I’m Matthew Patrick, aka MatPat, and this is my last meal. Every person has exactly two things in common. We all gotta eat and we’re all gonna die. You might recognize today’s guest from Game Theory, or perhaps Film Theory, or perhaps Style Theory, or perhaps Food Theory. Or perhaps from your local retirement home. Hello, internet, welcome to MatPat’s last meal. MatPat, welcome. Well, thank you very much, and I’m sorry that we didn’t have this meeting beforehand, otherwise I could’ve given the channels to you with that intro like that. You got the growl in there. Hello, internet, it was great. I practiced that about six times until I realized that the seventh might make my throat bleed. Yeah. Is that the Broadway training that kept it so fresh? That is a great question. I just have found a comfortable way to do it, and I could do it all day, all hours. It’s not a problem for me at this point. We’ve been watching way too many videos of you talking about YouTube analytics, and this is absolutely true. Y’all just saw a new intro where we didn’t tell you what his last meal was because we were worried about retention drop off if we told you the entire last meal. So, you have already fundamentally changed, MatPat, The face of this show. I noticed that, like, I was not given the roster of things that I’m going to be eating, which I’m like, that’s weird. I wonder if they filmed that after the fact, but maybe this is a new structure that they’re doing. Even through retirement, you are still MatPat, impacting. I live on. Yeah, it’s my lingering spirit, I guess. You are a very analytically minded person. I am. Too much so, it’s terrible. Does that increase your fear of death or decrease it? The analyticalness of it doesn’t really weigh in. I’d say my type A personality really factors in where it’s like, oh, no, I wish I could control this and have an idea of how long I have left and how I can maximize my time. I used to be that obnoxious kid that went around college being like, oh, well, if your personality were represented by a muffin flavor, what muffin flavor would you be? And so my friends knew to expect these off the wall questions, and one of them was like, hey, if you were on death row and you could choose any way you could die, what would it be? But also, if you’re talking about optimizing your life, you now have the ability to make that happen. Right, exactly. It sounds like a Mister Beast video. If that’s really taking it to the extreme. We’re going to some dark places today. Oh, it’s going to happen. We literally just started. We don’t know what I’m eating, and we’re talking about, like, the optimized way to die. This is pretty intense. MatPat, for your first course of your final meal, we have the jalapeño roll, and then we have a dozen oysters with all the condiments. We got prepared horseradish. We got a scratch made mignonette. We got the cocktail sauce, also made from scratch. The tiny little bottles of Tabasco. They’re so cute. They’re adorable. And some fresh lemons. A little chibi Tabasco. This looks incredible. I’ve watched your show so many times that I don’t know how people make it through the whole meal, because every course looks fantastic. You gotta hoover it. You gotta just open the mouth, open the throat. Cause we’re not leaving until all these oysters are gone. Oh, wow. Okay. I look at this, and my wife and partner, Stephanie, would be so jealous because she’s the person who got me into both of these, both sushi as well as oysters. But no, I grew up very scared of food. You know, in mill of Ohio, our home cooking was really a rotation of fast food. My family wasn’t really adventurous eaters, and so it wasn’t until college that I had my first bean, like, an actual bean dish. I was scared of beans. And so my wife Steph, who was just my friend at the time, introduced me. She’s like, hey, there’s this cool Mexican restaurant. Do you want to take a little scoop of this bean dip? And I’m like, oh, I’m scared of beans. But I tried it, and I’m like, it’s like, literally, like, the grain of rice sized bean. I’m like, I thought this girl was cute, and I’m like, I’m gonna impress her by eating a bean. It worked, baby! Yeah, it worked. Got them. So, pro tip. To anyone out there looking for love, try a bean. The magical food. Cheers. I know, right? I’m talking this entire time, I’ve completely butchered my sushi roll. Please don’t judge me. I know the internet’s gonna rake me over the coals for this. Well, fix it in post. Thank you. Something I yell all the time, and nobody does it. So, and then probably the most extreme food that Stephanie has gotten me to fall in love with is this guy right here. These are tough for a lot of people who have food sensitivities and whatever. Did you eat one yet? I have not. I haven’t dug in yet. These are Kusshi Oysters. These are probably my favorite oysters, they’re a lot smaller, but they tend to be, like, a lot sweeter. Where do they come from? I believe Kusshi is off of Okinawa in Japan. Oh, wow. But I think sometimes they find them in the Pacific coast, in Washington as well. Wow, that’s incredible. My favorite fun fact about oysters is that because