Episode 577
with J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, Sara Schaefer, and Dehd
Chef and food writer J. Kenji López-Alt tests his knowledge of cooking gadget infomercials; comedian Sara Schaefer leads a seminar on how to perform standup in various comedic styles... including puppetry; and indie rock group Dehd discusses bad love stories and dental work, before performing "Bad Love" from their album Blue Skies. Plus, host Luke Burbank and announcer Elena Passarello talk ambitious DIY projects.
J. Kenji López-Alt
Best-selling author of The Food Lab and chef extraordinaire
J. Kenji López-Alt is a chef, parent, and New York Times best-selling author of The Food Lab which won the James Beard Award for General Cooking and International Association of Culinary Professionals’ Book of the Year. He is also the author of Every Night Is Pizza Night, a food-inspired children's storybook illustrated by Gianna Ruggiero. He is a wildly popular New York Times food columnist, and the host of the YouTube video series Kenji’s Cooking Show which has over a million subscribers on YouTube. His newest cookbook, The Wok: Recipes and Techniques is the "definitive guide to the science and technique of cooking in a wok."
Sara Shaefer
Stand-up comedian, award-winning writer and producer
Sara Schaefer is a critically acclaimed stand-up comedian, writer, and producer. She was the co-host of MTV’s late night show Nikki & Sara Live, and her half-hour comedy special debuted on Comedy Central Stand-Up Presents. She won two Emmy awards for her work at Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, and won a WGA Award for her work on Ed Helms’ Comedy Central special The Fake News with Ted Nelms. She has also written for numerous programs as well as her own digital series Woman Online. Her stand up show Little White Box sold-out at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival while Sara’s scripted web series Day Job was named "one of 100 Best Web Series" by TimeOut New York. She also published an incredible memoir, Grand, and currently hosts a podcast called The Schaefer Shakedown.
Dehd
American indie rock band
Dehd is an American three-piece indie rock band from Chicago that draws inspiration for their unique sound from musical genres like post-punk, garage rock, and surf music. The eclectically cool band consists of members Emily Kempf, Jason Balla, and Eric McGrady, and after their first self-titled album and a second EP that was recorded on borrowed gear in an old room of a Frank Lloyd Wright Warehouse, Dehd made an acclaimed return with a full length album titled Flower of Devotion that they toured around the world with acts like Julien Baker. But their momentum didn't stop there. After their increasing success, they went back to the studio, invested in their overall sound and production quality, and launched their most electric project yet; Blue Skies is a studio album that "keeps pulling light out of the dark" with heavy-verb guitar and vocal melodies that are like "pointed signals for our collective woe" that makes the album not only feel like a musical reckoning, but a communal catharsis.
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Luke Burbank: This episode of Live Wire was originally recorded in January of 2023. We hope you enjoy it. Let's get to the show. Hey, Elena.
Elena Passarello: Hey, Luke. How's it going?
Luke Burbank: It's going well. I see you're flying your Pittsburgh Steelers terrible towel in your studio today.
Elena Passarello: I'm in my work office and I have my terrible towel so that I appear like a grounded human.
Luke Burbank: Uh huh, sure. Hey, you ready to do the "station location identification examination"?
Elena Passarello: Oh, yes, sure. I hope it's Pittsburgh.
Luke Burbank: Oh, I mean, that accent actually sort of sounded a little bit like where we're talking about. This is the part of the show where I quiz Elena on a radio station that Live Wire is on in the country. She's got to guess where I'm talking about. At one point, this city held the Guinness World Record for most bars and nightclubs on one street.
Elena Passarello: Green Bay, Wisconsin.
Luke Burbank: You're in the right state. You can see the Mississippi River. Minnesota, Iowa and Wisconsin from the legendary granddad Bluff in this city.
Elena Passarello: La Crosse, Wisconsin.
Luke Burbank: Elena Passarello, you are a marvel. It is exactly La Crosse, Wisconsin, where we're on the air on WLSU radio. I had another hint that I think would have been a dead giveaway. Because you're such a bird enthusiast. What do they call that a ornithophile or something? Yeah, it's known as the Birdwatchers Paradise, because you can find bald eagles, tundra swans, great egrets, bluebirds, warblers and sparrows.
Elena Passarello: Oh, I love all those.
Luke Burbank: Sounds like your kind of town. Shout out to everyone listening at WLSU in La Crosse. All right. Should we get to the show?
Elena Passarello: Let's do it. From PRX. It's... Live Wire! This week, chef and author Kenji Lopez-Alt.
Kenji Lopez-Alt: That's like one of my favorite infomercial lines ever. Stop having a boring tuna, stop having a boring life.
Elena Passarello: And comedian Sarah Schaefer
Sara Schaefer: Do you know how hard it Is to build a dollhouse without being able to shop at Hobby Lobby on principle? These people played a direct role in taking away our bodily autonomy, but they have such an incredible selection of glues, my god.
Elena Passarello: With music from Dehd and our fabulous house band. I'm Your announcer Elena Passarello, and now the host of Live Wire, Luke Burbank.
Luke Burbank: Hey, thank you so much, Elena Passarello. Thanks to everyone for tuning in from all over the country, including beautiful La Crosse, Wisconsin, folks on WLSU. We've got a great show in store for you this week. We have a listener question. We asked the Live Wire listeners, What is your most ambitious DIY project? We're going to hear those responses coming up in a few minutes. First, though, of course, we got to kick things off with the best news we heard all week. This is our little reminder at the top of the show that there is some good news happening out there in the world. Elena, what is the best news you heard this week?
