This Is Life Without Your Sense of Taste and Smell

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out.

I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

I'm constantly calling my doorman and asking him to come to the apartment saying, Do you smell that?

Is something burning?

Right after this ad.

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Hello, David.

Aria, Pablo.

I'm good.

I'm good.

I've been waiting to do this for a very long time with you.

I have not been waiting as eagerly as you have.

You had told me when you were first coming up with this show that you thought this would would be a topic that interested you, and I told you that I'd be happy to tell you everything about it, but that it was not my favorite topic in the world to talk about.

Okay, so you should know that David Sampson, the former World Series champion president of the Miami Marlins, is a remarkably candid human being.

I can think of just so many of his personal admissions that would embarrass...

Pretty much any other sports executive were they to become public.

But not the case for the host of of Nothing Personal, who, perhaps not coincidentally, was also the very first person voted off on Survivor in 2014.

First person but Survivor Kagyan, David, need to bring me your torch.

But this topic, this idea, is different for David.

This episode will actually be kind of dangerously personal, especially by the time we get to the very end.

I had this idea for an episode before the show

had launched, long before it.

And I want to preface this by saying

that we talk a lot.

I think more than people who listen to my show or your show might actually appreciate.

And we have these conversations that are invariably pretty existential.

about

everything.

I mean, truly everything, the mundane, the infuriating, but also

just how we feel about the way things are going.

Things, in this case, being like our lives.

And you told me recently, in a moment of like genuine sincerity,

apropos of seemingly nothing, by the way, that you wouldn't trade your life

for any other life in the world.

Which staggered me.

That to me is how I define.

One of the problems I have is how I define my own happiness.

And that's the test I use almost exclusively.

Would I rather be in that person's chair or in my chair?

Would I rather be in that situation or my situation?

And whenever I answer no, it means I've got to make a change.

So if I'm not happy where I am or not happy who I am, that is the impetus for change for me.

And so the more times that I can say no, no, I'm happy exactly where I am, or I would not trade with you, you, you, or you.

And this has nothing to do with running a baseball team.

This is when I was in school.

I felt the same way.

I used the same test.

This is when I was in law school.

This is when I was on Wall Street.

This is when I was alone in Europe for weeks and months at a time as a 25-year-old,

lonely in places where I didn't speak the language.

I still always answered it the same way.

And when I didn't, I knew that, all right, I got to do something different.

So the answer is, yeah,

I don't want to be anyone else but me.

And I am glad you're sitting in that specific chair today because I am sitting in this chair to tell you that if I were you

I don't know if I would feel that way

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This smooth, flavorful cognac is crafted from the finest grapes and aged to perfection, giving you rich notes of oak and caramel with every sip.

Whether you're celebrating a big win or simply enjoying some cocktails with family and friends, Remy Martin 1738 is the perfect spirit to elevate any occasion.

So go ahead, treat yourself to a little luxury, and try Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royale.

Learn more at remymartin.com.

Remy Martin Cognac, feeding champagne, afforded to alcohol by volume, reported by Remy Control, USA, incorporated in Europe, New York, 1738, Centaur design.

Please drink responsibly.

You got COVID when

I was tested positive the day Biden was inaugurated, January of 2021, literally on inauguration day.

Man.

And on inauguration day,

it was an exit day

For

two very important aspects of your life: your sense of smell and your sense of taste.

And

I have legitimately been unable to shake this thought from my head ever since I learned that

you still don't have either.

What's the thought that you can't shake?

Holy f, that sounds awful.

How did you notice that smell and taste were gone?

So every day, shockingly, I have a routine.

People are going to understand at the end of this episode how particular the details of your life have been orchestrated.

Well, they're orchestrated for efficiency purposes, and they're orchestrated to maximize the things that I like and to minimize the things that I don't like.

And so, again, it's all under the umbrella of efficiency.

So, I hadn't been feeling well, but that never stopped me before.

And back then, in January of 21, it was pre-vaccine.

You didn't really want to get COVID.

There were refrigerator trucks on 2nd Avenue full of dead people.

Hospitals and funeral homes were overwhelmed.

Bodies were actually piling up.

Refrigerated trucks were brought in to store the bodies.

Literally true.

Literally true.

That's what was happening.

As a resident of First Avenue, it's all true.

Which is unreal to think about.

And by the way, part of the subplot of the story is like COVID.

There's some shit here that's different.

And

I don't want to die of COVID.

I'm healthy.

I'm the one who had a pulse oximeter on two fingers checking

every two minutes, checking my fever every two minutes.

Always fine with my lung capacity was always fine.

Everything's fine.

I just have fever, not feeling well.