of the climate crisis, that waters are warming, which is actually causing a lot of disease in oysters. There’s currently an outbreak going on. It’s only caught a couple bodies, but I think we’re probably good. So what’s your ideal way to die? Cause mine truly, truly is getting poisoned by a bunch of raw oysters. Do you really want to go out, like, hovering over a toilet? There’s gonna be no toilet. I’m just going out to the woods, lay down some leaves, strip me naked. Let me do what I’m gonna do. He died the way he lived, stripped naked in the woods, vomiting his guts out. That was you there Saturday night? Okay, that makes sense. I watched as long as I could, and then I had to turn away, cause I was starting to lose my lunch. Oh, my gosh. I wanna talk about your retirement. Wait, don’t pivot away. You asked me a question, and now you’re pivoting away. It’s all right. I’m here to double up with you. Well, we’ll run it back, but then we have to both do, like a fly in laughing intro. Okay. So, it’s like a. How do you want to die? So, how do I want to die? You know, it’s not very exciting. It’s just, like, quietly in my sleep, laying next to Steph. When? You know, cuddling. When? Are you talking about hour of the day or age of life? Cause, like, listen, my grandma died at a hundred and one. She wishes she died at eighty-seven. You know what I mean? And she told me that. That’s not, like, editorializing. The last fourteen years or so going, all my friends are dying, and food doesn’t taste anymore. Yeah. You know? I’m a musical theater guy. Like, that’s, that’s where I got my start in a lot of ways, or that’s kind of what I aspired to do for a long time. I thought your audition for Hairspray was great. Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you very much. I thought it was pretty good. My hair was a hot mess, but, yeah, there it is. It was of its era. Yeah, it was of its era, for sure. And it was also of my pocketbook at the time because I had to keep my hair long because I couldn’t afford a haircut in New York. Sport Clips does good work. It’s one of those things where in Hamilton, the whole theme of Hamilton is like, he’s constantly writing, like he’s running out of time. Right? That’s kind of like the repeated refrain of the show. And when you look at life, you have two limited resources. You have money and you have time. You might have a lot of money, might have a little money, but time, you don’t know how much you have. And that is the one thing that you cannot get more of. Yeah. And so for me, so much of my work, so much of my beliefs, and how I live my life is trying to live my life like I’m running out of time and trying to optimize every moment and take advantage of every opportunity and say yes to as many things as come my way, and because I was so fortunate to have wonderful parents and wonderful teachers that inspired me to be curious about the world around me, because I was so fortunate to have a groundswell of people support me in nerding out about video games and stuff like that. If I can pay it forward to other people and work my butt off to make sure that they’re entertained and that they’re inspired and that they’re learning along the way, and that I’m sharing that enthusiasm for the world with them, that’s the best thing that I can do. That’s the way to give it back. And so that’s me. I’m trying to live my life like I’m running out of time. MatPat, for course number two, we have a fancy Big Mac. Now, you said that fast food was always a big part of your diet. You still love it, but we classed this up. We actually did a cranberry thousand island, some pickled, dried, rehydrated cranberries and cherry vinegar. We had some shredded frisee. We actually mixed goat cheese with American and then reformed it to make like a chev-merican cheese. We have a ground wagyu beef patty served Big Mac style with some pickles. And then we have the swamp water. Now, I believe the ratios are, sixty percent Diet Coke, roughly thirty percent Sprite Zero, and then a float of Doctor Pepper and root beer. And then finally dad’s ribs, which is somehow the most complicated recipe in all of this because there are about seven different sauces mixed together. You got A1 steak sauce, cocktail sauce, barbecue sauce, and several others slathered on some baby back ribs. This is my favorite show. Can I say that this is, like, the best collaboration I’ve ever done. Let’s go, Matt. I’m so stoked, man. No offense to Wired autocomplete interview, that I filmed earlier today. Great. You are wonderful people. I had a great time talking way too much about myself. But next time, serve up my dad’s ribs. This is incredible. Guys, we gotta delete the complete the sentence questions that we have for the next round. We’re not going back there. Do I get to hold a board and reveal? That would be amazing. I wanted to make my own soda for a while, so if anyone from Coke wants to partner up with me to create this amazing beverage, slap my face on it. We’ll make millions, my friends. I’ll invest fifty bucks right now. Fifty bucks! I will Venmo you. That’s it. We got the first. Ten percent equity, that’s a deal. Ten percent