"piers morgan tonight" starts right now. he was an american original. a businessman who changed the world. >> an ipod. a phone. an internet communicator. >> who is the real steve jobs? he's a risk taker, a gambler, charismatic, compelling. >> brilliant and abrasive. >> if somebody said something stupid instead of saying i don't agree you he would say that's the stupidest blank blank blank idea i ever heard. >> i will talk to the man jobs picked to tell his story. >> your time is limited. don't waste it living someone else's life. >> and top chef from a tiny italian joint downtown to a global food empire and tv career. mario batali will dish on his past and competition and own waistline. this is "piers morgan tonight." walter isaacson author of the biography steve jobs. walter, welcome. >> good to be here. >> a real firestorm. top of the charts. it's selling like hot cakes. it's causing huge debate. you would expect all that because steve jobs is one of the great american business icons in history. it's a fascinating book. when i plucked out some of the adjectives you use to describe him, obnoxious, rude, ruthless, i'm not surprised. nothing i know about steve jobs surprises me that he would be all of those things. i would add and i'm sure you would, brilliant, genius. >> absolutely. >> can you be a genius without being all these things? a erynef os pancrea ctr f saved himself. very typical of the man. there's two sides of steve jobs. this rebel counterculture child of the hippy period and he's always trying alternative new things but also the scientific technological geek. i think that he never really thought, i don't think, that cancer would catch him up until almost the end he thought he would stay as he put it one lilly pad ahead of the cancer. he was doing targeted therapy. every time the cancer would mutate he would find a new way to stop it. even though he was facing his mortality and even before he had cancer he used to talk about life being an arc. you are born and you die. i think that magical optimistic thinking he had up until the end he thought he would beat the cancer. >> you had a remarkable amount of time with him. over 40 interviews you did with steve jobs which is more time than anybody has had i would imagine with that brain outside of his immediate family, closest friends. the obvious questions to me when i finished the book is did you like him? >> i did. >> was he likable? >> he was compelling and likable because when you first meet him, you're afraid. you heard all of the tales. i saw it every now and then. i would walk around with him whether in a restaurant or a hotel or in a group of people hotel or in a group of people pt w he prleod uene deo 3 % wtrse re aaiesseina 3 pkndf rs.t3 admission for being in the room. i get to say you're full of it, you say i'm full it and we -- >> i get that. i worked for rupert murdoch. when you work for these people, they are all of those adjectives i read earlier about steve jobs but they are charismatic because of who they are and often very inspiring because they tend to work harder than anybody else. they are driven. they are creative. they take risks. they are gamblers. all things that most people would like to be but tend not to be. >> you just described steve jobs perfectly. a risk taker. a gambler. charismatic. compelling. >> control freak. didn't he even choose his own cover. >> the one time i really got chewed out is because he said i'll have no control over this book. i won't read it. i don't want it to feel like an in-house book. you can put things in there i won't like but that's good because it's not going to feel like commissioned in-house book but a publisher design that my publisher put out in the catalog. he looked at it the and said in short, snippy words, it was the worst thing he had ever seen and he had merit to it. after yelling at me for a while n gm itn and hihe. angid steve jobs said i can put a case around it and market it. when waz comes up with the circuit board, it's a brilliant design using the microprocessors and juicing them up to do great things. it's jobs who says we're getting a case for it. get a power supply. >> it's not a brilliant design, a brilliant piece of engineering. it's like all of these greats where either you have one or the other they would never be as great as the sum of both parts. >> there's a part in the book i love and a moment i had with steve in his living room where they are listening to the bootleg tapes he had of strawberry fields being created. john lennon is doing it and mccartney is working on it with him. there are 15 different takes they do. they would hit a wrong cord and they would rewind and steve would say that's exactly like i love doing at apple and with waz and with the people who are always fighting which we almost have it done and we rewind and make it more perfect. i think waz and steve were that way. lennon and mccartney were that way. >> fascinating. we'll come back and talk about what i think drives steve jobs throughout his life and that's his extraordinary upbringing. abandoned as a young man and then what happens next in the search for his real parents. apit h le you, he would say that's the stupidest blank, blank, blank idea i ever heard. you would be a little taken aback. >> you saw him do that. this is where i have a problem with the way that he was. pplinwoaps.