Hey, I’m Mike Shinoda, and this is my last meal. Every person has exactly two things in common. We all gotta eat and we’re all gonna die. Today’s guest is multi-platinum recording artist, rapper, graphic designer, and founder of legendary rock band Linkin Park, who head out on their From Zero World Tour this year. He’s also the reason I once ate a cruller with caramelized pineapple, yuzu air, and coconut glaze. Mike Shinoda, welcome to the show. I need to know more about that. Long before BTS had the McDonald’s Meal Pack, Linkin Park in 2017 had the Plan Check Meal Pack. Yep. Mike, I was an intern at Plan Check about a year and a half before that. I remember talking to owner Terry Heller about eventually collaborating with music acts, and he goes, “I think Linkin Park’s working on something.” And I was like, “Yeah, okay. You’re gonna have a Linkin Park meal.” Fast forward a year and a half, and I’m eating your donut. So thank you for that contribution to the- I wish I could say, I wish I could take more ownership of that donut. We just like pointed them in the direction and they took off with it. It was a lot of fun. You’re telling me that you weren’t back there hand whipping all the yuzu air for the donuts, Mike? I wish I could say that I was. One, thank you for joining us. Two, have you thought about your last meal before? I have never thought about it. This was, like, when I saw the show, when I like got the invite, yeah, I made like a little list and I think I made… It was probably like 10 or 12 things and then narrowed it down to like what seemed manageable. What did you learn about yourself when picking your last meal? Was anything surprising? I start thinking of like an appetizer at a specific, like a specific appetizer that was part of a thing that was at a restaurant in another country that you could never get here. Yeah. But like, you know, no rules. If you had it like no rules, no geographical restrictions or whatever, if just anything was possible, then this whole thing would be much different I think. It’d be 40 things from all over the planet. You know what I mean? I wish you would’ve given us the 40 things, Mike. We would’ve done it. We would’ve been importing things from Rio de Janeiro for you. Awesome. I would love to see how that works out with the budget of this shoot. I mean, you know, we were talking about what fine granite booths you guys have. This is real granite. It was carved by JG Granite, the founder of granite in 1992. They don’t accept like substitutes or, you know, knockoff granite. It’s only the real thing here. Yeah. How often do you think about death in general? An interesting thing, if you listen to our music, you can actually hear that start to enter the picture more on our third album. Was that just due to age? Because I mean, you guys- Yeah, yeah, I think it was. It was partially like, maybe it was also starting families and things like that. And it was also the fact that we had our first two albums, “Hybrid Theory” and “Meteora”, touch people in a way that was way bigger than we ever imagined. It was a crazy time. And then after that we got to like take a beat and go home and like think about holy shit, like we were kids in a dorm, in our like apartments and dorm rooms and like living in our parents’ house one minute, and now this is what has happened. Our lives are completely changed. I think a lot of people don’t think about the bigger things in life until they take a step back and rest and reflect. Yeah. And then there’s others who just keep distracting themselves with work time and time again. You’ve written more than 1,000 songs in your career. If you include all the numbers from the live stream productions during COVID. Oh wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Are you somebody who likes to distract yourself from that reflection via work? Or is that work part of your reflection process? Sometimes a song starts to form that way and I’m driving or I’m in the shower, I’m on a walk, and I hear a thing and I think of a thing. The way that I get to the good ones is to capture all of them as often and as like truthfully as I can, or accurately as I can. And I guess at a certain point it becomes like a volume game. Like, you know, if I’ve only written down 10 things, then I’ve got 10 shots at a good one. If I’ve written down 100 things, then I’ve got more. I can’t empathize with that experience. I can only empathize with the experience of getting your song stuck in my head, whispering in my ear, and then my fiancee barging into the bathroom going, “Why are you yelling about your wounds “that will not heal in the shower? “Are you okay?” And I go like put a bandaid on me. It’s fine. It’s funny. You ready to get to eating? Yeah, sure. Let’s do it. Mike, for the first course of your final meal, behold, we have the ham and cheese from Dan’s Super Subs up in Woodland Hills. Got that thinly shaved deli ham on there. Then we have the chicken and dumplings made with a simple roux and stock veloute action. A little bit of mirepoix, some