equity? Pull out the phone, Venmo me. I’m yes, anding you right now. I’m going to Venmo you. Right. He’s committed to this. I’m covered in mayonnaise. What’s your Venmo? What is my Venmo? I don’t know. Let’s see. Oh, I have a Cash App. That’s what I’m thinking. I don’t have Venmo. That’s okay. You want Zelle? Oh, Ian Hecox. We can send Ian Hecox fifty bucks. We can just send Ian from Smosh fifty bucks. Do it, do it, do it. I’ll say this is from MatPat. Okay, what’s this for? Ten percent equity. Just say ten percent equity. He’ll know what it means. Okay, MatPat for. Should I request it or pay it? Oh, pay it. Sent. All right. Passive income. There you go. Look at that. Did you expect that this would actually be a three way collaboration today between you, me, and Ian Hecox of Smosh fame? We’re gonna A B test him in the thumb and then him out of the thumb and then see what works. It should work less well. And that’s no offense to Ian Hecox. That is just from my experience doing over a decade of analytics testing on the website. If you have too many faces in the thumbnail, it becomes white noise to the audience and they go click. Yeah. It’s not additive. It’s actually a subtractive effect. Let’s take a bite of a hamburger, shall we? That’s something. Oh, that’s a win. Oh, my gosh. I love that you recreated the shape of the cheese with such a better cheese With you, you know, retiring, stepping away from being the main host of the Theorists channels. Yep. How do you think that is going to materially affect your life? The fundamental concept of Game Theory was born out of just like, my natural curiosity and my desire to find cool information and share it out with people. I mean, you look at videos of me when I was in college, right? And I was that kid who was standing at the bus stop in the middle of the college quad with my bright lime green suit and my pink polka dot tie, listening to, like, Never Gonna Give You Up, right? Shameless. Cause I, I don’t know, cause I have a very solid sense of who I am through all of this, you know, through the highs and lows and growth of the channel and this and that. I don’t think it’s ever truly shaken the core of who I am, you know? And I think that’s one of the reasons why people have really rallied around the format, right, and find comfort in what we do, especially the people who were watching the show for me, as a host. Every Youtuber I’ve ever talked to has had a lot of very intense experiences with members of their community at, say, meet and greets that all somehow end up in, you saved my life. And I absolutely believe the people have told me that, and my mindset on this has even shifted over time. Before, I used to feel a bit of a burden because I was like, I got my own things to worry about. I can’t be out here saving you then that’s shifted over time for me. How do you feel of that? That’s one of the reasons why I wanted to make sure that we had a ten week countdown to me leaving. Because if I just up and said, this is my last episode, that would be unfair to the people who have invested so much in me this year and even before this, right? Has been a year of grieving in a lot of cases. Hey, welcome to the Last Meals show. Had to say goodbye to different parts of this chapter of my life, right? Where it’s like, oh, this is the last time I’m going to be stepping into this recording booth. This is the last time that I’m sitting on the couch saying these words, this is the last time that I’m doing all this. Just like I had to go through that process, I think the audience also had to have their opportunity to go through that process. So me coming out of the gate at the top of the year and saying like, hey, in ten weeks time, I’m gonna be gone. It gives them that chance to kind of unwind themselves as well, and we programmed the channels and we structured videos in a way that’s like, hey, this is speaking to them as fans of this channel and giving them the service that they want, the content that they want, stuff that is going to be like a big old hug for all of us. It’s so interesting because this is straight up a level of human feeling and connection that not many people throughout the history of humanity have ever gotten to experience. Like, really, this is a very unique thing. And I remember when you made the retirement announcement, there were a fair amount of people like, oh, he’s not really retiring. This is a way to game views. He’s just stepping into a different role. What do you think that says about the unique relationship between YouTube creator and fan? Well, I think, I forget who said it early in my YouTube career, but I stumbled across this one quote that was like, if you have like Beyoncé and Jenna Marbles in a room, right? And you have a bunch of fans in the middle of both of them, the fans run to Jenna Marbles to talk to them, to talk to her about Beyoncé being in the room, right? Like, that’s, that’s the relationship, that’s the, the best friend mentality. That’s that parasocial, sarapocial relationship, like met in the middle, right? You know, I think for a long time in the early days of the internet, there was this mindset that