- w pitto waitresses d ose who a rude to waitresses. i think you tell a story of how you've seen him be rude to waitresses. a man of his power and wealth to be rude to a waitress serving a table to me hard to like that kind of person. admire and salute him and all of the rest of it but likable? >> well, you know, there are certain types of behavior you don't like. after a while you talk to him and he said that woman didn't want to be doing that job in that way or whatever and he just rationalizes it. i think that if you want to judge everybody by their politeness, you would find a whole bunch of nice clubbable and friends and not a lot of geniuses in the mix. >> was he driven by perfectionism? is that what it was all about? >> i think he had an artistic sensibility. driven by the power of perfection and almost poetic sensibility. as i said a moment ago, there's that sort of emotional sentimental romantic side of him and there's a hardcore business side of him and i think he was driven by connecting the two. whatever he did, even when it came to being tough on the people around him, that instilled such a loyalty and passion that, you know, it was a bonding thing. he said that's the price of admission for being in the room. i get to say you're full of it, you say i'm full it and we -- >> i get that. i worked for rupert murdoch. when you work for these people, they are all of those adjectives i read earlier about steve jobs but they are charismatic because of who they are and often very inspiring because they tend to work harder than anybody else. they are driven. they are creative. they take risks. they are gamblers. all things that most people would like to be but tend not to be. >> you just described steve jobs perfectly. a risk taker. a gambler. charismatic. compelling. >> control freak. didn't he even choose his own cover. >> the one time i really got chewed out is because he said i'll have no control over this book. i won't read it. i don't want it to feel like an in-house book. you can put things in there i won't like but that's good because it's not going to feel like commissioned in-house book but a publisher design that my publisher put out in the catalog. he looked at it the and said in short, snippy words, it was the worst thing he had ever seen and he had merit to it. after yelling at me for a while holding the phone like this, he says i won't keep cooperating unless you allow me to have input into the cover. i thought for maybe one second or maybe 1.5 seconds, sure. a guy with a great design eye. i saw that sort of artistic passion. >> it's a very clean apple style cover. you were designing a book cover for the boss of apple, it would be that. >> i will not show you the one we designed about ever then. it just shows how bad we were in that design. >> he was right? >> yeah. >> i like that cover. it instantly grabs. >> it's like an apple product. >> simple and clean and fascinating. >> you know johnny, the wonderful guy from britain and he says the drive toward simplicity means you have to understand the depths of something. you can't remove a lot of buttons and then it becomes simple. that was the essence of the steve jobs design sensibility. >> in reading the book, it doesn't sound like he was the world's best engineer. it sounds to me -- i felt this strongly when he died and he was this great engineer, actually, he's genius partly was marketing. this is one of the great marketeers i have ever seen. you knew that he left things off that everyone would want but wouldn't desperately need immediately but know the moment he put them on the next version of that model they would rush out and buy that too. that's brilliant marketing. it's manipulative and cynical. >> steve said waz is 50 times better than any engineer that steve has ever met, steve jobs ever met. he said he could do meetings in his head. they are young kids. steve -- they created the box. steve jobs said i can put a case around it and market it. when waz comes up with the circuit board, it's a brilliant design using the microprocessors and juicing them up to do great things. it's jobs who says we're getting a case for it. get a power supply. >> it's not a brilliant design, a brilliant piece of engineering. it's like all of these greats where either you have one or the other they would never be as great as the sum of both parts. >> there's a part in the book i love and a moment i had with steve in his living room where they are listening to the bootleg tapes he had of strawberry fields being created. john lennon is doing it and mccartney is working on it with him. there are 15 different takes they do. they would hit a wrong cord and they would rewind and steve would say that's exactly like i love doing at apple and with waz and with the people who are always fighting which we almost have it done and we rewind and make it more perfect. i think waz and steve were that way. lennon and mccartney were that way. >> fascinating. we'll come back and talk about what i think drives steve jobs throughout his life and that's his extraordinary upbringing. abandoned as a young man and then what happens next in the search for his real parents. a gripping part of his life i think. life insurance companies treat you like a policy, not a person. instead of getting to know you they simply assign you a number. aviva is here to change all that. we're bringing humanity back to insurance and putting people before policies. aviva life insurance and annuities. we are building insurance around you. when you're a sports photographer, things can get out of control pretty quickly. so i like control in the rest of my life... especially my finances. that's why i have slate, with blueprint. i can create my own plan to pay down large purchases faster... or avoid interest on everyday items. that saves me money. with slate from chase, i'm always in control. financially, anyway. get slate with blueprint and save money. call 855-get-slate today. 