Kind: captions
Language: en
he made me think that you know
everything was going to be reversed and
okay and anybody that
money was borrowed from they would get
it back you know maybe tenfold and so it
was this weird situation of
having like one foot in his reality
and
potentially believing the things he was
saying or
even over time
wanting to believe them more and more
because the alternative was so
the alternative was worse the
alternative was like
was increasingly a bigger and bigger
nightmare
the following is a conversation with
sarma melangalis
a chef and restaurateur who was the
subject of the netflix documentary bad
vegan
fame fraud and fugitives that documents
the rise and fall of her vegan raw food
restaurants in new york city that ended
in what she called a road trip from hell
being arrested in tennessee her pleading
guilty for stealing over 2 million
dollars and serving 4 months at rikers
island jail
sarma disputes the veracity of the
documentary and its conclusions saying
that she was misrepresented
so i wanted to talk to her to get the
full story and to seek understanding of
who she is as a human being the good
and the bad
this is the lex freeman podcast to
support it please check out our sponsors
in the description and now dear friends
here's sama mangalas
you've said that you did a lot of
reading when you were growing up and you
mentioned fear and loathing in las vegas
by hunter s thompson
so from the reading you've done in those
early days
how did you see the world
was it to you a beautiful place or a
cruel place
i don't think i thought about the world
you're focused on family just basic
day-to-day life i think i was focused on
day to day i had an awareness of not
fitting in but i think back then it felt
like something was wrong versus
some people are just that way
and speaking of books i read a book
called um
party of one by a woman named annelie
rufus that somebody gave me and
suggested i read and that helped a lot
that was that was one book that made me
feel like
it made me understand things from the
past that i hadn't understood before
specifically kind of feeling out of
place even among my family which is
where you're not supposed to feel out of
place
yeah i'm not sure where i saw it but i
think you mentioned that you're a bit of
a loner and i also think
i saw somewhere pictures of you with the
with green hair
in high school and a wild haircut what's
that about is that was that real am i
just imagining no you're not imagining
it it's strange because
i was kind of a a loner
so it'd be strange to do something that
calls so much attention to yourself
because back then i mean i grew up in a
suburb of boston um in newton
and
anybody that was there around that time
probably if you said you know that girl
with green hair or blue hair was blue
most of the time they would remember
like seeing me walking down the street
because it stood out like crazy
especially back then now it wouldn't
stand out so much but back then it
really stood out
so
i was trying to think about why
i did that when
i i was kind of a kind of shy and
on the one hand wouldn't want to bring
attention to myself but i did something
that did
and it wasn't
my family to their credit
they were fine with it so it wasn't a
rebellion against them or anything like
that they were fine with it i don't
think they loved it but yeah dad was a
physicist at mit yes so
uh so he was he was cool here with your
green hair when you're a rebellion
that's just the way of life he was fine
with the green hair but i think in some
ways maybe they had to be fine with it
because i didn't cause problems
otherwise and
i got good grades in school
i
was a very low maintenance child i think
even with a green hair
uh so hunter s thompson uh wrote a lot
of good stuff uh
he has a lot of just brilliant quotes a
lot of brilliant lines um so
one of the ones i love is life should
not be a journey to the grave with the
intention of arriving safely in a pretty
and well-preserved body but rather just
skidding broadside in a cloud of smoke
thoroughly used up totally worn out
and loudly proclaiming
wow what a ride
what do you think about that is that
good life advice
from hunter s thompson
i think so
he i think he followed it right
somewhere um i heard recently what he
consumed in a day
yeah and it was
kind of astonishing
it's funny i when i was in college there
were always really interesting people
coming through speakers and whatnot and
i tended to not go to events and whatnot
but in the four years i was there the i
mean really interesting people came
through and gave talks you know i don't
know just
a lot of famous people and
um but then one day hunter s thompson
came to speak and i was the only one i
attended oh wow so the only
interesting person who came to speak on
the campus that i attended was hunter s
thompson and he had a
you know he had a glass of whatever it
was whiskey
and i don't remember a whole lot about
it but it was it was entertaining
and yeah i mean later in his life he
started making less and less sense but
he was still somehow
like embodying the the crazy that he
represented throughout his life the
boldness the fearlessness the wildness
all that kind of stuff and we'll talk
about johnny depp a little bit too funny
enough there's like a echo
obviously he
johnny depp played him
or he started unloading and they hung
out together and it just seemed to
somehow
like the universe rhymes in these two
individuals
they're both mad men and in different
kind of ways so you also told me that
leon the professional is one of your
favorite films
it's also the reason you named your dog
leon so
uh what do you find beautiful and
powerful about this film
i've watched it a bunch of times but
it's been a while since i've watched it
so for people who haven't watched it it
there's a guy named leon played by jon
renau
there's a
um a young girl
i don't know 13 14.