like, oh, internet friends aren’t real friends. Or like, oh, internet relationships aren’t real because you don’t have this physical interaction. You don’t have, that is just as visceral, if not more so, because now all of a sudden, I’m watching Chef Josh on my toilet, you know, or in my bedroom. That is my preferred place for people to watch Last Meals is right on the toilet. Captive audience in a way. Right, exactly. Or I’m, you know, I’m falling asleep to your voice and things like that because you are comforting to me because this conversation is fulfilling an emotional need that I have in my life. But it’s also, yeah, like you said, it’s one of those things where it’s so important to me to not come back, you know? I did this thing, but then immediately reversing that and then you can’t trust. It’s like if you snapped away Tony Stark in Avengers Endgame, right? And then you bring him back two movies later because it’s like, oh, and he’s back now. Nothing has consequence. It’s like, no. I fell asleep. You fell asleep? Sleep during Infinity War, I think. Yeah, so Tony Stark dies at the end. But then do they bring him back? No, they don’t bring him back. They don’t bring, but don’t they bring other people back? Yeah, there’s a time stone, and it reverses stuff. What do you mean there’s a time stone? You said there’s a time stone, like, I know what a time stone is. Okay, there’s a stone that allows you to reverse time or speed up time, and so, like, sometimes it’s like, oh, you died. I’ll reverse time. Oh, everything’s good again. But they haven’t brought back Tony Stark yet. Not yet. So you’re Tony Stark, and if you were to get brought back, that’d be, like, a problem. Also, not enough has been said about how great. I was gonna say, how close to your dad’s ribs did we get these ribs? These are really solid. Heck, yeah. They are very, very good. They are fall off the bone tender, which I really appreciate. The sauce itself, is that right mix of sweet with the honey. Cause there’s honey mixed in there, as well as the little bit of spicy mixed in. It’s real solid. I will say a violent amount of A1 Sauce goes into this, and it is a delight. Yeah. A lot of beautiful through lines. This, this, and that are somehow all the same food. Just an amalgamation of things that, you know that you love, and you are so freaking confident in what you love and things you enjoy doing, and you don’t apologize for it. And I think that’s, like, genuinely very, very commendable. Thank you. I appreciate that. MatPat for course number three. This is a mystery course. Yeah, you brought this out, and I’m like, where on my last meal would this be? But I think I know what this is. This is a mystery sampler platter. Correct. One of the things that I said back when your team reached out and like, hey, what would your final meal be? I’m like, I want to be surprised and have a sampler platter where I can learn something about a piece of food. And so I’m assuming that this is what this is. Oh, this is the piece of food. So I know that you love the crunchy tacos at Taco Bell. Yes, hundred percent. And you probably know that Glen Bell, founder of Taco Bell, originally stole the recipe from the family that owned Mitla cafe in San Bernardino. And the taco dorado, or the crispy shell taco, is actually a very obscure regional recipe generally attributed to Guadalajara, Jalisco. Obviously, who doesn’t know that? Everybody knows that. Yeah. It’s easy. Common knowledge. Okay. Please surprise me with some new information. So, crispy tacos before Taco Bell opened in the nineteen fifties were very, very rare in terms of how many tacos across the world were eaten. But now people had to use the retronym soft shell taco to describe what is just a taco. An original taco, yeah. So these are some of my favorite crispy tacos that are actually from Mexico. And, Matt, we are going to be working from south to north here, so if you would start with the taco in front of you. This is from Mariscos Jalisco. This is a taco dorado de camarones. Okay. Fried crispy shrimp taco. This is from the state of Jalisco. Okay. Please pick it up and enjoy. It is drenched in a salsa de tomate and a little bit of avocado in there. One of the best things you can eat. Fish taco was the first food that really converted me into, like, oh, I guess, like, regionality does matter, and what we in America call Mexican food or Chinese food or whatever is, like, so vastly different from the realities of local cuisine. If you love fish tacos, you’re gonna love the next one. Okay. So, this is from Mazatlan, Sinaloa. This is called a taco de marlin or taco jamón del mar, ham of the sea. So you’ll actually take marlin, such a big fish, they will smoke it and cure it to preserve it, and then they’ll shove it inside a delicious tortilla and then fry it till crispy. You’re gonna dip it in the green salsa. This is from Coni’ Seafood down in Inglewood. Maybe my favorite restaurant, shoutout. Really? This is unreal. I am so excited about this. You’re not only satisfying my stomach, but you’re also satisfying my brain. What if I told you it’s all your brain, though, right? Get out of here. You