Hello and welcome to cookie issues is the Dave Alder hosted cookie cutter is coming to you. From newsstands studios at Rockefeller Center in the heart of Manhattan, New York City, East Coast, New York State. Remember, we are a whole state and not just the city, although we tend to forget that down here. You know, I'm saying yeah, kind of forget that. Very happy to have back in the booth. Joe. How you doing, Joe? I'm doing great. How are you guys doing? Well, doing well? I'm sure you did not miss us at all. No, I missed you guys dearly. Nice. Nice. And we have our West Coast. We have our West Coast musical and engineering crew. Jackie molecules. How you doing? Surprise. I'm in Mexico City again. What is it with you in Mexico City?

Why do you why why? You can be anywhere. This is the time of working anywhere.

Yeah, this is the What's that song? This is the world we live in. This is a hands we're given. What's that song? I don't know. This is what song is that? Who thinks that? I have no idea? No idea. Phil Collins. Oh, yeah. So I don't know. In fact, there's a very famous musician, whose violin class how many millions? Not going to call him out by name. Not that anyone cares. But stars. How much is his violin cost?

Oh, like 9 million?

I don't know. Not many millions. Okay. It's a Stradivarius many millions. And can't listen to rock musicians can't listen to rock music. Because it's too sloppy for them. Except for what group Anastasia. Genesis Genesis, and we're not sure. We're not sure whether he enjoys a Peter Gabriel Genesis, or more of a Phil Collins Genesis Phil Collins, I think I would say so. Because I mean, Peter Gabriel, no offense, but you're a little sloppy compared to my man, Phil. And I think he could be pulling off that. Mr. Macias favorite, all time favorite thing maybe, is when Phil Collins has to make it to that. Dang. drumset

Yeah. Have you seen it in the air tonight? He's walking around the stage singing the beginning of the song. And he has to make it to the drums for that part. You know, for the part the part. And he makes it?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. For those of you who like so so I'm 50 and I'm kind of old for music. Sorry, kind of young for Prime Phil Collins. Right. So the field cause I grew up with was this assises sudio Phil Collins, which is you know, I mean, he made a lot of money. But it's not like the best Phil Collins is it? No. Oh my god. Remember when he remade that supreme song?

can't hurry love.

Oh my god. Why? Why did that need to get remade one last thing about music before we get into what we're doing. Oh, by the way, the Stasi the hammer Lopez. How you doing? Okay. Oh, he's always selling yourself stars, man. Okay. Still breathing? Not underground yet. You know, you got to start doing like my crazy racist grandpa used to do all the time is it? When are you say how are you doing? He only had two answers. Vertical meaning not dead. Or soberly, meaning overly meaning he hadn't started drinking or I think he meant sober in the old school sense of angry. Yeah. Like severely soberly. Vertical. Those are there's only two answers ever. Yeah. So last music thing before I talk about our guest, first of all, Patreon people call in your questions. 2917410 1507. That's 917-410-1507. And we're gonna what we're going to do is going to split this show. And we're gonna skate. Like go crazy at the end on a bunch of Patreon questions. Other questions, so don't worry. It show the beginning part of the show. It's like two shows. You want people to shows in one. So I'm walking past the ice rink. You like this ice rink stuff. You used to know this hill. Do you want to describe the thing that you've taken over now? It's now not even my family sing anymore? It's your thing? I don't know sign of the cross.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. No, no, I know. You want

it. You want to tell people? So originally it started as something in my family. I don't know how many other families have this. But now in the Stasi, Anastasia has her own culture of sign of the cross. Yeah. So you might be thinking you Catholics out there or people who watch movies might be thinking that what sign of the cross means is, Oh, you like you cross yourself like something bad happens? You cross yourself right. That's what you're thinking, John. Yeah. All right. Know what a sign of the cross means is someone usually someone you don't sign the cross someone who's who you're not like, it's like a family member. It's like when your sister does something to you, or your cousin, or your brother does something to that is so so bad that what you do is it's almost always at the dinner table kind of has to be at the dinner table has to be in front of people you can't sign of the cross someone on your own doesn't work that way. Okay. All right, ready for it. You go, that's it sign of the cross and you pull out a piece of paper, you make a cross on it. You fold that paper up, you put it in your wallet, and they're dead to you. That's it. It's over. They're dead sign of the cross. Right? That's in my family. That's what they do. And you have to say it that way. That's it, sign of the cross. And then that said, it's never mentioned again. They're never brought up again. You don't bring that person up to that person. They're not just dead. They are like expunged in Stalinist sense. Got it. Right now. I have no such pieces of paper in my wallet. Right. And by the way, neither does my stepfather is more of the older generation that did the sign of the cross. I mean, I don't know. I mean, Gerard does have some people that he's kind of signed the cross, but it's not actually physically in his wallet. Like it wasn't his dad's wallet anyway. So stars what your your, your culture is slightly different?

