Flightless Bird: Donuts

I'm David Farrier, a New Zealander, accidentally marooned in America, and I want to figure out what makes this country tick. Now. we've done a few food episodes in this show because, let's face it, Americans love eating. From pizza to hot dogs, to burgers, America is as passionate about its diet as it is about its flag. But there's been an important food item missing from the flightless bird food chain.

Flightless, flightless, flightless bird, touchdown in America. I'm a flightless bird, touchdown in America.

That is a staggering statistic. I mean, that means people are eating over one a week.

Yeah, people love a doughnut. I don't eat a doughnut for a long time, but then when I do eat them, I eat a lot at once. So, I probably do eat about one a week on average, actually.

No, you do?

Well, yeah, when I eat it, I'll have 10 at a time, you know? If I'm having a doughnut once every two months, I'll have like 10 or 20.. I'll just gobble them down.

Oh, my gosh. I do. I mean, I love a doughnut. Who doesn't? What's not to like about it?

Yeah, that's a remarkable thing. I didn't sort of thought about that. America is good at taking what should be a dessert and making it a breakfast. They flip it. That's so savvy.

It is savvy from a marketing corporate perspective and it's so horrifying health-wise.

I mean, yeah, sugar is a great fuel to start your day with. A few times I have started a day with a doughnut. Generally, it's been a bad day. It hasn't gone well. You get the crash, all those carbs.

What is your favorite, not place, I'm sure we'll get into that, but what is your favorite doughnut? What do you order if all the doughnuts are on the menu?

I just like a simple, what do you call it? I just want like a little chocolate topping, like a chocolate glaze.

Glaze.

Really basic. Yeah, just a chocolate glaze and I'm happy. I don't want any filling in the middle of my doughnut. That's too much. I just want that dough and I want a bit of chalk.

My favorite of all time, I have two, is a blueberry doughnut or a chocolate cake doughnut. Oh, it's so good. Dunkin' Donuts. I think all time favorite is their chocolate cake doughnut.

My God, that's the one. Look, spoiler alert, but I do talk to the boss of Dunkin' later in the documentary. What? Yeah, so that's coming up.

Were you starstruck?

I was.

I liked all the people at Dunkin'. They were really fun to interact with. And this is actually quite annoying because, spoiler alert, I'm in New Zealand at the moment because I've had to come back here to get my visa renewed. So I'm looking at a very American topic as I'm coming in from afar. But the problem is, I was going to get doughnuts delivered to all of us today.

Wait, Dunkin', the man, was going to come?

Not the man, the company. The company was going to come and deliver doughnuts. Wait, David! Yeah, to all of us. Yeah, I mean, I probably should have done this even though I'm not there.

It would have been generous. Oh.

But I thought we're not all together, so I didn't make that happen. And I'll make it up to you later in the year, somehow, okay?

It does feel a little bit wrong morally that we aren't eating doughnuts or they're not in our presence. We can't smell them right now. I mean, I'll probably have to get one today after we record this, I'm sure.

I think we will probably need to get some doughnuts after this, to be honest.

Wow, I can't believe you met Mr. Dunkin' himself. Yeah, he's pretty good. I imagine he looks like the guy from Home Alone 2 who works at the shop where he gives the two turtle dove ornaments to Kevin.

Oh, that kindest looking old man of all time.

Yeah, and actually he owns the store, and he's also like a billionaire. You don't know it, because he's just so kind.

Oh, big Home Alone fan over here. I didn't pick you for a Home Alone 2 fan, actually. Really?

Home Alone's my favorite Christmas movie.

Oh, it's really good. I watched as a Christmas movie last year, Gremlins. That's a good Christmas movie. I forgot that a big part of that takes place at Christmas. And it's also incredibly depraved.

Can gremlins not die? I haven't seen it.

You can kill a gremlin. Yeah, you kill them by putting them in a blender, typically, or a microwave, something like that. But you haven't seen Gremlins?

No.

Hey, Monica, this Christmas, it's many months away, but we've got to get you to watch Gremlins. It's an all-time classic. They start as these cute little, tiny creatures, but then, if they eat after midnight, or if they get water on them, they turn into these horrible, conniving, awful creatures, and they rampage around this Christmassy town.

Can they turn back? good? No.

Once they've gone evil, they're pure evil. Once that's happened, yeah. And they procreate. if they get wet. The good ones procreate, so you've got like 20 cute ones.