don’t need, your brain experiences the whole world. That’s beautiful. That’s deep, ooh. Yeah. Oh, and it’s so different. Oh, see, this is what I love. This is it, man. This is it. This is life. When I sent this in, I’m like, there’s no way that they’re gonna do that. Like, I’m like, oh, you know, this might come like a cop out, but legitimately, this is it. This is fantastic. Just like, the first one was fantastic, but it is so decidedly different. Yeah. Awesome. I’ve been to Mexico. We live in California. We’ve tried a lot of different places, but nothing like this. You have surprised me. You have educated me, and I am so excited. That means the world, man, truly. Awesome. You, all of you, you’re amazing. This is the best. All right, keep moving on, keep moving on. Keep moving on, now, Birria de Reis. So a lot of people would argue that birria is only referring to a whole cooked goat, generally attributed, again to Guadalajara, Jalisco, but you’ll actually see if you go up north to, like, Puebla. Some of those birria I’ve ever had is Birria de Borrego, which I actually made for dinner last night, ironically, or lamb birria. And so a lot of people think it is just a style of cooking. Birria de Reis, beef birria became really big in Tijuana and then gradually moved its way up to LA and then gradually moved its way to Instagram when people noticed how cute these little guys tinged with red beef that dunked into the consommé. All right, so dunk the taco like the French dip. This is great, and again, me pulling out the fast food stuff. One of Ollie’s favorite restaurants is Moe’s Southwest Grill. And recently, they have a limited edition item on the menu, which is birria. And they’re, like, hard to pronounce. Delicious to eat. Did they say that? That is what they say. That is what they say in all the, like, posters in the window. Right? And it’s been my go to order when it’s like, hey, Ollie, what do you want to do before a swim lesson or whatever? And he’s like, oh, let’s go to Moe’s. And so it’s been my go to. To know that this is, this is the original. That’s awesome. So cool. I’m so hyped. Wow. We’re moving north again. We’re moving north now we’re in LA proper. We’re in Tijuana. This is possibly the genesis of the taquito. And this is actually a restaurant on Olvera Street in downtown Los Angeles called Cielito Lindo. They originally came from Zacatecas. Probably invents the modern taquito. It is based off of a taco dorado, but they actually roll it. Taquito just means little taco, of course, so they can be made any different shape. But because of the fine work of the people at Cielito Lindo all the way back in the 1930s in Los Angeles, predating Taco Bell by over a decade. Fantastic. I love, thank you. I love this little walk, through taco history. Man, I am so satisfied with this. So, you’re cool to die right now, right? Like, you’re fine if you just, you know? This is it, man. We’ve been designing a human trebuchet that, if we finally get a guest to sign the waiver, which you declined, and that’s fine, we’re just gonna toss you in and launch you over to the Try Guy studio. I designed an award winning trebuchet my senior year of high school. Of course you did. Yep, I did. Why wouldn’t you have designed an award winning trebuchet? Yeah. It was called Old English, and it won that year’s pumpkin launch. We set a new record for distance. But to this day, one of the most memorable days of school I ever had. When you’re finally on your deathbed. Yeah. What do you think the actual stories and memories that are gonna get conjured up are gonna be? What’s really exciting now about my life. And since having Ollie, it’s really shifted the priority of, like, I want to have experiences together, and I want to share those experiences with my loved ones. And, you know, it’s one thing to be an online influencer and be invited to a red carpet premiere and, like, whoa, cool, and look at all the pictures and this and that. But it’s another thing to be able to walk that red carpet with Stephanie. You’re sharing it with someone that you love and that you care about. And it’s not just like, oh, look, I got a couple likes on Instagram. It’s like, oh, no, we did this together. We made something special. We experienced something special. When Ollie was born. I think it was just a couple days before you had a really intense experience, and really tragic experience that you made a video about. Your editor, Ronnie, took his own life, and there’s this incredible juxtaposition of, you know, somebody you were very close to dying and a new life being born. Was that just a radical shift in perspective for you at that point? Yeah, it was, Stephanie was still in the hospital bed with Ollie, fresh in our arms, or, you know, off into kind of, like, carrier area. And, I mean, I remember both of us having to hop on the call with the wider team to let them know as soon as possible. You know, I’ve always appreciated people, but to make sure that you’re listening to other people valuing who they are and the time that you have with them, and more importantly than anything, like, don’t assume things about other people. You know, it