Andrew Rea

On this week’s episode, Ilana sits down with Andrew Rea, the self-made YouTuber behind two of the platform’s largest and most influential cooking shows—BINGING WITH BABISH and BASICS WITH BABISH—claiming over 10.5 million subscribers. Andrew shares the radical personal transformation that followed his discovery of anti-depressants as well as mushrooms, boosting his self confidence, and prompting the creative a-ha moment where he began producing YouTube videos by combining his two life long loves: film & food. And the rest is history. Ilana and Andrew discuss the softness that men need, inspiring men to cook, and his new found spirituality. Also that he loves Jews. Come on in, it’s open! 

Ben & Jerry’s Flavor Finder: https://www.benjerry.com/flavors

Host: Ilana Glazer
Producers: David Rooklin, Annika Carlson, Madeline Kim, Kelsie Kiley, Glennis Meagher
Video Producers: Lexa Krebs, Louise Nessralla
Audio Producers: Nicole Maupin, Rachel Suffian, Rebecca O’Neill
Lighting Director: Kevin Deming
Editor: Tovah Leibowitz
Graphics: Raymo Ventura
Outro Music: Don Hur

All Things It’s Open: linktr.ee/itsopenpod
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsopenpod
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@itsopenpod

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

So, my guest today is Andrew Ray, who is the face and creator behind the massively successful YouTube channel Binging with Babish. So, I first met him when I was promoting my stand-up special Human Magic, available now on Hulu. Um, but by promoting it, I went on his show and ranked pickles. And I had so much fun, and he was so lovely that we've since become friends. And most recently, Andrew has become a podcast host. He has joined the Vox Media Podcast Network, and in collaboration with Eater, he hosts In the Booth with Babish, where he interviews celebrities and chefs, and they make a meal out of chit chat. Every episode is structured like a menu of conversation, and his premier episode was with Peabody award-winning chef Alton Brown. So come on in. It's open. So you have one of the most successful YouTube channels on YouTube. 10 million subscribers for binging with Babish.

SPEAKER_02 0:58

Thank you very much. It's it's it's actually a product of what we were talking about before. Uh the because I started about 10 years ago. And back then you didn't need to pay for engagement, or it wasn't about creating the most engaging thing. You just put something out and people would gravitate to it.

SPEAKER_03 1:15

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 1:15

And I was lucky enough to come up in that era. You you as well with Chronic Gamer Girl. Like that was just like the time when you would make something that you were excited about and it would, it could succeed.

SPEAKER_01 1:26

Yeah. And um, like, you know, I I won't, I won't gush, you know what I mean? I won't go nuts, but I like do want to say your channel just brings people so much happiness. It's so gratifying, but it's not, it's not cheap because you are putting so much love and time into it. Um, and you're right, there's like a natural gravitation toward it that is, I mean, it's just fucking brilliant. It started with the um you making meals from TV and film.

SPEAKER_03 1:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:53

Right? And you are a a lover of TV and film. So this was combining your two passions.

SPEAKER_02 1:58

Yeah. Uh I'm I'm I it took me, you know, 27 years to figure it out. I've always been nuts about food and movies. And for some reason, took me a w a while to be like, oh, food from movies. I wasn't the first one doing it. There was a there was a channel on YouTube uh called Feast of Fiction uh that was doing it for a while before me. Um, but it was more geared toward kids. It was a very, very different format. Um and uh yeah, I was deeply depressed. I had just finished working on a documentary for a year and a half that went nowhere, and I got paid four grand for editing this feature doc over uh, you know, not uh 18 months. And uh it just imploded and I was just so down. And I started going to therapy and getting on well butrin, which is you know, giving me a lot of bandwidth and it took me out of the darkness a little bit.

SPEAKER_03 2:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:46

I took on more debt uh than I already had, which was so much, way too much, uh, and bought a camera and a light and was just fucking around in my kitchen. And uh I was background watching Parks and Wreck, uh, just like one listens to music. That's uh uh Pat Parks, Broad City, um, Frasier. Those are my background watches. Yeah. And uh it and the there was a burger cook-off, and I was like, what would that burger taste like? And that was that.