Okay. Before we get into donuts, we have to talk about the thing I know you don't want to talk about, but it was your birthday. You are 40 now. Happy birthday. How does it feel?

Yeah. How old did you say I was?

40.. Aren't you? Or are you 41? Or are you 39??

I turned 41..

Oh, you were 40 last year.

Yeah, so it feels bad.

Wait, why did I think this was going to be sad? I feel like me and you talked, and you were so upset about this birthday.

Yeah, I was, because I've crossed over into now the stretch to 50.. 40 was fine. It was like, I'm 4-0.. 41 is nine years from 50, and that is a huge, huge, huge problem to me, because 50 is a real problem for me personally. I see.

Okay.

Yeah, 41 feels infinitely worse. And everyone, for your 40th, everyone's sort of excited, and they're on board, and you can party. You can't party for 41.. It's almost a bit sad, you know?

You didn't party? What did you do?

Didn't party. I was at my mum and dad's in Whangarei, and it was very quiet. We just had a really mellow time. Mum made me a birthday cake and a Christmas cake at the same time, which is nice, because she's acknowledging my birthday. Because usually, you know, if you're a Christmas baby, it's going back a bit now, actually, but, yeah, the memories are all flooding back.

The luckiest little boy. But what kind of cake did you get? This is sort of circling back to donuts. What kind of cake was the birthday cake, and then what kind was the Christmas?

You would have liked the birthday cake, because it was a chocolate, very simple, beautiful chocolate, foamy sort of texture, not too moist, not too dry, beautiful chocolate icing, and with one of those little happy birthday signs kind of like squished into the top of the cake.

Did it say, happy birthday, Davey?

No, just happy birthday. A few candles. Not 41 candles. That would have been insulting. And then the Christmas cake was your classic fruitcake.

She makes it in June? I don't understand what you're saying.

Is it frozen? How does she do this and not spoil?

Yeah, no, I think actually, look, to be honest, I think she does freeze it. She makes it early, and then she freezes it, and then she de-thaws it. And something in that process, she thinks, makes it a better texture and a better cake.

Or maybe the fruit she's using is of a certain season or something?

Look, I've got to be honest, I haven't thought about this a lot. I just know she always starts making this cake in June, and it's like, by the time Christmas rolls around, it's really, really delicious.

Okay, well, in an upcoming episode, we need to get your mum on the horn, and we need to learn about this Christmas cake.

The most exciting thing about my mum's Christmas cake is that, you know, most Christmas cake, fruitcake, has sort of an almond-y icing on top?

I'm actually not all that familiar with fruitcake. I mean, I know it is a thing, but I don't know much about it.

It's not big. in the Padmin household. It's usually an almond topping. My mum is like, screw, that. Almond's horrible.

Wow. Here you go, Pam. I do want to try this.

Well, bring a frozen chunk back to you on the plane. Defrost it over a week.

Do it, do it. I just had a brand new thought. I've never thought this before.

Holy shit. Got a brand new thought coming in. It's rare as a human to have a brand new thought. They're usually remodeled thoughts.

Yes. It's cruel what we do to people with the candles on birthdays, where we put the amount of candles for your birthday, because it starts to become impossible, and you already are feeling old. And so when you can't do it, it's just reiterating that you're old, you don't have the breath you used to have. It's awful. Why do we do that?

You're right. And it's either, if you do use, so say 41.. 41 candles. It looks ridiculous. There's no cake.

You get the numbered candles.

You get the number. Yeah. That feels always like a cheat,

but I get it.

Or you do like a four, you do four singles and then one single.

Oh, God.

Have you ever been to a kid's birthday recently and there's a cake you actually want to eat and then the parents give it to the kid to blow out, which is awful. And the kid is just spitting. Spitting all over it. Just everywhere. They've got no control.

I'm out. Snot comes out.

Yeah. Horrific. It's disgusting. They shouldn't let kids blow out their own candles.

They should make David do it.

Mature adult that doesn't spit everywhere.

I do have one important donut question for you guys. Do you prefer yeast or cake donuts?

I'm a yeasty boy.

I like cake.

I'm team cake too.

Really?

You know, I like that yeastiness. That's interesting.

But I do love Krispy Kreme. Ding, ding, ding. Whatever episode. From a long time ago where we brought up Krispy Kreme randomly and then ate some.