feels like it’s a bit of a cliché when you look around online and like, oh, people suffer in silence, or like, oh, don’t assume that people are okay or whatever. And that moment really hit it as truth, right? Was there’s this person who’s so important to us and, you know, someone that we really valued, who we didn’t know anything really, about his life and all the things that he had gone through, he was very closed off about that. Life has a strange way of working out sometimes, where the timing of events line up in strange ways. And like you said, you have the departure of someone who is so important to us and so meaningful to us, and the arrival of someone new who is so important and meaningful to us and death and life and this weird cycle. It’s, to this day, like this bizarre reflection of each other that, yeah, is unforgettable, and not in a good way, but in an impactful way, for sure. And I know you really hate negativity online. People who go out of their way to say cruel things. Empathy is free, right? Having a conversation with somebody is free. Why do you think so many people actively make the choice to be cruel for no reason? The anonymity of being online, it allows people to exhibit the worst of themselves, their worst impulse. Like, you don’t have to have impulse control. I can just let myself be free. I can shout at the top of my lungs. I could be as crude and crass and awful as whatever, and that’s totally fine. And then toxic people find each other, and then they’re now all of a sudden, hey, it wasn’t just, I’m not alone anymore in this pain. Now other people have me. And that’s another neurotransmitter boost in there. And you’re being incentivized all along the way. You’re getting rewarded for being negative with other people. And it just builds and builds and builds and builds, and it becomes worse and worse and worse and worse as things become more and more extreme. And so it really is a difficult cycle, like a vicious cycle. And it’s all built on the actual profit model of psychology of keeping people on the page. Right, yeah. And that’s the underpinning of all of it, right? Is if you are a TikTok or a YouTube or a Twitter, X, whatever, Instagram, you actively have to choose to make your site less successful in order to promote more positivity, which is, you know, when its shareholders and line needs to go up. That’s a tough prospect to make. Did you find yourself making that choice a lot with all of the Theorist channels? We would play the game as much as we felt comfortable with, but, you know, the content that we were putting out there was meant to be educational, positive, and not stewing in negativity, to stew in negativity or just, like, piling on, but instead, hey, this is the story that you might be hearing. Let’s take a more objective, neutral approach to it. Look at the facts and actually come to a conclusion. But that’s just a theory. MatPat, for your dessert course, if you would just pivot your eyes over to. So amazing. The baked Alaska that Nicole will now ceremonially torch. You made this in a home economics class? I did, actually. I would take a home EC course every year of high school, and so I took Survival for Singles, Dating and Marriage, and Creative Hiking. This was in high school? This was in high school. You had Survival for Singles class in high school? I did. I learned how to sew my own underwear and how to budget. This is unbelievable. Nicole, bravo. But of all of them, thank you for this. This is incredible. Out of all of them, creative cooking was my favorite of those classes. This is a miracle. Do you remember what else you made, thank you, in creative cooking? Yes, we made the first ever project for the class was the Red Lobster Cheddar Bay Biscuits. From scratch, though? Yeah, from scratch. That’s a great first project. It was delicious, and they tasted exactly like what you got out of Red Lobster. I made probably the densest cheesecake you will ever eat in your life. You had, like, a fraction of it, you’re like, I’m stuffed for the next week. Oh, look at this. Oh, my God. We have a layer of vanilla cake on the bottom. Vanilla, strawberry, pistachio ice cream, and then a torched Swiss vanilla meringue. Have you had baked Alaska before? I have, not since, like, a cruise ship in O nine though. That’s where the Carnival Cruise really sprung, you know? Yeah, right. That’s it. No. I have been chasing this dream for so long. Oh, my gosh, and I think it was partly because I was so proud to have made it. Even though it’s incredibly simple, it’s beautiful, and it’s delicious and wonderful and all this mixture of flavor and texture, and I’ve never had it since. So this is my first bite since, what would it be? Like, since I was in tenth grade? Isn’t that a microcosm of life, though? I made this, and it’s beautiful. That’s great. That’s it. That’s what we’re here for. Also for dessert, we have the thick hot chocolate a la Max Brenner in New York. We have the sampler from Handel’s ice cream. We have Graham Central Station banana pudding, cake batter, and then brownie. And then we have, I believe this is your grandmother’s recipe that Stephanie has now