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[ male announcer ] the audi a8. named best large luxury sedan. ♪ who needannouncer ] the audi a8. named best large luxury sedan. imagine... one scooter or power chair that could improve your mobility and your life. one medicare benefit that, with private insurance, may entitle you to pay little to nothing to own it. one company that can make it all happen ... your power chair will be paid in full. the scooter store. hi i'm doug harrison. we're experts at getting you the power chair or scooter you need. i didn't pay a penny out of pocket for my power chair. with help from the scooter store, medicare and my insurance covered it all. call the scooter store for free information today. >> today for the first time ever i would like to let macintosh speak for itself. >> hello. i'm macintosh. it sure is great to get out of that bag. >> steve jobs in 1984 unveiling the first macintosh computer. he looked so dashing there. that was part of his appeal. i remember that launch and feeling so excited because there was a showman. this man was not your conventional geek. >> he choreographed everything about that everything from the lighting to the poor macintosh team that staggered across the finish line just a couple weeks earlier to get the coding done and now we have to do the launch to make macintosh speak. the light shines down. >> it was like michael jackson doing a show only for computers. making it an event and making it exciting and building hype and marketing it and promoting it. all these things he was brilliant at. what i want to get to with him is how much of this was driven by the fact that he was abandoned at birth. he was given away by his real parents. just reading the book it becomes a kind of surging crusade for him to try to find his real parents. tell me about that. >> i remember walking in his old neighborhood showing me the house is when he was 6 or 7 years old. i went across the street and sat on this lawn and lisa who lived across the street said to me you have been adopted. that means your real parents didn't want you. he said i ran back into my house and i saw my parents and i was crying. the salt of the earth couple that adopted him. he said we specifically picked you out. you were chosen. i think he says to me that part of growing up wasn't just feeling a little bit of a hole like do i fit here because i wasn't born into this but feeling chosen and special. i think there was always a little bit of a hole in him. he would tell his college friends. he would tell his friends in the early days of apple i feel something is missing in me. i think that's why he finally does go on a quest to find his birth mother. >> he tries to find his mother and is successful. tell me about that. >> he finally gives up after he hired a detective and couldn't find the mother. he sees on his birth certificate the name of a doctor in san francisco. he calls the doctor that sheltered unwed mothers including steve jobs' 25, 30 years earlier and the doctor says all my records were destroyed. i can't tell you who your mother was but that's not true. the doctor was lying and that night the doctor wrote a letter and said to be delivered to steve jobs upon my death. and then the doctor died pretty soon thereafter. it was coincidental. the letter comes to steve and says here's your mother. he tracks her down in los angeles. she says you have a sister in new york. it's one of these tales that nobody could have written. >> what is even more extraordinary, i think, is when he begins the search for his father and in the end he never actually has anything to do with his father but it turns out by a freakish coincidence that he's met his real father. >> you couldn't make this up. >> the father was like, whoa, i met steve jobs without knowing steve jobs is his son. tell me about that. >> his sister, mona simpson, he meets is an artist like him. a great novelist and loves that she's an artist. we have to go on a quest to find the lost father. he's not all that interested but she's able to track down the father who had been born in syria, a graduate student at the university of wisconsin and in one of the weird coincidences of the world moved to california and so there he is running a coffee shop in sacramento. mona goes to see him and steve says don't tell him anything about me. i don't want to have anything to do with this guy who abandoned you and your mother. he says i wish you could have seen me earlier when i ran one of the great restaurants. a big restaurant near cupertino. everyone used to come there. even steve jobs. mona simpson is taken aback. she doesn't say anything. steve jobs is your son. and he looks at how shocked she is. he used to come. he was a big tipper. mona goes back and tells steve and steve says that balding syrian guy, that was my father? forget it. i don't ever want to see him. >> amazing story. >> you couldn't make it up. >> did they have any type of contact at all even at the point when steve was publicly dying? >> no. i think that -- i heard that he said that he sent text messages but no. there was no contact. >> what do you think that did to steve jobs? he obviously had this huge curiosity about his real parents but did he feel great anger do you think towards his father in particular? >> i don't think he felt anger toward his father. he didn't want anything to do with the guy who abandoned the family and mona. i think he was very deeply connected to his -- what he called his real parents. parents who adopted him. he didn't want to hurt them. paul jobs is a guy who was an auto mechanic and had taught steve all of the lessons of design and how to be a good craftsman and realized that steve was special and treated him as special even when he was a kid when steve didn't want to keep going to the same school, they scraped all their money together to buy a home in a better school district. they just went out of their way to make him feel chosen and special. >> i don't think surprisingly necessarily but certainly it was ironic that steve himself has a girlfriend. he makes her pregnant and then he abandons the daughter. >> 23 years old. same age as his father. >> does exactly what his father did. >> when it hit me what a coincidence. steve of course takes responsibility for his daughter after a while. >> ten years. >> after the paternity test he then pays for her schooling and upbringing and in the first ten years he's not that close to her but she's a spunky good kid. smart kid. good writer. and by the time she's 8 or 9 or 10 years old they form more of a bond. she moves into his house for the high school years. so like any narrative tale, especially one that you couldn't make up, there's an arc to it and the people steve had trouble with eventually they all bond with him and certainly in her life she and all four of his children were very bonded to him. >> we'll come back and talk about the genius of apple as an institution in america. the part that he played really in making us all think differently. 