Dan Pashman:
This is The Sporkful. It's not for foodies, it's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman, and we're coming to you live from Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts.

Dan Pashman:
Yes, it's true, it's happening. This week I go back to my alma mater, Tufts University near Boston for a live show. It was really fun and meaningful for me to perform in this auditorium where I was in the audience so many times as a student. Now later on I'm going to play some clips from my old college radio show from 20 years ago. You will laugh, I will cringe.

Dan Pashman:
And then after that I'm going to ask my old advisor what the great philosophers would say about the ethics of picking out only certain ingredients from a snack mix. But first up, Myq Kaplan, he's a comic, a linguist, and a vegan. He was a Last Comic Standing finalist in 2010, he's been on the Tonight Show, The Late Show, Comedy Central. Myq does a lot of comedy around language. He also happens to be a former high school classmate of mine. So here Myq Kaplan.

Myq Kaplan:
Thank you. Thank you everybody.

Dan Pashman:
Myq, it's great to see you.

Myq Kaplan:
It is great to be seen.

Dan Pashman:
You have a master's degree in linguistics.

Myq Kaplan:
Yes.

Dan Pashman:
And I know that a lot of your humor is related to language, and I wanted to engage you on a little Sporkful-esque discussion here.

Myq Kaplan:
You may.

Dan Pashman:
I am on record as saying that I do not believe that sparkling water is water.

Myq Kaplan:
Okay.

Dan Pashman:
I believe that when you add CO2 to it, it ceases to be water.

Myq Kaplan:
Is there anything that you can add to water that would make it remain water?

Dan Pashman:
Water is H2O.

Myq Kaplan:
What about salt water? Is that water?

Dan Pashman:
It's ocean water, which is a different type of water. If-

Myq Kaplan:
A different type of what?

Myq Kaplan:
I did study linguistics, and we discuss... I had a class of semantics where we discussed, "What is the meaning of a chair?" And we talked about what makes something a chair, as opposed to, say, a stool, because you could have a chair that's very similar to a stool. You make it a little higher, oh it's not a chair anymore. Or wait, it's a high chair that's a higher chair.

Myq Kaplan:
You guys are familiar. And... We have a bunch of babies in the audience. So if you say, "Think of a chair," most of us would think of a similar looking thing, the prototypical chair. But you could have a beanbag chair, which we're always like, "That's a chair because it has the function of a chair." And so you have the form and the function combined to make the thing.

Myq Kaplan:
And definitely the more things that you add to water, the farther away it gets from the prototypical water. But I would say that carbonated water is still a type... It's not so far from water. If you were going to argue that tea isn't water, I'd be like, "Okay," but also it's 90 something percent water, plus it had some stuff in it.

Dan Pashman:
Then why aren't human beings water?

Myq Kaplan:
Fair question.

Dan Pashman:
Thank you.

Myq Kaplan:
I mean, basically... There's one version of me that would have to continue to argue that human beings are, because of the percentage of water that we are, we're mostly water. But I do think that-

Dan Pashman:
So if I said, "Myq, I want a glass of water," and I-

Myq Kaplan:
I get into a cup and hand myself to you?

Dan Pashman:
Right.

Myq Kaplan:
Yeah, I don't see why you could have a problem with that. I'm water, drink me.

Dan Pashman:
That would not quench my thirst.

Myq Kaplan:
No, it probably wouldn't. I mean I think that there is a number, like if something's 99% water, then that's water. Is ice water? I mean ice water is water, but it's water with ice in it and ice is also water. So I mean, I'm not saying that you're... Look, I'm not going to tell anyone that they're wrong, but I think if your last name is water, like salt water, carbonated water, flavored water...

Dan Pashman:
What if you're a misnomer? I mean, here's my point, Myq. If you're going to go at it with the approach of, "We must find a percentage point at which something ceases to be water-"

Myq Kaplan:
I won't say must, but go on.

Dan Pashman:
Okay, but if that's the path we're going to go down, you're going to have a big gray area and you're never really going to know. There's always going to be very contentious issues. As you are a lover of language, words matter. If you go with H20, water is H20, and if there's anything else in there besides two hydrogens and an oxygen, it has to be something that got there naturally, like a mineral that seeped into the water. Whatever just got there naturally.

Myq Kaplan:
So if there was naturally carbonated water, you'd be fine calling that water?

Dan Pashman:
Yes.

Myq Kaplan:
And so you have two cups, otherwise indistinguishable, both with carbon in them.

Dan Pashman:
The intent of the water must be to be H2O. The water must be striving to be pure H2O.