optimized for gobs. Yes. So, Max Brenner, I don’t know if you’ve ever been. I have not. But for anyone at home, right. I first discovered it when I was living in New York. And basically it is a shop that specializes in chocolate, and what they are probably best known for is their hot chocolate. And then they serve it in this, like, they call them the Hug Mugs, where you kind of have to cup your hands around them and it keeps it all nice and warm. It’s delicious. Golly. This is. Wow! The cold cream and the hot chocolate, oh, my God. So good, right? And it’s the fusion. I love mixing stuff, if you couldn’t tell. I think that’s one of the themes. Right? Go figure. I’ve never tried Handels because the only one in LA is right next to a yoga themed frozen yogurt shop called Yoga-urt. And MatPat, I always go to Yoga-urt instead. Oh, well, say goodbye to Yoga-urt, my friend. It’s literally a graham cracker flavored ice cream with graham worked into the cream itself and then chocolate pieces mixed in. It’s unreal. There’s this intense toasted toffee note in there. Yep. That I can’t exactly figure out. That’s going beyond graham, and that’s like a toasted malt, even. Yep. God, that’s good. It’s amazing, right? Good show, Handels. We gotta eat the gob. Let’s have a gob. We haven’t had a gob yet. We haven’t had a gob. Yes. No, we haven’t. So you like the ice cream? I love the ice cream. I’ve converted you away from Yoga-urt. I need just one more hit of Yoga-urt and then I’m done for good. I swear. This is shockingly close. It’s not it, but it’s shockingly close, and this is, no, this is nothing against the team here or anything like that. So, this is a recipe written by a grandmother with addendum notes from staff. Yes. Yeah, yeah, okay. So, I asked multiple times to get my grandma’s recipe, and eventually she gives it to me and we follow the steps of the recipe and we make it and we get something that is not at all like, my grandma’s gobs. And we’re like, hey, grandma, this is not the recipe. What did you give us? And she’s like, oh, that’s not the real recipe. She gave us a decoy because she didn’t want us to have the real recipe. And I’m like, hey, no, we’re serious about, like, we had to prove our worth. So, clearly my grandma’s holding on to this secret, and she doesn’t want anyone to know the secret recipe of her gobs, right? And so we start experimenting with it because there are secret steps in the process that aren’t written down. But it took us, I think, like, a year of experimentation to actually get there. I kind of love that. That was their generation, right? Like, that’s maybe how she locked up grandpas with her gobs, you know, whereas we’re out here spreading our mess all over the internet. Yeah. No, I think we should go back to grandma, where she’s keeping under lock and key that she mixes the canned tuna with the mayonnaise. Yeah, I do too. Do you have any family secret recipes that you had to kind of, like, work your way to uncover and unlock? I did, but it turns out that the kosher powdered chicken soup mix that my grandma uses was discontinued in, like, nineteen ninety-four. Oh, no. You haven’t got Tellman’s Soup. Like, no, grandma, it doesn’t exist. Yeah. All things come to an end, Matthew Patrick, speaking of which. Good segue, Josh. Good segue. What do you think, Matt? You don’t have to high five yourself. You have someone here who can high five you. What do you think happens when you die? I’ve been thinking a lot about how redundant the universe is, and I say redundant as far as it recycles the same pieces. There are universes that live inside of us, which is hoity-toity, like, weird, esoteric. It is so not my style to talk in, like, these esoteric, like, oh, we all have universes. We exist in multitudes. Like, that’s not me. I’m not that guy, right? But if you think about it, right, like, we are conscious organisms made up of trillions of cells, all themselves individual living organisms, and within there, there’s, like, the mitochondria, which is another living organism inside of the living organism of the cell inside of the living organism that is you, right? I feel like there’s some secret to that, right? And we are made up of the same stuff that stars are made up of and the same stuff as this table is made up of. And so I feel like there is some element to the recycling of our atoms, or the recycling of our elements, back into the universe. You know, I don’t know if it’s reincarnation. I don’t know if it’s multiverses or whatever, but I get the sense that death is not the end, and I, that’s, that’s not a theory at all. That’s not a theory and not scientifically proven in the slightest, but it’s, I don’t know, it’s a feeling like you called out earlier with, with Ronnie and my son. There are a lot of coincidences in life and a lot of fortuitous timings and circumstances that just line up, and it feels intentional. It feels designed in some way to not just be a bunch of, like, random ones and zeros, and so I feel like there’s something more. So, there is no last meal. There’s only a final meal in this chapter of your life, and then a turning of the page to something else. That