Was it the Amish episode?

I think it was. It was. It was Amish. Yeah. Amish and their donuts.

Wow. Good memory. Okay. So listen to that too. Do a double header on this for donuts.

All right. Let's crank into this little documentary, into the world of delicious donuts. Yum. Yum, yum.

When do you start baking?

I start at one o'clock in the morning until six thirty. Be done. What are your best ones?

The best one is Reese's Peanut Butter.

I'm at a California donut store and I've just been told their best donut is their Reese's Pieces donut. Funnily enough, I'd been researching Reese's Pieces for an episode about American candy and my head was brimming with Reese's Pieces facts. Invented in 1978.. Based on the Buttercup's version from 1928.. Got huge because they featured an E.T.

It's called Flightless Bird and it's just about different parts of American culture. How long have you worked here for?

Thirteen years.

What's your favourite? donut? Reese's, Peanut Butter and Snicker Bar. I'm looking forward to it.

I'd come to this store to research donuts. With me, Andrew, a friend from New Zealand. Andrew's a fitness freak and hates things like battered dough and sugar. This is his nightmare.

I sort of need to have my eyes opened to the donut experience.

Then there's Lauren, an American who grew up surrounded by donuts.

I love the donut. It's very classic. We used to get them as a family on weekend mornings, which was quite nice. These are the yeasted donuts, which are the like big puffy ones, and I like a denser cake donut.

I thought they were.

all yeasted.

I think they all technically have yeast, but like I like, like a cruller or like a buttermilk bar.

Andrew, my New Zealand cohort, how are you feeling about this situation? I'm approaching this with some trepidation, having a low tolerance.

of sugar, but I have the Snickers donut. I've taken my first bite.

and I can see this sort of.

melted kind of Snickers.

It's like an entire Snickers bar inserted into the middle.

The three of us had agreed to drive around all morning and eat different donuts at different stores, but I could already see a flaw in our plan. Donuts are filling. I had a feeling this might be our last stop, especially because we'd started with the most sugary nightmares available.

It does make me think too. LA is so notoriously like a svelte culture, a wellness place. We are like gluten free and vegan and so obsessed with our bodies and our figures. and yet the donut is very central to LA culinary history.

And to US culinary history. While different cultures have been frying dough for hundreds of years, it's thought the actual donut can be traced back to the Dutch who came to New York in the 1600s and started frying smaller bits of dough. But it wouldn't be until 1850 that an American sailor would stab a donut onto one of the spokes of his steering wheel, accidentally inventing the donut hole. This revelation meant that donuts could be made bigger because with a hole in the middle they'd cook all the way through and wouldn't have a disgusting undercooked center. They became big with American soldiers during World War I in the trenches.

That's a real thing, because they're 24 hours. so when you're on your shift and you're just cruising around town and you need a little pick-me-up, you get your little caffeine to keep you going, you walk in, often they have the air of authority, the donuts are cheap anyway. I think often they're kind of gifted to the cops that come in and if you need a place to kind of hang out one or two booths on a main drag with a big window, you can just kind of sit, have a nice little break but still be on the clock.

We'd eaten a few donuts each at the California Donut Store and Andrew had given up. This is about the time that I make a kale salad.

at home, you know. And there I am with you two, eating another chocolate donut.

I thanked Cindy for the donuts. she's behind the counter today, especially the Reese's Pieces one.

This was an amazing donut, so thank you so much. You're welcome.

I hope to see you again.

Okay?

I abandoned my friends and go and meet up with Emily Tang. She's originally from the Bay Area and grew up working in her parents' donut shop. I wanted to meet Emily to better understand the donut situation in America, which, for her, started when her parents Ying and Sang moved to the US.

My mom came in.

her late 20s, her and my father met in China and she immigrated here and first day in the US was at the donut shop essentially. And then my father he's ethnically Chinese and Cambodian born in Cambodia immigrated to the US as a refugee due to the Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide in the late 1970s. So a very common business that a lot of Cambodian Americans got into, because it was sort of a community built internship where a lot of folks, mainly guys, would start waking up, go learn how to make donuts, collect money, kind of save up, lease a donut shop, rent a donut shop, buy a donut shop from another relative and start building their own small business. Everyone in the family is involved. the kids are folding the pink boxes, the dad and the mom are behind the counter.