matilda played by natalie portman
and she's abused she has a really hard
life
her parents are spoiler alert
uh murdered
and then she finds protection under this
um
fella
uh
leon who's also happens to be a
professional assassin
and he is also kind of a forest gump
type character like he's a really simple
human uh he almost he seems to be like
the immature one or like rather the one
who's young and she seems to have a
wisdom far beyond her age
because of the hard life she had to live
through and then and they're here
huddling together
from the the cruelty of the world um
in and finding connection
yeah i think it's one of those films
where there's so many interesting things
about it but
you know i'm sure one of them is just
the contradiction of him being
a caring person and reluctant to get
attached to her you know he tries to i
think he knows he's he's very reluctant
to get attached to her in the beginning
um
and
so you see all of his humanity but yet
he's also an assassin that kills people
so
um
that's interesting and i think
probably a psychoanalyst would have a
field day with why i like that movie so
much um and i haven't neces i haven't
gone there myself but
there's something i think about she
even in the brief part
that depicts her in the beginning
it seems clear that she's sort of out of
place in her family
um
and
um and then yeah there's all kinds of
interesting things about their
relationship along the way
what i like about that movie and i had
to think about it recently because i've
read stuff about it
that bothered me
or it bothered me the fact that i
haven't really thought about it before
for people haven't watched the movie so
here's a young underage girl who kind of
comes onto him
first of all i think she actually just
doesn't
know what
like familial love is
so this is the only way she knows how to
express love that's one
and two is
you know a lot of bad people in this
world would take advantage of that
right
and the fact that
um
she finally met a human being who
doesn't
and is just there to protect her
that's a real sort of um
i don't know a powerful statement of
what it means to be sort of like a
father figure i suppose a protector
so that
that to me i i i love the idea of being
the sort of the the protector
that there's something
like uh something worthwhile in this
world to protect
amidst all the cruelty that's all around
so that's that's a beautiful kind of
you're basically saving
this young humans
or you're repairing this young human's
path
to love to real love
in life because that idea of love was
destroyed for her just family everything
is is everything is uh
sort of uh everything around is broken
and he's kind of repairing it by
re-establishing what that kind of love
can be i don't know
and the plant
that's spreading they save the plant
also
well there's also just a simple the
simplicity of the film just from a
cinematic perspective is beautiful the
music
the way it looks the minimalism even the
violence was beautiful
yeah violence it was over the top
and also the the bad guy the bad cop
played by um
gary oldman
yeah he was amazing yeah i think he was
listening to beethoven or something like
that and you're taking some sort of
pills and drugs and some kind and
uh so there was a kind of like uh like
like it's part of the orchestra like the
violence was part
of the
of some kind of
musical creation
yeah it's interesting because i i turn
away from
violence or films usually that have
violence or tv or anything that has that
sort of
um
element to it except in certain
cases where
um
where the violence is beautiful
yeah
yeah or um
did you see the movie true romance
uh yes that's my second favorite movie
okay that's probably my favorite movie
yeah oh well interesting that's my
second favorite movie um that's that's a
more uh simple kind of love but also
with the violence that is beautiful yeah
as you could say yeah and my um
my favorite scene is the one with
patricia arquette and james gandolfini
oh yeah was she there's a shotgun
involved yeah yeah
and then it actually makes me cry every
time i see it
for some reason
[Laughter]
so for people who haven't seen the film
i think
i think he's actually he think he's
hitting her
or
um like there's blood and violence and
so on because he's resisting being
murdered
yeah there's a lot of violence and then
you know he throws her into the glass
um the shower yeah
thing and she's all cut up and beat up
and only and she laughs yeah there's
just so much passion in it you know
she's she knows she's gonna or
in that moment she
knows or thinks she knows that she's
gonna die anyway yeah because she she
knows he's gonna kill her yeah so she
kind of gives it her
gives it all she has and um
but she also just says guts she's not
afraid
yeah
well and also she's um
you know she loves clarence
yeah the love comes through through that
violence yeah yeah just like uh clarence
her fella
in that film
uh has the same kind of thing when he
visits well it was gary oldman again it
was gary oldman again that's right the
pimp looking very drexel drexel yeah
yeah and he's also fearless in that
interaction saying she's not mine
it's interesting that movie is so
romantic
and that a happy ending spoiler alert in
a way that's what i like about it too
because i i feel like some movies should
come with
i don't want to watch a movie if it's
going to be devastating usually unless
it's worthwhile in some other way but
i'm kind of sensitive and i don't want
um i don't like movies that have a
terrible ending you know i mean
there's a book i read because it got so
many good reviews and the very last
scene the woman steps in front of a
train and it was like
um so i'm partial to movies with happy
