Yeah, definitely. Well, speaking of which, you're looking on your social media saw a lot of, you know, great videos and different, you know, pictures from your trip there, which were great. And the people should should check out one particular that caught my eye. And got everyone's eye was the the maggot cheese. There's something about that. What's what God's name was that about?

So this is insane because it's called the Guinness Book of World's Records, labeled it the most dangerous cheese in the world. I think I'm like 96 or something. It's a cheese called Casio Matsu. It's a pecorino. It's a sheep's milk cheese. And there's a few cheeses in the world, not many. There's a there's a mite cheese in Germany. And there's there's a cup of not many where you invite insects into the cheese making process. But in most cases, you do everything you can to keep them out. But in this particular case, when you make this pecorino cheese, a sheep's milk cheese, there's a stage where you put little divots in the top. Now, the pecorino has a smell that this particular fly loves. The flies that produce these maggots loves this. So they're already attracted to the cheese, but they create an opportunity for these flies to lay their eggs in the cheese. And then the cheese, sorry, the eggs hatch. And then you have these these maggots. And the maggots then proceed to go into the cheese and eat the cheese and digest the cheese. And I know this sounds crazy. But if anybody likes brie or camembert, for example, it's the exact same process, but it's using molds instead of insects. So what happens when you make a camembert or a bridge, you make this wheel of cheese, and you have this this mold on the outside. And what that mold does is it literally digest the cheese from the inside out. And that's why it gets soft and gets that stronger flavor and that stronger aroma, because it's doing the same thing as you have these microorganisms digesting this cheese. Well, what's happening with the casu marzu is you have these maggots that just like an earthworm through the soil go in and consume the soil. And it comes out the other end a little bit changed, which is really good for farmers when this happens, they go in and they literally eat this cheese. It goes through their digestive tracts. One of the primary things that they do is they break down the fats through some kinds of enzymes that they have in their body. And it makes a really strong flavor and aroma with the final cheese, because these fats have been changed after they go through their bodies. And you can eat this cheese in one of two ways. One, with the maggots still crawling all over it, which is the most popular way to do it, or you can wait till the maggots turn into, you know, they turn into adult flies and it literally fly away and there's none left in the cheese. But I do understand that it is one of the benefits of eating the cheese when it's still covered in maggots is the presence of those live maggots on the cheese is an indicator of the quality and the safety of the cheese itself. Like if the maggots were dead, you know, the maggots eat that cheese and are sick or dying or slow or whatever, then you know, something's wrong with the cheese. Years ago, we were visiting family, long lost family in Campania in Italy, which is the area where that mozzarella comes from. And we didn't even know that they made cheese. And it turns out that Mike, like third cousin or whatever, has his own sheep and he actually makes casu version of casu in Marzu. But it was obviously on the mainland. It wasn't in Sardinia. And he gave us all a little piece. And I had no idea what it was over there. And then maggots come on our hands. The kids are like ready to kill me, but they're eating it. But this was a proper we sat down and had this cheese. And I have to tell you, Anthony, it was so, it was so strong. It was so incredibly strong. Like, if you've ever had a piece of provolone that's like really aged pecante shark provolone, it was that on steroids. But soft and you spread it in the maggots are there. I enjoyed the experience, but it wasn't as good as the intestines and intestines. And would you try it? If you were there, you

would have tried it. Yeah, maybe. Maggot poop cheese. I don't know. I'm just thinking that, you know, being very, you know, G rated with it. Well, you know, they eat it and it goes through their body. And it's just like, yes, they defecate it out and poop it. So it's maggot poop, you know, and it's a, you know, digested, digested cheese. And but I think that's absolutely hilarious. The, you know, the, that's the funniest thing. You all, I was trying to think about how they how they figured these things out. You know, it's probably an accident, right? Those flies are really attracted to that cheese. They're trying to keep it away. And then all of a sudden, they didn't do a good job. They have maggots on it. Somebody's probably just so hungry that they're like, I got to eat this. And they ate it. And they're like, yeah, it's not that bad. I actually prefer that, you know, and I didn't die. So, you know, maybe we'll do that again on purpose next time.