Myq Kaplan:
I don't like to use the word crazy too much, because I don't think that that's... It's not kind to people who have mental illnesses. But you are, I'm going to say, being unreasonable. Water doesn't have intent. I mean, unless you're saying that humans are water, in which case that kind of water does-

Dan Pashman:
So water does have intent.

Myq Kaplan:
Wait, but now you're saying that humans are water.

Dan Pashman:
Oh, dammit.

Myq Kaplan:
So yeah, and I didn't... Look, this is natural.

Dan Pashman:
Let's move on, shall we?

Myq Kaplan:
Fair enough. So who won?

Dan Pashman:
Let's do an audience poll here, by applause who here thinks that carbonated water, sparkling water, is water? All right, all right, that's enough, that's enough, that's enough. Who here thinks that it is not water?

Dan Pashman:
All right, well I got the rabbi. The rabbi clapped for me, so we'll call it a tie. All right?

Myq Kaplan:
And were there any scientists clapping for the first time? Science says yes, religion says no.

Dan Pashman:
What part of becoming vegan has been surprising to you? What did you not expect?

Myq Kaplan:
Honestly, that it was so much easier than I expected. Like vegan, oh my God. To be vegan you got to read everything, and ask a lot of questions, and be so annoying. And then I was like, "Wait, I'm good at all that."

Dan Pashman:
Is vegan cheese, cheese?

Myq Kaplan:
I know there's some debates going on with the issue of mayo, I feel like-

Dan Pashman:
Yes, I should fill people in. So there's a company called Hampton Creek that has created a vegan mayo that has no eggs in it. It's called Just Mayo. It has a picture of an egg on the label, and I have gone on record... The FDA is giving them a hard time. The FDA is saying, "You can't call that mayo, because mayo is eggs and oil. It has to have eggs and oil." And there's a fight going on.

Dan Pashman:
And I have said that I think that the FDA is right. And I've had the Just Mayo and it's very delicious, I'm not knocking it. But they're saying-

Myq Kaplan:
Oh yeah, no I'm... The idea is that are they trying to put one over on people? To trick people into thinking like, "Hey, this is mayo and it's good," and then they eat it and you're like, "Ha ha, it wasn't, it's actually better for you, and the environment, and animals." And you're like, "Damn it, I wanted to hurt things." You know?

Myq Kaplan:
But here's the thing, is number one, language changes over time. We're not speaking the same thing that Chaucer wrote in, or Shakespeare. For example, milk means many things. There's soy milk, almond milk, rice milk, and we now understand that soy milk isn't a cow product. And I think that ideally... Probably the Just Mayo people would argue that their context was like, "It's a product that's like it. It's taking the function of it, so we're giving it the last name."

Myq Kaplan:
I like cuter names. There's Neo, you know that? There's Nayonaise. It's like mayonnaise, but it also has the-

Dan Pashman:
You like that better than Vegenaise?

Myq Kaplan:
Yeah, of the names I like Nayonaise better than Vegenaise, because it's cute.

Dan Pashman:
Okay. In Russia, do they have Nyet-anaise?

Myq Kaplan:
Do they?

Dan Pashman:
I don't know, but it'd be great if they did.

Myq Kaplan:
I mean that's not as... I'm not sure. I would like a fake lettuce called and Nyet-tuce. "Why are you making lettuce fake?" "We just, you know, Russia." In Russia, lettuce... Anyway.

Dan Pashman:
Yeah, I'm on the fence on the cheese one. That one I'm willing to cut you a little bit more slack, because I feel like there's so many... There's a bazillion different types of cheese already, so I feel like it's easier to throw a couple more on the pile.

Dan Pashman:
What are some of the dumbest things people say to you when they hear that you're vegan?

Myq Kaplan:
I mean, here's a thing somebody said once. They were like, "What if you found out that trees could feel? What would you do then?" I was like, "Well I guess I would just keep not eating trees." And they're like, "Wait..." I'm like, "You only get one wish." You know what I mean?

Myq Kaplan:
I think a lot of people don't realize that I've thought about it a lot more than they have probably. I'm not saying that I'm better than anyone. I'm not saying it, you know... But I don't know, we're all just a bunch of water. But a thing that people will say sometimes is like, "You don't know what you're missing." I'm like, "Well, for about 20 years I ate everything that you ate, possibly. And now for almost the next 20 years, been doing what I want."

Myq Kaplan:
You can't eat everything. You can't date all the people, you can't read all the books, you can't eat all the food. You can't go to all the movies. So if you're just talking about what you're missing, we're all missing billions of things. You'll be so sad if you just focus on what you don't have. And honestly, I'll eat some fake meat things, but even...

