there's that line about, is each of us an island or more like Finland? And then the second verse is talking. It kind of brings it more to a personal level, which I often do if it gets a little too, you know, abstract about technology or geopolitics, I'll make the next verse about like between two people. But yeah, that the song was just kind of talking about, you know, from Yeats second coming poem to Joan Didion's Slouching Toward Bethlehem essay. And then this is an attempt to sort of update that to the present with technology and social media.
Luke Burbank Okay, so we're going to hear a song. Which song are we going to hear?
Andrew Bird Imma do "Make a Picture".
Luke Burbank Okay. And this is off of the new album Inside Problems?
Andrew Bird Mm hmm.
Luke Burbank All right. This is Andrew Bird here on Live Wire.
Andrew Bird [Singing] Oh, I don't wanna ride on your shoulders or put you in the hospital/I just wanna roll away boulders that they said was impossible/'Cause don't you know there are many repressible optimists walking with the fatal flaw/Running in the streets like feral vats/Will be hard to mistake any and raise a paw/Tell us what you think you saw/What you think you saw/Tell us what you think you saw/Make a picture/Make it snappy/Make a picture/Don't look so happy/All the scowling faces/All those furrowed brows/ All those burn-out cases/ Make em' take a bow (Make 'em take a bow)/ How 'bout them smiling faces?/Come on and show us how/Nevermind the braces/Love you anyhow/We love you anyhow/I don't wanna hear what's impossible/Falling with the shepherd's tone/And if we're ever gonna get out of this hospital/You will never sleep alone/Listen to the cries of the wounded metropolis/ (?) sits on tenterhooks/I listen to the cries of the pliable populace/Giving us some dirty looks/They're giving us some dirty looks/Dirty looks now/They're giving us some dirty looks/Make a picture/Make it snappy/Make a picture/Son't look so happy/All the scowling faces/All those furrowed brows/All those burn-out cases/Make 'em take a bow (Make 'em take a bow)/How 'bout them smiling faces?/Come on and show us how/Nevermind the braces/Love you anyhow/We love you anyhow/We love you anyhow/Love you anyhow/We love you anyhow/And then we sleep alone/Love you anyhow/And then we sleep alone/
Luke Burbank Woooo! Andrew Bird. Right here on Live Wire. That was incredible.
Andrew Bird Thank you.
Luke Burbank Well, Andrew Bird, thank you so much for coming on. Live Wire. If you want to find out where Andrew's going to be on tour this summer, go to Andrew Bird Net and you can also get the new album Inside Problems there. Andrew, thanks again.
Andrew Bird Yeah, good to see you again.
Luke Burbank All right. Before we get out of here, a little preview of next week's episode. We are going to be celebrating Father's Day and sharing some incredible and moving conversations that we have had with guests regarding their dads, including filmmaker Kirsten Johnson. She made this documentary, Dick Johnson Is Dead as a means to sort of commemorate the life and legacy and also the journey with dementia that her actual father, Dick Johnson, went on. It's a really incredible piece of filmmaking. We're also going to talk to comedian Chris Garcia. He pokes fun at his life choices by channeling his Cuban father. And he's also going to tell us about his podcast, Scattered, which is about his family. Then Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, a father himself, is going to perform a song with his two sons. And as always, we are going to be looking to get your answer to our listener question. Elena What are we asking the listeners for next week's episode?
Elena Passarello We want to know the most important thing that your father or any father figure that you have ever taught you.
Luke Burbank Nice mind is don't show up an hour and a half early to things because it's what my dad just did while we were doing the show, texting me that he's somewhere we're supposed to be meeting in like an hour and a half.
Elena Passarello So he's on Walt Burbank time.
Luke Burbank That's right. That's my answer for next week. Hey, if you have a response to that, go ahead and hit us up on social media, Twitter or Facebook. We're at Live Wire Radio and give us your answer to that question. All right. That's going to do it for this episode of the show. A huge thanks to our guests, Cecily Long and Andrew Bird, Live Wire is brought to you in part by Alaska Airlines.
Elena Passarello Laura Hadden is our executive producer. Heather de Michelle is our executive director. Tim Harkins is our development and marketing director. Our producer and editor is Melanie Sevcenko. Our assistant editor is Tre Hester and our marketing manager is Paige Thomas! Woo!
Luke Burbank Welcome to the team!
Elena Passarello Welcome, Paige! Our house band is Ethan Fox, Tucker, Sam Tucker, Al Alves and A. Walker Spring, who also composes our music. Molly Pettit is our technical director and mixer. Our house sound is by D. Neil Blake and Viviana Castillo Serrano is our intern.
Luke Burbank Additional funding provided by the Oregon Arts Commission, a state agency funded by the state of Oregon and the National Endowment for the Arts. Live Wire was created by Robin Tenenbaum and Kate Sokoloff. This week we'd like to thank members Arvid Hokanson of Mercer Island, Washington, and Kathleen Kinder of Portland, Oregon. For more information about our show or how you can listen to our podcast, head on over to Live Wire Radio dot org. I'm Luke Burbank. For Elena Passarello and the whole Live Wire crew. Thank you for listening and we will see you next week.
PRX.