Test positive.

Of course, go to a doctor, confirm the test positive.

And on the way to the doctor,

my routine is shower, brush my teeth, brush my teeth while the shower is getting warm, then deodorant, then a cologne.

And I sprayed the cologne the way I do.

I spray it in front of me 12 inches.

I sprayed twice and then I walked through it.

That's why I put cologne on.

And I said to myself, oh, the cologne is stale.

And so my first thought only was, this is not the normal cologne smell that I know I smell like.

Obviously, there's something wrong with the cologne.

And the bottle was more than half empty.

And so I googled, does cologne expire?

Because it's the only possible thing I thought of.

And then I went to the doctor and got everything, got the test and was given the zinc and the this and the that, et cetera.

And then I noticed that, in fact, I was not smelling anything because the doctor asked, have you lost your taste or smell?

And then I realized at the doctor's office that I had, told him, and he said, no problem, totally normal, three to five days.

Oh, man.

So I didn't think anything of it.

Three to five days, what's the difference?

And that was January of 21.

And now it's been, we're coming on three years.

Jesus.

Jesus.

Your reaction

at the point

at which I guess five days expire, six days go by, seven days go by,

the sinking in of,

oh, this is, this

this is not coming back.

Oh, I didn't think that for months.

So when it didn't come back in five days, I started to think about it.

And I started to adjust my life even in those five days, thinking they were temporary adjustments.

How?

In terms of my expectations for food.

So my biggest taste sensory issue is differentiating jelly beans between licorice jelly beans and cinnamon jelly beans.

And that's the test I use to this day to this day i eat licorice and cinnamon jelly beans every day oh my god and you you're a guy who carries for people who don't know the legend of of how particular your habits are you carry around a giant ziploc bag of candy i do like candy and so the licorice versus cinnamon yes this is this is a thing that you have access to presumably um

Yeah, you've had access to every day.

Every day.

So I always have a inventory and I can't tell the difference.

And I don't want to jump too far ahead, but if you asked me for a top five list of the problem of not having taste or smell, it used to be number one.

It is no longer number one because now when I eat the jelly beans, I'm okay with not tasting the difference because I feel the jelly bean, but it used to be my number one until other things came up when you have no taste or smell that I realized are way more important than not knowing the difference in your jelly beans.

Okay, we're going to need that top five list.

So hold tight to that.

But But your mind, it's very clear already, does not work the way I suspect that my mind would, or most people's minds would, because my reaction, truly, as like five days go by, six days go by, seven days go by, would be like,

fuck

me

is like how I would feel about all of this.

And your reaction seems to be,

it's time to adjust.

It's time to adjust.

Immediately, you're describing that.

So adjusting means this.

It's when you're at a restaurant and you get angry because you think, wow, I didn't order correctly.

Normally I order this dish and it's fantastic.

Something happened.

The chef must not be here today because this food stinks.

And what my brain did for the first year is it made me forget that I had no taste.

And what it did is it made me think that I was getting bad food at restaurants.

For a year.

And then I would be eating it.

I'd be upset.

I would say to who I was eating with is this do you like your dinner and they would say yes and i would say my dinner sucks and then i'd say oh i have no taste so it took about a year i would say for me not to go through it and sadly i don't go through that exercise anymore now i go into meals knowing i'm not going to enjoy them they're just meant as a gas station but but just but just explain though when we say that you lost your sense of taste you lost your sense of smell

how absolute is that description?

So it changes.

The first year, it was pretty absolute.

I can walk through New York City's silver lining playbook.

I don't smell urine.

I don't smell weed.

I don't smell anything walking through New York City, which people complain about, the bad smells.

For me, it's no problem.

All the things that you would say are bad, I can just power through.

and not have an issue with.

Yeah, I've been reeking of weed and farting this entire time.

And you've got nothing.

I have nothing.

So I don't smell it now.

The taste part,

for the first couple weeks, I went on what I thought would be the most amazing diet.

I only ate green food and kale.

So this is how I suspected you would adjust.

Because I thought I'd become this perfectly in shape, amazingly healthy guy.

Yeah, you're optimizing.

I'd stop with candy.

Pleasure from taste and smell no longer factors into my hedonistic calculus.

And so I'm going to be better for it.

I'm going to now become the healthiest man who's ever lived.

So it lasted two weeks because it made me too sad.

Because when people would go out to pizza, I wanted to eat pizza or I wanted to have dessert.

I love ice cream.

I love candy.

And so what I did is I just learned that I wouldn't know the difference between a pizza with onion or a pizza with pepperoni, which I don't eat, but I wouldn't be able to tell the difference in my jelly beans.