Well, yeah, I mean, you You taught me and then I put in to, like, a couple years ago, and to me, they're like, they're dead. Right. But I also hope, like the worst for them, not death, but like the worst thing, and it usually happens. So that happened, I took those two out, then I have one in there right now that's been in there for like two year three years, maybe. And then I need to put the new one in soon. Yeah, yeah. And Dave is like, David said to me, like, hold on to that. No, come on out and do it like so Dave actually believes that this is

what it's supposed to know. I don't believe it's gonna have a negative impact on them. But it's supposed to be a permanent personal statement. Yeah. But I also add a little to it. But what I'm saying is, yeah, your your culture of the cross can be different from mine. You know what I mean? It doesn't have to be the same thing. But like, you know, in my family, it's not that it's not serious for you, but it means something slightly different for you. I think. You don't say it may it

means taking down remembering to hope and wish them ill every time I see it and take them down in a very specific way.

Yes, so like, Yeah, so like, in my family sign of the cross, they're just gone. You don't do anything against them. Right? You know what I mean? It's just that's it. You have to have the piece of paper it's all about a piece of paper. Yeah. molecules we're gonna say some I heard you say some No. Now listen, we have some upcoming his he's worried he's gonna get the sign of the cross. But I'm, so I'm going past. I'm going past the rink. And they're playing that Sam Cooke song I don't know much about history. Don't know much biology don't know much about the French I took all the all this other stuff. Let me tell you something. I was thinking about that. I was thinking about myself. Imagine if I use that strategy to woo somebody. Listen, if you are not Sam Cooke, don't use the strategy. I am a complete, dummy dumb but to try to woo a date. And the reason I thought about this is because the only reason I can think that molecules is going to Mexico City. So often, if you have some sort of hot date down there someone who brings something other than yellowtail to the table. Everybody thinks

if I didn't have reason to travel, I don't. I don't think so. Jack. Thank you stars. Yeah, why I believe that you're there because you can work anywhere. And yeah, anyone who thinks that it's

cheap. It's cheap. It's delicious. Yeah, there's an incredible music scene. I mean, the weather's perfect. Come on.

So for those of you down there, he doesn't have a hot date. You can call them up. Okay, now. So single, the next, the next two episodes are focused on and we haven't, we haven't had anyone for the museum on a long time on the Museum of food and drink. And we have an upcoming exhibition. So next week, we're going to have on Dr. Jessica Harris, who is the curator of the upcoming show African slash American making America's table corrected making the nation making the nation's table. And we're going to have her on but she's also going to talk about high on the hog her Netflix documentary. And like all the books, she writes. And also, people might not know this personal friend of Jackie molecules. I mean, I've known her a long time. But you know, Jackie molecules and Dr. Harris are tight. Also, you should ask, you should ask a lot of specific questions for Dr. Harris, because it's very rare that we get to have her on because even though she does live in New York most of the time, like a lot of the time she's either in New Orleans, or you know, in other places, so, you know, get your questions in for her. But this week, we're having actually the new well not new anymore. It's been like, almost like half a year or more something like that. Again, I lose track of time. The older you get, the more you lose track of time, but the President of the Museum of food and drink Nazli Parvizi how're you doing? Hi, Dave, how's everything going?

I love that you just did. It's good. I just love that you did my annual review and don't know that I've been there for a year now.