SPEAKER_01 3:11

Yeah. You talk very openly about mental health. And when you were just saying about Well Futrin, I always say there would be no Broad City without Cymbalta. I was on antidepressants, but it was uh like it's also for chronic pain from ages 19 to 32. And the way that you just said it, that it like expanded your bandwidth, is exactly it, right? Like you didn't, it doesn't change things, it just like kind of all there's like all these like clouds taking up space and it like parts them a little bit. Um and it's funny how you were in such a low place, and then out of that you found this such an authentic expression of your creativity.

SPEAKER_02 3:49

It raised the floor on how bad I could feel. And it's it's funny how we're both over medicated and under medicated at the same time because like so many people who have experienced even acute incidental depression get prescribed antidepressants, which can be good or bad. But then there are so many people who are just in the fucking dumps who can't bring themselves out to go and get the thing, the help that they need and then there.

SPEAKER_01 4:16

They also think that's baseline.

SPEAKER_02 4:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:18

You know, like so you're from Rochester, New York, and you went to school at Hofstra on Long Island, and I went to um I grew up on Long Island. You know, I'm wondering about um like how you your perception of mental health or your like grasp of mental health growing up. We're like the same age, we're both from the suburbs of New York, New York City. Was that the first time you hitting rock bottom? Was that the first time that you were like, oh, I'm depressed. This is what depression is, I need therapy. It sounded like it all happened at once, the way that you just said it.

SPEAKER_02 4:47

Yeah, definitely of my own volition. Uh my mother died when I was 11, and that um obviously wasn't great. Uh it sent my dad into a deep, deep depression. Um, of course. And and do you have siblings? Uh yeah, I have an older brother, but he was he's seven years older than me, so he had a life going on. Totally in a different phase. Yeah, he was he was with us, but he, you know, was building his life. And so it was just me and him, and uh we, you know, were at odds. And I went to go see a therapist who was an awful therapist.

SPEAKER_03 5:20

Fuck.

SPEAKER_02 5:20

Uh, I remember him telling me uh, because I would have such big emotions that I couldn't go to school or I couldn't interact with people. And he would be like, Sometimes you just need to put those emotions in a box. Silent generation therapist?

SPEAKER_00 5:36

What is this? Oh my God.

SPEAKER_02 5:38

And uh so that was detrimental, I'd say. Uh I only went to him for about a year and my dad pulled me out for reasons I can't remember. Um, and uh I didn't touch it since then.

SPEAKER_01 5:51

And um Right, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 5:53

I was also diagnosed ADHD without being treated for it because basically my my mom and dad got me tested when I was like nine, tested positive. She uh wanted to do it on her own. She didn't want to medicate me at the time. It was just like Ritalin or 100. And she didn't want to do that. And uh she was apparently doing a very good job, I don't really remember, um, doing a very good job of just like finding systems that worked for my brain. And then when she died, obviously that all went out the window. And my father's always been a disciplinarian, so that obviously we butted heads on that. Uh and uh yeah, mental health always felt and was always treated like a a um either a luxury that you know only the the the very wealthy who are caught up in their money problems uh have, or people who are very sick who really, really need it. It wasn't for people who are just trying to get through life with their existing traumas and stuff. Um I like to say that uh very few people need therapy, but everybody could use therapy. Um not very few people. Some people need therapy, but everybody could use therapy. Uh and so yeah, it took me a long time to figure that out. I was just gutting it out for the longest time.

unknown 7:08

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 7:08

And that was the beginning of the change. It was that and mushrooms. I don't know if we can talk about mushrooms on sure. Oh, I figured.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

And then also I didn't I didn't know that your mother passed away when you were a kid. I did not know that.

SPEAKER_02 7:19

Yeah, no, it was it was uh she it was her third bat with cancer. Uh so everybody else kind of saw it coming, but I was eleven, so I was just like, oh, it's her third round, she's got this. Right. And uh uh so it was actually extremely shocking when they came downstairs and told me that she had just died.

SPEAKER_01 7:35

And you were 11 and your brother's 18. So yeah, he's out of the house.