I wouldn't know the difference in cookies, whether it's chocolate chip or chocolate chip with nut or macadamia or even oatmeal raisin.

But I loved the thought of having a cookie.

And so I learned to love the thought.

And how social was that desire?

Or how much of it was the,

I want to be around people who are doing normal things and feel normal?

Or how much of it was you

and or you tricking yourself into like feeling the rhythms of the familiar?

So it started with me me wanting to trick myself because I thought that I could will it back.

That if I if I look and I'm having pizza, I could taste pizza.

And what I would do is I would do taste tests all the time.

So I would close my eyes, I'd have two things, and I would try to identify what I was eating.

So I would have two cookies in front of me, or I'd have a slice of pizza with two different things on it.

And what I learned is I was reacting to hot, hot sauce, spicy, because I felt, always felt that in my nose.

so you felt the physical sensation of of

what's spice the scoville scale making you water or whatever your eyes water or whatever else it's like hot peppers exactly that so you can feel the hot pepper but you don't taste it but you feel it yeah so I learned to just add tons of hot sauce to everything so I went on Amazon bought these vats of hot sauce and I just use it on all my food which is insulting when there are chefs around and I'm cognizant of it so sometimes in nice restaurants or even at home, I have to say, by the way, I don't have any taste.

I'm sorry.

That's why I'm using hot sauce.

Because people get offended

when you ask for hot sauce at a Michelin restaurant.

When you dump out onto your plate

as much

that'll make you feel literally anything.

It's in my eternal quest to feel, which permeates many parts of my personality.

We don't have time for all of that today, but feeling what the hot sauce does became my lifeline.

It became everything I do is spicy and I require it.

And if in terms of how it's changed over the last few years, what's changed is my brain now is tasting.

So I love.

What does that mean?

It means that when I have a slice of pizza, I can enjoy the slice.

I went through a period of time where I was angry and I didn't enjoy eating what I used to love to eat.

And I am now at the point where I've tricked myself into thinking that I taste what I love.

And so I love what I eat.

That's fascinating.

And so I'm good.

You're feeling in the way that some people feel a phantom limb, you feel phantom taste buds as if they're still there as they used to be.

I love that.

I used to taste things that I thought I was eating and I wasn't eating them at all.

And then my brain eliminated that.

And now my brain literally tells me what I'm eating and tells me what it's going to taste like as a reminder of what it did taste like.

So, new food is not impactful.

That's so interesting.

So, I can't try anything new because I won't know, I have no frame of reference.

So, you are trapped in a culinary arrested development that is limited

by your catalog of previous experiences.

Which wasn't, I mean, I'm lucky, it's not that limited.

Well, this is okay.

So, let's, let's, let's establish here that you

loved and still love going out to eat.

It's so irrational.

No, but it's under,

me too, right?

Like, I just think it's amazing that you, the guy who is, of course, carrying around, you're double-fisting pulse oximeters,

and you love

a meal at a nice restaurant.

And this befalls you, creature of the most consistent habits.

And

of course, your response is,

I'm still eating out.

I am going to live my life, but there have been some issues.

So my favorite food used to be sushi.

And I went to Jiro with Ichiro.

We're talking the number one sushi restaurant in the world.

Jiro dreams of sushi, of course, a famous documentary, the greatest.

And it's in a train station in Japan.

Ichiro had it closed down just for him and a few of Marlon's executives when we signed him.

And I've been there twice with him.

And it was my favorite.

And I don't mean to look at me, Louie.

No, no, no.

Now I don't like sushi.

And I just had sushi last night because Sunday night sushi with my sisters.

And

it is, if you ask me what I'm angry about with no taste, no smell.

I'm not angry that I can't smell flowers.

It doesn't, I was never that, I was never a botanist.

I don't mind that I can't smell certain, like people walk into cookie stores.

Yeah, there's a Chip City store right near

bakeries.

Oh, so that's one of my favorite.

If I could pick a cologne, I would pick like freshly baked bread.

So people love that.

And I used to, but I don't miss it.

It is what it is.

I walk into a bakery and I don't smell anything and it's fine.

But I don't like sushi because the The way that it feels in my mouth, I can't tell the difference between salmon and tuna or eel or yellowtail or certain amazing pieces of masamy, subtle spectrum of flavor.

Which was everything.

Everything.

Now it's nothing.

Right.

Supper and hot sauce on

wasabi.

Oh, yes.

That's what I do.

I cover it with wasabi, which is insulting to every sushi chef in the world.

And I eat it, but it doesn't feel good to me.

So, for example, last night, I had sushi for the first time in two months, and I used to go three times a week.