peas, some fresh dumplings boiled in there. And then a perfect Manhattan. This is my own recipe. This is Angostura bitters Antigo Karputo vermouth. This is Sazerac Rye stirred, strained with a Luxardo cherry on top. What a combo. Looks perfect. This is the craziest combination of things. I love how crazy. It’s crazy to me. I don’t know if it’s crazy to other people. So my mom’s family is from West Virginia. They’re from the middle of nowhere. The houses are miles apart. And my grandma always made, when we would come up, she’d make fried chicken, she’d make chicken and dumplings, and a handful of other things. She was also really well known for fudge, which was a thing that I almost threw at you guys, but I knew that it would be- We can’t handle the grandma’s fudge recipe. That’s too high expectation, Mike. It’s too hard. Please, I mean, dig into it, man. Don’t let me stop you. Her dumplings were like, so these are like really, this is like a meatball. Like, hers were like a- They were like the flat, almost like a thick noodle. No, it wasn’t the noodle style. It almost looked more like gnocchi. Oh, interesting. Little, little, little ones. Little balls. Yeah, yeah. I hope we can do her a little bit of justice with this. Yeah. It looks awesome. It is good. This is comfort in a bowl, man. Yeah. That’s some serious comfort. Are you somebody who goes back to comfort foods like in times of sadness and strife? Or for you is it like purely a celebratory thing? I think it’s like for me, probably a little more of a, yeah, it’s more of a if things are tough, like I do go to food. We actually, by the way also, like in the band, we use a lot of like food analogies because they fit so well with music. Yeah. In what way? Well, like our first album, “Hybrid Theory” was made to be like more, we had all these different sonic elements that we loved. We wanted to put them together in a way that they meshed. Like, it was hard to tell one element from another, and they were blended, right? So then when we got to our third album, we were like, oh, we’re actually, what we wanna do with this album is we wanna take those sonic elements and make them a little more visible. Like, we want you to be able to hear the references or the inspirations. So like on “Hybrid Theory”, all of the elements were sitting combined with each other. Like a smoothie. Like a smoothie, like a soup. Okay, I’m tracking. And then by the time you got to like “Minutes to Midnight”, it was more like a salad or like a, you know, even like a sandwich. Like, you can see how the elements are stacked, and before you get into it you go, “Oh, I know what’s going on here.” It was more deconstructed or something. Yeah. What food is “From Zero”, your new album? It’s more about the approach. Maybe it’s more of like an omakase than a menu. Oh, interesting. You know what I mean? ‘Cause we really chose very specific… I guess all albums are that way, but this one is more of a greatest hits kind of DNA of the band. Each song seems to like harken to a specific time in Linkin Park’s history in certain ways. A little bit, yeah. It seems that they were like very deliberately chosen. And I feel like I’m eating the songs directly out of your fingers. You know? That’s funny. In case anybody like wasn’t like super familiar with the band, you’re like more new to the band for example, before we were called Linkin Park, we were called Hybrid Theory. Before we were called Hybrid Theory, we were called Zero. So it was like that was the initial, the start of the band. So part of the idea of like “From Zero” is that fast forward to 2021/2022, we felt like we were starting the band over again. Like, we were… You know, Chester passed away in 2017, and we were trying to figure out how to do it again and have it feel good ’cause there was a point when we would try to do it in 2018, 2019, whatever, we got together a little bit and it didn’t feel good. It felt sad. Yeah. And so to be able to get together again and find joy in it and inspiration and start from kind of a blank slate, “From Zero”, it’s the only album that we would ever get to experience this way where we’re creating the album while we’re creating the band. Tell me about the sandwich right here. Tell me about Dan’s Super Subs. This is in Woodland Hills, and y’all grew up in Agora Hills, right? Dude, Dan’s Super Subs is a spot like on Ventura Boulevard near Fallbrook. We got these back when I was going to, my family went to church in that area, and I also got, like my parents made me do this youth group thing there. They made me do this theater program there, which I actually didn’t really want to do, but it was important stuff to do. Like, it made me comfortable in front of people. Made me be able to get on a stage in front of people. Dang, man. I didn’t know the lore. Please dig into the sandwich. This does look… I’m telling you- It’s the thin shaved ham. This is the sandwich equivalent of like incredible Japanese sushi where it’s all the basics. It’s simple. There’s no frills here. But it’s like the