MatPat Eats His Last Meal

I'm Matthew Patrick, aka MatPat, and this

is my last meal.

Every person has exactly two things in common.

We all gotta eat and we're all gonna die.

You might recognize today's guest from Game Theory,

or perhaps Film Theory, or perhaps Style Theory,

or perhaps Food Theory.

Or perhaps

from your local retirement home.

Hello, internet,

welcome to MatPat's last meal.

MatPat, welcome.

Well, thank you very much,

and I'm sorry that we didn't have this meeting beforehand,

otherwise I could've given the channels to you

with that intro like that.

You got the growl in there.

Hello, internet, it was great.

I practiced that about six times until I realized that the seventh might make my

throat bleed.

Yeah.

Is that the Broadway training that kept it so fresh?

That is a great question.

I just have found a comfortable way to do it,

and I could do it all day, all hours.

It's not a problem for me at this point.

We've been watching way too many videos of you talking about YouTube analytics,

and this is absolutely true.

Y'all just saw a new intro where we didn't tell you what his last meal was

because we were worried about retention drop off if we told you the entire last

meal.

So, you have already fundamentally changed,

MatPat,

The face of this show.

I noticed that, like,

I was not given the roster of things that I'm going to be eating,

which I'm like, that's weird.

I wonder if they filmed that after the fact,

but

maybe this is a new structure that they're doing.

Even through retirement, you are still MatPat,

impacting.

I live on.

Yeah, it's my lingering spirit, I guess.

You are a very analytically minded person.

I am.

Too much so, it's terrible.

Does that increase your fear of death or decrease it?

The analyticalness of it

doesn't really weigh in.

I'd say my type A personality really factors in where it's like,

oh, no,

I wish I could control this and have an idea of how long I have left and how I can

maximize my time.

I used to be that obnoxious kid that went around college being like,

oh, well,

if your personality were represented by a muffin flavor,

what muffin flavor would you be?

And so

my friends knew to expect these off the wall questions,

and one of them was like, hey,

if you were on death row and you could choose any way you could die,

what would it be?

But also,

if you're talking about optimizing your life,

you now have the ability to make that happen.

Right, exactly.

It sounds like a Mister Beast video.

If that's really taking it

to the extreme.

We're going to some dark places today.

Oh, it's going to happen.

We literally just started.

We don't know what I'm eating, and we're talking about,

like, the optimized way to die.

This is pretty intense.

MatPat, for your first course of your final meal,

we have the jalapeño roll,

and then we have a dozen oysters with all the condiments.

We got prepared horseradish.

We got a scratch made mignonette.

We got the cocktail sauce, also made from scratch.

The tiny little bottles of Tabasco.

They're so cute.

They're adorable.

And some fresh lemons.

A little chibi Tabasco.

This looks incredible.

I've watched your show so many times that I don't know how people make it through

the whole meal,

because every course looks fantastic.

You gotta hoover it.

You gotta just open the mouth, open the throat.

Cause we're not leaving until all these oysters are gone.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

I look at this, and

my wife and partner, Stephanie,

would be so jealous because she's the person who got me into

both of these, both sushi as well as oysters.

But no, I grew up very scared of food.

You know, in mill of Ohio,

our home cooking was really a rotation of fast food.

My family wasn't really adventurous eaters,

and so it wasn't until college

that I had

my first bean, like, an actual bean dish.

I was scared of beans.

And so

my wife Steph, who was just my friend at the time,

introduced me.

She's like, hey,

there's this cool Mexican restaurant.

Do you want to take a little scoop of this bean dip?

And I'm like, oh, I'm scared of beans.

But I tried it, and I'm like,

it's like, literally,

like, the grain of rice sized bean.

I'm like, I thought this girl was cute,

and I'm like, I'm gonna impress her by eating a bean.

It worked, baby!

Yeah, it worked.

Got them.

So,

pro tip.

To anyone out there looking for love,

try a bean.

The magical food.

Cheers.

I know, right?

I'm talking this entire time, I've completely butchered my sushi roll.

Please don't judge me.

I know the internet's gonna rake me over the coals for this.

Well, fix it in post.

Thank you.

Something I yell all the time, and nobody does it.

So,

and then probably the most extreme food that Stephanie has gotten me to fall in

love with is this guy right here.

These are tough for a lot of people who have food sensitivities and whatever.

Did you eat one yet?

I have not.

I haven't dug in yet.

These are Kusshi Oysters.

These are probably my favorite oysters, they're a lot smaller,

but they tend to be, like,

a lot sweeter.

Where do they come from?

I believe Kusshi is off of Okinawa in Japan.

Oh, wow.

But I think sometimes they find them in

the

Pacific coast, in Washington as well.

Wow, that's incredible.