So, that's been a casualty of this.

But it's remarkable that

you're still out there taking swings.

How do you not?

Well, you have to.

But it's not just that

you're trying to

hit a single.

I want to point out for everybody that you over the summer went to Italy.

on what can only be described as a culinary like make-a-wish tour.

If you like food and you have only so many days to live, you would go to the restaurant that you went to, right?

Where did you go?

What restaurant was it?

So

it's a three-star Michelin restaurant, and I was there for

a Springsteen concert when he was on tour.

And my girlfriend loves Michelin restaurants.

And when we travel with people who love to eat well, and so we'll eat very casually once in a while and then save up and try to get a reservation at these crazy restaurants that you can't get reservations.

Best in the world.

Best in the world.

That's the goal.

There's a list of the best restaurants in the world, and I would love to eat at all of them.

Yeah, same.

Just experience because it's an experience.

And you know me, I love making memories.

It is a memory.

The problem is that I'm still doing these things and I'm not getting out of it what you should.

And it's upsetting to the people I'm with.

Well, you can't smell or taste, David.

I know, but I want you to imagine you're with people who want to have this shared experience with you.

And what they're doing at the end of every course is saying, let's rank these.

This is the best thing I've ever had.

This is the best thing I've ever had.

And they look at me and they feel badly because I'm not enjoying enjoying it, but I'm pretending I am.

And I want them to enjoy it.

I want them to do their top fives when there's a 16 course meal.

Here's the top five courses.

And I just sort of sit there and I pretend, but they know because they love me and know me that I'm not enjoying it, but I'd still do it.

Well, also because it's not that subtle.

So and I say this from journalistic secondhand knowledge because you went to, I don't want to get the name of this restaurant, right?

You went to Modina, Italy,

one of the food capitals of our planet.

Yes.

It is.

What was the name of the restaurant you went to?

It's Casa de Casa.

De Luigi?

Casa Maria.

Casa Maria.

Luigi, I believe.

It's some Luigi.

It's the most Italian thing you've ever imagined.

We just wanted to have an opportunity to show what this particular corner of the world looks like, smells like, tastes like.

The joy of having you all in our home.

That is the Casa Maruiga.

Massimo Bottura.

That's the chef.

Yes.

And I asked your girlfriend to help

chronicle what you have just described.

And she was kind enough to

bring back footage if we could

play an example of what David means.

It tastes like ice cream.

Some sort of ice cream.

What flavor is it?

What flavor is the white stuff?

Like you got cold in, but you actually have one.

You can wine.

It's cold like ice cream.

What's the green?

What's the green?

But I was acting.

Cape guy.

What flavor?

That mortifies me.

No, but by the way, for the record, I went and found out what dish that was.

It was this ice cream.

It was oyster compote and lamb carpaccio like you could not have been more off

unfortunately

so that video i i'd forgotten about that when you're at a restaurant like that and i now i'm doing that even at a lunch when you're prepared something you want to know what it is because that helps inform my brain what i should be tasting so what i do is when i see something orange i'm assuming either squash or pumpkin if i'm told it's squash i'm going to taste squash If I'm told it's pumpkin, I'll taste pumpkin.

When people want to screw around with me, they'll tell me it's squash and it's pumpkin, and I'll say, my God, this is really good squash.

Because for me, it's squash.

If you tell me it's squash, as long as it passes the eye tests

and the

taste, the culture, the

texture.

If it passes the texture test, then it can be that.

So it's an example with desserts very commonly.

I would not be able to tell the difference in the two types of ice creams because if it looks like vanilla ice cream, I'm going to say it's vanilla ice cream.

And then what you saw in that video, tough to watch a little bit, even though I understand the privilege of it, it's everyone was having the time of their life.

And I kept saying, I want to be a part of it.

What is what is what are you guys enjoying over there?

I want to feel something.

Just tell me anything that you're eating because they wouldn't give you a menu.

No, because it's a restaurant where the waiters are dressed in black tie.

That's a Michelin three-star restaurant.

You don't order a la carte.

No, no, they're giving you what they want to give you.

That is correct.

And you are at the table feeling, in one physical sense, right there,

and in the sensory sense, a million miles away.

At a restaurant like that, you're surrounded.

It's very small.

And people are having the meal of their life.

Yeah.

And I'm watching them experience that.

And all I'm doing, and that video just reminded me how annoying I must be to be with, because I keep saying, what is that?

Like, what, tell me, talk me through it, what it tastes like.

Yeah, you want people to basically

not just

they need to be my guide.

You want them to be a phone sex operator.

Tell me what the food tastes like.