architecture, it’s the hands that have made it, it’s everything. All of the basics. The texture of that bread, like the way it yields to the ham. The ham’s razor thin. You mentioned being comfortable on stage. I wanna talk about the first time you ever performed live as Zero. It was at the Whisky a Go Go in the summer of 1997. You were opening for Cypress Hill’s Sen Dog and System of A Down. You took the stage in an ensemble that has been described as a blue rapping Smurf since. Do you remember what was behind the outfit choice? And will you bring it back for the From Zero World Tour? In that era, I think it should be noted that it was the era of Wu Tang, the era of Big Pun. New York rap was very like lyrical, very exciting at the time. That’s what people were wearing to stand out. They were wearing all kinds, it’s New York too. So like LA we don’t do that type of thing, but New York, they were like very eccentric with the stuff. And I was starting to see in The Source magazine, seeing those guys wearing like ski goggles on the head, like crooked, the beanie, Timberlands, and all this stuff. A lot of camo, a lot of military. And our band at the time was, we were mixing rap and rock and other things, but those were the primary, the things you’d notice when you came in. So like we were kind of like, well, we’ve never done a show before. We wanna like telegraph. We want you to look at us and see like, oh, that’s what they’re about. Actually, my friend, Mark, our singer, he said to me before the show, we were like, “We should go get some clothes for the show.” And like, you know, we were talking about it. And he’s like, “Bro, you need to wear, “like you need to like really get creative with this “because you look like a dude from my math class.” I was like, “Mark, I am a dude from your math class. “Like, that’s our relationship.” You cheated off me in that class, Mark. Actually, that’s almost true. See? And truth be told, like it was our first show, so putting on a costume makes you feel like you’re a little, it made me feel more comfortable to be in a costume basically. Tell me about this Manhattan. I’ve been eyeing it the whole time. So the Manhattan is an adult choice. This is, this is- Cheers. Cheers. Oh, cheers. This is the choice. Nothing like a Manhattan first thing in the morning. Mm-hmm. It’s almost brunch. I realized as many adults do at a certain point, you’re like, God, I’m old enough now that I can’t just drink whatever, so I need something that’s gonna slow me down ’cause if it tastes too good or it’s like whatever, then I’ll just, I’ll have too many. And the Manhattan was the first time that like a friend of mine made his signature Manhattan at his house. And so he made me his Manhattan. And I was like, “This is delicious. “Like, what is it? “I’ve never had a Manhattan. “That’s delicious.” And if you drink it too fast, you’ll swallow the spike and die. So you gotta kinda like keep yourself paced up, you know? I can swallow that spike and not- Yeah? Yeah, this is fine. We’ve tried to book Chris Angel for a while and he wouldn’t come, so this is the next best thing we have of swallowing the spike. How are you being trapped in ice? How am I being trapped in ice? Yeah, yeah. Last couple times it’s been fine. Okay. Well, good. You talked about leaning on band members. I wanna ask about a time when you maybe had to lean on some band members. You had signed with Warner Records to produce the album “Hybrid Theory”. Suddenly you’re thrust into the big machine. Yes. And an executive tried to oust you from the band, Mike? When you’re young and you’re new at a label, they’re trying to do their best to sell records. Like, they just want to like get the thing that’s the hit. And in the process of making “Hybrid Theory”, they weren’t hearing it. I can’t explain that. We were positive that it was good. And more importantly, like we felt like this is us on this record. And they went to Chester, like got him alone in the studio. And they were like, “Look, man, this is all about you. “You’re the star here. “Let’s just build this project around you “’cause what you guys are making, like, we don’t get it.” And Chester had come into the band with, you know, understanding that like he’s a part of a band. Like, he wanted… I felt like what was going on is he wanted to be part, he liked the band, he wanted to be part of the band, and he had way more loyalty to us than he did to them. He told us, he went immediately from that conversation back to us and said, “This is what just happened.” And we were like, “Oh no. “Like, thanks for telling us. “You know, what did you tell them?” He’s like, “I told him to go themselves.” Eat it! Sorry. Can’t help myself. That’s the truth of the story though. So if you edit that, you’re editing the truth. Strong words. Hybrid theory refers to all the different styles and upbringings and everybody, and ultimately speaks to the diversity of the band, that’d be viewed as a threat for a lot of bands. And there were a lot of bands in that era that did break up. How was