It is illegal. It is actually illegal to sell. It is illegal to transport that cheese. You can't bring it into the US. You can't bring in other parts of the EU. And suppose it's like a 50,000 euro fine if you're caught selling that cheese, which is insane. And the fact that it's got this label most in out, whether it's something that is, you know, exciting to your pleasing to your palate is a different story. But as far as danger is concerned, there is nothing dangerous about it. And what I wrote in a recent blog post, you want to talk about dangerous cheese and American cheese is dangerous. She will definitely making sick over time. This one is, you know, maybe your head would make it sick, but is it completely different?

Yeah, I probably would try it. And you know, I do like trying like, you know, traditional local things. I probably would try it. I don't know if I tried again, but I would do sort of, I think, you know, went in Rome, you just sort of have to have to try it. The maggots, I don't know. Honestly, I think that that's a bonus for me. At least it's some, you know, animal protein, stuff like that. So, you know, and you bring that with it. So, I don't know. Could you take, I mean, I don't want to get too graphic here, but could you could you taste the maggots that changed the flavor for you a bit?

No, I could definitely taste the change in the cheese because of the maggots. But the fact that the maggots were there is more of visual thing than anything else. You didn't really even know they were there.

Did you get a chance to try the cheese without that process going on to see what it was like before

that? Sort of because it's the same exact everywhere we went, they were making, even in everybody in their houses were making pecorino, geez, almost everybody, but everybody we were with was making it themselves. So, yes, because it's the same exact cheese that they introduced them to. So, and really, if you have a young pecorino, not like pecorino Romano that you get at the store that's super hard and you can grate it, the early younger version of that before it goes through that process is exactly what it would have been without it. Nice firm, it probably would have, say, like a cheddar texture before it

goes through the maggot process. Which one would you prefer? Premagnet or Post-Maggot? Oh,

pre-maggot. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Very similar. The other thing, and this is important to everywhere we went, when I was in public Georgia where I filmed the Great Human Race, one of the things I thought was brilliant was that everybody who drank wine still made their own wine. I mean, even in the cities, they said that somebody 90% of the people still make their own wine, they have these big clay things that they bury in the yards or keep in their basement depending on what their house or living situation is like. They all made it, and that's that region still holds the record for the earliest wine in the world, and they've carried on this tradition. When we were in Sardinia, and I know this is very similar in parts of Sicily and other parts of Italy, you see this, but it was really apparent in Sardinia, everybody made their own cheese. Like, he was there in the house, and they did sell it in the stores for sure, but they got it in the house. When they made bread, everybody made the bread, everybody was butchering their pigs, but what I found fascinating is, first off, they weren't asking questions about their own food. They weren't asking other people, the healthiest or the longest living people in the world, the population, don't hire an nutritionist to tell them how to eat, because they have this direct connection to their food, very traditional food. This is how they make it. This is where it comes from. They have the sheep, they have the goats, they have the pigs, they have all of these things, and they're all doing it themselves. So there's nobody else involved with adulterating their food or putting preservatives in or messing up a process or whatever, they all knew it. And they all made whatever kind of cheese they were making. And with the way that was left over, ricotta cheese, if you look up, if you Google how to make ricotta cheese, the first 99 recipes for it are going to tell you to get a gallon of milk, put it in a pot, add a little, heat it up to 200 degrees Fahrenheit, add a little bit of lemon juicer, vinegar, and then you make the ricotta cheese. In fact, I just saw a video of somebody who, and it was a very well done video, and she goes out and she's milking her own cow, and she brings the milk, and she, I'm going to show you how to make ricotta cheese, and she does that. That is not ricotta cheese. Ricotta in Italian, ricotta, means to recook. So when you make ricotta cheese, you make cheese, take the pecorino, or whatever, you could take the cheese, whatever, I put it over here, and what's left is the way, and it's still full of whey proteins, and that's what you heat up, and ricotta cheese is literally nothing but whey protein just about. And it's a completely different texture, completely different nutritional profile, completely different experience eating this. And I feel really bad because most people have ricotta cheese and butter from the store are not eating the same food. But the reason I'm bringing it up is because recently, we did an event here and somebody came, and we make all of our cheese here, and we make that same kind of ricotta. And one of the women there said, I haven't had cheese in 10 years. And I said, why not? She says, I'm allergic to cheese. I said, are you allergic or are you lactose and tolerance? She goes, no, no, no, no, I'm allergic. And if you're allergic, it's easy to a protein. And I said, what are you allergic to? She said, the casein and milk has casein and whey proteins in it. And the casein is taken out when you make most cheeses. So she hasn't had cheese because almost all cheese has casein in it. And I said, well, you can have ricotta. And she said, well, I know, I can't. I said, no, real ricotta doesn't have casein in it. It only has the whey proteins. And it was the first time she said cheese in like 10 years, was I thought it was nice.