endings leon ends
with loss
beyond the movie right but it's still
inspiring a love persists in some kind
of form yeah persists and the plant
and the plant
um okay sure sure
true romance does have one of the i mean
it's probably unhealthy and the whole
scene is just amazing you're so cool was
she
is that one knowing where she just kind
of
looks at clarence and her son and child
or whatever and
she's saying you're so cool you're so
cool
yeah
that's that's love
i just that movie has so much in it
because it's
you know it's funny and there's so many
so many good actors in that film and
brad pitt uh plays in that film a
pivotal role of pothead on couch yeah
they're just they're all so good and
funny and michael rappaport yeah and um
and even val kilmer people don't realize
he's in the movie because he doesn't
look like himself
um wait what what is val val kilmer's in
the very end it's
um you know when he's there's like the
elvis sitting there
talking to him in the end yeah that's
val kilmer
yeah you don't notice it unless you
yeah somehow either are very perceptive
or noticed in the credits yeah and uh
quentin tarantino wrote the film i think
yes which is interesting
uh directed by tony scott and the music
is uh beautiful too and christopher
walken and um
um
dennis
hopper dennis hopper dennis hopper plays
clarence's
dad uh dad and they have this
very racist sounding scene but
the big
uh
important aspect of that scene is it's a
father
willing to die
to protect the sun i mean it's so much
so much beautiful violence there is
there is i love that phil so much uh and
she's a prostitute or not really
part-time short time no it was her first
time first time yeah
okay and he saved her
and uh
hmm
my third favorite film has no violence
whatsoever what's your third um a room
with a view
i feel like you'd like it it's um
um
i forget the author it's a book and i i
read the book much later um but it's um
helena bonham carter
and um
uh daniel day-lewis
is in it and julian sands
daniel day-lewis is a fascinating
character
he's amazing in this film because he
plays
he's very funny he sort of plays a he's
a comical character which is unlike
most of what he does i think i don't
watch a ton of movies so
um but
yeah he played his his role is funny
well that's a that's a heck of a top
three
uh you you brought me some books some
bread and books
yeah
some russian bread russian inspired
bread
yeah i mean it's latvian but it's
similar to close enough similar to
what's made in russia and it's made at a
russian bakery and your dad is from
right my dad is from latvia yeah
so you got me some books
beautiful ruins yeah and if you never
read them who cares that's totally fine
you know people give you books and then
you feel like
you just
you're i don't you sort of feel like i i
see this is we'll we'll talk about this
this is part therapy session i don't
feel the need
to to satisfy people's happiness that's
a good thing okay so but they it could
also be a
an opportunity to experience something i
never otherwise would have so beautiful
ruins
it's a book that made me laugh and cry
and it's just a happy story and for some
reason i don't know exactly why but for
some reason
um
when you asked me to come first it just
i thought oh i'm gonna bring a copy of
that book
that's you just felt it came the voice
told you yeah there's others darkness
visible these are more a memoir of
madness compelling harrowing a vivid
portrait of a
debilitating disorder it offers the
solace of shared experience the new york
times this is
a little bit
about this book that reminds me of um
the carl
deisseroth book because he
writes about his own condition in um i
mean he's an amazing writer so he writes
about it in this beautiful way and
oddly enough in some ways it's kind of
delightful so it's not at all a
depressing book at least i didn't find
it depressing at all i don't think it is
um but he writes about
his own experience with depression in
such a beautiful way
um my own copy is full of underlines
um i would have loved that copy too i i
would love to look into the underlines
and the and then the books with notes
those little secrets that people leave
part of why i like paper books is
because i underline i tend to underline
like crazy the the carl dice book is
full of underlines too well i do the
same thing on kindle but
um and then you can actually more
effectively go back to the things you've
underlined because you highlight and so
on but in fact when you underline in
on paper
books
you sometimes never go back
which always makes me sad to the book to
the things you've underlined in the
paper books yeah in the paper books oh i
do i go back
yeah i go back a lot do you wonder what
what the heck you were thinking about
when you wrote something
no well sometimes i underline things
that are well also what i do is i have a
whole file in evernote
of
transcribed quotes from books ones that
i want to save so i might underline a
lot of things in a book and then
maybe like a third of them
i want to write them down somewhere
so i i write those down and i think even
the time it takes to transcribe it is
somehow worthwhile it's like searing it
in your brain
and um and you're reliving the memory
having it read it the first time yeah
and then sometimes i'll pick up books i
even um
and sometimes i just underline sentences
that are it's not the content of the
sentence it's more that it's just a
beautifully written sentence or like a
particularly apt metaphor or something
that's that's really nice um
and i like paper books too because i
bought beautiful ruins i would have
never heard of it i don't think except
one of my favorite things is to go to
used bookstores
actually goodwill sometimes has really