that diversity a strength for Linkin Park? With this much space, like, you know, looking back on it, it’s easy to idealize so much of it. Like, there was so much strength and so many positive things that were going on. There’s also friction and like disagreement. And I think that like at the time we would be, like you’d be happy about the parts where things are going well and you’d be so upset about the fact that we just like were not, you know, it was noisy. But I think those things actually added. So for example, which chorus do you like better? Which verse do you like better? What the melody should be? Oh, I like these words. I don’t like those words. And I think they did call me the glue back in the day. That was like a jokey nickname. And it’s not just because what you used in your hair to become Spike Minoda. Take it easy. Thought it was a good look. Trying to bring it back. I see what’s going on up here. We’re kind of halfway there. We’re kind of halfway there. They haven’t described my hair as crispy in a long time. So yeah, so, you know, the good momentum, the negative feeling of the friction, both things are actually like very valuable to the band. There was an element of like all of the like adversity that we faced and even the, like, having hard discussions and then getting over them, getting past them were so valuable to our growth as friends and our growth as a creative unit. I’ll just speak for them. Not say this about myself, but I’ll speak for the other guys that my opinion of them is that they’re one of the most emotionally intelligent groups of people that I’ve ever spent time with. Mike, for course number two of your final meal, we have the tsukemen. This is from Tsujita Noodle Annex in Los Angeles. Probably the best Japanese noodles in the entire city. It’s got the scallions on top, the marinated egg, a little bit of sudachi lime, and then this super ultra concentrated tonkotsu pork bone broth that you dip the noodles in. And then I wish I could tell you what is in this dish, but I cannot because this is the Shinoda family secret karaage recipe, only the eyes of the person who directly made it have seen the ingredients. I do not know what is in it. I am sure it is fantastic. This recipe is so top secret that when I told my family that we were gonna do this, they got mad at me. They were like, “You’re gonna let somebody else in on the recipe?” I said, “No, no, no. “Like, we’re gonna-” If we get you disowned from your own family, I’m gonna be pretty bummed. I will let, I mean, I’ll be immediately on… You’ll know on my social media. We’ll catalog the whole thing. So yeah, it’s like a hot wings, you know, style presentation, whatever. But it’s a relative of chicken karaage. So my mom, as I explained before, my mom is Caucasian. She’s from West Virginia. My dad is Japanese. His father was born in Japan. He was born in the United States. They were here during Japanese internment and World War II. That said, like a lot of traditions and recipes and things like that that are native to Japanese Americans here are very specific to Japanese Americans. So anyway, so this is a thing that like, it’s not like the Japanese thing, it’s not an American thing. It’s kind of like something in between that our family had. Dig in, man. I can’t wait any longer. We did a little bit of like Kewpie mayo, some sudachi limes, some- Okay, I’m going with none of it. I just want the actual wing on its own. Like, that is so juicy. That’s good. It’s good. It’s good, but? It’s good. It’s like 85% there. What are we missing? I think they did a potato… Is it a potato starch? Something’s different. Do you have any advice for, if you’re in Malaysia and someone puts a baby in front of you and asks you to sign it? You sign the baby. You sign the baby? 100% of the time you sign the baby. Yeah. It worked out for you? It might have been a shoe store, streetwear store, something like that. And the guy came up, and he didn’t really speak much English and he asked me to sign something. And I said yes, thinking that it would be something reasonable, and it was not. It was his baby. He handed me the Sharpie, and then he like did this with the kid. And I was like… At that point, I’m too committed. Like, I’m just too far gone. Yeah, yeah. Was the kid wearing a garment that you, did you sign a garment or you signed the baby? He didn’t want me to sign a garment. Okay, got you. Yeah. He wanted me to sign the baby. Sign the baby. I have PTSD. Have you followed up with this Malaysian baby since? I would absolutely love for that person to like reach back out, if that person hears this message and can like, you know, make themselves known on Twitter or Instagram. I mean, really what I want is the kid to say it was me. I got my forehead signed or whatever. I think he did make me sign their head. Like, he was like right here. It’s probably the best place to sign a baby. Everywhere else is soft. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I’m wrong. This is… I’m 60%, like I feel like I’m 60% convinced that it was the baby’s head, forehead. You talked about your dad growing up in a Japanese internment camp. That’s like a lot of heavy history. On your “Fort Minor” album, not only did you calculate the amount of concentrated power of will you needed to remember the name. But you had a song called “Kenji” that’s like very raw, and it has your dad and your aunt, I believe, giving vocal samples talking about their experience. Are you somebody that processes that emotion through music? Why did you feel the need to tell that story? One of the things about writing Linkin Park songs is there’s a heavy, there’s this element of like, there’s creativity, but there’s also like a lot of like, it’s left brain, right brain. It’s analytical, right? And one of the things about the way “Kenji” came together, I think is it was so right brain. It was just like, okay, I’ve got this weird beat. Like, normally you hear like 4/4 times signature. Like, you know, lyrics are in groups of four. Everything is very structured that way. And “Kenji” is not that kind of pattern. Those words just started kind of coming to me, even though the track has nothing to do with Japan or Japanese culture. It just kind of felt like the thing I wanted to say that day. And so I started to, you know, create the, I wrote the two verses, which were about fictional story based heavily on my dad’s family’s story of internment in the ’40s. Did you grow up with your parents telling you stories about that? Like, telling you that hey, you need to sort of embody your Japanese heritage because this is what you went through? World War II was happening. It was severe, you know, wartime paranoia. And they just, and the American people and the American government were worried that there were Japanese spies in their country, in their ranks, in their communities. And so the government issued this executive order, which said that all the Japanese in these areas on the west coast were gonna go into these internment camps. And that’s what happened. My family was one of them. My grandparents, they had at the time I believe 12 kids. They lived near like Fresno in California. And they got taken from there, and they got put temporarily at the Santa Anita racetrack horse stalls. No way. Just because they didn’t have space for all these people. They were like removing thousands of people. So they just stick ’em in places like a horse track and no beds, no anything. And it’s like, we’re gonna put you in here temporarily until we get the camps ready. And then they built the camps in the middle of the desert and put a fence around and then put turrets with like, you know, soldiers with machine guns, and they face the guns in inward. Jesus Christ, man. And they stuck them out there for two years. My aunt, who’s also on the song, was like one of the older ones. I’m forgetting right now exactly which, how old, which one down she was. But she was one of the oldest. And so the reason I wanted to get both of them is ’cause he had the experience of being like a little kid, like a toddler, like just barely older than a toddler. And she had the experience of being like a teenager, older kid. Those stories were things that we grew up on as kids. They were cautionary tales. Shikata ga nai, which means it can’t be helped. Like, there are things that happen where you go, “This is a bad thing.” You can point your finger at somebody and blame somebody and get mad about it and, you know, want revenge or want justice or want whatever. But also like there’s a part of it that it’s like, it just is. And I think for me like growing up that way, like knowing about that history and knowing about that like philosophical outlook was helpful. That seems really beautiful. Dig into the tsukemen. I love this place. Tsujita. I think it’s the first time I had tsukemen was at Tsujita. This is one of the more intense dishes that you can eat. If you’re used to ramen and you have this, it’s a very different experience. A very different thing. Yeah. It just punches you in the face with flavors. Sometimes I feel like a lot of the music I’m into is similar to the food that I’m into, which is to say loud and a lot. You know what I mean? I want to be absolutely assaulted with flavor. And this is an absolute… Flavor’s all still balanced, right? It’s still like delicious. You get the aromatics, that delicateness. But it’s a lot of all of that at once. This is incredible. You know, you said you were not fully Japanese, not fully white, grew up between two cultures. Even though southern California is such a diverse place, you were sort of this perpetual outsider. Do you think that affected the genre of music that you were really pulled into? I’ve always joked to my band mates about how that influences my writing. You know, that like partially accepted but partially not outsider kind of mentality. It’s just kind of built in. And if you go back to the era that “Hybrid Theory” came out, right, people were using the phrase, tossing the phrase nu metal around, or putting you in that box. Right. But