Is it sweet?

Is it oily?

So I don't use that tone because my tone is far more during moments like that.

I get more angry than anything.

So while I've come to grips with it, there are moments still.

And you just saw an example of a moment where I'm frustrated by,

so you'd think that would inform my desire not to be in those situations.

That was my next follow-up thought.

And I won't let myself do it.

I'm not going to give in.

I'm not going to give in and just eat at Applebee's.

Nothing against Applebee's if it's a sponsor, they're listening, but it's an example of any of the great restaurants that I like to go to that are that are casual you don't want to compromise the life that you want to still live because you do not this has all the way from candy to a michelin restaurant right this isn't about the fact that i eat at michelin restaurants every day i eat candy every day yeah yeah yeah yeah i eat turkey sandwiches every day like everybody else but i just do it with so my my order with turkey is now turkey and jalapeno of course so i load it with jalapenos but i should point out truly that you still have preferences.

I want what I want, what I used to like, and that I will pretend I like again.

So basically, I just play games with myself.

Mealtime is game time

where I just do different things.

I'm doing, every time we eat, I'm doing different.

tests with myself.

You know, I'm a tester.

You are.

So I'm doing different tests.

I'm doing food in different combinations.

I'm just trying to see different sides of my mouth.

Maybe the taste buds on my left are doing a little better today.

So I'm trying things every day.

And so it's to the point: your preferences, your desire to keep eating, your desire to live a life that is familiar to anybody who knew you before Inauguration Day has gotten to the point where your,

I should say,

your producer, Matthew Coca, some part of him, he said to me, wonders if this is like, is Stevie Wonder really blind?

He was like,

I can't say for sure that this is actually what's happening because

he sees you and he's like,

yeah, I don't know.

So

I think the reason why he would react that way is maybe the reason why you react that way, which is you are envisioning what you would be doing in this situation.

And that's what Coke is doing.

I assume the same thing.

But again, you can't envision it until you do it, until it happens to you.

Your top five

of what is it, stuff you miss or stuff you now actually appreciate more.

Which way does it go?

No, it's actually the way I view it, it's a top five of today.

It's how do I feel both positive and negatively about having no taste or smell.

Number five is the inability to be discerning, which is how I am in my life to the 10th degree.

And now I cannot discern

from heaven.

I can't tell if I'm at a Michelin restaurant or at a restaurant with five health code violations other than presentation.

Now I look for all the things that really may not matter.

Yeah.

How are people dressed?

Who are the other clientele in the restaurant?

And when you travel internationally, that's a real issue.

Because the beautiful part about traveling is you go to holes in the wall.

You go to places where there's only locals.

Yes.

You try to stay away from the tourist traps.

Yeah, you kind of want a place that has a health code violation

vibe.

And

you should be able to discern, oh, that doesn't taste right.

I'm eating the best sushi in the world in a subway station.

Exactly.

Number four change in my life that

has far really, really interested me is I pay more attention to other people than I ever did during mealtime because I'm taking cues off them in a way that I never used to.

I am trying to figure out how you're feeling so that will help inform how I ought to feel because I'm open to feeling either way.

I'm open to saying this restaurant sucks or I'm open to saying it's the greatest restaurant ever or that, wow, there's a problem here or not, but I need to get it from you.

You're You're collecting information that will then feed

the computer of your imagination.

It's doing the math.

It's the calculation.

The number three thing that I miss terribly is that I can't eat dairy alone.

I don't understand.

Whenever you drink, put milk in your cereal, or whenever you have cream cheese, or when you have anything that's dairy, you're supposed to, I was taught, and I do, you're supposed to smell it before eating it.

Oh.

In order to know whether it's spoiled.

Curdled.

Yeah.

Curdled.

I can't tell the difference.

So when I'm alone, I don't permit myself to eat any dairy.

And that bothers me because I want to, but I'm too scared to because the one test that I'm required to give prior to eating dairy, and there are zero exceptions to this.

So I don't care what the date says.

I don't, it doesn't matter.

It's got to pass my test, and I can't give the test anymore.

So not only can I not eat dairy alone, but now I'm dependent on other people to tell me it's okay.

And I'm suspect of all of their judgment because most people don't care about an expiration date or a little kerdel.

I am, I would be, so you are a mad king demanding to know whether he is being poisoned.

And I would be the worst tester of food for you because I love a stank on my cheese.

eat a rind.

The older, the better.

The sweatier, the more delicious.

I am not going to be helpful to you in that way.

You are not helpful to me in so many ways

because you, your give a shit meter is extremely low.

This is correct.