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>> the amazing thing about the ipod is here's a personal computer company. it had finally clawed its way back with beautiful design of the imac and macbook pro and he discovers now we have to think different again. we're going to do devices that will make your computer sort of the hub of your digital lifestyle but it will be for music and then phone and everything else. so he takes apple during the ten years beginning in 2000 in this whole new direction. reinvents the music industry. reinvents the telephone industry and publishing and digital publishing with the tablet. >> ipad latest and last of his creations. what's so satisfying for him and i would imagine as a biographer is building apple up and being cut off at the head and thrown out and discarded unwanted and goes off and has this amazing success in hollywood and then comes back and he takes over the company when it's dying on his knees and then he turns it into the biggest company of its type ever seen. >> it's one of those dramatic tales cast out and returned from the wilderness and when he comes back, he says we now have to focus. they were making 9600s and 9400s. here's a diagram. we'll make four machines. a consumer and a professional laptop desk top. that's it. and then once he got that focus done they would take the management retreats and take his top 100 people to an offsite retreat and then they would fight over what are we going to do next and after all weekend they would have hundreds of suggestions and have ten on the board and cross off the top three and big change is when he decides we'll go into consumer devices and does the ipod. >> how important was his wife in his life? >> you know, everything about steve is the connection of sort of the romantic sort of poetic side of steve and realistic, smart sensible side. >> i'm going to read you a line from the book. we didn't know each other 20 years ago. we were guided by our intuition. >> we were sitting in his living room before his 20th anniversary and he wanted to take her back to yellowstone park and pulled out his iphone and read that to me. i'm going to put pictures from our wedding day 20 years ago and read that. he's reading that and he's crying. he's a deeply emotional intensely emotional person. when people talk about wasn't he hard to live with as a family guy? wasn't he hard to work with as a business guy? yes. how many people have marriages like that that are incredibly tight, faithful in which they really sort of fit together both the sensible side and poetic side. >> it shouldn't be some he's all fantastic. she knew when she said that what he's really like. she knows he's difficult. >> i do think that he said he wanted something that didn't feel in house. tell them about steve because i want all sides. of course now that he's gone, you know, it's hard and -- >> have you had a reaction? >> no. >> nothing at all? are you surprised? >> i just don't really want to talk about what their different thoughts might be. >> i don't want to push you but i imagine it's because they have not been massively -- probably not massively enjoying the negative headlines even though i as someone who didn't know him don't see them necessarily negatives. >> they knew him well. it's a very emotional time for everybody. >> let's take another break and come back and talk about what turned out to be the fight of his life that he eventually lost against cancer and what you think as his biographer, the man who spent so much time and what you think he would like his legacy to be. o0 c1 2 o0 [ beep ] [ man ] you have one new message. 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[ female announcer ] aveeno daily moisturizing lotion. and for healthy, beautiful hair, try nourish plus haircare. only from aveeno. >> your time is limited so don't waste it living someone else's life. don't be trapped by dogma living with other people's thinking and don't let voice of others drown your inner voice and follow your heart and intuition. >> we've seen that many, many times since he died. it's a statement he lived up to himself. great thing you put at the start of the book, the people crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones that do from apple's own think different commercial in 1997. he was the great maverick. when it came to his illness, do you think he ever really appreciated he was going to die or did he exude infallibility to you. >> there are many people that remember him as a young man saying we're going to die. the arc of our life is this way. he told people he thought he would die young. he thought it was liberating. it allows me to follow my intuition. he thought he could be the first person to outrun the cancer like that by staying one step ahead of it. >> play a quote from the great designer, great british creator and designer of so many of the apple products. we'll discuss it after this. >> bold, crazy, magnificent ideas or quiet simple ones which in their subtlety, detail, they were utterly profound. >> i mean so right. very moving. such an extraordinary relationship together. >> there was a wonderful tale when johnny was doing the first imac. it's a desk top machine. johnny wants to put a handle recessed into the top. you never really use a handle. you don't move a desk top around. he intuitively felt that his mother was afraid of computers and the handle gives you permission to touch. and he said