Elena Passarello: Okay, so this is one of those best news that starts out really not best. Okay, sounds kind of worst, but it gets better. So there is this plant disease that is ravaging the olive trees of Italy.
Luke Burbank: Oh, no.
Elena Passarello: It's not that great. It's called Xyella. And it's really affecting the region of Puglia in Italy, where 50% of Italy's olive oil is produced. Oh, no. It's attacking trees that are like hundreds of years old. And it's a relatively new disease to Italy. But it's actually happened all over the world, including to certain vineyards in California. It's just this this this bacteria or disease or something that kind of suffocates the plants and it's spread by hungry spittle bugs. And they bite one plant and they get their spit in there and then they take it to another plant and they bite that plant. And it's just awful. It's spreading through Italy at like 12 miles a year, and you control it by uprooting the plants entirely. But the problem is humans have a really hard time detecting if a plant has this disease at its early stages. So a couple of years ago, there's a guy who's an olive manufacturer who used to be an Italian policeman where he worked with drug sniffing dogs.
Luke Burbank: Okay.
Elena Passarello: This guy's name is Nicola di Nola. And so then he called basically the Italian version of the American Kennel Club. So he's like, which breeds would be best for being trained to detect this scent of this disease. And they were like springer spaniel, cocker spaniel, lab. So I read this amazing article in the BBC about this adorable lab named Paco.
Luke Burbank: Aww.
Elena Passarello: Who is now able to detect...You can't see it, you can't smell it, you can't taste it. If you're a human, it is completely not detectable to you. But Paco and other dogs like Paco are learning how to monitor all of the crops of Italy. So basically, I could get my olive oil and bread dip, whenever I need it, which is really the most important news for me.
Luke Burbank: That was exactly where my brain went. The EVOO. If I don't have my EVOO, if I have my extra virgin olive oil, I'm in a lot of trouble. So I'm glad to hear that.
Elena Passarello: I get evil if I don't get my EVOO. So thank you, Paco.
Luke Burbank: All right. The best news that I heard this week, this is right out of the Elena Passarello Files. And I'm honestly I'm sorry that I deprived you of it because, like, it's birds in the news.
Elena Passarello: Oh, yeah, that's true.
Luke Burbank: I feel like it's really. That's your brand. I just. I cannot tell you how much this story warmed my heart. It's from Austria, where a biologist named Johannes Fritz has been working to save a species of bird called the northern bald ibis. Now, the northern bald ibis nearly went extinct. In fact, there weren't any of them living in the wild when Johannes Fritz was born. He's 56, by the way. There had been hunted so extensively in Europe that there was just a few hundred of them. They were living in captivity. But Johannes saw that movie Fly Away Home with Jeff Daniels and Anna Paquin. You remember that one?
Elena Passarello: Yes. It's one of my faves.
Luke Burbank: Where they teach Canada geese how to migrate the proper way with that ultralight. This guy, Johannes Fritz, saw that and he goes, I'm going to do that with the northern bald ibis. And he says that everyone thought he was crazy. Like, that's just a movie is like, No, I think I can do it. He had to learn how to fly.
Elena Passarello: He wasn't a pilot ahead of time.
Luke Burbank: He was not. And in fact, he would get sick when he was in a glider. He had motion sickness. And one of the things, too, is they had to modify this kind of ultralight that he's in so that it didn't fly so fast that the birds couldn't keep up with it. And I'm not a Wright brother, but I know there's a certain amount of speed you need while airborne to stay airborne. He apparently figured out how he could go like 25 miles an hour so that the birds could keep up with him. So he gets these ibises, which some describe as the ugliest birds on earth, which, of course, you know, immediately means I love them.
Elena Passarello: Right.
Luke Burbank: Immediate, like, makes them my favorite bird that's ever lived. So he teaches them how to migrate. He flies this thing, they follow him. And the ibises are doing fine for a period of years. And then because of climate change, their migratory route they had been using is no longer viable for them because of various things involving the temperature of the air and updrafts and things. And so he bribed them with a bunch of mealworms and got them into like a truck and drove them on their migratory path so they would survive. But he realized this was not a sustainable model, so he figured out a new route for them. And so he's been raising these ibises, a group of them, since they were chicks. So they're very bonded with him and his associates, and they just recently took their flight. Where they got them all out in a field. And then he's on this like, weird airplane thing. And his associate, one of his research colleagues, the one that the Ibises really identify with, she's also sitting on this flying contraption backwards looking at the birds. So they know that like that it's her, that it's her because they're very bonded with her. And if she's on this weird flying contraption, they know that it's okay for them to follow it. They just did their, like inaugural flight and they actually got them all the way down to Italy eventually, which is where these birds go on their migration.
Elena Passarello: Well, sounds nice.
Luke Burbank: Right? So it actually worked. And I thought this was such an amazing thing because, like this guy had a watch, the Jeff Daniels movie had to learn how to operate a light aircraft. He had to get over his motion sickness.
Elena Passarello: He had to find like minded friends, birds of a feather, if you will, to help him with this project.
Luke Burbank: Will And then, thanks to climate change, the route didn't work anymore. And he didn't just give up. He went out and found a new route. He's doing the whole thing again, he told the New York Times. This is not so much a job, he added, but my life's purpose.
Elena Passarello: Oh my God.