Myq Kaplan:
Vegan technology today, like vegan desserts, and all these things have vastly improved since 10 years ago, or 15 years ago when I first became vegan, and I had a vegan cheesecake and it was just a piece of tofu. And they're like, "It's shaped like cheesecake, is that good? It's a triangle, do you like eating a triangle? You liked a triangle made out of cheese."

Myq Kaplan:
But now if you go into any upscale vegan restaurant, their desserts... I actually brought some vegan cookies that my girlfriend baked, and I'll let you have one after the show.

Dan Pashman:
Actually, I have had many wonderful experiences with vegan desserts in particular. I agree with you, I think that there's been great progress in the field of vegan desserts.

Myq Kaplan:
And I'll grant that maybe the maximal experience of eating cannot be attained by me, but also eating is a minimal fraction of everybody's day. It's something we do every day.

Dan Pashman:
Well all right, slow down there, Myq.

Myq Kaplan:
I'm saying just by quantity.

Dan Pashman:
By number of minutes perhaps, but by mental energy devoted to thinking about it, and pleasure derived from it, it's most of my life.

Speaker 3:
Yeah.

Myq Kaplan:
I understand, but let me suggest another way to be. You have a book and a whole career based around this myth and a lie.

Dan Pashman:
That is Myq Kaplan. His latest comedy album is called No Kidding, and he has a podcast called Broccoli and Ice Cream. Despite the name, it's more of a comedy interview show, not a food show, but you should still check it out. He's also performing all over the country all the time. Find his tour dates at Myq Kaplan. He spells Myq M-Y-Q, okay? M-Y-Q, MyqKaplan.com.

Dan Pashman:
As we go to break, we're going to listen to the Tufts Beelzebubs performing live at our show there. The Bubs are Tufts oldest, all male acapella group. You can stream their music on Spotify.

Speaker 4:
...

Dan Pashman:
Coming up, more from Tufts. I'll play you clips of some of my less stellar moments as a college radio host, and I'll talk to my college advisor live on stage. We'll discuss what the great philosophers would have said about a timeless question. "What are the ethics of cherry picking specific ingredients from a snack mix?" Stick around.

Speaker 4:
...

Dan Pashman:
Welcome back to The Sporkful, I'm Dan Pashman. We are doing our first ever live taping in Washington, D.C. this Friday night, and I want to take a minute to tell you about my guest. Eight years ago, Kwame Onwuachi was selling candy on a subway to raise money for culinary school. Three years ago he was on Top Chef. This year he won a James Beard Award for Rising Star Chef of the Year for his work at his D.C. restaurant, Kith/Kin.

Dan Pashman:
So how did Kwame end up selling candy on the subway? And how did he get from there to where he is now? That journey is detailed in his memoir, Notes From a Young Black Chef, which is being turned into a movie staring Lakeith Stanfield. We'll hear Kwame's story, and he'll sign copies of the book at this special live taping at the Miracle Theater in D.C. this Friday night. Get details and tickets for this show and our others in Richmond and New York, all at Sporkful.com/live. Now back to our live show at my alma mater, Tufts University.

Dan Pashman:
As I said, it was really special for me to do a show there, because the first time I was ever on the radio was at Tufts. I got into radio a little late in my time in college, I was already a senior. So my friend Gabe and I were at the bottom of the heap, which means we got the time slot no one else wanted, Thursday nights, or really Friday mornings, 2:00 AM to 4:00 AM. The show was called After Hours with G Money and The Pash Man. I was The Pash Man. We had a lot of great times, and I like to think there was some good radio made, but it wasn't all good. Take a listen.

Dan Pashman:
This is 91.5 FM, WMFO. Is that a good radio voice? I'm trying to work on my radio voice.

G Money:
And we will be taking the third caller.

Dan Pashman:
Right, the third caller, unless we get fewer than three callers.

G Money:
Then we will take the last caller that calls under three.

Dan Pashman:
Well, we had a small little technical difficulty there in our intro. What happened was I forgot to turn the mics on.

G Money:
Yeah, I noticed.

Dan Pashman:
But we're still learning.

Dan Pashman:
Hey, it wasn't pretty, okay? But it was a start, and it set me on the path I've been on for most of the past 20 years. Now as you'd expect, I also had some formative food experiences at Tufts. I talked a bit about those at our live show.

Dan Pashman:
I remember a chicken nugget eating contest in the dining hall. I was the champ, I ate 45 chicken nuggets in one sitting. Not proud of that. Well, I'm a little bit proud. But I think my two best food memories from Tufts, one was going home late at night from parties and I get up to the top of the hill in front of Olin Hall.