Yeah, so you made it for her the proper way in your kitchen.

Yeah, we make it anyhow every week. So we had it already. But yeah, we offered a tour and she got that. Oh, that's really good. And she didn't die. So it's even better. That's good. Yeah, that's even better. Absolutely.

Well, it's great. It's so good to hear that. I mean, we intellectually, understand that the Blue Zone studies really just editorialization was not only, well, it's not even cherry picked. It's just very bastardized information and changing things around. And saying that people in Sardinia only eat meat once a week. I mean, I'm sure they could have just seen very clearly like that. They eat every single day, but we're going to run with that and say they only eat meat once a week or mostly plant-based and things like that. It's nice to get confirmation of that because not everyone is able to go to Sardinia and see that straight away and you can have people saying, well, no, actually, that's not really the traditional thing. But it's like, well, how do you know? Well, I was there. I saw it. And so that's what they do. So it's great that you have that experience. How long did that take you to set up to getting all the pieces in place and getting that trip put together? Was that

what? It took several years. Yeah. And was

that purely just for your own interests? Or was that researching for a book or another project? Or what was

that for? Well, I'm working on, I'm actually working on a book that looks at traditional processing of animals around the world. But the part of what we're doing through the food lab is continuing to conduct research with ethnographic research, with living cultures, living groups, living communities that have longstanding traditions on how they approach food, especially from a technological perspective, so that we can document and record it and make that information available. And most importantly, be able to use that not only in discussions like this, but in transforming how we're approaching things in our food system today. So that was a pointed trip primarily. And that's why we wanted to record how to make that egg cornbread, because it literally is a dying tradition that has never been fully documented. And we wanted to make sure that we were able to preserve that. But years ago, when I started looking in the Sardini and I just looking at their traditional foods, oh my god, I mean, there's some traditional foods in Sardini that people go to experience, like they make this pasta that they stretch so thin, it's like hair, and a particular kind of flat bread and these other things, which are traditional in the sense of hundreds or in some cases, maybe even thousands of years. But what I was really focused on is, you know, what were they doing for tens of thousands of years or even longer? So that's the reason we were there. But there's a second reason I'm glad you brought up people going to Sardini. We had an inkling when we were putting this this trip together that it was going to be something special. And we wanted to start laying the groundwork to be able to take people there in the future. So the idea is, and I'm hoping we can do it as early as next year, but it might be two years out that we can, that we're going to run a trip, or we're bringing, you know, 10 or 12 people to experience a lot of the same things. In fact, a lot of the same people we were with to be able to do that. And I think being able to bring people who are really interested in that kind of eating to an actual blue zone to experience what they're actually eating would be a really, really cool thing. So we're laying the groundwork for that.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, that's great. Well, well, let me know when you're doing it, because I'm going your first trip. That'd be awesome. Yeah, well, that's great. Well, thank you so much for sharing all that with us. That was absolutely amazing. It's an amazing experience. I hate that I wasn't able to go. Unfortunately, it just couldn't break away from the prison island that is Australia. So I wasn't able to make it. What other projects and things you have going on at the moment?