Luke Burbank: I mean, it's just absolutely adorable and rooting for those ibises. And that's the best news I heard all week. Let's welcome our first guest on over to the show. He's a chef and wildly popular New York Times food columnist. He's also the bestselling author of The Food Lab and the host of the YouTube series Kenji's Cooking Show, which has over a million subscribers. His latest cookbook, The Wok: Recipes and Techniques, is available now. Take a listen to this. It's our conversation recorded at Town Hall in Seattle with Kenji Lopez-Alt here on Live Wire. Hi, Kenji. Welcome to the show.
Kenji Lopez-Alt: Thanks. Thanks for having me.
Luke Burbank: Now, you're one of those classic chefs that studied architecture at MIT. When did you actually get into food?
Kenji Lopez-Alt: So I started getting into food the summer after my sophomore year of college when I was quitting biology. Because. Because I took organic chemistry, and I hated that. So that summer, I was going through this, you know, what am I going to do with my career? And so I needed to make money. So I was looking for a job as a server. And then a restaurant I walked into was like, well, we have we have a prep cook who didn't show up this morning. So you can start today. You can have a job as a cook for the summer. So I was like, okay, I'll do that. And that's how I started cooking.
Luke Burbank: Do you remember what you were doing those first days in the kitchen?
Kenji Lopez-Alt: Yeah, I remember my very first day when I... The question they asked is, do you know how to hold a knife? And I said, Yes, but I didn't really. And I was I was slicing oranges for the bar. And one of the prep cooks comes over to me and like, like just, like, stands there shaking his head. And so he showed me how to hold a knife properly and how to slice an orange. And I did practice on a lot of oranges. It was at like an all you can eat Mongolian grill.
Luke Burbank: Is that the kind with the big grill where you bring the bowl of your stuff and you put on a section of the grill
Kenji Lopez-Alt: Yeah like pre-COVID days. Yeah. You go to the raw meat bar where everyone's like poking around. Yeah. And then I started as a prep cook, and within two weeks, I was a Knight of the Round grill, so.
Luke Burbank: Whoa, and that was your title.
Kenji Lopez-Alt: And then after working in restaurants, that's when I started to sort of get into eating food. And I was like, Oh, this is, like, interesting. Before that, I was a pretty picky eater, especially like going out at restaurants. I didn't want anything interesting. And so I started learning how to cook, and then I was like, Oh, this is a whole new world of stuff to appreciate and then got into food after that.
Luke Burbank: Your grandfather was a chemist.
Kenji Lopez-Alt: Organic chemist.
Luke Burbank: Now, do you feel like that is sort of in your DNA that you were programed to want to really get into food on a a more kind of molecular and scientific level?
Kenji Lopez-Alt: I mean, I don't I don't think I'm interest in sciences is like genetically passed down
Luke Burbank: It's not epi-phenomenal.
Kenji Lopez-Alt: But but, you know, but but certainly, like my my grandfather was a chemist. My dad was a biologist. And so there's a lot of sort of science conversation at the dinner table. So in that sense, yeah, I think it definitely got passed down to some degree.
Luke Burbank: Your first cookbook was this huge hit. What do you attribute that to? Was it just that you were able to help people understand how to make some relatively simple stuff just a lot better using science?
Kenji Lopez-Alt: No, I mean, I think a lot of it is like being in the right place at the right time, just like being really lucky. When I started cooking, there wasn't really I mean, there wasn't Internet, but there wasn't even like YouTube, anything like that. And then, you know, and so I learned how to cook in restaurants. And then I went into the writing world, and then I kind of came along the writing world and my career as a writer kind of paralleled the shift from paper to online media and got really lucky to fall into like those early sets of like sort of food blogs that became popular and finding a platform of serious eats, you know, as far as the book goes, the way I thought about it was that, you know, I didn't come into cooking until much later in my life compared to a lot of chefs. I know, you know, who, like maybe they had parents who cooked and they have the food of their people. And and, you know, it's like I didn't come into food that way. I came into as like a summer job, and then I wanted to learn about it, you know? So for me as a cook and restaurants like I did have a lot of questions about like why things worked the way they did and whether I could make my life easier, if I did it in a slightly different way, you know. So when I wrote the first book, I was kind of thinking, yes, if somebody wrote a book for me when I was 19 or whatever and wanted to like not waste so much time poorly peeling boiled eggs, what would that book look like? And so that's that's what the first book kind of was.
Luke Burbank: What's the key to effectively peeling boiled eggs?
Kenji Lopez-Alt: You start them in hot water. So it's...
Luke Burbank: Science.
Kenji Lopez-Alt: Yeah. I mean, like thousands of eggs worth of testing on this.
Luke Burbank: You heard it here first on Live Wire. Okay. We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, though, I want to ask how an infomercial may have led directly or indirectly to this latest book of yours. We're talking to Kenji Lopez-Alt here on Live Wire. Back with much more in a moment.
Luke Burbank: Welcome back to Live Wire from Town Hall in Seattle. I'm Luke Burbank here with Elena Passarello. We're talking to Kenji Lopez-Alt, the food writer and YouTube host about his latest book. It's called The Wok: Recipes and Techniques. Now, is it true that your interest in the wok really came from seeing an infomercial about kitchen gadgets or something?
Kenji Lopez-Alt: It was an infomercial about woks.
Luke Burbank: Specifically woks?
Kenji Lopez-Alt: Yeah. Yeah.
Luke Burbank: And what were they doing on there that you found compelling?
Kenji Lopez-Alt: Well, it was a it was like a very British guy calling it the Great Wok of China.
Luke Burbank: Oh, nice and casually racist.