That's true. I was on the Annual Review. Listen, I'm telling you, the older you get people like here is like time. A year is like a week and a half. I know. It's like,

especially this year. Yeah. Also,

does anyone mean like, I feel like you can do a yearly review after like three days or like after like five years? You know? I mean,

I feel like it's just not working for us. It's been four days your fire? Yeah, I

get that. You know, people should do that more often. Honestly, like, it

would save a lot of problems. Yeah. For those of you out there like you kind of have lost

yet. Well, look, how often has it happened? Look, so Nazy, before she came to the museum of food and drink was like, okay, so she's in California now moving back to New York. But she, you know, was working in the Bloomberg administration. What was your What were you? What were you running? What were you heading up at Bloomberg?

Bloomberg, the Commissioner for? Yeah, yeah. Bloomberg the mayor. I was the commissioner for Community Affairs for New York City.

Alright, so in other words, you had to deal with a lot of people. A lot of people, like a lot lot of people. So true or false? Yeah. When was the last time when was the last time that when you hired someone or brought someone on? Right? That you were like, This person is 100%. Right? And then you like, Oh, my God, I hate this person. That doesn't happen that often. Right? Not that often.

Here's the thing, I would say my talent in life is hiring. Like everyone's got a way to manage or talent or whatever, and mine is hiring. So I don't think I have done that. I definitely towards the last days hired somebody who I knew I wasn't going to like, but I gotta say, I also think that's a sign of growing up is hiring people that you don't necessarily like but who are right for the job. I actually thought that was okay. Right. I don't think I've ever hired somebody who's like really failed me in the end.

Well, you've never had to hire someone and you had that little twinge because you needed someone right, then that's never happened.

It's not worth it. My management style is to not manage people. And so I have sort of taken a hit both on like, I'll have to do the extra work or other people will have to cover to make sure the right person is there. There's no payoff to quickly hiring somebody. There's just not

I don't even know how we got on this. Nazy This is not a hiring seminar. We got to talk about the exhibit. So why don't we talk? It's my fault.

As usual. Hire people for the museum's as

usual. Are you hiring people right now? Alright, people, yeah,

we are hiring folks. Yeah, on the floor. We need folks on the museum floor during Ofo while the exhibition is going, and I think we still need an educator, so we're hiring for that. What about Dosen? Team educator to work with the kids?

What about docente kind of pupils?

Yeah. docente kind of people are both on a volunteer basis. And the folks who work on the museum floor essentially can be trained as docents as well, while making sure you don't touch the ebony kitchen.

Okay, so let's get let's get to let's get to the exhibit. And so you will probably go kind of hard in on content next week. When Jessica is here. Yeah. So let's go into like the mechanics of like, how and John, by the way, full, full disclosure, when the exhibit was being made, John was one on the curatorial team. Frank, you know, and like on the exhibitions, and I'm on the exhibitions committee, so like, you know, we're pretending that we're siloed here, and we all have different jobs, but really, we don't. So come on. So yeah, so NASA, you and John Hess can talk about a little bit about the, the advisory structure, I'll just say this at the beginning. So like, for those of you that don't know, like, I'm the founder of the museum food drink, and that it's my was my idea, but I don't do the work to make it happen. Right. I mean, I do some work, but not the work to make it happen. And we've done several exhibits. You know, the smallest exhibit was the very first one that I did I literally built in my wife's architecture office on American country ham back when no one was talking about American country when no one was talking about it. Anyway, so like, I was like, you know, you have to like, eat it like Judo slice it don't cook it eat it like you know love your American country ham. I was on that train. I gotta say, I gotta say Joe, before anyone before anyone Joe. People might say that. I was like, I was early to that game. I was before the game I wrote I made the game I created the game anyway. Not to toot my own horn anyways, so that was the first exhibit tiny dinner to trade show that's how I actually got into the food business. For real so Michael batter berry found me and got hired and foods anyway. Of course I don't know how to start a museum so I didn't so the idea floundered fester until Anastasia and I were like hey, let's throw this fundraiser starts. Best fundraiser you've ever been to in your life best? Yes,

we know how to party.

We know how to both party about that fundraiser and sub party Nazy when was the last time you were at? When was the last time you were at a event where a whole roast ostrich was wheeled in.

Written by.

Yeah, when was the last time you were written by a cook? That's all I'll

say about you know the answer to this.