SPEAKER_02 7:38

Yeah, yeah, he was in college and um uh Which is all I mean, that's like so hard too. Yeah, no, he was going through it on in his own way, and he was like, Where was he at? He was so he went to Rochester Institute, you know, pretty nearby. And um, you know, I he did the exact same thing I would have done, which is turn inward. That's what we were always taught to do.

SPEAKER_01 7:57

And two boys, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:58

Yeah, two boys, and we've always been to anytime things are tough, we're taught to, you know, buck up and just deal with it. Yeah. And um, yeah, it's I still have a lot of issues getting over that that feeling of like, oh, you're not supposed to feel like this. Totally. You're supposed to, you know, be strong, you're supposed to be like capable, and and you gotta go, you know, pay this person $500 a week to talk to them. Just to like it, it it it doesn't make sense to my you know, simple man mind that I was given from an early age. But as I'm getting older, I'm getting better with it.

SPEAKER_01 8:33

And then the other thing that just lit up for me is that you said your mom liked systems, which is reminding me of your channel. And now you like organize it into systems. You know what I mean? That your, you know, production is so robust and the team also, it's just um, it's just making me think about like the systems that you employ. That's really funny. And it sounds like without medication, she was like really dedicated to practicing it, which is like so um, so clearly what your work is so clearly like the effort of your work, you know, so much practice and systems put in place and trying it again and again and again and again until you get a perfect.

SPEAKER_02 9:12

I've never thought of that. That's actually that's really interesting. Um, and it's it's cool, it's cool to think about it that way because I'm going off hearsay. I'm going off what people tell me because I've I've obviously a lot of people that I've met that um that uh who've lost parents around that age, they don't remember anything before that. And I'm I I have little fits and starts, little glimmers of like particularly bad moments usually that wedge themselves in my brain. But I don't remember what her voice sounds like. I I I don't remember many of the things that she did. It's more things that people have told me. So to know that it's imprinted on me in some way outside of my conscious identity, that's actually that's really cool to think about.

SPEAKER_01 9:52

And also, like, I'm not surprised that you are drawn to mushrooms because it is such a like mothering substance, you know. And it also like it'll bring these things up that you can't like think of from here. You know what I mean? It has to like sort of like blossom from behind. So that started when you were. So first of all, I didn't okay, there's like two other things I want to say, but I'm gonna hold them for here. I didn't realize that you were it was only 10 years ago that you started the channel. I thought it was more like 14 or 15.

SPEAKER_02 10:19

No, no, it was um back in 2016. That is incredible.

SPEAKER_01 10:23

You have got gained so much success in this time. And like Broad City was happening before it in LOL Chronic Gamer Girl. Thank you for knowing it. Uh we love it. But um, yeah, that is it, it like really popped off in such a short amount of time.

SPEAKER_02 10:39

Um it I mean, uh, it feels weird saying this, but you know, for food YouTubers uh or any but any YouTubers that could self-produce, uh, if COVID were kind of the Halcyon days, because you know, I I I didn't stop. I baby, I was working harder than I have ever worked during COVID because all I had to do was be in the house and keep making videos is the only way I could stay sane. So like I remember one month I got 260,000 subscribers in a month. Wow. Uh because everybody was making sourdough. And uh right.

SPEAKER_01 11:11

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SPEAKER_02 16:21

Yes. Uh so this is before I made the first video. I definitely did mushrooms before uh the first video. I was probably going to therapy for like six months before I, you know, managed to come up.

SPEAKER_01 16:32

Got it, got it.

SPEAKER_02 16:33

Um and uh I was going to my uh old uh bosses, they every year they would have a big birthday blowout in uh Montauk. And I they were said they were gonna do mushrooms, and I was like, oh, I don't know. I'm not sure if I'm into that. And I so when I say you wouldn't have recognized me back then, I mean it both physically because I had some hair and no beard and zero confidence and zero ability to carry a conversation uh without constantly just like judging everything was coming out of my mouth, in other words, not be able to hold a conversation. Um, and then I did the mushrooms and I got a glimpse into oh my god, this is the person I've always wanted to be. I was making people laugh. I the one guy had a freak out on the mushrooms, and he because uh this this really drunk cop just walked into the house.

SPEAKER_00 17:25

Oh, oh well, welcome to Long Island. This really drunk cop just walked into my house.