Kenji Lopez-Alt: Yeah. And a lot of steaming when there was supposed to be stir frying going. But the selling point of this wok was that it was like hand hammered. And they showed this footage of like, of like where the people were making the walks in the in these factories and they're like hammering them into tree stumps to mold them. And I was like, Oh, that's pretty cool. But anyhow, I, I watched a lot of infomercials as a kid, and that one always kind of stuck out to me as like, Oh, we actually have this one in our kitchen.
Luke Burbank: When in your cooking life, once you, you know, realize it's what you wanted to do and you're trying to really look into food and write about food. Did you start to use a wok more?
Kenji Lopez-Alt: The wok was one of the few things that my you know, my mom cooked a lot of... She came here from Japan. She cooked a lot of Japanese and sort of Sino-Japanese food in a wok. So, you know, so I was familiar with the tool in particular, like deepy frying, she always did that in a wok. So I was familiar with the tool growing up. But, you know, I bought myself a wok when I was in college, so like right after I started cooking. So I bought a yeah, but at a Target in Somerville for 20 bucks. And that same walk up until this book was published in March, and that wok was like fully functional until like April or so.
Luke Burbank: The one you bought at Target?
Kenji Lopez-Alt: Yeah, twenty years. I mean, because I cooked for, you know, it's like I cooked in college. I cooked like when I was after college living with roommates and, you know, like when it was just me and my wife and now my family. So, you know, it's like a tool that honestly is, like, spent has been like every stove I've ever had, like at least 60% of the time. Like, there's that wok was sitting on it, you know. So it's a it's a tool that, you know, like this entire book, there's only one or two recipes that call for anything other than just a walk on a stovetop. And so, you know, whether you're learning how to cook or whether you're you're trying to learn a new style of cooking or familiarize yourself with a very ancient and well researched style of cooking, it's it's a cheap investment.
Luke Burbank: I like a lot of folks, bought wok at some point. I tried it a few times. It never gave me or I never got the effect I was going for. Didn't taste like the stuff I had been eating in a restaurant that was cooked in a wok. What are people like me probably doing kind of wrong in that scenario?
Kenji Lopez-Alt: Well, so a couple of things. You know, the first one is that... [Audience laughs]
Luke Burbank: Like how much more time in the show do we have, for me to list the ways you're bad at this Burbank?
Kenji Lopez-Alt: No, no. The first one, I think is that you're trying to get exactly what you get at a restaurant, you know, which is it's a goal. It's an achievable goal, but it's not necessarily I think the first goal you should have with the wok, you know. In particular, like ones that have like a lot of like wok-a like the the smokey, like getting the flame in there. That's a technique that takes some practice and also some specialized equipment to do at a restaurant scale and you know and then that said in the book I talk about a few ways you can try and get some of those restaurant flavors. So in particular, like a lot of it comes down to cooking in smaller batches and instead of trying to do what they do on the infomercial, like where you just had like tons and tons of stuff until it's like, oh, at the top
Luke Burbank: That was literally exactly what I did. I probably bought, you know, like $40 worth of like vegetables, meats and everything. And it was like it was for an army. And then just like my bird-like arms can't even, like, toss this thing on my dorm stove. We're talking to Kenji Lopez Alt about his latest book, The Wok: Recipes and Techniques. Okay. Now, as you mentioned in the book, and as we've been talking about, your kind of first little bit of interest in the wok was from an infomercial advertising it. And so we wanted to test your knowledge of some other infomercials about culinary contraptions. This is a game we're calling Inspect Your Gadgets.
Kenji Lopez-Alt: Okay? Yeah.
Speaker 5: [House band plays Inspect Your Gadgets Theme]
Luke Burbank: All right. The Live Wire house band, by the way.
Luke Burbank: Now, here's how it's going to work. Kenji, I'm going to play you a snippet of an actual infomercial.
Kenji Lopez-Alt: Okay. And they're all food related?
Luke Burbank: Yeah, these are these are infomercials for for like food based items. Okay. Okay. Things in the kitchen. Okay. So here's the first one. What do you think this is an infomercial for a real food thing.
"I used to use a fork. Get the fork out of here. Now you just grip it, dip it, flip it. And the best part is your fingers stay clean."
Kenji Lopez-Alt: Geez. Is that...I don't know. Is it for, like shredding barbecue, claws?
Luke Burbank: You know, this would work with that. This is for a product. A real thing called Trongs.
Kenji Lopez-Alt: Oh, okay.
Luke Burbank: Trongs are these little like, you know, those, like, wax, like vampire teeth you get when you're a kid, you know, for Halloween? They're like that. But you put them on your fingers and they're made of, like, food safe plastic. And when you're eating hot wings or something, that juice doesn't get on your actual fingers. It gets on the trongs. If you watch the full ad, the guy literally says, Have you ever been eating wings and then you realize you can't shake anyone's hand?
Kenji Lopez-Alt: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Luke Burbank: This is a product that was created when a person realized that he couldn't shake enough hands immediately after eating wings.
Kenji Lopez-Alt: Right. Because when you see the guy eating wings with trongs on the fingers, you don't you don't go close enough to shake their hand.
Luke Burbank: Exactly. It solves the problem, but not in the intended way. Right. All right. Trongs were the most obscure. Okay. That was the hardest one, probably. So this one is a little more widely embraced. This is another actual snippet of an infomercial for a food product.
"This thing, this tuna looks boring. Stop having a boring tuna, stop having a boring life."
Kenji Lopez-Alt: [At the same time as infomercial] Stop having a boring tuna, stop having a boring life.
"Add this tuna, putting it like this.... You're going to love my nuts. Tuna salad. Look at this. You're going to have an exciting life now."
Kenji Lopez-Alt: [At the same time as infomercial clip] You're going to love my nuts.... you're going to have an exciting life now.