good
big book selections and depending on the
area where you go
um sometimes you find a lot of treasures
there
and what ends up happening a lot is i
end up buying books that i know
sometimes also because i lost all my
belongings at one point so i'll very
often buy books that i've already read
just to have them
and um
but then what always ends up happening
is i'll
find
there'll be a couple of books that i buy
that i've never heard of the author i
don't really know anything about i don't
know anything about the book at all but
something drew me to it and
what i like about that is you're buying
you're buying used books so it costs a
dollar or two so if you made a mistake
like no big deal who cares so but every
time i come back with a book haul
there's usually
at least one
gem that i end up loving and i'm so glad
that i read it and beautiful ruins was
that book for me and i was drawn to it
because of the cover art like i just
loved i just loved the cover and the
colors
and um and then i picked it up and read
the bag and and bought it and
um i also feel bad sometimes buying used
books when the author is still alive
because i feel like if you write a book
you should get the
the royalties so um
and but you get to live with that regret
well also i mean i'll usually end up
putting a picture of leon reading the
book online and then other people buy it
and read it and so i feel like i've made
up for make up for it i've made up for
depriving him of the
royalties i used to live
in cambridge massachusetts
i know it well i used to hang out in the
pit in harvard square with my green and
blue hair when i was very way too young
to be doing that by myself
and there's a guy
that i think has been there for a long
time
sort of between
kendall and central
that would just lay out these books and
sell them i always loved that guy
whoever he was
he had a cool hat he's an older
gentleman
and you could just tell he's seen some
things
i don't know who he is i always wanted
to actually
like talked to him for a long time but i
was too afraid
maybe because i wouldn't be able to
handle what he had to tell me i didn't
because i almost wanted to maintain the
innocence of just okay here's this guy
but he's he was so
every time you would ask him a question
about a book first of all he's read all
of them
oh that's interesting which means he's
traveled
quite a few places inside these worlds
and then you would tell him
i would look at a book right
and you just he would catch you being
curious about it and then he would walk
up to you and then he would start
talking about the book and he would
always
forget that you were there he's almost
like
he's not trying to sell you the books
start talking to himself yeah yeah yeah
like almost like an ex-girlfriend he's
visiting through this book or something
did you buy books from him yeah yeah
definitely but the experience of just
just being there because he lays them
out and people actually that watch or
listen to this
probably will be able to tell me what
his name is because i'd love to find
that guy again i'm sure he's still there
maybe he'll have him on the podcast i
would 100 will
uh but this it's almost terrifying
um i'm not sure i can handle
because he's been through some things
i'm not sure if he's homeless or
or just looks like it
yep
that's sometimes a thing
and uh some of my favorite people
either are harmless or look like it so
okay what's the third one
the uh a confession of a sociopath by
m.e thomas a life spent hiding in plain
sight it's a book i recommend a lot um
because i've read a lot about sociopathy
and i've read all the books by
psychologists and um
and this one's written by a woman who
um understands herself that she is a
sociopath and so it's beautifully
written but i learned i learned more
from that book than from any other book
and
i think i thought about it a long time
ago
i think a lot of
conversations you've talked a lot about
good and evil and
you know whether everybody's really good
or
some people are not good
um
and i think sociopathy is that
is something that i think
the world needs to understand much
better and so that that book helped me
understand a lot and it's beautifully
written and she
tackles all the really interesting moral
questions like
um
you know like what if we were able to
definitively
diagnose people in some way like there
was a
you could immediately identify
who's a full-blown sociopath and then
what as a society would you do with them
because in most cases
you know they're just going to cause
destruction and pain and harm and or
potentially rise to power and become
president
or something
um
so it's i just found that book
fascinating
and we'll return
to this idea because it's fascinating
we'll return to human psychology and
human nature but let's go through um
let's go
through the timeline of your life let's
take a stroll
so uh you wrote that the documentary
about you called bad vegan fame fraud
fugitives is not a documentary it got
some things right something's wrong and
some were quote disturbingly misleading
so let's go through and get things right
today
um
first can i give you a whirlwind summary
the way i understand it and also for
context of people
so 2004
you
matthew kenny and jeffrey chattero
open pure foods and wine in new york
city did i say their names correctly
pure food and wine no they're oh theirs
well yeah matthew kenny jeffrey chattaro
yeah yeah so it's uh
and i'll ask about what it takes to
to
to launch and run a restaurant in new
york city that's a fascinating story in
itself so it's an upscale raw food
restaurant
all right that's 2004 2007 you opened
one lucky duck juice and takeaway
and second and third locations in 2009
and 14.