SPEAKER_02 17:30

Yeah, that's Long Island. Blackout dude came in. I mean, it was a little, you know, cottage, like a rental thing. And uh he just walked in and sat down. He's like, You're gonna make me a drink? And we're like, So scary in his uniform. And no, no, he was plain clothes. We asked him, What do you so what do you do? And he was like, I'm I'm an off-duty uh officer.

SPEAKER_00 17:47

And one guy I'm professionally a drunk off-duty officer.

SPEAKER_02 17:50

Well, you know, yeah, yeah. But then one guy who uh the guy who brought the mushrooms literally stood up like the Manchurian candidate and just walked out because he was like, No, I'm not doing this. And he didn't bring his shoes and he didn't bring his stuff. So I chased him down on my bike uh with one hand. I could never ride my bike with one hand, and I had a flashlight, and I was like, How am I doing this? So, like, even stuff like that. It was just like, here's the guy you've always wanted to be.

SPEAKER_01 18:17

It's right, it's and you're going to like save this other guy who's freaking out.

SPEAKER_02 18:21

Yeah, and I've I he must I must have scared the hell out of him because he was walking in the center of the road, just like as the crow flies back to his house, and uh and I pulled up on a bike with a flashlight. Hey, hey. Here's your shoes. Um, and uh yeah, it just it just showed me like that the the person you've always wanted to be is in there. This helped you access it, but I got a taste of like, oh, I can I can be this person.

SPEAKER_01 18:44

Um and this is at the same time that you're starting therapy.

SPEAKER_02 18:47

Yeah, I can't right super recommend going out and getting on antidepressants and trying psychedelics at the same time. Probably not the most cogent move, but it worked out for me.

SPEAKER_01 18:56

It like fully lines up for me.

SPEAKER_02 18:58

Okay. Well, I've I I I fear other people's mental states and that not working for them. Yeah. Uh and uh uh but no, it's it's it was hugely transformative. Um I thank mushrooms every day and every time I do them.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

Yeah, how often do you do them?

SPEAKER_02 19:13

Uh I microdose pretty frequently. Uh I don't have like a regimen about it. I did it twice last week. Um didn't do it for a month before that. Uh and then I'll macro trip my macro dose, if you will, uh, you know, once every few months.

SPEAKER_01 19:28

Um Will you stay in the city to do that?

SPEAKER_02 19:30

Uh I I will, but I tell like Deanna and I love eating mushrooms and then going on like 10 mile walks. We'll go we'll walk down through Prospect Park and just like take in nature. You gotta be in nature when you trip. It's hard to do it in the city.

SPEAKER_01 19:44

Do people recognize you constantly?

SPEAKER_02 19:46

Uh with frequency enough that yeah, when we go out on those walks, I'll get recognized a couple of times, which when it freak you out?

SPEAKER_03 19:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:52

Yeah when I'm tripping, it's it's I mean, D I'll always ask after we walk away, I'll be like, was I weird? Did I say anything weird? And Dan will be like, No, you're perfectly charming. And uh so um that I mean that that becomes an issue only uh uh when I'm on mushrooms and when I'm headed to and from therapy on the subway. Sometimes I just got out of talking about like my mom or my uh sexual trauma, and I don't want to take a selfie. But this is the only time it's ever been an issue.

SPEAKER_01 20:20

Yeah. I um I I I like to be in nature when I trip and I haven't done it, I haven't done like a macro trip in a long time. But it's making me think of my best friend. She had um two kids like quickly in a row, and it's like just so unbelievably effortful to have two kids under two and then get them to the point where they can like wipe their butts or whatever. Um and she for the first time has gotten into tripping. And it just makes so much sense to me. And it's so I love I'm loving being a millennial parent, despite all the fascism. But other than that, you know, it's like uh so um it's so cool that this is a normal thing for moms to do. Like, you know, it's um it's helping her uh just having all the things come up.