Luke Burbank: Who is that?
Kenji Lopez-Alt: That is the slap chop.
Luke Burbank: It is absolutely the slap chop.
Kenji Lopez-Alt: That's that's like one of my favorite infomercial lines ever. Stop having a boring tuna. Stop having a boring life.
Luke Burbank: That is, of course. That's Vince, right? Yeah.
Kenji Lopez-Alt: He went to jail for biting someone. I think that's right.
Luke Burbank: Now, in fairness, he. He grabbed them with his trongs. Was actually later the court was saying...
Elena Passarello: He should have slap chopped them
Luke Burbank: That that whole ad is like riddled with entendre, like you said, Kenji, like he's like chopping up nuts and he's like, you're going to like my nuts. He was like, the bad boy of infomercials, Vince. I bought a slap chop. Yeah.
Kenji Lopez-Alt: How'd it work?
Luke Burbank: Terribly. The problem was, So if your familiar...
Kenji Lopez-Alt: Life is still boring
Luke Burbank: The tuna was the least of my problem. It was like a kind of a plunger thing that had a knife on the bottom that was kind of S-shaped, and it had a kind of a plastic cylinder around it. And the idea was you'd put it over your thing of onions and you just slap it down. It would just chop the onions and you wouldn't cry. The problem was the thickness of the blade. Yeah. It was not a blade. It was a flat piece of metal that was like a quarter inch thick. So it just would mash. I mean, it made the tuna more boring. Yeah. Impossibly. But it's the only one of those things I've ever purchased because the ads were that convincing to me. I thought it was really going to change my life. Okay, here comes another one. Can you identify this?
"Are you tired of fussing with giant pasta pots, strainers, timers stirring in testing just for a plate of pasta? Well, I've got the solution for you. Hi."
Luke Burbank: I'm Cathy Buddy. I have to finish that line because she was the lady doing all of the infomercials for a while. Cathy buddy.
Kenji Lopez-Alt: Hmm? Is it a spaghetti shaped thermometer that you throw at the ceiling?
Luke Burbank: Whoa. Oh, my god. That is a million dollar idea. Yeah, that is not what this is. But that, my friend, is a million. This is why you have 500,000 Instagram followers. No, it is a pasta boat. Okay? It was a boat shaped thing that you would put pasta in and water and then put it in the microwave and microwave, all of your pasta.
Kenji Lopez-Alt: I think David Chang sells that now.
Luke Burbank: Yeah.
Elena Passarello: Isn't that just a bowl?
Luke Burbank: No, Elena bowls are cumbersome and they fall out of the cupboard on you. As for some reason, the screen turns to black and white for that section. Like the easiest thing that we've all been doing. But now if you just film it right, it looks like it's the bane of everyone's existence, black and white. Have you ever bought a, like, one of these extremely kind of silly kitchen gadgets?
Kenji Lopez-Alt: You know, I was just remembering like a month ago of a time when we tested a bunch of, like, the most ridiculous hamburger products you could find. So there is one called the Hot Dogger where you where it's like a hot dog shaped mold. So you can put hamburger into it and save it like a hot dog. And it's like if you run out of hamburger buns that you still have hot dog buns.
Luke Burbank: Honestly, that's a good idea.
Luke Burbank: Kenji Lopez. The new book is The Wok: Recipes and Technique. Thanks for coming out. Live Wire.
Luke Burbank: Thanks for having me.
Luke Burbank: That was Kenji Lopez-Alt right here on Live Wire recorded a town hall in Seattle. His latest book is The Wok: Recipes and Techniques.
Luke Burbank: Live Wire is brought to you in part by Alaska Airlines. Alaska Airlines offers the most nonstop from the West Coast, including destinations like Hawaii, Palm Springs and San Francisco, 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 AirCon.
Luke Burbank: This is Live Wire. Of course. Each week we ask our Live Wire listeners a question in honor of Kenji and our upcoming guest, Sarah Schaefer's extreme DIY abilities. We asked our listeners to tell us about your most ambitious DIY project. Elena has been collecting up those responses. What do you see?
Elena Passarello: How about this one from Brian? Brian says, I have never built anything before and I built a two level chicken coop that could be open from the outside and you could pull out the eggs. It is the one and only time I have used the Pythagorean theorem as an adult.
Luke Burbank: Wow. And that worked. And by the way, Brian is laughing all the way to the bank. Have you seen how expensive eggs are right now?
Elena Passarello: That's right. Yeah. No, like that Pythagorean theorem really paid off in terms of this avian flu egg shortage.
Luke Burbank: I was too busy investing in crypto, and my friends that were building chicken coops knew where the real money was. What's another DIY project that one of our listeners took on?
Elena Passarello: Sort of a different topic from Claire. Claire's biggest DIY project, having children and trying to make them into decent people.
Luke Burbank: Tell you what, you never stop d-ing that I-Y. I know as a parent of someone in their twenties, it is a lifelong journey.
Elena Passarello: Doesn't it just sort of D-I-T? Like they got to do it themselves or, no?
Luke Burbank: Ideally, Elena. Ideally. What's one more before we move on?
Elena Passarello: Speaking of parents, what do you think about this one from Lynn. Lynn's most ambitious DIY project? Helping my daughter photograph the undead.
Luke Burbank: Photograph the undead, i.e. ghosts, I guess, right?
Elena Passarello: Yeah. Is it a science project at a at a very liberal school? In terms of what sciences?