Dan Pashman:
And there on the sidewalk... It's one or two o'clock in the morning, but sitting in the middle of the sidewalk is a giant pile of cookies. And I was with my friend Myq, and I'm like, "Myq, eureka!" And Myq's like, "You are not going to eat cookies off of the ground." And I said, "No, of course I'm not going eat cookies off the ground. I'm going to eat cookies off of cookies." So I only ate the cookies that were touching other cookies, and they were delicious.

Dan Pashman:
Then there was the time homecoming weekend, there was some big alumni event on Fletcher Field, and I was walking home by there and the whole thing have been cleaned up except they left one giant grill. Like Dining Services left an industrial-size grill on wheels. So I did what any quick thinking college student did, I wheeled it back to my apartment.

Dan Pashman:
And the next morning I wheeled it to the football field, and we had the biggest tailgate party that Tufts has ever seen. So I want to take a moment to thank Dining Services. Yeah, give them a big hand. Big hand for Dining Services, I want to thank them for leaving things all over campus because they really provided some of my most treasured memories.

Dan Pashman:
Now, I should say in addition to my formative food experiences and formative radio experiences, I did have some pretty important educational experiences. And one of them was this class I took freshman year called Western Political Thought. This is first semester of freshman year, I go into this big lecture hall and I sit down, and this professor's up at the front of the room filling the chalkboard with notes before class starts.

Dan Pashman:
He's scribbling furiously in this tiny chicken scratch and he's got long messy hair, and the class begins and this professor cracks open a can of Diet Coke and begins pacing back and forth in the lecture hall, and basically shouting. And in that first lecture he talked about Plato and Aristotle, and how they related to the movie Pulp Fiction. And I think hopefully everyone has this experience in college, where you have one class that really changes the way you think.

Dan Pashman:
And for me that was this class, Western Political Thought I, and the professor who taught that class was Professor Rob Devigne who went on to become my advisor. And it influences me to this day, it influences The Sporkful. The whole idea of questioning underlying assumptions I think is something that we do all the time here on the show. And my favorite part of my book that I wrote a few years ago is a Socratic dialogue. It's a debate among the great philosophers over the question of, "Is it okay to cherry pick specific ingredients from a snack mix?"

Dan Pashman:
You get people hanging out in the living room, there's a bowl of snack mix on the table. Now that snack mix, think of it like the resources in society, okay? Now if one person comes along and starts picking out all the pretzels, is that person taking more than their fair share? How should society be structured? Is that unjust? Should that person be punished? Should there be restrictions on that person?

Dan Pashman:
Or I mean, what if no one else in society wants the pretzels? Maybe that person's doing the rest of us a favor. The question of what is a fair way to allocate resources is a timeless question in philosophy. And so when I was at Tufts, I had to get my old advisor Professor Rob Devigne onstage to talk with me about snack mix.

Dan Pashman:
You have a snack mix arrayed before you with four or five different components, and let's say one person keeps picking out all the pretzels. What do you see as the argument against that behavior, and what philosopher do you most associate with that argument?

Rob Devigne:
I would say first of all that Hobbes, Thomas Hobbes would say that you're going to have a big problem if you're just going to let people pick out of the snack mix without having some type of higher authority that's going to determine at what point will people's safety be harmed. So Hobbes would be primarily making sure that nobody was going to get sick, and that none of the food was going bad.

Dan Pashman:
But I mean it wouldn't Hobbes just be like, "Hey, snack mix is nasty, brutish, and short?"

Rob Devigne:
When there is no higher sovereign. That's the reason for the higher sovereign, the higher authority with... So again, he wrote a tremendous book. Okay? I just want to give it applause.

Dan Pashman:
Hobbes did?

Rob Devigne:
Both of you.

Dan Pashman:
Thank you.

Rob Devigne:
Hobbes and Pashman. The famous-

Dan Pashman:
That's going on the back of my next book. I'm sure the copies will fly off the shelves. Well thank you, anyway.

Rob Devigne:
Sure. Rousseau would say, "Well..." You used to always... I remember your midterm, and you actually got Hobbes and Rousseau a little mixed up. Rousseau would have a social contract and he would say, "Well we all have to have some type of agreement as to what's going to be our general will." So Rousseau would say there would have to be a general agreement between cherry picking or keeping harmony. I'm using your...

Dan Pashman:
Sure.

Rob Devigne:
And if you violated the general will, the general will had the right to force you to be free. So the general will could literally make you spit up.

Dan Pashman:
Or at the very least prohibit you from eating further snack mix.

Rob Devigne:
It responds more to actions that have been done, but it would originally prohibit you because that's what the general will would say, yeah.