uh all of those things closed
in uh 2016
15 16 15 and 16 okay
all right 2009
jeffrey lends you 2.1 million dollars to
buy the business outright and matthew is
out
matthew was out earlier than that and
then time passed time passed and i had
um
what was complicated is i had started
the one lucky duck brand on my own
um at first it was a com that was doing
like delivery
it was a it was a com where people could
order ingredients and things and all of
the products that we made and packaged
so we made a bunch of cookies and snacks
and things that were i think different
and
if i may say so myself better than other
um strong words products
already yeah but then about the cookies
but i feel like i can brag about our
food and products because
um i wasn't oh you know a few recipes
recipes early on i came up with but it
was
the people that
worked with me that created really good
recipes and products and
i was just kind of there
curating it all or
um helping to
get it out there what was your favorite
thing that you've created maybe yourself
eat
not you created but this whole
all of these efforts have created in
terms of meal
like
you said cookies what are we talking
about that's a hard question um it's
just okay not the favorite but like
something that pops into memory that
brought you joy
the malomar
everybody loved the malamar it was so
very often we made
like raw vegan versions of things that
people are
um familiar with
so it was a
i think it was pecans it was like a
salty
cookie made with nuts and then covered
in chocolate and then there's a big blob
of
coconut cream um i love coconut which it
didn't taste coconutty
um our ice cream was made with a coconut
also it's like the meat from coconuts
pureed
and then there's some soaked cashews in
there but anyways a blob of vanilla
flavored cream kind of like a
a you know like a healthy natural
version of fluff
i don't know if you're familiar with
fluff
basically every single word you say i'm
not familiar with you should see my diet
i don't
it's like steak and vegetables a fluff
is like a thing that i remember it from
my childhood like peanut butter and
fluff is a ridiculously delicious
combination is it fluffy or is it it's
like a marshmallow it's basically like
like if you softened marshmallows and
made it into a
luxurious amazing goose it's like a fan
and then put it in a jar
okay and then they just spreadable it's
spreadable marshmallows kind of oh i see
i think that's yes so spreadable
marshmallows got it yeah so there's a
big blob i didn't know that existed
that's a thing
fluff i know does everyone for you do
people know about this
oh yeah everybody knows
people i mean i think so people know
about fluff and see i think i went
i i took the road less traveled by you
know i went the
the peanut butter and nutella road in
terms of spreadable things nutella is
like the chocolate version
and then fluff is like the vanilla
equivalent sort of cool but i think
commercial fluff that you buy in the
store is just like sugar and whatever
else they put in there
um
anyway not actually fluffy
it's it's kind of fluffy
okay but it's wet because nutella is
it's like fluffy
yeah it's it so it's like nutella if you
whipped it and then kind of got a little
bit like
a little bit aerated so it's a bit more
fluffy so fluff was a part of the
formula here so it was fun but so the
the coconut cream
that we made
was like a healthy version of fluff
oh kind of nice except it would you know
you could make a
quenelle like a like a little scoop of
it and it would stay in that form
malomars were refrigerated and then
there's like chocolate
um drizzled over that so it had that
like salty sweet thing going on um that
was probably my favorite
that's a dessert
yeah it was like a it was like a dessert
snack it wasn't as you wouldn't order it
on the restaurant menu but in the
takeaway you could get them or sometimes
some people would get them um
shipped on dry ice and pay a lot of
money
like a lot of money to have them shipped
on dry ice
people are funny i know i kind of want
to like name drop because it was tom
brady used to order them oh that's
awesome yeah they would order those
shipped um on ice
to boston
um
yeah
continuing on
in 2011 you meet anthony strangers on
twitter and then in real life
also around this time
i think before you got your rescue dog a
pit bull named leon
yeah 2011 2010. do you remember um it
was september
so because i think he was born roughly
around march i gave him a designated
birthday
of march 10th 2010. why is that why why
march 10th i wrote about the story of
adopting him on my
website a long time ago and then i
reposted it here on my current website
and um what happened
i got weirdly obsessed with
leon before he was leon he was a a dog
in a shelter named quinn
and um i couldn't stop thinking about
him and him specifically him
specifically you saw him and there's
something very special about him i was
trying to convince somebody else to
adopt a dog
so and i alec baldwin yeah and it didn't
occur to me that i like how you didn't
name drop him but you know i'm tom brady
i like it um
so
i was trying to convince him to get a
dog cause i thought you know he should
have a dog
i saw leon's picture and just got
weirdly obsessed with it in a way that i
couldn't really explain and um i was
laying in bed one night and thinking i
just couldn't stop thinking about him
um
the dog and
the paper or the his description in the
shelter bio said that he was roughly
five months old or however whatever it
gave us his age i went back and
it would have been march 20
would have been march of that year that
he was born
and um
i had a cat that i was particularly
attached to
i had two cats brother and sister but
the the boy cat we had sort of like a
something that felt like a
you know like we'd look at each other
and
like there was something there i don't
know what it was but um and in fact when
he got sick i i knew it before he even
had any symptoms it was like something
in the way that he looked at me i knew
something was wrong
and then
uh was it friendship was it
like uh was their power dynamic
cats seem to not really
give a fuck yeah they seem to dismiss
you
usually yeah your your entire worth as a
human being right in a single look
was that there or um he was more
dog-like
he would occasionally fetch like this
little styrofoam thing i had he would
fetch it and bring it back and he was um
friendly and you know if somebody came
over you would jump in their lap um
he was less standoffish than most cats
but there was just something
about the way he would look at me i
don't know and i
maybe
probably in his mind he's just a cat
i give him food whereas in my mind it's
some kind of you know
great soul connection