Her parents' store, Best Donuts, is in Santa Clara. so today in Los Angeles we've met up at another mom and pop store called Tasty Donuts and Cafe. Emily knows a lot about donuts because she grew up with them, but also she now runs an Instagram account called Pink Box Stories, bringing attention to Cambodian Americans, who we have to thank for the iconic pink donut box. The story goes that in the 80s a Cambodian refugee was expanding his donut chain and was looking for cheaper boxes than the typical white ones. the supplier offered him one very cheap colour.

And at the time it was only pink because someone wanted red and they already made all these red boxes for a different business and such, and the pinks were scraps running through to get the remaining colour out before they changed the colour. so they're like we'll go with this pink one!

Pink took off and now it's the norm. Emily also tells me there's a kind of coastal divide of donut shops where the east coast has more franchises, like Krispy Kreme and Dunkin', where the west coast tends to have more mum and pop stores, many owned and operated by Cambodian Americans.

How many donuts would you have consumed in your life? do you think?

Um.

maybe 100 or so. I'm not huge sweet tooth. my dad will actually have a donut a day mainly to taste how his recipe is, but they're also both sweet tooth, so they will eat it almost all the time. I'll just eat it to like provide a review or if it's super fresh. I've had like peak donuts where they're straight out of the fryer.

we've been eating donuts this whole time. by the way, they're really good. Johnny, who runs this place, comes over to check in.

we've been here since 2014, but we were across the street since 1991.

we end up talking to Johnny for a while, who insists on giving us more free donuts, while telling us that maybe things are changing a little in these smaller family run stores. the next generation of donut makers have other things on their mind.

they don't want to keep. it's too much, too much work, too much work. if you have no baker, you have to bake yourself. times are changing. it's just that, the new immigrants that's coming in.

and he says that while a box is the perfect device for holding donuts, in a way the donut store itself ends up feeling like a box for those making them.

I think a lot of people.

they just want more freedom.

to roam around rather than be stuck in a box.

if anything, this just makes me want to support smaller stores, even more places like this one, Tasty Donuts, which I can assure you lives up to it's name.

Flightless Bird.

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I thought that was so lovely. I loved hearing those back stories. I didn't know that about the pink box. that was very sweet.

yeah, it was just like the end of a run where the red was running out and they just had this other color that no one wanted and they rolled with that. and now everything. yeah, you just associate pink. right? I feel like you go to Universal Studios and you get that big touristy box of donuts and it comes in a big pink carton.

yeah, I never really thought of it as being an establishment that a lot of immigrants sort of flock to.

yeah, donuts especially. I can't remember what the exact stats are, but so many of those mom and pop donut stores, especially in California, are Cambodian run. there was a story, I think, in the LA Times the other day about this really iconic one in Echo Park. I think the landlord.

sold the building.

and they're having to move and the whole community grew up getting their donuts there. so they've made this GoFundMe campaign to like try and help them keep their donut store, because they make like the best donuts in Echo Park. yeah, I think that's the interesting thing about donuts. and in the next part of the doc we get into the more corporate side. but yeah, there's a big corporatized world.

well, there's a third bucket. that's kind of trending too, is the trendy fancy artisanal donuts.

yes, the fancy boys. I reached out to a lot of the trendy ones for this. none of them got back to me. they're too trendy. they're too trendy for this podcast.

but also that's just culture. right now, everything is artisanal. there has to be a fancy version of everything.

have you had sidecar donuts?

I have. yeah, they're very good.

I think you took me there, Rob, and they were friggin delicious. I just remembered a bad thing. I did where this was years ago. I was staying at someone else's house before I'd found a place to live in LA, and a giant box of voodoo donuts arrived at my door. it's that store that they're like crazy sweet additions, and a big box of them arrived, and I just assumed they were for me, and so I ate them, just sat there and ate them, all sort of forgetting that I was living with someone else, and they came home and they're like where are those donuts that were delivered?

did you not go that day?

no, so we sorted something out for that day. but then, when that person had like another event on, I felt, of course everyone at the party was like David ate your donuts, David ate your donuts, and everyone teased me. I felt sick.

you ate like a dozen of them?

no, not all of them. I ate maybe six and a half or seven. I felt bad.

at one time?