So what

so what you're doing is you are both showing me the yin to my yang, but in areas where I need you to be more like me, you're not.

And it impacts when we're together.

Right.

Right.

I am a poor substitute for your phantom limb.

That is exactly correct.

Number two.

The second thing that is the largest impact of losing your taste and smell is it has hurt my ability to connect with people who I love

because I didn't realize prior how many people connect over smells and over tastes.

And I don't mean just over meals.

I mean when you're walking, when you're going to apple picking or when you're going to pick out flowers or just when you're doing anything.

Smell of the air after rain.

All of those things were a point of connection in certain relationships I had.

And what I've been forced to do is change because if you take that away, then if you're looking for 100% connection, you're down to 80.

just like that.

And if I want to get back to 100, it's forced me to find a different 20%.

So what I've actually been able to do is enhance certain other connections through commonality of movies or books or politics or political discussions, things where we can say, oh, we have this in common or we don't, but hey, we're having a connection here.

And what I'm doing constantly is trying to get to 100 with people because

I love the connection.

I need the connection.

I crave the connection.

And I don't crave halfway.

I crave 100% connection.

You have an energy bar or you have a progress bar that you're trying to get to full green, 100%.

The amount of commonality of interest you have with people over taste and smell.

Yeah.

Like you don't think about it now, but you at a meal or just walking through, walking in New York or going out to be with the people you work with, when there's something, oh, do you smell that?

What I've been forced to do is try to replace it.

And sometimes it comes out as clumsy or awkward because I'm still, it's only been a couple years.

So, you know, this January will be three years.

So I'm still working on that.

And I'm used to it, 55 years old.

I'm still growing and evolving, but I've gotten pretty good at figuring myself out and what I need and what I need other people to do to help me with what I want to need.

But this has been a new process, a new game.

And I'm finding different parts about it every day still where I can do it better and be better.

Yeah.

All right.

So at the risk of

testing the very thing that you have just just explained you're concerned about.

What is the number one thing

that you now have to reckon with as a result of this?

The number one thing in a landslide is that I'm now scared to be alone again.

And I spent years, years

trying to be alone.

And I'm talking about when I had a wife and kids, little kids, and they would travel.

When I would be alone in a house, I would hire someone to stay with me because I wouldn't be alone.

When I went to hotels on the road with the Marlins, I slept with lights on and I made sure that there was someone in a connecting room.

Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.

This is all true.

So when you were home alone in your family home,

you'd hire

a nanny.

Okay.

I was going to say that that is the weirdest Craigslist ad I can imagine.

No, no, no.

It's someone who worked for me, but would knew that there's no days off when the kids are gone, even though that would normally be a time when you'd have a day off.

And so you just ask them to like hang out.

So we wouldn't be around.

Be around.

Because I'd be scared.

And I've worked through it.

And now I can be alone, except since 2021, I'm back to scared to being alone because I can't smell.

So in New York City, as an example, I'm constantly calling my doorman and asking him to come to the apartment saying, do you smell that?

Is something burning?

I'm constantly checking in a way that is even worse than my normal OCD, checking to make sure the oven's off, making sure that the toaster oven is unplugged, checking things in an absurd way that if a camera were following me, I'm doing laps around the house and the apartment to make sure.

And it's a nightmare when you cannot smell.

And so I don't want to be alone because I just don't know if something's going to happen.

So I'll have the doorman come up.

I'm talking not once.

This is several times a week because I get the feeling in my brain, oh, shit.

There may be a problem in this apartment.

Something's on fire.

Right, right.

Your fear, the fear, that part of your brain that you had worked an entire life to manage for reasons that maybe one day

we'll get into, but to the point of its sensitivity, not quite yet, you had managed that part well enough.

And now you feel that recurring again.

Basically, it's created an inefficiency.

So I had it down pat in terms of how I did everything in the most efficient way, as you know.

And now what the lack of taste and smell has done, it's created these interesting inefficiencies that I wouldn't have figured.

And so I'm still forced to deal with that.

Right.

So the way I deal with it is having a doorman come, and the way I deal with it is I don't stay alone anymore, which is a step backwards therapeutically,

but it's a requirement.

Do I wish that my taste and smell would come back?

Of course, but

what can I do other than wait and adjust and become more efficient at what I currently face?

There is no national occasion like Thanksgiving to enjoy taste and smell.

What will that be like for you specifically?

Can I ask that a different way?

Are there moments where I feel worse about having no taste and smell?

And the answer is yes, but Thanksgiving is not one of them.

Because for me, Thanksgiving has always been a,

you're with family, check the box, get it done, no drama, no fighting, make sure everyone cleans up and that I can get back to what I want to do by Friday.