I mean, it's like Josh ever played the game. It was written at one point by Yeah, Charles, great game. So also, let me ask you another question stuff. And this is actually what I'm most proud of. Not that we had like an amazing like all star cast of cooks. Not that, you know, yeah. People who were huge at the time, people who became huge afterwards, like, so like, good choices all around. Also, what was that events? Does? Was that event late? No, no,

it was during the day. No, no,

no, no, no. I mean, like, did it last the amount of time that it was supposed to last? Oh, yeah. Did the dishes go out on time? Yeah, yeah. There was anyone waiting around? Yeah.

Was there a lot of speeches? No, no, no.

People, people, people. I don't understand what it is. Maybe rich people. Maybe rich people like to hear people talk it when they're trying to have a conversation to table. I know that we don't like that. I know that no one I know likes speeches. If you ever need someone to speak, I know you listen. If you listen to this show, you're like, oh, Dave, you talks forever. Not at events. At events, stars. How fast are my speeches

so fast? So and I think you were you were the auctioneer too? Right? Oh, my

God says How fast was that off? So fast? Easy. good at that. He's, first of all, I turn on my loudest, fastest jet wine. And I'm not aggressive. No, but like, remember that time I did an auction at the Thanksgiving farm? And what's your name? Lorraine bracha was there and I shamed her for not upping her bid once. Oh, god. Yeah. While she was like, at the height of sopranos kind of thing. I was like, come on. I was like giving her stuff anyway. I'm just gonna say, for those of you that have to give speeches at these events, snappy fast, hit it quit. snappy, fast. Yeah, hit it, quit it. Right. Because Because

listeners to remember, as we plan our fall event, listen, people no one wants to hear

Nope. Not only that, you're angling to sit next to that one person that you paid all that money to sit next to, right. So you just want to have a conversation with that one person or meet someone new. That's the only reason other than to look, whatever, give money to the institution. Sure. So you pay, you sit there, you want to talk to that person, I want to get interrupted every 25 seconds. I mean,

and lots of alcohol.

Because if you're the one speaking, you can see when you lose the audience, you have to give speeches on behalf of the mayor. And I was like, I'm gonna just cut for these paragraphs because no one cares. Especially when you're not the mayor. Like the last thing they want is some like city employee giving his speech and they're just start chatting are like, This is dumb. Why am I here?

I mean, I don't know. Honestly. I mean, not for nothing. But I'd rather have almost anyone other than Bloomberg give a speech. I mean, the guy is like, the guy's like a desiccated sponge in terms of his speaking, man.

I mean, he's smart. But he's German, Spanish, brilliant.

I mean, oh, my God, his Spanish is hilarious. I mean, like, I mean, like the whole, he's not saying anything negative about the guy. What I'm saying is, is he he's a boring speaker. That's all I'm saying about him. You know, I mean,

I think you'd agree. Yeah. I mean,

on the other hand, he's a billionaire, Massachusetts, deadpan. Oh, yeah. Why can't you tell people that this is not a mask? This is not a museum question. But and if you don't feel comfortable answering, why does he not have any love for Medford? I mean, I know why I permettra it. Yeah, I mean, I can see many reasons why you wouldn't have love for Medford. This is where he's from people. Bloomberg is not in New York or Bloomberg. Bloomberg from Medford mass, where they used to have the wrong where they were Paul Revere has stopped and drank the rum and they have that event every year, blah, blah, blah, Medford Why am I hating on it?

I kind of feel the same way he does, which is and by the way, he has certainly like given a lot to Medford but sort of it's not obviously anything he makes a big deal about. But I think for all of us who grew up in Massachusetts, it's an amazing place to grow up. But I'll say from my perspective, someone who grew up outside of Worcester, like I grew up knowing I could not wait to get out of there. And I couldn't wait to move to New York City. And as soon as I turned 18, I moved to New York City. And Mike, he got out of Massachusetts as soon as he turned 18 as well. I think that when your success is built in New York City, you're not sort of trying to be like, let me figure out how to make Medford the world's best city. I mean, it's just, it's a small town, he didn't have a choice and growing up in it. And New York is where he made a name for himself in New York's got bigger problems, and that's where he decided to spend most of his money to try to sort of move the needle on some of those problems rather than Medford. But yeah, I always say this, like, I love my Boston sports teams, blah, blah, blah. I love Massachusetts. I don't know that Massachusetts loves me, and I would say is a brown kid growing up in central mass and maybe as a Jewish kid growing up in Medford I'm not I don't want to speak for him. But I'll say, when you're different, you really feel different in New England. So it probably goes anywhere. But you're different. It's like really stark in your face. Like my town was Irish Catholic signs of the cross everywhere.