My favorite fun fact about oysters is that because of the climate crisis,

that waters are warming,

which is actually causing a lot of disease in oysters.

There's currently an outbreak

going on.

It's only caught a couple bodies,

but I think we're probably good.

So what's your ideal way to die?

Cause mine truly,

truly is getting poisoned by a bunch of raw oysters.

Do you really want to go out, like,

hovering over a toilet?

There's gonna be no toilet.

I'm just going out to the woods,

lay down some leaves, strip me naked.

Let me do what I'm gonna do.

He died the way he lived,

stripped naked in the woods, vomiting his guts out.

That was you there Saturday night?

Okay, that makes sense.

I watched as long as I could, and then I had to turn away,

cause I was starting to lose my lunch.

Oh, my gosh.

I wanna talk about your retirement.

Wait,

don't pivot away.

You asked me a question, and now you're pivoting away.

It's all right.

I'm here to double up with you.

Well, we'll run it back,

but then we have to both

do, like a fly in laughing intro.

Okay.

So, it's like a.

How do you want to die?

So, how do I want to die?

You know, it's not very exciting.

It's just, like,

quietly in my sleep, laying next to Steph.

When?

You know, cuddling.

When?

Are you talking about hour of the day or age of life?

Cause, like,

listen, my grandma died at a hundred and one.

She wishes she died at eighty-seven.

You know what I mean?

And she told me that.

That's not, like, editorializing.

The last fourteen years or so going, all my friends are dying,

and food doesn't taste anymore.

Yeah.

You know?

I'm a musical theater guy.

Like, that's,

that's where I got my start in a lot of ways,

or that's kind of what I aspired to do for a long time.

I thought your audition for Hairspray was great.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

Thank you very much.

I thought it was pretty good.

My hair was a hot mess, but,

yeah, there it is.

It was of its era.

Yeah, it was of its era, for sure.

And it was also of my pocketbook at the time because I had to keep my hair long

because I couldn't afford a haircut in New York.

Sport Clips does good work.

It's one of those things where in Hamilton,

the whole theme of Hamilton is like, he's constantly writing,

like he's running out of time.

Right?

That's kind of like the repeated refrain of the show.

And when you look at life, you have two limited resources.

You have money and you have time.

You might have a lot of money, might have a little money,

but time, you don't know how much you have.

And that is the one thing that you cannot get more of.

Yeah.

And so

for me, so much of my work,

so much of my beliefs, and how I live my life

is trying to live my life like I'm running out of time and trying to optimize

every moment and take advantage of every opportunity and say yes to as many things

as come my way,

and because I was so fortunate to

have wonderful parents and wonderful teachers that inspired me to be curious

about the world around me,

because

I was so fortunate to have

a groundswell of people support me

in nerding out about video games and stuff like that.

If I can

pay it forward

to other people and

work my butt off to make sure that they're entertained and that they're

inspired and that they're learning along the way,

and that I'm sharing that enthusiasm for the world with them,

that's the best thing that I can do.

That's the way to give it back.

And so

that's me.

I'm trying to live my life like I'm running out of time.

MatPat, for course number two,

we have a fancy

Big Mac.

Now,

you said that fast food was always a big part of your diet.

You still love it, but we classed this up.

We actually did a cranberry thousand island,

some pickled, dried,

rehydrated cranberries and cherry vinegar.

We had some shredded frisee.

We actually mixed goat cheese with American and then reformed it to make like

a chev-merican cheese.

We have a ground

wagyu beef patty

served Big Mac style

with some pickles.

And then we have the swamp water.

Now, I believe the ratios are,

sixty percent Diet Coke, roughly thirty percent Sprite Zero,

and then a float of Doctor Pepper and root beer.

And then finally dad's ribs,

which is somehow the most complicated recipe

in all of this because there are about seven different sauces mixed together.

You got A1 steak sauce, cocktail sauce,

barbecue sauce,

and several others slathered on some baby back ribs.

This is my favorite show.

Can I say that this is, like,

the best collaboration I've ever done.

Let's go, Matt.

I'm so stoked, man.

No offense to Wired autocomplete interview,

that I filmed earlier today.

Great.

You are wonderful people.

I had a great time talking way too much about myself.

But

next time, serve up my dad's ribs.

This is incredible.

Guys,

we gotta delete the complete the sentence questions that we have for the

next round.

We're not going back there.

Do I get to hold a board and reveal?

That would be amazing.

I wanted to make my own soda for a while,

so if anyone from Coke wants to partner up with me

to create this

amazing beverage,

slap my face on it.

We'll make millions, my friends.

I'll invest fifty bucks right now.

Fifty bucks!

I will Venmo you.

That's it.

We got the first.