would have made the title six words longer, which means that it would. You have lost retention. No, totally. That’s terrible for SEO. I’m so glad that you didn’t do that. You ready to get in the lightning round? Oh, yes. Okay, wow. Yes. Who’s the one person, dead or alive, you’d want to share your actual last meal with? One person, dead or alive, I’d want to share my actual last meal with? Steph. Easy. Yeah, she’s fantastic. You should have her on here, and she will give you a completely different experience, but you’ll probably have oysters again. If you could play one role on Broadway right now, what would it be? Oh, geez. Beetlejuice. I don’t think it’s on Broadway right now, but, like, recent history. I feel like my, that’s just a theory voice. It’s literally the Beetlejuice voice. I’m Beetlejuice. I mean, it’s the same thing. That’s my audition, Broadway. Make it happen. Never seen Beetlejuice. What song do you want to be played at your funeral? I would like it to be. What is it? Chasing Cars, mostly because that was the song that was very important and special in my wedding video or in my proposal video to Stephanie, and so it has a lot of deep, personal meaning in our relationship, and again, with her being so important and that being the thing that I am most sad about and scared about with death is having to say goodbye to her and not, and not knowing whether or not I’ll get to see her again. Yep. That’s the thing that scares me about death. Like, I have lived a rich, full life, right? And I try to make sure that I live every single day to its absolute fullest and optimize everything, right? Even if it makes me sick. I’m gonna eat that baked Alaska. But to know that I might not see her again or not get to spend another day with her again, that’s the thing that scares me. And I’m sure Stephanie feels the same way, which, I mean, that’s. No, she’s like, get him out of here. She’s like, good riddance. Give him the boot. We’re gonna move down to the Margaritaville retirement lounge. We’re gonna find a rich. Do you have any regrets in life? Yeah, there was this one day that I was in, I was doing the dance marathon in high school, and I sat down for thirty minutes, and I didn’t dance the entire ten hour dance marathon. You’re a real piece of crap, you know that? No, that’s, that’s an honest, true answer. It was, I know that. I can’t believe you’d admit that on YouTube. Yeah, I know. We’re recording this. I know. I’m so ashamed of it. It was terrible. I’m weird. I, again, unapologetically so. But I recognize I’m strange, and so I’m like, I’m gonna dance the whole time. And even though I’m talking to people, I’m always gonna be grooving it on my feet. But at a certain point, I’m like, you know what? I want to sit down for, like, ten, fifteen minutes, drink like, the Red Bull that they’re serving hashtag spon in the corner of my high school, I guess, and just get a break. And I sat down and I regretted it, because I had set myself a personal goal of dancing the entire damn dance marathon, and then I didn’t do it. And for whatever reason, that was the day that I made a conscious decision to try and live my life without regrets. Finally, are you happy? Yes, absolutely. Good ol’ MatPat. If you want to deliver your last words to that camera right there. My name was MatPat, and, hey, that was just a life. A life well lived. Thanks for tuning into a portion of it. And God dang it, it was. Really, thank you so much for the incredible candor, for the incredible food, for being willing to listen and learn. I absolutely love people like that, and I think that really is one of the meanings of life. You’re incredible. Thank you for everything you’ve given to the internet, to our audience, to me personally. Yeah, no, thank you, and thank you guys for everything that you’ve given me to eat today. Thank you for opening your homes and your phones in your bedrooms and your phones in your toilets for the weird content that I’ve delivered for the last thirteen years, and I can’t wait to enjoy the next chapter with you, with you, and in a very different way. And everyone, make sure you check out MatPat on all the other channels he’s appearing on in this little tour. Also, you got Creators in Fashion coming up. Yes, Creators in Fashion is our basically, basically Fashion Week for online influencers where there’s a lot of awesome people who are doing a lot of awesome things in the apparel, style, fashion space, and so we’re like, hey, if Fashion Week doesn’t invite people there, we’re going to create it ourselves, just like the digital mentality does. So that is happening, I think next week. We’re premiering a whole new fashion line for the stuff that we do, including this sweater right here, funny enough. So, that’s happening next week. Tune in. It’s on the Style Theory channel or on the Game Theory channel as well. Beautiful. Love this. And send off, thank you all so much for tuning in. You know the signature Mythical Kitchen outro. Clearly you know the signature Mythical Kitchen outro. I love you. That’s it. Face the reality of mortality head on with our new Last Meals hat and tee available now at mythical. com.