really related to Linkin Park, especially in “Hybrid Theory” and “Meteora” for that newfound vulnerability coming out of grunge through this frat bro nu metal, and there was you- Funny you said frat bro. Mike from math class. We did call it frat rock. Really? We did. In the band, we were like, oh, we don’t wanna be on that bill with the frat rock bands. Yeah, yeah. Now I have a healthy amount of respect for all those bands that did so much stuff that was really fun. Like, it didn’t have to be smart. They weren’t changing the world, right? They were- When I heard “bawitdaba, da-bang, da-bang, diggy-diggy,” I was moved to change, Mike. I mean, okay, so to each his own. But my thing was at the time, like I would tell people, they’d be like, “Nu metal this, nu metal that, “rap rock, this and that.” I’d say, “Don’t put that flag in my hand. “I will not carry it.” I wanted as much space as possible between Linkin Park and all that other stuff. But with age and a little bit of like perspective, I also realized that like we were probably, many of us like soaked way too harsh. That’s the thing that happens with age in general. All your previously hard held opinions just softens as you realize how much bullshit it was at the time. But it’s also like I watch like some of those old videos of those bands playing and I go like, okay, it’s crude but it’s intentionally crude, and the people are having a great time, and they’re very good at giving these people the great time. Speaking of having great time in music videos. In “One Step Closer”, now the floating karate monks. Were they having a good time or a bad time? You’re gonna have to ask Joe Hahn about that one ’cause I still to this day have no idea what was going on. To be honest, it wasn’t his video. He was our DJ in the band, not our video director at the moment. And it was a guy named Nathan “Karma” Cox, who had directed it. So Joe threw some ideas at Nathan. Nathan took some of them and didn’t take some of them. And it was his vision. Mike, for the final course of your final meal on earth, we have the vanilla latte, half as sweet as a normal vanilla latte. We have the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup still in the packaging. None of them pumpkin shapes, none of the bunny rabbits. The original. We have some vanilla ice cream. And then we have from The Benjamin, this is a warm chocolate chip cookie with some flaky Maldon salt on top and then freshly whipped vanilla bean cream. How do they serve the cream with the cookie? ‘Cause I’ve never seen a preparation. What do you call that little, the shell shaped, that little thing, you do that? Talking about a quenelle. You gotta like typically wet the spoon. I know. I know. But I can like try and get halfway there. Yeah, it’s that. That’s the vibe with the cookie. Do that. And then it’s just- And if it’s super warm, then it’s gets a little melty. You can see the effort there for. It’s close. Sorry to disappoint you on your last meal. I mean… Please, man, dig in. I can’t wait to try this. I mean, yeah. Yeah. It’s spectacular. I think the only other cookie that competes with this is my wife’s mom. Her chocolate chip cookie was legendary, and she gave my wife the recipe, and we made it, and it was wrong. And then we did it again. She was basically like, “Oh, I don’t know.” Like, it was one of those things, it was like, oh, I think you screwed with the recipe. Older relatives, you gotta stop gatekeeping recipes. We wonder why traditional cooking is dying out, ’cause you’re out here lying about the ratio of mayonnaise in your tuna salad ’cause it’s top secret. It’s Lipton onion soup, Nana. We know it. Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to blow up in front of you. That was actually, all of that was accurate. There’s no pushback on anything you just said. Well, the album “From Zero”, you mentioned like working on it without an exact plan of what it was going to become. What was the decision and how heavy did you treat it to keep the name Linkin Park after Chester Bennington passed away? Because there is an alternate universe in which, you know, I’m thinking like Rage Against the Machine and Audio Slave. A new singer coming on and changing the name. So the simple answer to that is that the music sounds like Linkin Park. Like, the DNA is all still in there. It’s obvious to anybody who listens to it and gives it a chance. The second thing though is that as we were navigating the, I don’t know, like the decisions we were making about like what is the band? Like, what do we make? Who’s in the band? Who’s playing what? All of that. We could have chosen a male singer. We could have chosen somebody that sounded very different. We could have chosen somebody that sounded very similar. We could have had the singer of one of our cover bands who covers Linkin Park and is like a doppelganger. Like, so, so, so close to Chester, could have had them. And so what we did end up doing, which just naturally felt better, it wasn’t a strategy. When Emily came in, it’s like she sings so