Ten percent equity, that's a deal.

Ten percent equity?

Pull out the phone, Venmo me.

I'm yes, anding you right now.

I'm going to Venmo you.

Right.

He's committed to this.

I'm covered in mayonnaise.

What's your Venmo?

What is my Venmo?

I don't know.

Let's see.

Oh, I have a Cash App.

That's what I'm thinking.

I don't have Venmo.

That's okay.

You want Zelle?

Oh, Ian Hecox.

We can send Ian Hecox fifty bucks.

We can just send Ian from Smosh fifty bucks.

Do it, do it, do it.

I'll say this is from MatPat.

Okay, what's this for?

Ten percent equity.

Just say ten percent equity.

He'll know what it means.

Okay, MatPat

for.

Should I request it or pay it?

Oh, pay it.

Sent.

All right.

Passive income.

There you go.

Look at that.

Did you expect that this would actually be a three way collaboration today between

you,

me, and Ian Hecox of Smosh fame?

We're gonna A B test him in the thumb and then him out of the thumb

and then see what works.

It should work less well.

And that's no offense to Ian Hecox.

That is just

from my experience doing

over a decade of analytics testing

on the website.

If you have too many faces in the thumbnail,

it becomes white noise to the audience and they go click.

Yeah.

It's not additive.

It's actually a subtractive effect.

Let's take a bite of a hamburger, shall we?

That's something.

Oh, that's a win.

Oh, my gosh.

I love that you recreated

the shape of the cheese with such a better cheese

With you, you know,

retiring,

stepping away from being the main host of the Theorists channels.

Yep.

How do you think that is going to materially affect your life?

The fundamental concept of Game Theory

was born out of just like,

my natural curiosity and my desire to find cool information and share it out

with people.

I mean,

you look at videos of me when I was in college,

right?

And I was that kid

who was standing at the bus stop

in the middle of the college quad

with my bright lime green suit and my pink polka dot tie,

listening to, like,

Never Gonna Give You Up, right?

Shameless.

Cause I, I don't know,

cause I have a very solid sense of who I am through all of this,

you know, through the highs and lows and

growth of the channel and this and that.

I don't think it's ever truly shaken the core

of who I am, you know?

And I think that's one of the reasons why

people have really rallied around the format,

right, and find comfort in what we do,

especially the people who were watching the show for me,

as a host.

Every Youtuber I've ever talked to has had a lot of very intense experiences with

members of their community at,

say,

meet and greets that all somehow end up in,

you saved my life.

And I absolutely believe the people have told me that,

and my mindset on this has even shifted over time.

Before, I used to

feel a bit of a burden because I was like, I got my own things to worry about.

I can't be out here saving you

then that's shifted over time for me.

How do you feel of that?

That's one of the reasons why

I wanted to make sure

that we had a

ten week countdown to

me leaving.

Because if I just up and said, this is my last episode,

that would be unfair to the people who have invested so much in me

this year and even before this, right?

Has been

a year of grieving

in a lot of cases.

Hey, welcome to the Last Meals show.

Had to say goodbye

to different parts of this chapter of my life,

right?

Where it's like, oh,

this is the last time I'm going to be stepping into this recording booth.

This is the last time that I'm sitting on the couch saying these words,

this is the last time that I'm doing all this.

Just like I had to go through that process,

I think the audience also had to have their opportunity to go through that

process.

So me

coming out of the gate at the top of the year and saying like,

hey, in ten weeks time,

I'm gonna be gone.

It gives them that chance to kind of unwind themselves as well,

and

we programmed the channels and we structured videos in a way that's like,

hey,

this is speaking to them as fans of this channel and giving them

the service that they want, the content that they want,

stuff that is going to be

like a big old hug for all of us.

It's so interesting because this is straight up a level of human feeling and

connection that not many people throughout the history of humanity have ever gotten

to experience.

Like, really, this is a very

unique thing.

And I remember when you made the retirement announcement,

there were a fair amount of people like, oh,

he's not really retiring.

This is a way to game views.

He's just stepping into a different role.

What do you think that says about the unique relationship between YouTube

creator and fan?

Well, I think,

I forget who said it early in my YouTube career,

but I stumbled across this one quote that was like,

if you have like Beyoncé and Jenna Marbles in a room,

right?

And you have a bunch of fans in the middle of both of them,

the fans run to Jenna Marbles

to talk to them,

to talk to her about Beyoncé being in the room,

right?

Like, that's,

that's the relationship, that's the,

the best friend mentality.

That's that parasocial, sarapocial relationship,

like met in the middle, right?

You know, I think for

a long time in the early days of the internet,

there was this mindset that like, oh,

internet friends aren't real friends.

Or like, oh,

internet relationships aren't real because you don't have this physical

interaction.