yeah, I'm very hungry, I'm growing. so the next time that person had an event, they knew that I'd eaten their donuts last time. so I went and got some new donuts from Voodoo Donuts to take to that person's house. but then I was sitting there on the bench and I was like oh my god, I just had a donut and I ate them too.

you're kidding David, how old were you?

back then I'd say 38, 39. this is.

unacceptable behavior no.

no, there's a complete lack of self-control. it's childlike, it's awful, yeah, and so I've never gotten this person their donuts, because whenever I try and get them, I just eat them.

this is like another egg to the head. it's insanity.

do you know the story of Voodoo Donuts?

no.

that was the original trendy donut shop in Portland from 20 years ago.

really? so. it was like a little trendy one and it just got big.

yeah, it was like 20 years ago, I think it opened, and whenever you go to Portland, you had to go there and it was always lines around the block for their donuts, and they did the cock and balls donut and cereal on top of it and

right. they're like a naughty donut place.

yeah, I think they've opened some since in LA.

there's. apparently there's an amazing documentary on Netflix that I embarrassingly haven't seen, called The Donut King, which is a lot about these Cambodian refugees who've made donuts such a big thing. apparently it's a really beautiful doc, but if you like this episode, that's probably a good thing to watch.

okay, should we get?

into the other side of donuts, the big giant. you're driving along the freeway and you get off and there's the reliable donut store. it's always there, the chain.

the sign is on.

beckoning you yeah, I'll take that exit. yeah, let's get into this.

let's get into it.

Ben Affleck, the star's legendary love of Dunkin Donuts just hit a whole new level. he's always photographed with a little Dunkin coffee.

Tuesday.

Ben was spotted serving cups of the New England Brew at Medford, Massachusetts drive-thru.

I'd be cursed for all eternity and banished to the lower depths of hell by Monica if I didn't turn my sights towards Dunkin, the chain loved by actor.

Ben Affleck.

Emily from earlier on had mentioned to me how the east coast was defined by bigger franchise chains. so of course it's time to turn to Dunkin.

I think you can quote me. donuts are sexy again.

I'm not here to.

fuck around, so I went straight to the top.

so my name is Scott Murphy. I'm the president of Dunkin, been here about 20 years and we are the franchisor of Dunkin. almost 10,000 restaurants here in the United States, another 4,000 outside the United States, but obviously a leader in drip coffee, in donuts, in bagels, in all sorts of categories across the food and beverage spectrum. what are the?

defining aspects that make Dunkin Dunkin, because there's a lot of places in America that sell coffee, a lot of places that sell donuts.

what's the whole?

Dunkin thing?

the whole Dunkin thing. yeah, it's a great question and I think it's a really deep answer. Dunkin's been around for 70 years and it's one of these great brands that have found a way to stay relevant and to stay in the conversation with America and to really grow with people. so if you are traveling around America and talking to people, a lot of them will reminisce about their early childhood getting a donut with their father after a baseball game or with their mother before church or after church, that type of thing. and then they'll talk about in high school when they started getting a coffee culotta or something like that.

good lord Americans are really good at.

making you feel

patriotic about everything in this case, a bit of dough with a hole in the middle. and what's the balance between the donut aspect?

and the coffee aspect, because obviously Dunkin Donuts.

I mean even in the.

name. it's got donuts. are you meant to be dunking them in the coffee? what's the?

fusion between the.

coffee and the donuts, or is that just a good breakfast?

yeah, I mean I think it's how it originally started, and our donuts even had that little handle, that little bump out on the donut. you were meant to hold it and dunk it in your coffee, are people.

still doing that, or is that a practice that's generally not.

happening in America.

I've never seen it done now that I think.

about it. yeah, we don't do too much of it now, but I will tell you, everyone remembers it and some people still certainly dunk their donuts in their coffee. in 2018, we dropped the name donuts from the name, so now we just go by Dunkin, and mostly because that is how America was referring to us, we are on our way to Dunkin, and it was also a nod to. while donuts are an important part of our legacy. certainly the future is probably more around beverages, and certainly ice beverages, when we think about that next generation consumer, I hadn't.

even noticed it was no longer called Dunkin Donuts, just Dunkin, a donut store without donut in its name. Scott tells me the first store was opened in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1950, which was actually a rebrand of another donut place called Open Kettle. the idea was to serve blue collar workers only what they needed two things donuts and coffee. it was eventually franchised and today it sits in the hands of franchisees. like Sue Andrade, she's run a Dunkin store for the last 26 years.

in the business for about 52 years and then he sold to me and my brother. so as I graduated from high school, I worked at Dunkin behind the counter since I was 12. back then there weren't any labor laws against that, and it's been wonderful. so there are now four generations of this family that is in this business today. you would be amazed at the uniforms that we have collected through the years.

do you think it'll go on for like another generation in your family? I think so, yeah.

my kids are still a little bit younger, so I don't know what they're going to be doing, but the legacy that's been created is truly amazing.