well. She’s a ton of fun to hang out with. We end up just sitting around. It was like, oh, we’ve been here for like two hours just talking. Yeah. Like, that’s the thing at the end of the day that made it obvious what direction we should go. You kind of talk about like the paradox of a multiverse in a sense, in a Twitch stream actually, when somebody asked you if you had a time machine. And you talk about the idea of like, well obviously for you with Chester who took his own life, there’s one moment you go back to, but also you don’t know if anything would’ve been different. Right. That’s right. These single points in life that we put a lot of sort of value in, it’s like you don’t know the totality of all the situations at hand. You can’t outsmart these things. Like, it goes back to that shikata ga nai. Like, at a certain point you have to just say, “Okay, well these are the circumstances that we’ve got. “I’m not gonna try and,” like, you can’t change ’em. They’re just, they are what they are. So what are you gonna do? It’s completely futile to actually look back at that. Why the latte and the ice cream? I have not had a Benjamin cookie with vanilla ice cream. I’ve never liked cookies and ice cream together. Because to me, fundamentally, cookies are best at a warm temperature. Ice cream is best at a cold temperature. When you add them together, it’s two things that don’t mix. It’s like rap and rock. It really is. Can’t combine that. It sucks. Horrible. You know what I mean? Talking about moving forward. You did a Linkin Park and Friends tour after Chester passed away, and you chose to call it A Celebration of Life. When you look back at Chester’s life, what are the moments in time that you choose to really celebrate that with? Like, even thinking about doing the show, there’s a part of me that’s like, oh, it’s too dark. Because that stuff is still very raw. I mean, there are very few humans I’ve spent that much time with in my life. Yeah. One thing, I don’t know. I think the first thing I think of, and there’s probably a million things, but the one that sticks out to me in the moment is really like that we had a very, we do have and he had a very like this interesting relationship with like this very serious stuff inside right next door to us being the biggest like idiots and so silly and just really, really not as serious as the other stuff. Yeah. Like, when people say… I think a long time ago if somebody said, oh, well, this bad thing happened to this person. They got divorced or their parent died, or the, you know, something happened, and they were not really like completely immersed in it. They were like joking around and doing other things. Like, oh, well that person’s in denial. Isn’t that sad? They’re like in denial about the sad thing that happened. And having gone through it, I’m like, no, no, denial is actually a very useful tool. Like, it’s very- 100%. It’s very efficient at dealing with a thing because with something that’s that heavy, you can’t just like drink out of the fire hose and do it all at once. It protects you in such a valuable way. It would be horrible to like deal with it like that. So you gotta like space it out. Yeah. And having a little bit of levity, having a little bit of denial, a little avoidance, I just wish there wasn’t such a stigma attached to it because it’s actually effective. It actually helps us protect ourselves. Yeah. Taking things bite by bite. I mean, going back 27 years, such a crazy impact on so many people’s lives and continues to. There’s one story that stands out to me as particularly impactful. There was a person having brain surgery who had to stay awake for the entire surgery, and they could listen to something for eight hours, and they listened to “Hybrid Theory” on repeat. Do you remember hearing that story? And was that an impact moment where you’re like, “Oh man, this is what we have become”? Yeah, that was a really cool story. There’ve been a lot of fans of the band who have like paired big moments in their lives with our music or something, from, you know, tattoos to weddings, funerals, and getting engaged at our shows, things like that. Like, big stuff, you know? It’s really powerful. And like these days, I think one of the things I see often that’s really sweet, the fans are bringing their kids. Like, you know, they’ve got families now. They’re bringing the kids to the shows, and the kids are fans of the band and the music. Mike, when it’s all said and done… Shit. I thought that was gonna work out so much better. One more time. Hold on, now we’re gonna time it. Mike, when it’s all said and done… Damn it, Mike, when it’s all said and done and you’re being put in the dirt, you’re going to the final resting place, what do you want your… God dang it. What do you want your largest impact to have been? Is that where we were trying to land it? I was trying to flip it to you to catch it, but I didn’t want to like say it. I thought it was gonna land there. I thought you were gonna snatch it outta the sky and like put it in your