Luke Burbank: I watch all of those shows where they're like ghost hunting and I really want there to be ghosts. I want them to have some evidence, but it's always just kind of like a little blip on the audio recorder and everybody kind of freaks out.
Elena Passarello: I'm very happy to not hunt or photograph or I mean, they may be out there, but you know what? I'm not going to look, I fight of my own.
Luke Burbank: You know, let those sleeping ghosts lie is kind of your policy.
Elena Passarello: Amen to that. Yes.
Luke Burbank: All right. Thank you to everyone who sent in those responses to our listener question this week. Let's welcome our next guest on over to the show. Sarah Schaefer is a critically acclaimed comedian, writer and producer. She was the co-host of MTV's late night show Nikki and Sarah Live. She won two Emmys for her work at Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. And she joined us on stage at Revolution Hall in Portland recently. And just a quick note before we get to this performance. It is a little visual. In some instances, particularly a puppet makes an appearance. Remember that, Elena?
Elena Passarello: Oh, yeah. Can't forget that puppet.
Luke Burbank: Our technical director, Molly Pettit, who brought a puppet out on stage. I don't want to say anything more. I want to ruin it for you. So just take a listen to this. It's Sarah Schaefer here on Live Wire.
Sara Schaefer: Hello! Hello, everyone. Hello. So good to be here. I have to set this up. I'm doing a solo show for you tonight. It's about 90 minutes. No, no, I'm working on this solo show. It's called Going Up. And the premise of the show is it's a fake seminar about how to make it in comedy. And I'd like to do a little portion of it for you tonight, if that's okay with you. Okay. Because I can feel it. There's a lot of people in this room that are lost and you're looking for purpose, that purpose comedy. But Sarah, I already have a career. I'm a dental hygienist. You were a dental hygienist. Your new life has now begun. So if you're going to make it in comedy pretty early on, you're going to want to decide on your brand. What type of comedian are you going to be? Now, there's lots of different styles of comedy to choose from, and I'm going to demonstrate them for you right now by telling a joke in each style along one specific topic. Quick note about topics. Now, when you're working on something creative, maybe you've heard the phrase write what you know, write what you know. Well, in comed-iosity we take it a step further. Not only do we write what we know, we write what everybody else knows. We pick those big, broad topics that everybody can relate to food, family, relationships, the differences between men and women along a cis heteronormative binary, right? So you're going to want to pick a very big, broad topic for this demonstration. I'm going to pick a topic that not only do I know, but that everyone else knows, and that is miniatures and dollhouses. Here we go. First up, standard comedian. You've seen a few. Here's a standard comedian, standard joke. I love miniatures and dollhouses. And I know you might look at me and not immediately think that you might, you know, because normally we associate dollhouses in miniatures with, like, grandmas and ghosts. Right? But I do have the muscle tone and overall demeanor of a grandma, and I am dead. I actually I have been dead ever since Beyoncé played Coachella. I died. I literally died. So that's like a standard joke, right? So then we have your one liner, one liner, comic. Man, miniatures. I love a tiny thing, but my husband asked me to stop calling it that. See, that's a one liner. Then we have the misdirection comic. Now, you might not have heard that term before, misdirection, but once I demonstrate it for you, you'll get it. Here's a misdirection comic, and this is actually true. I. I am officially a first time homeowner. Yeah. Thank you. It's a doll house. Anyway, I. Have very little money. I keep it in a matchbox. It's adorable. And you just keep going. Never finish the sentence. Just keep changing directions. That's misdirection, you know? You know what I'm talking about. Now you're starting to get it. And we have storyteller. Here's a quick story. I was recently shopping for a miniature supplies at my one of my favorite places to shop Joanne's. If you've been to Joanne's, you know about Joanne, right? We've got a few. Come on. NPR crowd, Come on. We're spending hours in Joanne's. Joanne's is a great store for crafting supplies. It's where you can shop for crafting stuff right alongside other women literally named Joanne. And Joanne's are kind of like Karen's, right. Except instead of being motivated by racism, they're motivated by coupons. Very fine line. Very fine line. Now, whenever I go to Joanne's, it's always the same thing, right? You know, you've been there. You know what I'm talking about. It's a long line and one register's open and it's always being held up by one. Joanne. She's up at the front, and for some reason, she's not done shopping yet. She's running back into the aisles to get more stuff. And if, you know, if you shop there a lot. Yeah, I'm doing it. I'm doing a full half hour of jokes on Joanne's right now. Joanne's, you know, if you shop there, you know what's going on. She was trying to use the coupon. The one, the main one we all love, spend $35, get $5 off great value. But she gets up to the front and she didn't meet the threshold. She didn't get out the calculator. She didn't realize the sales, and now she's screwed. So she's running back in the aisles to get more stuff to try to get over the line. But that's not what we agreed to. We made a silent agreement. You get up to the front and if you don't get over the line, you got two choices You abort the mission or you're grabbing whatever's in arm's reach to get over the line. You're buying three bottles of blueberry muffin hand soap. Those are your only two options, right? So that's a story.
Sara Schaefer: And then we have poignant solo show comic. Solo show comics will tell that same story. But at the very end they'll add one really harrowing, messed up detail from their life. Whatever the worst thing that's ever happened to you, use it. Mine your trauma. Add it on. Just tack it on at the end and do the whole story with new meaning. So for instance, you tell that same whole story and then you say something like. And that's when I was attacked by my seasonal allergies. Blackout, Standing ovation, critical acclaim, Netflix Special, Emmy Awards. Then you have your crowd work comic. Who's out there? You two. You two together? You answer me. You? No. Yes. You're the miniaturist of the household. Her mom? Oh, wow. Are you going to let him talk to you that way? What scale are you working in? What scale are you working in? I'm not going to leave until you answer me. 10th of an inch. Wow. Bold. The more of a 1/12th-er tthere myself. What's your favorite fraction? See, this is when you just become best friends with one lady in the audience. Personally, I'm a 3/8 girl myself. When you do crowd work, you really want to listen. You know, don't just force your stuff on to them. And we have political comedian, only 20 more examples, hold on. Political comedian. You know how hard it is to be a miniaturist and a feminist at the same time. Why? Two words. Hobby Lobby.