I guess it's your job now to probably start slowly indoctrinating your kids. you know, giving them little bits of donut and little bits of coffee now and then.

oh, they love donuts, let me tell you, and coffee.

generations of Dunkin franchisees selling donuts and coffee to generations of Americans. I guess that's where their slogan comes from.

probably 10 or 15 years ago when we came up with America runs on Dunkin, the slogan, and we were contemplating going west right. we were very much a northeast donut company and the question was could we expand our footprint and go to California and other places? we looked at a lot of the demographics and the rub on Dunkin was it was very much a blue-collar brand. it was for the landscapers and the teachers and those types of people. we went to go do the demographics and then we realized it's actually not demographics that are important, but it's the psychographics.

I could tell I was being indoctrinated indoctrinated into the world of Dunkin. I mean it happens to all of us. one day Ben Affleck is spotted struggling with handfuls of Dunkin coffees. the next he's fronting their entire ad campaign.

things with Dunkin.

are going well.

big promotion made me brand ambassador. we got to come up with a drink name, but it's not easy right nowadays with social.

media, the kids. it's gotta be authentic.

I would argue, Ben has been our sort of number one fan for the last 20 years and we've never actually had a relationship with him. he was just a fan. you know, he grew up in Boston and Cambridge, and I actually think who he is is an exact archetype of who that Dunkin customer is. he's moved out west local boy done well, he's an Oscar winning, obviously writer, director, actor, all those types of things. but at the heart of it he just loves a great product, and so he loves our iced coffee.

if you missed it.

the ad has Ben Affleck taking orders at a Dunkin drive-thru, hidden camera style and of.

course people are surprised when they.

turn the corner and see it's Ben Affleck serving them.

Jennifer Lopez drives.

up annoyed her husband's been gone all day.

it came out incredibly well 7 billion media impressions rated the number one 30 second ad in the Super Bowl, and it was all his idea of how to do a behind the scenes hidden camera while he works the drive-thru, and I think people really related to it because they associate Ben with Dunkin, and so it made sense. but Ben, just like Dunkin, doesn't take himself too seriously. he's a little frazzled in the ad, but he's having fun with it and it worked out really well.

my journey into the world of doughnuts is coming to an end and, honestly, I've eaten a lot of doughnuts along.

the way, I don't feel all that great, so it's probably good. I wrap up before I leave Scott.

to go and do whatever it is that presidents of massive doughnut chains do. I let him tell me his most important Dunkin fact.

given your fascination with doughnuts, I would let people in on a little-known fact that munchkins, which are our doughnut holes, the spherical doughnuts, they're the most, approximately 4.3 munchkins that make up a single doughnut in terms of their mass, and so it's like these miniature candy bars that are out there. everyone feels good when they just have one, but that you end up sort of having multiple so you can have about 4.3 is your break-even comparison to having a traditional doughnut, and I think that's a highly guarded secret in the vaults of Dunkin headquarters here. but now you and your listeners will know the true ratio the doughnut.

doughnuts come a long way since a sailor accidentally invented the doughnut hole, and I guess these days we're back to eating the hole as well. doughnuts now come in a variety of shapes and sizes, with toppings and fillings that boggle the mind, and I like that. between giant chains like Dunkin and smaller mom-and-pop stores like Best Doughnuts and Tasty Doughnuts, you're never far away from a fried ring of dough. 10 billion of them guzzle down every year.

still can't get my head around that number.

journey. oh, I'm so pleased we're recording.

this over zoom and I was looking at your face whenever Ben Affleck was being talked about. you kind of had this like glow in this expression on your face. it was really beautiful to see. it was like contentment makes.

me happy he is. he is a good old boy from Boston. he is, he just is.

yeah, she's so good I.

thought that was a genius move him to totally embracing this Dunkin connection that everyone had all these horrible memes about him and just so rude, and he's like fuck it I'm.