Right?

That's how I view Thanksgiving.

Food was never the lead of that.

Food was never the lead of that story.

And I'm lucky in that way.

I'm not a chef.

I've spoken to chefs about this, and they acknowledge that they would lose their livelihood.

It's the equivalent of you.

If they lost smell and taste.

Right.

Yeah.

You can't be a chef and lose your smell and taste.

And I couldn't do what I do if I lost my vocal cords.

I'd have to find a different way to do it.

So I don't suffer in that way.

But Thanksgiving for me was always a, oh, I got to deal with family stuff.

Yeah, yeah.

There's things going on here that are far more important than, wow, that turkey smells nice.

So I don't react to Thanksgiving the way you would think.

There is no specific holiday that I view as food related that I engage with differently.

It's the smaller things like my candy.

Yeah.

So in terms of what you miss the most.

Easy.

It's easy, and I know it, and it sounds horrible.

It's tasting a black black licorice jelly bean.

I can't tell you how much I love black licorice jelly beans.

I cannot describe to you how I love black licorice jelly beans.

I should say true love.

I should say right up front that I don't relate to that at all.

Many people don't.

Gross.

Do you know what started that?

And I remember when it started in elementary school, I would get,

this is not for you to feel sorry.

This is just life.

When you're small, you get bullied.

It's not bullying bullying like it is this day and age.

For the podcast audience, David is small.

I'm small.

And people would steal things from me at even a very nice private school in New York.

What I learned, and this was the beginning of the brain, no one was stealing good and plenty or black licorice jelly beans.

It's the saddest origin story.

But it's exactly, and I learned to love it and be okay.

Like, all right, I'm not going to crave for what I don't have.

I'm going to desire what I do have.

And it turned into this amazing love story with black licorice that has lasted my whole life.

Wait, now it's gone.

So just to be very clear about this, because people were stealing the good candy,

you adapted evolutionarily

to literally enjoy, to enjoy the taste of the bad candy.

The number one thing, there's a candy called chuckles.

There's five chuckles in a box.

There's an orange, there's a green, there's a yellow, there's a red, there's a black.

No one wants the black.

It's the one in the middle.

They put it in the middle on purpose because people eat the outsides first.

They like the outside.

I always say, fine, I'll take the black.

Evolutionary.

When I'm in a car, I call backseat middle.

I'm small.

I know I'm going to be put there anyway.

So I learned to love it.

Candy corn.

Love it.

12 months a year, everyone hates it.

And it's always there.

It's always available.

So I get to enjoy things and I don't make up that I enjoy them.

I actually do.

That's the part.

That's as mind-blowing as anything about anything we've talked about is the idea that you've actually authentically

reconfigured your brain, yourself, you, David Sampson, to like the things that others don't want

so that when you draft them with your number one overall pick, you feel like you got what

you wanted.

And I always want to win.

And so I will.

That's an amazing thing, man.

That's an amazing thing.

It's quite true.

So

how much hope do you have left at the end here for getting back the senses that you have lost?

I don't think about it much.

I read everything and listeners have nothing personal.

And I thank them so much.

They send me articles and links and doctors in various places.

It is being worked on.

There will come a time when there will be a cure for this, I assume.

And when it happens, it happens, though what they're already saying is when you get it back, it may be totally different.

And so I'm a little fearful in some ways.

If I get taste back and I don't like pizza, that's a nightmare.

But there's nothing I can do.

And one of the things you know about me is I don't spend much time on things I don't control.

So I maximize what I can control and then I control it.

Well, that's the story of everyone I've talked about.

And this one I can't.

So therefore, why would I long long for a solution when I can fix

today?

So

what was the closest that you allowed yourself

to come to

as hope is concerned?

There was a day when I was in bed.

All of a sudden, it's unmistakable.

I'm smelling shit.

So I assumed there's no animals in the house.

I thought someone shit in the bed.

That's the only explanation.

That was your first thought.

My first thought was, there is something that I need to not step in or lie in.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I looked over, and Cara was just doing her thing.

And I said, did you just fart?

And she said, David, that's fantastic.

You can smell again.

Because she'd been doing it for months and months and months and months and getting away with it.

Right.

And loving life that she could be in bed, you know, dropping ass, and I didn't care.

And so now I smelled it again.

And I yelled, Yahtzee,

I'm back, baby.

We celebrated thinking you're done.

Yeah.

You got it back.

It's over.

It's over.

Our long national nightmare is over.

So I went right to the bathroom

immediately, not to get the Febreze to spray the bed, which is what I did pre-COVID.

Of course.

Of course, you would.