SPEAKER_02 21:06

When when I I I kind of imagine it like I am a rubber band ball, and the rubber bands are are like thought and behavior patterns, and they just get keep getting strapped on until you're this big quivering, you know, like like ball of systems. And and you know, if I do this, then I have to do this, and you just like future tripping, past tripping, all this stuff. And then mushrooms or ketamine uh comes through like a hot knife and just cuts all those away and reminds me, like, oh, it's not it's not as complicated as I'm making it. It's not as dire and horrible as I'm making it. Uh and no, this isn't the beginning of the end of my career or my life or whatever, as I'm you know, over with enough time. I'm just constantly I wish I could do it without it, but thus far I've needed uh plant help in order to you know get. Back to that baseline, which is where I want to be.

SPEAKER_01 22:03

Totally. And it also like lets your brain practice being there. You know, that's what I think about antidepressants too. It's like, you know, to do uh to do therapy and have medication, if that's what you need, is so helpful because like the therapy can be more productive because you have the medication, helping your brain like make the space for it. You know, you are such a thoughtful, reflective gentleman.

SPEAKER_00 22:25

Nobody says gentleman anymore.

SPEAKER_01 22:27

But like you're a you're really like a gentle guy. And also, like, I think you you um present the tip of the spear for you is your reflectiveness. It's not like something that you're like, you know, the way that you talk about how much thought you put into these videos, and then you thought of a new way that you could turn it over. And then the thing turns on its ear again and turns on its ear again, you know. But like, and also you grew up with with all men, um, you know, after age 11. But I I feel like you present this alternative masculinity that I don't think it's um a coincidence that you are so popular and that your videos are that you resonate with people and that they want to be in that world of like, yeah, you got a deep voice, but it's like a soft voice, you know, and you're like sort of gentle, gently bringing people through through the process.

SPEAKER_02 23:20

It's I I it's one of my favorite things about what I do is when people stop me on on the street. The most recent time this happened was yesterday in a restaurant, the server. Uh this young guy was like, you know, you you got me into cooking. And I I I couldn't be happier with that. If that's my if that's the mark that I leave, I uh that's that's amazing. Um and Yeah, it I think that there's a lot of strength in vulnerability. I say that while still having a very difficult time being vulnerable. I I want to be a place where where guys can come to be, and they hate when I even say this, soft. I think that that we need softness as men because when you're hard all the time, not only is it not good for your you know circulatory system, but also it's it's uh uh it i i it it just makes you always have armor on. And it turns you into an island. And so many men are islands. They love thinking of themselves as islands. Like even even people who are uh great providers and and fathers, they're doing it all for other people. Uh and yeah, I mean, uh it's hard for me to talk about the difficulties of being a man when there's so many other struggles in the world. It feels like, you know, why are we talking about this? But given the influences that are out there in the world right now, it's something I think I, you know, I I would love to talk about more. Um because I I think when I was younger, when I was, you know, 12 and I was just starting to, you know, uh like girls and they did not like me back, uh, and I was very sad and very angry and very lonely, I I am 99% sure if if all this manosphere shit existed when I was that age, I would have gotten swept up in it. I think I would have absolutely, because if strong uh presenting men were telling me, you're not the problem isn't in you, it's everyone else. And I have the answer. I would probably listen.

SPEAKER_01 25:21

How how um seductive is that is that messaging? That is so seductive, especially to a kid or anybody's like kid brain to be able to blame it on someone else. Yeah, it it's so sick. And yeah, I can only I can only imagine. Of course, we had messages and systems, uh, messages with within this same framework, but the way it's available right now, constantly and in your hand, you're right. You you could have been um swept up in it. And the effort that it takes to unlearn, deprogram, and then become yourself. It's like this um moment we're in right now culturally is like setting us back decades because we're gonna have to rebuild the framework and present it to people to know what a normal fucking baseline is. It's psychotic right now.

SPEAKER_02 26:09

All we have to do is dose everyone in the world with a little bit, mostly America, with mushrooms.

SPEAKER_01 26:13

100. Oh, America needs to trip balls for sure.

SPEAKER_02 26:17

That should be the one takeaway from this interview is that America needs to be able to trip balls.

SPEAKER_01 26:20

That's the feeling of having a kiddo, too, is um, you know, you feel like you're tripping. And sometimes you are, sometimes you're micro microwing, but um, it's just they're so naturally exploratory. And I was thinking about this yesterday, is about how, like, you know, when you trip, everything's profound. If we had just more time and space and our basic needs were met, we would have so much more space to see things as the profound thing that they are.