Sara Schaefer: Do you know how hard it is to build a doll house without being able to shop at Hobby Lobby on principle? These people played a direct role in taking away our bodily autonomy, but they have such an incredible selection of glues. My God. But you know what? Maybe I wouldn't even have to be shopping at Hobby Lobby because maybe if I could afford a real sized house, I wouldn't have to build a dollhouse. But I can't because malignant capitalism is decimated the housing market. Am I right? Clap. All right, See, now, that's called. That's something our claptor. That's when you filled the air with clapping instead of laughter by just saying something that you think the audience will agree with. Now, some people think that's a political thing. They think that's woke comics only use claptor or they think it's a brand of comedy. But no, it's just a tool that all types of comedians use. And in fact, I would say that the type of comedian that makes fun of woke comedy, the type of comedian that makes fun of claptor, is kind of the one that uses it the most. And that, of course, is the edge lord, which I will now demonstrate for you. The edge lord. No. My son came up to me the other day. He was like, Daddy, daddy, I want a doll house. And I was like, No. What are you a snowflake? Can't see that any more, can I? What are you going to do? Cancel me. Obviously. But you know what? I'm just saying what everybody's thinking, I hate my son. Clap. Clap. Okay, there you go. We have the beloved puppet comic. For those listening at home, I have a puppet of myself. For some reason. Oh, hey, Jessica. What are you doing today? "Oh, you know, I'm just playing with my miniatures." Wait a minute. Why are you talking like that? "No, that's how I talk." Why? "That's just how I-" But no, I don't think we should do that accent. "Why not?" Because it's just. I don't know how. It's just. It's. I feel like it's going to get racist. I don't think I should do that. "No, no, no, no, no, no. The C is not racist. Because you're not saying it. I'm saying it." No. Get away from me. And then finally, we have there are many other examples. Hopefully, I'll be doing my show for you in Portland next year to look for it. Finally, we have a musical comedian. We didn't do a soundcheck, so it's their fault.
Sara Schaefer: [Singing] All right. I love miniatures. Yes, I do. They are so tiny and so cute. But I think the real reason I love them is because I'm in charge now. I'm in charge. Now. They're so little and I'm so big. They're so tiny. I could crush them.
Sara Schaefer: That's a musical comic. So you're gonna want to choose one of those. Thank you so much!
Luke Burbank: Sara Schafer everyone.
Luke Burbank: That was Sarah Shaffer right here on Livewire performing at Revolution Hall in Portland. I'm Luke Burbank. Right over there. Elena Passarello. We have to take a quick break, but don't go anywhere. We will be back with some incredible music from the band Dead that you do not want to miss. So stay with us. Welcome back to Livewire from pr X. I'm Luke Burbank here with Elena Pazuello. Okay, before we get to our musical guest this week, a little preview of next week's show. We are going to be talking to Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and acclaimed novelist Hector Tobar. His latest book is Our Migrant Souls A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of Latino. We're also going to talk to comedian and filmmaker Jenna Friedman. She created the show Indefensible on AMC and also Soft Focus on Adult Swim. She's worked on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and she was nominated for an Academy Award for her work on Borat, two subsequent moviefilm. Jenna is going to be talking about her latest book, Not Funny Essays on life, comedy, culture, etc.. Spoiler, though it is in fact very funny. And we've got music from the indie folk group and sister trio Joseph. Of course, though, no episode of Live Wire would be complete without a listener question. Elena What are we asking the Livewire listeners for next week's show?
Elena Passarello: We want you to tell us about a time that you tried to be funny and totally failed.
Luke Burbank: I can just say as a person who tries a lot of jokes that don't always work, you know, failure is an important part of the creative process. So yeah, so don't be embarrassed to tell us about a time that you tried to be funny and it failed. You can hit us up on Live Wire Radio over on Twitter or Facebook or whatever they're calling Twitter now. It's at Live Wire Radio. We're looking forward to getting your answer. In the meantime, our musical guest this week started out in Chicago. They're inspired by the likes of the Cocteau Twins, James Brown and Dolly Parton. Their music has been streamed tens of millions of times. Their most recent album is Blue Skies, and it's available now. Take a listen to this. It's Dehd here on Livewire. Emily and Jason from Dehd. Welcome to Live Wire.
Jason Balla: What's up?
Emily Kempf: Hi, Luke.
Luke Burbank: Hi. Thank you for doing this. There is a really great track off of the album Blue Skies, your latest album, it's called Bad Love, which coincides with something on your website that I noticed, which is the Bad Love Hotline. Can you kind of explain how all that sort of works together?
Jason Balla: Yeah, basically we've had this phone number for a couple of years and used to just send like weird messages out to whoever would call. But then we when we put this new record out, we thought it would be fun to entertain people's terrible dating love stories that they could call in and leave a message.
Luke Burbank: And those messages are like listed on the website. I was listening to some of them.