great but not enough long-running uh
romance not in his kitty mind but either
way so he died in march and i thought um
so
i sort of concocted this
i just thought
um you know that well if he died and
he died on march 10th and so i thought
well maybe leon was born that same day
and that's why
that's why i'm so drawn to him
i don't know
that that mean okay that makes sense but
then you just found that like sort of
when you saw him you just like there's
something it was this picture yeah oh
the picture and you were drawn something
about the personality in the eyes
it was something about his picture i
don't know what it was and um
and
everybody at the time was like what are
you thinking why would you get a dog you
can't you know
you can't even take care of yourself
you're overworked and busy and why would
you get a five-month-old
pitbull mix you know why not get an
older dog that's easier to take care of
and
um for me it was like i don't i don't
want any dog i don't want
my intention isn't to get a dog but
there's something about this dog that i
have to get and so
i went to see him
um
and then i had already filled out an
application it was just
i went to see him and then i it was the
afternoon
and i
sort of decided in my head like all
right i'm coming back to get him i have
to and so the next morning i got on the
subway i went back to get him um and i
was crying on the subway and i remember
thinking that people
i don't like crying in public i cry a
lot but i don't like crying in front of
other people
and um i love it
i thought people on the train looking at
me probably think that
you know i just somebody died or sorry
you're crying on the way there on the
way back on the way there to get him
yeah i don't and i don't know why i was
crying it was just something about it
was overwhelming so
tortillas of happiness or tears of
something something i yeah i think tears
are
overwhelming i
i know i'm like
jumping off but
there was some i don't know i'm trying
was it in your conversation or the book
carl diceroff talks about tears of joy
and trying to explain them and he said
something about how it was like
about
you know because tears of sadness
could
be understood in a having like a
evolutionary purpose um but why tears of
joy and i think he said it was something
about like
hope that could be
like lost
so if you cried at a wedding it might be
like you're crying because their love is
beautiful and you're crying because you
know they could get hit by a bus
tomorrow or something you know like it
had something to do with that and i
thought um
but i thought to me it feels like
overwhelm because then how would that
explain music because music will make me
cry
because it's
it's anything beautiful
like love
you realize you're going to have it's
going to be over one day
or it's just overwhelming it could be
overwhelming i think it's just
overwhelming but over it could like if
you had to explain
like one way to explain it as you're
saying is
it's so awesome
that it breaks your heart that it's
gonna be over this feeling is going to
be over
the
either it's the song or the person
you're going to lose them one day
but even when you're just watching
something that this is completely
ridiculous but i remember one time i
probably was hormonal or something but
it was like an episode of family feud
years ago and the
fam oh no
um
wheel of fortune it was wheel of fortune
and some family like won all this money
and they were so happy like it just they
were so happy they must probably needed
the money or something and i started
crying and i'm thinking
why am i crying but i think it's just i
think it's just like an overwhelming i
think it's overwhelming in some way on
the surface
because is a relief like you feel better
after you cry
but that's not doesn't explain the
crying you feel better after you cry
and you're saying it's overwhelming but
that's on the surface
the question is what's going on
underneath that's
the younging shadow and i don't think
neither you or i can answer that
question right but there's something
going on there's probably something that
touches you in some specific way yeah um
and so you were crying in the subway
so i was crying in the subway very it's
a very new york thing to do
yeah i well that's one of the things i
love about new york is people you can
be weird and
do strange things and nobody's going to
look at you strangely or the fascinating
thing about new york is super crowded
and yet you can still feel super alone
but also energized because a lot of
other things and places
will make me feel depleted but there's
something about the energy of new york
specifically that feels energizing
i mean everybody is
going up about their day excited for a
future they're building and so on and
that that could be energy
sure
it could be overwhelming though
it can be yeah i mean also depending on
what neighborhood
and what part well i'm just talking
about the subway
right yeah and then there's the
musicians
i love new york new york at his best is
a special place i've never lived but
every time i visit
it's so many characters so many
fascinating people yeah and and then
there's a bunch of people always crying
in the subway and you're one of those
people i was one of those people one day
yeah so i befriended some
busking musicians like the the guys that
just
play out on the street these two young
guys playing guitar and i felt like it
was one of those moments where it was
like handed camera because nobody was
paying attention and i thought it was
like
i was so beautiful i may have cried or
almost cried or um but anyway i ended up
becoming friends with them and um
helping them out in some ways and um and
i knew i was like well they're gonna
do really well
um
and now they're like playing
large places and
it's kind of fun to watch via instagram
you know they're going on tour in europe
and they were these two
scrappy guys well now it's just one of
the guys and
um
but they had like no money nowhere to
live nothing
and um another
and they didn't quit they're on tour no
persisted
yeah exactly so um but i cried on the
subway and i got there and um he was
there and i adopted him but it just felt
very
profoundly
um like a force that was beyond me
like i couldn't not get him so he was
the same in person as he was in the
picture
like meaning in terms of like
something
like pulling you towards him like
something yeah when i first met him the
day before he was really distracted
which i think is
um
you know he is a puppy that spends most
of his day in a cage which is not
natural so when i
think let him they let me take him for a
walk and he was kind of you know
distracted and all over the place but
then
when we put him back in the cage