You don't have, that is just as visceral,

if not more so, because now all of a sudden,

I'm watching Chef Josh

on my toilet, you know, or in my bedroom.

That is my preferred place for people to watch Last Meals is right on the toilet.

Captive audience in a way.

Right, exactly.

Or I'm, you know,

I'm falling asleep to your voice and things like that because you are

comforting to me because this conversation

is fulfilling an emotional need that I have in my life.

But it's also, yeah,

like you said,

it's one of those things where it's so important to me

to not come back, you know?

I did this thing,

but then immediately reversing that and then you can't trust.

It's like if you snapped away

Tony Stark in Avengers Endgame, right?

And then you bring him back two movies later because it's like,

oh, and

he's back now.

Nothing has consequence.

It's like, no.

I fell asleep.

You fell asleep?

Sleep during Infinity War, I think.

Yeah, so Tony Stark dies at the end.

But then do they bring him back?

No, they don't bring him back.

They don't bring, but don't they bring other people back?

Yeah, there's a time stone,

and it reverses stuff.

What do you mean there's a time stone?

You said there's a time stone, like,

I know what a time stone is.

Okay,

there's a stone that allows you to reverse time or speed up time,

and so, like,

sometimes it's like, oh,

you died.

I'll reverse time.

Oh, everything's good again.

But they haven't brought back Tony Stark yet.

Not yet.

So you're Tony Stark, and if you were to get brought back,

that'd be, like,

a problem.

Also, not enough has been said about how great.

I was gonna say,

how close to your dad's ribs did we get these ribs?

These are really solid.

Heck, yeah.

They are very, very good.

They are fall off the bone tender, which I really appreciate.

The sauce itself, is that right mix of sweet with the honey.

Cause there's honey mixed in there,

as well as the little bit of spicy mixed in.

It's real solid.

I will say a violent amount of A1 Sauce goes into this,

and it is a delight.

Yeah.

A lot of beautiful through lines.

This, this,

and that are somehow all the same food.

Just an amalgamation of things that, you

know that you love, and you are so freaking confident

in what you love and things you enjoy doing,

and you don't apologize for it.

And I think that's, like,

genuinely very, very commendable.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

MatPat for course number three.

This is a mystery course.

Yeah, you brought this out,

and I'm like, where on my last meal would this be?

But I think I know what this is.

This is a mystery sampler platter.

Correct.

One of the things that

I said back when your team reached out and like,

hey, what would your final meal be?

I'm like, I want to be surprised

and have

a sampler platter where I can learn something about a piece of food.

And so I'm assuming that this is what this is.

Oh, this is the piece of food.

So I know that you love the crunchy tacos at Taco Bell.

Yes, hundred percent.

And you probably know that Glen Bell, founder of Taco Bell,

originally stole the recipe from the family that owned Mitla cafe in San

Bernardino.

And the taco dorado, or the crispy shell taco,

is actually a very obscure regional recipe

generally attributed to Guadalajara, Jalisco.

Obviously, who doesn't know that?

Everybody knows that.

Yeah.

It's easy.

Common knowledge.

Okay.

Please surprise me with some new information.

So,

crispy tacos before Taco Bell opened in the nineteen fifties

were very,

very rare in terms of how many tacos across the world were eaten.

But now people had to use the retronym soft shell taco to describe what is just

a taco.

An original taco, yeah.

So these are some of my favorite crispy tacos that are actually from Mexico.

And, Matt,

we are going to be working from south

to north here,

so if you would start with the taco in front of you.

This is from Mariscos Jalisco.

This is a taco dorado de camarones.

Okay.

Fried crispy shrimp taco.

This is from the state of Jalisco.

Okay.

Please pick it up and enjoy.

It is drenched in a salsa de tomate

and a little bit of avocado in there.

One of the best things you can eat.

Fish taco was

the first food that really

converted me into, like,

oh, I guess,

like, regionality does matter,

and

what we in America call

Mexican food or Chinese food or whatever is,

like, so vastly different

from the realities of local cuisine.

If you love fish tacos, you're gonna love the next one.

Okay.

So, this is from Mazatlan, Sinaloa.

This is called a taco de marlin or taco jamón del mar,

ham of the sea.

So you'll actually take marlin, such a big fish,

they will smoke it and cure it to preserve it,

and then they'll shove it inside a delicious tortilla and then fry it till

crispy.

You're gonna dip it in the green salsa.

This is from Coni' Seafood down in Inglewood.

Maybe my favorite restaurant, shoutout.

Really?

This is unreal.

I am so excited about this.

You're not only satisfying my stomach, but you're also satisfying my brain.

What if I told you it's all your brain, though,

right?

Get out of here.

You don't need, your brain