Of course.

Very subtle.

I went to the cologne, my cologne, and I sprayed it.

And I didn't smell it.

And so I said, it's all right.

This is step one.

I was fine.

I said, let's see what happens tomorrow.

And so it was later that same night that Cara looked at me and she said, hey, how you doing?

I said, fine.

Why?

She's like,

You don't smell that, do you?

Oh, no.

She said, no.

She said, all right, it's not back.

So in other words, you had neither smelt it nor

dealt it.

I'm afraid of what we're about to do here a little bit, David.

I've dragged you back into the studio.

I've never done this before,

any of the things we're about to do before,

because you said something on the episode that we just, well, that the listeners just heard, about how you don't taste or smell anything, but you feel hot sauce.

And so here we are with a special message from a friend of Pablo Torre finds out.

Hey, what's going on, David?

This is Sean Evans, host of Hot Ones.

Pablo reached out to me with an interesting problem, one that I've never faced before.

He said that you cannot taste anything.

So today, I guess we'll put that to the test.

I've sent along three of the hottest sauces that we use on hot ones: sauces that are in our 10-spot, our nine-spot, or eight-spot.

So, the tail end of the show, I'm just gonna wish you good luck and remember to please be careful around the eyes.

Fantastic.

Context here.

Thank you, Sean Evans, for that.

The spiciness of these sauces, of course, measured using the Scoville scale.

That scale goes from zero to over million heat units.

Okay, so this is our gift to you, a gift that I realize only now in full, that I must also enjoy, unfortunately.

Two million?

Two million.

So we have all these wings.

What does that mean?

Three of the hottest hot sauces.

And I'll give you some numerical context.

Please.

We can start.

So please, this is the bomb evolution with red hot chili base.

That is a 500,000 on the Scoville scale.

And so we should start.

We should start, David.

We have our milk, we have our water, we have fries, which are mostly decorative and taunting, but we have each a plate of three wings.

And I think you should start with Debom Evolution.

Let me start with I don't eat wings.

I love how the worst part of this whole exercise for you, of course, is not the hot sauce.

It is, it is.

Where the napkins?

We have paper towels here below.

We have a garbage can that you can barf into over on the side.

Yep, that's that.

I got them.

Thank you.

All right.

How much are we doing?

A healthy, a healthy, a healthy dab, as it were, on your wing.

Yeah.

Oh, my God.

Like that?

Is that a healthy dab?

That's more than healthy.

I think it might be too much, honestly.

But wait, is this the hottest or the least?

No, this is merely 500,000 on the scope of it.

So that's the least hot.

That's the least hot.

This is the starter.

This is the appetizer.

Does it smell to you?

Yes.

No.

All right.

Let's go for it.

So just eat it.

Yep.

Immediately.

Immediately like opening.

I didn't know there were pores on my tongue, but they're all open now.

Okay.

Does the sauce feel chewy?

Does the wing feel chewy to you?

That's really what I'm focused on.

You're like, are you pranking me?

Now I was getting okay.

So here's where I am right now.

Oh, God.

That wing was chewy.

Right?

Like, that's

all right.

That's next.

All right.

Number two.

Jesus Christ.

Hellfire cranked hot sauce.

Extreme black garlic reaper.

Cranked with a K.

699,000 on the Scobel scale.

Okay.

Don't touch your eyes.

This is.

There's a face of an evil man.

I need some milk.

Have those glasses been washed ever?

I don't care.

Okay.

I don't care at this point.

Is that enough?

Do you want how much would you like?

That's so much more than

you're ever going to put on.

Okay.

Woo!

All right.

Hellfire cranked hot sauce.

It's David Sampson making a mockery of this entire premise.

Okay.

We're doing this.

Hellfire cranked hot saw, 699,000 on Scoville scale.

That's a better wing.

Okay.

David's mouth is stained with 699,000 Scovo heat units.

What this is actually doing is depressing me a little more than I would like to feel.

Last dab.

You have a minute left, David.

Oh, I'm okay.

Here we go.

Ready?

Is this the hot one?

Yeah.

Over 2 million.

The last dab, Pepper X, over 2 million on the Scoville scale.

You have 35 seconds to tell me what that is.

Is that enough?

Is this enough?

In no way am I going to try this?

Oh, my God.

Well, I couldn't tell the difference between any of them.

The hottest hot sauces on hot ones.

David Sampson laughs and I'm literally crying.

I'm not laughing.

I'm sad.

All right.

It's the opposite of laughter.

David, thank you for doing the show.

Yeah.

See you later.

Oh my God, I'm going to barf.

This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media production.

And I'll talk to you next time.

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