taking it. there's certain commercials that come about in such an organic way, and I guess brands try and fake that sometimes, but you can never fake it and nothing makes me laugh more still, in a really good hearted way we've.

all struggled with like a.

thing of coffees and too much in our hands and just seeing an alien same struggle that the rest of us have. it's just eternally funny and his facial expressions as things fall out of his hands, it's great, it's.

hard. it's hard to be a doughnut guy. yeah, I.

hadn't actually watched that Super Bowl ad until recently, and when people catch Ben Affleck in the window, it's just a good moment. you know that.

was what I dreamed of just driving up to a Dunkin Donuts and Ben is working in the. that is like probably something I asked actually had a fantasy about.

so actually probably.

another topic for this podcast is the drive-thru because, being back in New Zealand, I've sort of really remember. we don't look. I mean maybe it's popped up in some cities here. I haven't noticed it. like you can't really do a drive-thru Starbucks, they don't have a drive-thru bank.

we do drive-thru.

McDonald's and fast food, but it hasn't expanded to other things like

doughnuts and coffee.

oh, I love that. yeah, that'd be a great.

episode. yeah, why get out of the car? just stay in the car, just stay in there all day.

we are a country of convenience if nothing.

else yeah and we love.

you for it. yeah, do you miss us? I know I miss.

you, I do. I do miss you. yeah, it's I mean I'm in this weird sort of reverse purgatory and I'll do an episode about this where I'm now waiting for my visa interview. so I've filled in all my paperwork, paid the lawyers some money. now I have to wait for my interview and then I'll go into the embassy here in Auckland, New Zealand, and they'll quiz me about the visa.

podcast to them. I do a podcast called

Flightless Bird. that could be a little ad pitch, a little sales pitch for them. we'll get one more listener from the embassy, yes, and then they take my passport away to put the visa in it, but it's unclear when you're getting the passport back. my point is, I'm kind of stuck in New Zealand in a weird purgatory, which is nice because it's, you know, at the moment it's summer and it's beautiful, but I do miss America. I miss my buddies, I miss you.

believe it. I want to.

be back. yeah, I want to be back in the crazy. you know, New Zealand's too beautiful here. I want to be back in the madness of the US.

the muck.

the muck.

well, we miss you too and we hope your interview goes well. yeah, maybe play them some clips. maybe play them this Ben Affleck clip. it makes people smile.

maybe I could take.

this in. that's a good.

idea and I can sort of really sell it to them, and there'll be a big queue of people behind me at the embassy so they can hear them as well. that's one thing about these visa interviews. you're in this big room and you can listen to what everyone's being quizzed about, and it's some of it's really personal. so

why do you need to be?

in America and some of

them are pleading there.

to get over for a wedding or to see a relative. there'll be some guy who's desperately trying to explain his business venture that he's trying to get to America for fumbling with papers. yeah, it's like a really wild environment to be in.

are you allowed to take your mic in there?

oh no, it's you know, they scan. it's like going through airport security. I wish I could record in there. yeah, they take your phone off you. they take any recording devices off you.

film before I've heard of it. yes, so in New.

Zealand, about a two hour drive from Auckland, where I am. they have kept one of the sets of Hobbiton going and there's little hobbits in there and little hobbit houses and you can pay a ticket and go along. I'm gonna probably jump on the bus and take a bus ride to Hobbiton, because I noticed when I was flying over to New, Zealand, so many people on the plane were watching Lord of the Rings.

oh, they were getting in the spirit.

people do that apparently when they come to New Zealand now, and so I figure I'll go to Hobbiton and have a look around and maybe record some audio there I love.

it. oh, I can't wait.

yeah, it'll be good, it'll be good, but in the meantime let's all go and eat doughnuts.

doughnut day doughnut.

day, Rob, go and eat your trendy sidecar doughnuts. I'll go and find whatever doughnuts they have here in New Zealand and, Monica, we know where you're going.

you know exactly. I think you are 14% more American, oh, and 14% more Cambodian. thank you this.

is nice. it's like it's taking the show in a different direction. we need to chase these stats actually with the ups and downs and see how American I'll become, because I haven't been keeping a track of this quite chaotic system we're.

using. I know, yeah, someone should go. do that, let us know in the comments. all right.

I'll see you guys soon, see you next week.

bye.

bye.

you.