As a Whoa, yeah. As a white man who used to go to Medford as a kid a lot, because you know, I have family there. Like, I've never, I've never been to a place where someone assumed they could say such crazy overt racist to me, about other people.

That's Massachusetts. Yeah. Well, I realize because it's such a democratic town, it's such a, but I have a friend of mine who's Haitian sort of said this kind of perfectly, because we talked about how weird it was for both of us to grow up there. And kind of also love it and kind of also hate it. And he's, they moved up there because his mom was getting a PhD at Harvard. And he goes, you know, the bus never stopped for my mom. And she would always say, at least in the south, I could get on the bus. This is obviously years ago, she goes, I had to sit on the back of the bus, but I could get on the bus. And in Boston, the bus didn't even stop to pick me up. And that to me, is kind of like a nutshell of like, old Massachusetts racism. It's changing. I don't mean to sort of like paint a bad light. But I think anybody from New England like, knows that you can be like, have super liberal values and be extremely racist. Like, the two are not mutually exclusive in a place like Massachusetts,

right? But I mean, I think there's like it's so different there. Now, first of all the T's and this now the med from show the T is there now right or it's about to be and then the the other thing

we change these titles Yeah,

no, I mean, it's like it's like everyone's getting you know, all those old school like blue racists are getting priced out of their out of their out of the area, right. I

mean, yeah, totally. Yeah, same with Lester. Like all of it. The tease goes from Worcester to Boston. Like, I grew up next to Worcester. No one ever went into Worcester or anything. No one even worked in Worcester

until you tell your story about that. It's really nice Stasi a story to tell she's gonna get mad at me. I'm gonna get hit for this afterwards. Because she's not going to tell it.

I don't know what you're gonna say. The Stasi

has a friend of a friend who's a local reporter in Worcester. Okay, a local reporter in Worcester not going to sell this person out who they are. They are live in California. But they are a local reporter in Worcester. So they are they would rather just like scan your Twitter feeds from Western people then get anywhere within 1000 miles of Western to write about local Worcester stuff that that's crazy.

I love that. I love that. No, that tracks to me. That makes total sense. Have you been to Worcester? Massachusetts?

I don't think I'll ever go back. Today. They closed the the armory museum. So I don't know that I'll ever go back. But you know, I mean, that was a great burn down. Well, that's one way to close it.

It was metal all burned to the ground.

Yeah. Great museum if you like armor and armory stuff. Amazing Museum. Yeah. Even if you don't like it was an impressive armory Museum. Yeah. Good stuff. Yeah.

I don't care about armor. That museum was awesome.

I have to say again, last. Like, like Massachusetts has like a lot of cool, weird little museums in it. You know, I'm saying totally the whaling Museum. Go to the whaling museum people.

Elizabeth Gardner. Oh, lots of colleges.

I've never been back. I've never been to the gardener. I've never been in the gardener, I need to go. I tried to go last time I was in in Boston, but their time now I couldn't get in. But the whaling Museum. Like the best thing to do is to be my age and have gone in the early to mid 70s When they were still like wailing, yay. And then go like when you have kids, and they're like wailing boo, and just see how the museum changes over time. That's kind of fun. All right, so let's talk about for us, let's talk about like, so we start the museum. And we develop this apparatus for like talking about food as a lens through which to view culture, technology, history, economics, the whole the whole gamut. Basically, we try to view all of the aspects of, you know, what it means to be human through the lens of food and at the same time trying to promote learning about each other, each other writ large, by, you know, breaking bread with each other, which is, you know, pretty much everyone involved with museum believes that the best way to kind of build bridges between people is to break bread with them and talk about you know, what, reading, why reading, etc. This is why Anastasia hates Italian people because that's all they talk about eating and what else.

Don't hate Italian. Okay, all right, but you hate that they

only talk about fluid fluid and digestion, right? Yes. Okay. That's fair. I haven't said an unfair thing.