Emily Kempf: Yeah, I guess so. People that they call in was like in the beginning of the campaign it was like calling with their bad love stories because everybody has terrible dating stories. I'm assuming. I know I do. And and we thought it would be a fun way to, you know, bring levity into the lonely part of dating. And yeah, and I guess some of them are on the website, but people still call in. And I don't know what they're saying now. You know, every now and then we get a notification that...
Jason Balla: I think we've maybe kind of fixed everyone's problems.
Emily Kempf: They're just calling to thank us.
Luke Burbank: We notice that there's no more bad dates happening anywhere in the world.
Emily Kempf: We're putting Tinder out of business. So yes.
Luke Burbank: You're listening to Live Wire Radio. I'm Luke Burbank here with Elena Passarello. We're talking to Jason and Emily from the band Dehd. Speaking of, I guess, how your songs get created, my daughter Addie is a huge fan of yours, has been to a lot of shows. I told her that we were going to get to talk to you, and she said this in text to me. She was like, "I think it's really admirable how much they've committed to their own sound and just kind of seem to make art for themselves. And if other people are into it, so be it. But they don't have any pretentiousness." Is that I mean, kind of what you're trying to do is just make the music that you like.
Jason Balla: What up Addie! Nailed it! Yeah.
Emily Kempf: I feel seen. Wow, what a bad ass. What a compliment. Yeah, we are definitely. I mean, I know if we're trying because that would be like canceling it out, but we definitely are just simply vibing with ourselves. Like we're friends, we make music, we like it. What we make happens to have a sound that people recognize and we kind of stick to it.
Luke Burbank: I guess what I'm wondering about, I was looking at Spotify and I was noticing that you have songs that are streamed like 7 million times, and then there are other songs that are streamed hundreds of thousands of times, which is still a lot of times. But is it hard to not look at that and then start writing in the direction of the things that are getting 7 million streams?
Jason Balla: Mmmm I think it's just mostly more about like what's exciting to us, you know?
Emily Kempf: Yeah.
Jason Balla: And sometimes I guess you could see the numbers and I guess like, have that thought for a second. But it's pretty easy to let it go because we're just trying to chase like what's interesting and feels relevant to us at the moment. So.
Emily Kempf: Because that seems to work out well and like when you look at a song that has 7 million views, you're not looking at the whole picture. It's like, well, it's relative to like, you know, the industry, the time that it came out, what people are into, like what trends are happening, algorithms, money, like there's so much that goes into it like it's, it would be suicidal to be like I'm going to put my self-worth int like views or streams or follows or even sales. It's like. Yeah. It's easier to just stick with what we like and then just kind of roll with it. Obviously, we know, like, Okay, well, that song that was, like, you know, noted. But I don't think we make ourselves sick trying to reproduce something that other people saw as a hit. You know.
Luke Burbank: I was wondering, Emily, I was looking at the official Dehd TikTok feed, which has literally two posts, and it's just you at a gym doing like crunches, trying to be able to call the Bad Love Hotline. But I noticed that the I don't know if you still but at that time you had braces. And I was wondering, does that affect how you sing that change, like actually the practice of singing for you?
Emily Kempf: That's so funny. Speaking of the TikTok, I didn't even know it was still there.
Luke Burbank: You still have the braces? I can't tell from here.
Emily Kempf: No, no, no. I have braces off. I have a gold tooth, now. The braces did affect my singing. And you can hear it on some of the songs on this album because I had just gotten them when we were recording. And I have a slight lisp, which I thought was cool. And I leaned into it.
Elena Passarello: Yeah!
Luke Burbank: Does the gold tooth impact how it feels to sing, or is that just for a good look?
Emily Kempf: It was an accident. Like the dentist is supposed to be a, you know, a tooth colored tooth. And it came in and he goes, I'm so sorry, it's gold. And I was like, Screw it, just put it in. Look at me like, this is destiny. And he was like, so excited and brought all his assistants and he took a selfie with me and he was like, This is amazing. He was like really stoked that I was like into a gold tooth because it's in the front of my mouth. He was like, Nobody ever does this. I'm like, Well, I'm not everybody.
Luke Burbank: Well, what song are we going to hear?
Emily Kempf: We're going to hear Bad Love.
Elena Passarello: Playing the hits!
Luke Burbank: Yeah, well, we're excited to hear it. This is Dehd on Live Wire.
[Dehd Plays Bad Love]
Elena Passarello: Woo woo!
Luke Burbank: Yeah, That's Dehd right here on Live Wire. That was great. Thank you so much for coming on the show.
Emily Kempf: Thank you.
Jason Balla: Thank you so much for having us.
Luke Burbank: That was Dehd right here on Live Wire. Their latest album, Blue Skies is out now, and they will be touring Europe. If you're over there, check them out when they come to your town. Yeah, that is going to do it. For this week's episode of Live Wire. A huge thanks to our guests, Kenji Lopez-Alt and Sara Schaefer and Dehd.
Elena Passarello: Laura Hadden is our executive producer, Heather De Michele is our executive director. Our producer and editor is Melanie Sevcenko.Molly Pettit is our Technical director. And our House Sound is by D. Neil Blake. Our assistant editor is Tre Hester. Our marketing and production manager is Karen Pan. Jackie Ibarra is our production fellow and Julienne McElmurry. Our house band is Ethan Fox Tucker, Sam Tucker, Ayal Alvez, and A. Walker Spring, who also composes our music.
Luke Burbank: Additional funding provided by the James F and Marion L Miller Foundation Live Wire was created by Robin Tenenbaum and Kate Sokoloff. This week. We'd like to thank member Chris Bright of Portland, Oregon for more information about our show or how you can catch 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.
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