SPEAKER_02 26:42

Yeah. You know, it's I mean, it really comes back to for me, it's presence. Like if you're truly present, everything's awesome because this is all there is.

SPEAKER_01 26:51

And that's the thing about having a kiddo, is like, you know, the goal is just to be present with them and then I'm present and I'm like, wow, everything is fucking awesome. You mentioned Sawyer, um, Sawyer Jacobs, who's your business partner, and a big old Jew. Um, you know, when I first met you, I was like, yeah. When I first met you, I was uh a couple years ago, I was like, I thought you were Jewish because you're so sensitive. And I thought maybe your last name was like Eastern European, and I was calling it Rea for a time. Um, and I was like, Yeah, it ends with an A, but I I don't know, I just thought you were Jewish, but exotic, yeah. But but um uh but you're not. And you know, sometimes I find with white people who are um not Jewish is that they're like drawn to Jewish people because there's this like, you know, culture of sensitivity and thoughtfulness um that I'm really proud of. Yeah, like I'm just curious about your relationship with Sawyer. If you were just liked his like Jewish, he is like, you know, he's like our age, but David and I laugh that he's like he it's almost like you could picture him being like a 50-year-old Jewish dad in fifth grade.

SPEAKER_02 27:55

Wow, yeah. Is that that's beautiful? Is that right? Yeah, no, absolutely not.

SPEAKER_01 27:59

He's that's he's such a mensch. I mean, he is.

SPEAKER_02 28:01

Oh, he's a true mensch. And he I'm so lucky that he's my best friend, my business partner. I get to be in business with somebody that I trust implicitly. It's very rare, it's really wonderful. And yeah, no, I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna come out and say it on the record. I love Jews. Uh I we need it. I I love Jews because uh beyond the thoughtfulness and the the uh the sort of presence that you're talking about, but also the there's a gr wonderful sense of community and family and tradition. And I think that's um tradition is something I wish I had more of uh um ritual or or or uh yeah, just just just old actions that uh that bring up that connect you to history. And I don't have any of that. Like I came up Presbyterian, I became an atheist in college, like so many people. Uh and once I got into Reddit, game over. I was an atheist all the way through.

SPEAKER_01 28:53

Well, Reddit is atheist, cool.

SPEAKER_02 28:56

But then I had my uh my big trip, and uh I'm I don't belong to any religion, I have my own experience, and uh, but I'm not an atheist anymore.

SPEAKER_01 29:07

Yeah, yeah. Well, thank you so much for sharing yourself with me today. You know, we've um I like kind of didn't contextualize this, but I will in the intro. But we've gotten to know each other the past couple years, and neighbors. We can always we're neighbors and we can always get real real fast, and I love it.

SPEAKER_02 29:21

I really I really appreciate it, and I appreciate that you can do that with your guests on this show. It's a really great show, and I'm so happy for you every time I see a new episode come out.

SPEAKER_01 29:30

Thank you. I'm learning so much from you. Um, all the joy and just the just thoughtfulness that you put into your channel. I um really inspires me.

SPEAKER_02 29:38

Well, thank you so much. And you inspire me. We can keep going back and forth. You inspire me too.

SPEAKER_01 29:44

I want to thank Andrew Ray for coming and joining me today and really opening his heart. Um, this has been a solely human production. This is a StarPix production. I want to thank my creative producers, Annika Carlson, David Rookland, and Glennis Mahar, Kelsey Kylie, and Madeline Kim. I want to thank the people who made this look and sound so good: Kevin Deming, Lexa Krebs, and Nicole Maupin. I want to thank Raymond Ventura for the graphics and opening musical sting. And I want to thank the band Don Her for this outro music. Um, listen, if you like this show, like, subscribe, and join the community wherever you podcast and or on YouTube. It makes a difference for us to be able to do it. And do it independently is also the thing. And um join my Substack. That's my newsletter where you can see all the shit that drops in my life and how I can come to you. Um, that's it, you guys. Take care of yourselves today. Uh, get some rest. We're gonna get through this and sending you love. Later.