he sort of lay down and looked at me and
i looked back at him and of course i
imagined all kinds of i just looked at
him and i thought all right i'm don't
worry i'm coming back to get you like
i'll i'll get you
so
um
yeah it just
it felt like um
it felt like something that i i had no
choice that i had to do and that was the
beginning of a 12-year
journey together an ongoing an ongoing
one but so i wrote about these things on
my website and um and i think it was you
know among the many things that was
later weaponized by
um
anthony strange's
just oh the fact that because i was so
open to heart about it yeah and also
just it's not like i believe that he was
you know that i was just expressing my
feelings about how i felt going to get
him that there was something about
leon and specifically that i it was like
i felt like i had to get him so
um is there words you can put to your
connection with leon
like is it love
is it
friendship is it
some kind of like what is it
or or are we getting to the crying and
being overwhelmed something you just
can't put words to
yeah it's probably something that's hard
to put words to kind of like i sort of
feel like
love being something that's hard to
define is part of
is the definition of love the fact that
you can't define it you know the moment
you define it you're no longer talking
about love
sort of something like that um
so well my definition of love is
whatever's going on in true romance yeah
i don't know
let me fly through the timeline
before we get to any of the interesting
details so
in 2011 you meet anthony stranges then
in 2012 you to get married
uh 2015
the staff walk out due to failure to pay
from the two restaurants
it reopens in april of 2015 and july of
that year there's another walkout and so
on there's
all this kind of confusing timeline
well it's not to me that's not even
the point is in 2015 there's
chaos happening okay uh 2016 in the
spring pure foods and wine closes closed
in um
2015 2015. okay
there's some factual stuff that's not
yeah maybe correct man to me it's not
that important to me the spirit of the
thing is important
okay may 12
2016 you and your then husband anthony
strange's were arrested after he ordered
pizza using his real name okay in may
2017 you pleaded guilty to stealing more
than two million dollars from investors
and
scheming to defraud as well as this is
from wikipedia
yeah wrong
well let me just finish reading it and
then you tell me why it's wrong in may
2017 you pleaded guilty to stealing more
than two million dollars from investors
and scheming to defraud as well as
criminal tax fraud charges why is
wikipedia wrong and how dare you
well it's about i mean i did plead
guilty to those things which um
i had to oh i was
i got a jury duty summons and i had to
fill out like what charges i pled guilty
to um and i had to go online and look it
up because i didn't
really remember which is i thought that
was interesting
i had to go look it up but actually let
me finish the time because there's one
more point oh yeah
march 16th 2022
bad vegan documentary comes out
where you're interviewed
does they tell the story
some stuff is true sometimes some is not
some is disturbingly misleading as you
said okay timeline over anyway what
what's wrong with the um
how would you elaborate onto the you
pleading guilty for two million dollars
stealing so a lot of people plead guilty
when they're for reasons other than
they're actually guilty
so you know it's
even right now if i knew that i was
gonna have to spend four months or three
and a half
um
at rikers
and i was thinking about this recently
and even if i knew
that i'd be acquitted at the end of a
trial
i very
likely would have just taken the four
months because
um
you know the stress of going through a
trial but in particular be incredibly
stressful not knowing the outcome um and
then money and expense i didn't have and
so
you know people plead guilty all the
time even if they don't think that they
that they should um
and my situation was so complicated
and hard to understand
that it just was the easier thing to do
but also i just was kind of going on the
advice of lawyers and um
so the the choice just so i understand
was to plead guilty
or to go through a lengthy trial
and that trial
would stretch
a long time and it would be extremely
stressful and extremely expensive
because you have to pay the lawyers
right and i didn't have anything
right
and so a lot of people in that situation
might choose to plead guilty and so that
doesn't necessarily mean
the full heaviness of that statement of
guilt
right and i think people plead guilty
all the time in situations where they're
being threatened with uh
like a heavy sentence um
and they sort of feel like they have no
choice but that's kind of part of
a lot of things that are messed up about
the system overall that didn't
necessarily apply in my case but
so we'll talk about to what degree
you're guilty
and what that even means yeah
yeah
it because it depends on
intention i think
um
yeah yeah but then the word intention
also means a lot of things like the word
love
that's true
um all right so the restaurant closed
the first time
when i was away and told to be
off communication
um
and then i by anthony yes
and then
um he told you not to talk to anybody he
told me not to like open email or look
at my phone or whatever
um and so when i
came back
and
had to get it reopen which seemed like
an unbelievably difficult
task and i was kind of shocked that i
was able to pull it off
um you know i worked incredibly hard to
get it reopened
and
you know
because that placement
meant everything to me and so i just
like i just had to get it reopened are
you surrounded by people that were just
angry at you
at that time not well
just the staff and all that yeah but
most of them came back a lot of them
came back i think what was so
unbelievably painful about that whole
time
um was like not being able to tell
anybody what was really going on and in
a sense not really knowing what was
going on myself but not
being able to like having to pretend all
the time was just
like
so you didn't really tell anybody about
uh anthony about him and what was really
going on in part because i didn't really
understand what was going on yeah so
what i did was i raised money to reopen
the restaurant and i think i raised
something like
eight
maybe like 900 grand
and probably 90 of that went to reopen
the restaurant
um and i even made two um
sales tax payments
right before we disappeared
so it just sort of logically seemed
like so i didn't it's not like
all of this money was taken and then he
and i ran off together with a whole
bunch of money
it was like i raised a bunch of money to
reopen the restaurant