mouth like… Well now we’re spraying- So much… We gotta open up. Hold on, we’re gonna time it with. Mike, when it’s all said and done and you’re being put in the dirt… One more time, one more time. Mike, when it’s all said and done… Take 22. Mike, when it’s all said and done and you’re being put in the dirt, going to your final resting place, what do you want your biggest legacy on this earth to have been? It was something like, I could be even butchering my own thing, but it was something like, work hard, be smart, and don’t be an asshole. And the fans caught on to that. And I think there’s even people with that tattooed at this point. But it became like a little bit of a meme. I stand by that. Finally, what do you think happens when you die? Are you a believer in life after death? Or for you it’s just go dark? Nobody knows the answer to that. So like thinking about it is like thinking about like the origin of like time and space. You don’t know. You’re basing your thing on a gut. Like, you’re basing it on nothing. And like you think you’re the guy, Mike from math class that’s gonna solve it? It’s your own guess on your own experiences and whatever. It’s like my guess is as good as anybody. So I just, I resign myself to like, who cares? Like, it’s not my place to have an opinion about that. We’re here now. That’s what matters. I am just enjoying the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. There’s nothing better, man. It’s kind of at the perfect temp. It’s at cellar temp is what it is. Okay, I don’t know if you could see this, but it’s like, look at that. Look at the temperature. It’s just- A little bit of pliability. Yeah. It’s not a hard, a hard Reese’s is is not the best Reese’s. It’s like an elasticity to it. Scientists need to study that. That’s not how chocolate’s supposed to be, right? That’s a perfect Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. Mike, you ready to jump into the lightning round? Do we get to do it with a perfect latte as well? Oh my god. Yeah. So I’ve been drinking the latte the whole time. I haven’t had it. Oh God. A lot of dairy. I’m living for it. Who’s the one person dead or alive you’d want to share your actual last meal with? My wife. What album would you play on repeat if you had to stay awake during an eight hour surgery? I like too many albums. I’d make a playlist. I’d make a playlist. Oh, by the way, like, I have playlists that are available. I have a playlist called “Best Songs of All Time”. So this is my answer. I have a playlist. It’s a public playlist. You can go on Spotify and look my name up, and I have a playlist called “Best Songs of All Time”. Who would win in a fight, the floating karate monks from the “One Step Closer” video or the floating karate monks from “Into the Badlands”? Badlands, unfortunately. Who’s your dream eulogizer at your funeral? Bobcat Goldthwait. Oh, come on. Come on. He’d crush it, man. He’d skewer your ass. What’s your biggest fear? Oh God. Not having an answer to a question. I can smell the fear pheromones coming off you, Mike. I was wondering what that was. Like, it smells like gasoline and old bananas. What’s your greatest regret in life? Saying mean things to like, when you’re younger, people are so mean when they’re younger. Yeah. Would you ever recreate the Linkin Linkin Park with Linkin Park watching Linkin Park Park and Linkin video? No ’cause you can’t improve upon perfection. God, he’s right, man. Heard Scorsese directed that. Finally, Mike, are you happy? I am. I’m very happy today. Today. With all of this. Mike, if you wanna deliver your last words to that camera right there. In the immortal words of me, dream big, work hard, and don’t be an asshole. God dang it, Mike. Truly, man, this is incredible. I have been listening to “From Zero” on repeat all the time. From Zero World Tour going out. Yes. What cities are you least excited to go to? We’re very excited about all the cities. All of our babies are very important. Even Columbus? All of them. All of them, yep. Tour dates are up at linkinpark.com. We are going virtually everywhere. We have a ton of dates in the US. We have ton of dates outside the US. Unfortunately the dates, many of the dates outside the US are already sold out, but tickets are available on linkinpark.com. The LA show is also sold out. What are the chances that, I’ll pay, I’ll pay fair value. I’ll pay you for resale. I just don’t wanna get scammed on Ticketmaster. You gotta talk to Trish. Trish. Talk to those guys. Let’s talk. I got cookies with your name on it. I can trade, fair market. Shinoda family chicken wings for tickets to Dodger Stadium. I think it’s a fair trade. Mike, this is awesome. Can’t thank you enough. And I can’t thank you enough for watching Mythical Kitchen. Make sure to subscribe, comment, all that stuff. Tell us what your favorite Linkin Park is… Tell what? Tell what favorite Linkin Park is yours song down below. We all gotta eat and we’re all gonna die. But in the meantime, you can wear our Last Meals hoodie available now at mythical.com.