Ben's not working. Yeah, they'd love to talk about not work

there for it or against it, or the northerners talk about the Southerners, or both

that too, but generally deeply against it.

I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna go there. I'm not gonna go there. But the so we developed this apparatus. And then this is the first exhibit, I guess, Chow, to some extent, right as well. But this is the first exhibit where we're like, okay, we're going to hand over the apparatus of the museum to an outside. Curator, Jessica Harris. So I don't know whether you whether you want to talk about the process of like the advisors working with the museum or what we want to talk about here. I'll leave it up to John.

John should take that question. Oh, yeah. John, I think stick that question. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, obviously, you know, we wanted to talk about this subject, that's, you know, hadn't really been given much attention. And also timing wise kind of worked out. It was the 1619 project was coming out was 400 years of, you know, since slaves, enslaved people first arrived to the Americas. So just a really kind of timely exhibition we wanted to put together and we realized that no one on the staff was really capable or had the expertise to be able to talk to this. So we've Peter Kim. And I think Dave and Catherine, were able to talk Jessica Harris into helping us out with it. And she was really just a tremendous force to work with. She is the authority on the subject. And then with her help, we also got together a sort of advisory council of just really terrific figures in the field of African American culinary history, current culinary chefs, things like that. Want to read some of them off? Yeah. Alexander smalls, Michael Twitty Adrian Cheetham, Pierre CEMB. had on the show we've had on the show. Eric Ajith, hyung. Carla Hall. Yeah. And

you're Holland.

Thank you. Yes, yeah. Tony Holland, I mean, really just this tremendous, really amazing roster of chefs and historians, and just people who are involved in this world. And they helped us put this story together and really realize what was important what we need to hit on how to talk about all this properly, and, you know, really helped to put together a great exhibition.

Yeah, I mean, it was funny. So I was there in the first meeting, years and years ago. So this is something we'd wanted to do, fundamentally, forever. Ever since I I knew Dr. Harris's work for obviously, for a long time. But when Pierre took me on to Senegal, she was also on that trip. And I was like, hey, you know, like, would you ever want to, you know, do something with the with the museum? You know, because we had already had the idea. We weren't going anywhere with it yet. And she's like, Yeah, sure, you know, and so then, and then she became friends with Peter and, and all kind of snowballed from there. But we were at this first meeting. So she's gonna be on next week with, you know, for those of you that don't know, Dr. Harris, she is the kind of person that pretty much everyone defers to, right. So I couldn't imagine anyone better to have as the kind of person leading up the team running this exhibition. So we had this giant meeting a, you know, near the Andaz hotel, right, and you're here in Midtown. And we get like that a lot of advisors, you're talking about people calling in, but people around the tables is pre COVID, like way pre COVID. And this is huge table. And I think because she is such a force in the, you know, in the community, food community, the black community, in writing about in writing in teaching, that she was able to kind of cement what would otherwise be an incredibly disparate group of people into a kind of message and idea that a lot of the least most of them could get behind. I thought it was a interesting process. Yeah. What do you think?

I wasn't at that meeting, but I heard good things about it was healthy, and all the other subsequent meetings, but yeah, don't make that first one.

Man, no, man. Got to be in the room where it happens. I know.

I was a lowly intern at that point.

Lillian. Oh, hi. Oh, how you have risen here. Yeah. Art History professor.

Yep. Letting Dave know with the empty city bike racks.

Hey, people, life's not linear. Okay, so

actually something we also haven't said on this yet. Nicely. When is the exhibition formally opening up to the public and when Can everyone get tickets and where can they get tickets?

Thanks, Shawn. tickets sales start tomorrow, which is super exciting. Unless you're more Fed members. You're able to buy tickets starting yesterday. But ticket sales start tomorrow and we delayed like so many other folks did. But this time Thankfully, it was all Only by three weeks. So the public opening is February 23, which we are so excited about. It was supposed to open actually, this week, but I think we made the right choice. We just, it's funny, we didn't all McCrone obviously hit New York City pretty hard. My problem was that we just don't have a lot of staff redundancy. And, you know, if the person who's supposed to deliver all of our like new panels and new furniture got sick, or the carpenter who's supposed to make it, like all the work that we have to do right now is basically physical and on location. So it makes sense, just just to try to build a little bit of a time buffer to make sure that we can actually get the exhibition up in time.