you know because i wanted the restaurant
to exist again
and i wanted to you know i wanted to run
it i wanted to reopen the restaurant and
most of that money went to reopen the
restaurant
and then i disappeared
so
um
sort of the the timeline gets a bit
wonky so it's you know this impression
was created that
we ran off with a whole bunch of money
and we didn't so you know if i wanted
to be a criminal and steal a bunch of
money
why would i have put it all back into
the restaurant and reopened it and then
also made
two ten thousand dollar sales tax
payments that i didn't you know
and i also repaid um
you know ten thousand dollars of another
loan i'm you know i was making
repayments and stuff and then boom i
disappear so is your mind
going through a roller coaster here
so could there be multiple use there so
one one mind is like i love this
restaurant i'm going to reopen it i'm
this
um chef business owner
this person and then the other the other
is a human that's in this
uh complicated love affair
it wasn't a love affair okay
these are just words how can i okay what
i don't want to uh lo i say that lightly
uh but also not
because love can make us do
dark things and you can say that's not
love but
okay
the thing that traps us the things that
pulls us in to a connection with another
human being
that's love even when it's abusive and
dark and toxic and all those kinds of
things
in some cases i think like if it's
voluntary but in other cases um somebody
pulls you in
so it's not like you're drawn towards
them they they pull you in so just to
clarify even when it's not physical when
it's when the pull is with words
so it's emotional yeah
okay
where is your mind when you
raise
eight to nine hundred thousand dollars
to open the restaurant
working your ass off to open this thing
okay
making payments and then all of a sudden
disappearing
what where was your mind
um if you had a lengthy conversation
with carl dice roth
in privacy what would you be telling him
as your therapist
i would
probably be asking him questions okay no
i don't get carl as part of this well
actually i have more questions for
andrew hueberman because you know i i've
had to investigate all of these things
myself like dissociation
um
and even
there's a psychologist who believes that
he must have used neuro-linguistic
programming on me which is something
that keith rainery from the nexium cult
he was known to have used that with
people
um and i think neuro-linguistic
programming is kind of the same as
like a sort of like hypnotism
the only reason i know about what nlp is
is because in in what i do there's
something called natural language
processing artificial intelligence stuff
so it has the same
uh like three letters right
uh what was the other thing that nlp
neuro-linguistic linguistic
yeah
anyway
all right well uh we we talked about
andrew
my friend andrew hubermann offline and
you definitely you should do a podcast
with him uh he's a he's a fascinating
he's such a
brilliant and kind human being uh
definitely worth talking to yeah i've
listened to a lot of
a lot of us and you said that
you listen to a lot of his instructions
on getting light
in the morning or whatever during the
day it's very important for your
mental like there's all these kinds of
studies it's good for your for your mind
for your oh and also the other thing
that he got me to do is to try to delay
having coffee so instead of having
coffee right when you wake up i always
drink a lot of water first yeah but then
um instead of having coffee right away
if you wait an hour or an hour and a
half or two hours
then your body is able to
naturally do something that drinking
coffee too soon would sort of blunt that
so then you'll be more tired in the
afternoon
so if you wait an hour and a half or two
hours or as long you know before you
have your first cup of coffee then you
won't be as tired in the afternoon
interesting um there's a lot of does it
work
yes one coffee addict talking to another
coffee addict yes it works and so i try
to get up and do other things first um
before i have coffee
um
so and the light thing also makes a lot
of sense to me um
getting light early in the morning i
have a one of those bright light boxes
um and i would
love to have an apartment that had a
little deck or something where i could
just step outside because when you live
in an apartment you kind of have to like
go all the way outside and then there's
people everywhere and so to get that
early morning light isn't that hard to
do when you're are people good for you
or bad for you what does andrew humor
say about that i'm just kidding it's a
joke okay okay so moving back to where
was your mind that led you to disappear
to uh did you guys go to vegas first and
then tennessee no i kind of refer to it
as like the road trip from hell
it's a very hunter s thompson way to
describe it
right you went back to the back country
maybe it was sort of hunters
thompson-esque except
without actual
drugs
um
that was one of the first questions my
father asked me was was it drugs and i
wished that i could have said yes yeah
because i didn't know how to explain
what had happened
um
but
so really took me away
involuntarily except you know of course
he wasn't holding a gun to my head but
all along it was like a metaphorical gun
was there ever physical abuse
um
no
what would qualify as sexual abuse yes
um but physically no
a couple of times we would get into
slightly physical fights but he never um
i mean he was
big and as
large and blubbery
as he was
he was he was also really strong so
sometimes he would like subdue me but
other than that no there wasn't physical
violence but a lot of people will say
that um
the
psychological violence is
um
i don't want to diminish physical
violence but some people say that the
psychological and emotional violence is
more destructive
it's just that the physical violence is
easier to identify teacher identify and
and it seems kind of more
straightforward
whereas psychological you know and you
have a bruise on your face or you break
a bone and those things hopefully heal
in a visible way
but
psychological stuff
you know
you can't
easily identify or understand or others
can't easily identify it and then you
find yourself crying for no reason at a
beautiful song at some point yes and
it's that that has to do something
happening in the depth
of your mind okay so he took you away
but where was the i mean where was your
mind that was doing both of those things
was able to be taken away
but also was pushing to the
the the
flourishing the reopening and the
flourishing the restaurant
well you know i wouldn't have reopened
the restaurant with and then knowing i
was gonna all of a sudden be taken away
from it and it was gonna get cl