We've got a couple of things going on. So first off, we're always expanding down here. Anybody ever is in the area to come visit us, either take a class or see what we're doing as a food lab or downstairs at the restaurant. We are only about an hour from Washington, D.C., an hour and a half from Philadelphia, and about two, two and a half hours from New York City. So even though we're in this little world, really cute, kind of separated area, we're not that far from some of the major cities. So put it on your travel plans. We'd love to have you. But we are looking, we're hopefully doing a huge research trip in the winter, going up to the Arctic Circle in the middle of the winter to be spent time with the sommie, the reindeer herders up there. What they do with animals is absolutely amazing. Their approach to reindeer and the way that they literally eat every single part of the reindeer is fantastic. And one of the things we're looking at is not only traditional butchering and cooking practices of reindeer, but also this really interesting interplay between the traditional ways that very much are ethical and sustainable and respectful of animals and nutrition and all of that. And the modern resistance to that and kind of being ahead of that as commercialized and industrialized to meet system. So one of the women that we're going to spend time with is lives up at the Arctic Circle. It's very, you know, very remote reindeer herder and traditional butchering and practices. But she also is a commercial butcher for reindeer to supply to shops in Oslo. So that sommie, traditional sommie that have now migrated to cities have access to some of their traditional foods. But the fascinating part is she's running up against the laws. Don't let her butcher slaughter and butcher the animals in a traditional way. And these sommie who have been raised on eating the entire animal their entire life can get their traditional food in the cities because of these laws. So and now we're doing a lot of work with that. We're super excited, super excited for that. And next week we leave for Ireland. And the following week we're running our first kind of food culture history prehistory tour where we have we have 12 people going across Ireland and looking at prehistory earliest examples of daring in the world earliest examples of butter eating all kinds of amazing food. And so we're hoping that goes really

well. Nice. Well, I'm sure. And

when is that sorry? That trip is so the family leaves next week and it's a week after. So it's like

August 7th of the 13th something like that. Oh, great. All right. Well, you might you might still catch some of the some of the weather in Ireland don't I mean you you've been there. So there's about there's about a week of good weather. Some of it's in September and getting into August. Yeah, sort of sort of the role of the dice. We'll see.

Yeah, I know. Although there's been a little heat wave up that way, I think,

right? Well, really. Yeah, well, they had a cold snap as well. A couple of years ago, they had like six feet of snow and doubling.

Right. Well, the one year we live there, we had two snowstorms. They said it was unheard of. And actually, the airports were shut down both days. I was actually trapped in in England, one of the one of those trips. But yeah, it's weather's been crazy lately even there.

Yeah, yeah, I remember when I went there in 2009, 2010, that first winter, it was it was the worst winter in 92 years, they said. And and it was so cold that the the water mains froze and broke in part of Dublin. And there was like there's you know, the water wasn't potable in certain areas and you had to be really careful about, you know, the drinking water and things like that in certain areas. So yeah, and then the next year, it's snowed probably just as much as not more. And then yeah, I don't know sort of sort of a bit milder after that. And then yeah, out of nowhere, just this like six feet of snow. I don't think I ever I only ever gotten that you know, past the average, you know, yeah. Yeah. Well, hopefully, yeah, hopefully the weather's good for you though. Have you ever thought about documenting some of these trips? I mean, that would be like, you know, getting like a film crew to come in with you up to the, you know, up to the Arctic Circle or to start Dinea and things like that. I mean, that would that would be amazing. I a lot of people would watch that. You