So yeah, let's talk about COVID. So this exhibition was supposed to open in March of 2020. It was slated, and we were only a couple of weeks out, when the when the kind of COVID hit. And it was you came on? I don't know, maybe, I guess a year or like nine months, actually, not exactly a year ago. So but yeah, but I'm, I don't know how long nine months after the lockdown or something like this? Yeah. But so what like, obviously, a lot of our listeners know about how hard it is to run a hospitality establishment during these times of COVID cultural institutions have been hit, obviously extremely hard. But do you want to talk about what it's like to be a small cultural institution when this kind of thing hits

shore? Shore, and I think, you know, I'll go on the soapbox. I think the difference between running the cultural institution and a small one versus a restaurant, I think we have a lot of the same challenges. But restaurants did not get nearly the same amount of help. Nor was the aid offered to restaurants, useful for how restaurants operate, versus how other types of businesses or cultural institutions operate. Because we were really saved by the PPP, not the first round, that was also geared terribly towards cultural institutions, but certainly the second round and subsequent aids. You know, obviously, it's really tough. We don't have an endowment, like the larger museums in New York City, where you could essentially sort of shut the doors, kind of furlough everybody lay everyone off, and know that you can sort of turn on the lights, and there's money for sort of decades not to kind of make light of what every institution was going through. And I think space is this really interesting thing, because a lot of organizations have to deal with 10s of 1000s of square feet of space that they have to kind of still maintain, even if the doors remain shut. But I think for small institution, you know, we gave up our the Mossad lab space. So by the time I got the I got the position, we were out of the lab space, there was no way we could afford to kind of keep paying rents on a space that was going to be closed. The majority of the staff were laid off. Some of them were unhelpfully rehired for six weeks, and then that money ran out that first round of PPP, and they were laid off once again, or eight weeks, 12 weeks, whatever. And it's just incredibly hard. And I think part of it too, is, you know, the sort of psychological impact. It's just really heartbreaking. You know, we don't sort of talk about backs, I think we're all sort of heartbroken in our own way. During these last couple of years, if you have to deal with any one of the ramifications as a business owner, as a parent as a, as an employee, what have you. But I think it was really hard, you know, to some extent, given everything that happened in the last two years, especially with the movement with Black Lives, like I'm happier that we're opening now versus then I think that the show, there's just a lot more interest in around any number of topics around the history and acknowledging the history of African Americans in America. I think there's a lot more interest on foodways given all the amazing food programming that's sort of come up through sort of Netflix and other other venues. But um, I will say it's been unbelievably hard. I think that everyone has felt a sort of personal responsibility to keep their favorite local restaurant alive to sort of make sure that people are being fed in their communities and cultural fall to the bottom and I get that of people sort of giving structure. Cultural institutions aren't necessarily deemed as necessary when push comes to shove. And when you're dealing with an emergency situation, when you see lives getting really broken, and more and more people on housed and more and more people sort of food insecurity. So yeah, it's been kind of zero fun. And I would say if you're going to take a nonprofit job, don't do it in the middle of a pandemic. But that said, there's enough people and the staff, like I can't say enough about how amazing the staff is. Any one of them can be paid twice as much and be working somewhere else, and their dedication and their devotion to Mofaz. To the show to getting the show open is, is really something to behold, I feel really lucky to have inherited the staff that I inherited. I feel really lucky. They're an amazing, amazing group of people. And yeah, I think for us the pivot, we made a pivot to virtual. And that's actually been really was really successful, and still continues to be fairly successful. But we were really quick. I think by June, we started our first virtual events. And I would say a lot of culturales. Like, if we're going to look for some silver linings have sort of said this, it didn't do a whole lot in terms of funding. But you know, it's not kind of how we can like, stay alive. But it sort of kept us going. And it did. The other thing is an educational institution that we always think about, which is access, like, for the first time we had, we have audiences from California to Omaha to Singapore to China like joining in, and I say Asia because somehow the timing of our programs worked really well in the Asian market. Not necessarily like the European market or anywhere else, but

seven 7am

Yeah, so before work, it's like there before work happy hour program as

a as someone you know, to start and Stassi and I are quite well versed in doing business in Asia. And we really enjoy all of the calls right during dinner. Don't miss dasya Oh, yeah. Or like, you know, if you happen to be out, don't you love having to like you love

when I'm at a club? And I'm like, I'll take it from here. Yeah,

first of all, it's more like, it's more like a club. And she calls up and it's like, like, stars, I can hear it. I can hear it. I can hear it. We're on a business meeting. Okay, so in the in a couple of minutes we have left before I have to start going. Speeding through Patreon questions. Why don't you run us through the exhibits. So talk about like, like the structure of the exhibit, and what you're going to see. And of course, what I consider to be the gem the test kitchen.