Dan Pashman:
So what would you say is the argument that says cherry picking is okay? And what philosophers do you associate with that argument?

Rob Devigne:
Well, I think you could turn to Nietzsche, and Nietzsche's argument that God is dead. So by God is dead, meaning all the traditional ways of eating are gone. What used to be breakfast, lunch, or dinner is now up in the air. And it could either lead to great creativity and entirely new foods, or it could be that we will just fade in the context of the task and continue to act the way we did under God, and continue to act in a very passive way, and continue to restrict how we eat-

Dan Pashman:
Just because that's the way we're comfortable?

Rob Devigne:
Yes, that's the way we've been trained. So now we do it even though we no longer-

Dan Pashman:
Have to.

Rob Devigne:
... Know why we're doing it.

Dan Pashman:
Right, and the argument that I make in the book, or Socrates makes it in my book, and he wins because he always wins Socratic dialogues. That's why they're named after him. And the argument that I try to make through him is that when you eat a snack mix, any individual snack mix is a representation of the one true mix. The great snack mix in the sky, which is what I would call the platonic ideal of snack mix.

Dan Pashman:
And whatever that platonic ideal is for you, your personal great snack mix in the sky, and while you may never get there, it is the quest that defines us all. And I believe that by cherry picking the closest that you can get to your ideal snack mix from the available ingredients, you are imposing your will to power, and you are becoming, you are moving closer to the great snack mix in the sky.

Dan Pashman:
And I feel like it is every eater's right, and it's not that you're... That one snack mix experience is not a discrete moment in time, it is part and parcel of a lifetime of snack mix consumption. What do you think?

Rob Devigne:
A great lecture. I think it's mainly right, what you said, and I think he would side with those who are picking what they want to pick, and eating what they want to eat. So I definitely agree with you about that. The only thing I hesitate about is that Socrates said that the self examined life is the best life, and you never do anything unless you completely know it. So I'm just wondering as to whether Socrates really would've moved into action unless he knew everything about whatever he was picking out of the snack mix.

Dan Pashman:
How could you know without trying it?

Rob Devigne:
Well that's been a big debate about Socrates. How much was he trying, or how much was he just trying to let everybody else who was trying know that they were stupid?

Dan Pashman:
Right, so he was a bit of an armchair quarterback.

Rob Devigne:
Socrates is, yes. That's the charge against him, yes. One of the charges against him.

Dan Pashman:
Okay. And do you cherry pick ingredients from a snack mix? You personally, when you're at a party?

Rob Devigne:
Yeah, I'm a cherry picker. I don't like balance at all.

Dan Pashman:
Well I want to thank you again Professor Devigne, for being such a great teacher and advisor, and for joining me here today. Big hand for Tufts' own Professor Rob Devigne.

Rob Devigne:
Thank you to him, thank you Dan. Great job.

Dan Pashman:
Thank you. Thanks again to Professor Devigne. If you want to read the Socratic dialogue I wrote in which the great philosophers debate snack mix ethics, that excerpt from my book was published on Slate. I'll link to it at Sporkful.com.

Dan Pashman:
While you wait for next week's show, check out our recent two part series on our associations between plantations and food. So many of you have already written in to tell us that you've connected with these shows or that they changed your perspective. So if that was you, thank you. If you haven't listened yet, I hope you will.

Dan Pashman:
Remember to get tickets for our upcoming live shows in D.C. and Richmond this weekend, and the special one at the Palace Hotel in New York in a couple of weeks. Find all the info at Sporkful.com/live. I want to thank Tufts Hillel for inviting me back to campus. In particular, thank you to Lenny Goldstein, Shana Berston, Stephanie Sanger-Miller, and Rabbi Jeffrey Summit.

Dan Pashman:
Lenny recently moved on, and Rabbi Summit recently retired, but that's not going to stop me from playing this ID for my radio show from more than 20 years ago.

Rabbi Summit:
Hi, this is Rabbi Jeffrey Summit of Tufts University. You're listening to the only two guys who could make crossing the desert with nothing but matzo a good time. After Hours with G Money and The Pash Man, 91.5 FM, WMFO jumbo radio.

Dan Pashman:
This show is produced by me along with associate producer-

Ngofeen M.:
Ngofeen Mputubwele.

Dan Pashman:
Our editor is Peter Clowney, music help from Black Label Music. The Sporkful is a production of Stitcher, our executive producers are Chris Bannon and Daisy Rosario. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.

Ellen Brady:
And this is Ellen Brady from Peninsula, Ohio reminding you to eat more, eat better, and eat more better.

Speaker 10:
Stitcher.