know, we've talked about it and I really, really, really want to do that. And that was the idea we started talking about that with one of the guys, actually a good friend of mine now was one of the directors for the Great Human Race. And we're working on it. We're just we're just looking for the funding because it's some of these experiences are not only unique and powerful, but they're they're it's getting more difficult to find people that are still eating such traditional ways. And a lot of these things are and I would love to share that as much as possible. So yeah, we're really we're working on that. And I think we're going to be able to make that happen for the sami. I'll tell you it was interesting for Sardinia, we it took me a long time to make the context and and making inroads to be able to do this to be with the people we were with. And I mentioned about bringing a film crew and it was met with a little bit of resistance and it was some of the people I contacted. And look, they knew nothing about me. They had no idea what my intentions were. They had no idea, you know, what I was going into do is I think in some cases they had some probably some bad experiences with film crews and their messages getting kind of bastardized when it was sent out. So I was a little bit of resistance and I backed off and I said, look, I'd rather make sure I got in there and got the genuine experience than we filmed something that was of a lesser, you know, level. And it turned out, but I was a little bit nervous, to be honest, because I had a little bit of that resistance, like, you know, what is my experience and my family's experience going to be like when we get here. And everybody as soon as they realized that we were there to learn from them and champion, you know, their what what they were doing, every wide open, you know, completely opened up. So there is that little bit of, you know, that balancing act of, you know, going in there and what does bringing a film crew prevent happening experiences wise versus what looking at what can it document. But the contacts ever made with the Psalmy, I think that was part of the original idea. So I'm really hoping we could bring a film crew with us for sure. Yeah,

yeah, well, it'd be great. And you know, and you do have the inroads now. So maybe, maybe something for the future. Maybe that can be a six part Netflix series on traditional ways of living, coming forward, which we pretty bad ass. And also, like, you know, I totally agree, like documenting and, and, you know, thoroughly, and thoroughly documenting those traditional ways of, you know, making the acorn bread, doing these different sorts of things that there are going to be lost. Otherwise, you're just three old women, they know how to make this acorn bread, right? You know, you need to you need to preserve that. I think that's important. Even though I'm not going to eat the bread, I think it's important to preserve that, that, you know, that, you know, that technique and those that that are craft. So, you know, good on you. And hopefully, hopefully, we'll see that that on air one day.

And we got to get to Australia soon, because you and I have to eat a witchy girl together.

Yes, we do. Absolutely. That's actually a very good point. So, yes, because, yeah, I was, I was talking, you know, I guess I had on here sort of lives out bush and, and we're going to wait for the rainy season to get over or through. And that's, that's probably coming up. So, might have to, might have to, I'll make tracks and see, see if I can, you know, sort of do the leg work for you. And then when it's all set up, you know, bring you down and work hang out and eat some

grubs. It sounds good.

And take out some kangaroos. And that was another thing that's the guy I mentioned before that, you know, chases down animals, hunts them by running them down. It's pretty amazing. He says, well, this is who you're talking about when I saw, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So that you just chases them down at, he said, they all sort of just give up after about a kilometer. They're just like, nope, that's it. And he just, and sometimes he does like, you know, catch and release, you know, endurance hunting, just chase him down, catch him, hold him, be like, all right, there you go. Another time to eat, you know, he does actually eat them, but, but he does it sometimes just for sport as well. So that'll be interesting. So I'll have to check that out and let you know. Okay. Absolutely. Yeah. Great. All right. Well, Bill, it's been absolutely great to see you again. Wonderful to hear about your trip to Sardinia and, and the actual story about the Blue Zones. Where can people get a hold of you and find your stuff?

Awesome. So we can anything related to the, my research or teaching and all that, you can find it. Eat like a human dot com. And I'm on Instagram at at dr. Bill Schindler. So at Dr. Bill Schindler. And then the Modern Sonnage Kitchen is on the internet at modernsonagekitchen.com. And same thing, you can follow the Modern Sonnage Kitchen on Instagram at Modern Sonnage Kitchen.

Awesome. We'll put all that up in the description and everyone can find, find you there and great to see you work and hopefully see more in the future.

Always great to see you. Thank you so much for having me.

You too, Maggie. Have a good day. You too. Hey guys, thank you very much for taking the time out to listen to what I had to say. If you like it, then please like and subscribe to my YouTube channel and podcast. And if you're on YouTube, then please hit that little bell and subscribe. And that'll let you know any time I have a new video out, which should be every week, if not more. And if you could share this with your friends, that would help me get the word out and let me know that you like what I'm doing. Thanks again, guys.