So obviously, going back to what John was talking about with, with Dr. Harris and the advisors, I think there was a choice between breadth or depth. And I think Dr. Harris really felt like, don't forget, again, two years ago, I would say a lot fewer people sort of cared about the subject. Dr. Harris was like a rock star these days, right? Like she was one of times 100 notable people like this stuff subject, and Dr. Harris, and all the work she's been doing for decades. Like, I think it's amazing for her to kind of like reach her moment, kind of fully 15 years into her career, right. Like, that's pretty incredible to watch. But I think that for Dr. Harris, the thought was to really contextualize all this within sort of the history, like the 400 years of the beginnings of the when enslaved people were brought over to the Americas and sort of into the now. And this means that it's like, you'll get kind of a wide understanding of the context of the show, and not a ton of opportunities to sort of go super in depth, except for my favorite objects. Dave and I each have our own this sort of my sort of favorite sacred object as you walk in, at first to our legacy quote, which is just 406 squares, beautifully, beautifully hand stitched by the Harlem needle guild that we commissioned and designed and had them sort of so it and the each square represents mostly people, but also sometimes ingredients or organizations that really impacted sort of black food history. And that could be anywhere from inventions to the Black Panthers school lunch program, to Dr. Harris was obviously featured on the quilts. But folks who've had a significant contribution over the last 44 centuries in African American food, culinary history. And the nice thing about that is like you can sort of it's cool, you can have the tools. You can use your phone to kind of scan it because we also have a built in mobile app. And you sort of click on something you're interested in, and you'll see like a two tweet, sort of 268 character description of what you're looking at. And it's a really nice chance for people to kind of get a understanding of who's on the quilt but also an understanding an opportunity to explore that further and dive deeper. Then you go into sort of the body of the exhibition, which we sort of split up somatically. So it was agriculture, commerce, culinary arts, distilling, Brewing and Distilling. And again, cover sort of like we focus on Gullah Geechee agriculture, rice culture down in the low country. And then what we do with exhibitions kind of start with a piece of like Gullah Geechee culture, which is from the 1600s, and then bring that into sort of what does that look like and what's the legacy of that farming culture today, along with other stories around agriculture, including like sort of gardening and sort of modern day African American farmers and gardeners Their contributions, culinary arts, we go into the 18th century. Talk about James hemming, and how he brought French food and kind of really introduced French food and other foods into American kind of the American vernacular. And then again, go into sort of modern day, African American chefs and their contributions, Brewing and Distilling. We talk about Uncle nearest the enslaved, man who's taught Jack Daniels, how to brew, how to make and know how to brew how to distill whiskey. Easy people, and again, going to the modern story of Uncle nearest wonderful, wonderful whiskey brand. I have not tasted some of the best whiskey in the country.

I have not tasted really good. I know. have not tasted.

Tasted. It's a delight.

Is it like is it tastes like Jack Daniels?

No, it's much better. It's a much smoother product.

You know? When I was young, were you like Jack? Were you ever taught the ghost of gentlemen Jack? You take the Jack Daniels. You take you take the Jack Daniel's bottle. And then you take it and you run it under hot water in the bathroom. You turn the lights off and then you put a match to the thing that goes whoosh and it's the goes to gentleman Jack. Yeah, that's what he used to do. Yeah,

that's amazing, man. No artifacts in our house and that was it.

Cool artifact in the exhibition is the original. Or like the first line of square Jack Daniels bottles needs to be rounded. We found one was first one that was clear. From like the 1890s.

We also have an ideal bartender there we do. Yes. Original that was loaned to us.

We only climate controlled thing that we have in the exhibition, the only climate control display case.