he presented it to engineers and it will cost too much and pointless. the minute he says it to steve jobs, boom, steve gets it. johnny said steve would act as if johnny's ideas were steve but johnny immediately after said if it hadn't been for steve those ideas would have died in the studio floor. >> that's true but it's also true from the regular occurrences where he seems very reluctant and in some cases i would say inhuman in some cases in giving people credit and in giving valued employees the stock perhaps they should have. it's a running theme. what drives that aspect of steve jobs' character do you think? >> i do think by the time he creates what is now apple and it's top team, he totally appreciated each and every person on that team whether talking to me about tim cook or any of them, he really had a deep love for what they did. i think early on he just had this way of thinking which is you give them an idea and he says that's stupid. this is what people would say on the original mac team and a week later he would say let's do that idea. that's his way of processing it. in the end the ideas got done and even with the early macintosh each and every member of that team signed the inside of the case. you are the artist. real artists sign their work. >> how do you think he would most like to be remembered? how would he like to be remembered? >> beside the obvious that he had four great kids and loved his family. the thing he was most proud of is creating a company where creativity can be rewarded. he grew up in silicon valley. when you depend on creations of people before you and you want to put something back in the stream of history. he said a lot of companies they disappear after a couple of generations. only by building a lasting company can you build lasting innovation connected to technology. >> preposterous as it seemed at the time, does it seem like it today? >> i would put him in a line with ford and ben franklin. you can start with einstein but somewhere in one of those orbits you have to have steve jobs. >> it's a brilliant book. thank you for coming and talking about it. >> great to see you. >> coming up, celebrity chef mario batali on his empire, shrinking waistline and serving salads to those one percenters. t your shave right, the irritation can be a problem. 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[ male announcer ] progresso. you gotta taste this soup. whwill be giving away passafree copies big piece of potato. of the alcoholism & addiction cure. to get yours, go to ssagesmalibubook.com. >> keeping them honest tonight. a closer look at the verbal mario batali is america's best loved chef. star of abc's "the chew." a new book out. mario batali joins me now. >> i'm an italian american. >> do you feel italian? >> i do in that after studying college and figuring out the restaurant business from america's perspective, i moved to a tiny hill town and lived there which is where i learned to speak italian. [ speaking italian ] >> america is going through a rough time. here in new york occupy wall street. your restaurants appeal very much to what michael moore would call the 1%. how are you seeing the economy impact on those people from what your business tells you? >> well, i have 19 restaurants. nine of which are around new york city. we have everything from a pizzeria with a $30 check average to four-star italian restaurant with $160 check average. we run book ends on that business. what i must point out, however, and just traveling around the country a little bit and from knowing a lot of my friends in the business, it seems that new york city and los angeles are a little bit kind of insulated from the full fallout even if there is definitely 99% and 1% or say real number is more like 90 and 10. we're lucky enough to be in a place because there's tourism and because there's people not just relying on their own jobs, they're here in new york to try food and theater. i think the theaters are still doing pretty well as well. where there are tourists and locals getting together, it makes sense. it works for us. >> you are a fiery individual. you like to be passionate and lose your temper and you're a good businessman. you get things done. you employ people. you're successful. if you were running the country, what would you do to fix this malaise? >> i'm not sure. i must say the base of the problem right now is that truly never more than any other time before are we truly 50-50. it's two sides. and both quite adamant and unfortunately or fortunately depending on how you look at it, republicans and that guard prepare themselves in a way to present it more like a really successful advertising campaign and they are also in every knife fight with a knife. obama came in with a really great idea. i love him. i love what he represents. he came into the knife fight without the knife and thought he might just bowl them over and politics need someone to get in there and fight every inch. every time. you can't take a break. >> it's war every day on these streets. in a positive way. you're competitive with each other. restaurant business is thriving but incredibly competitive. you must wake up and want to kill your rivals in a business sense. i don't get that feeling about obama. he seems too nice a guy sometimes. >> the beauty of new york city is even if 3 million people hate you, there's 5 million left. you don't have to create a focus group successful restaurant. you can have a point of view. big enough and wide enough that people appreciate it, some people came into our restaurant and say we rather you play opera. i'm like get your own damn restaurant. we play rock 'n' roll because that befits the experience and it's a unique opportunity for people to say i love music, food, lighting and love the whole experience and i'll come back. >> you have the world's most long suffering wife. i'll show you why. look at this clip. >> i never understood this shriek response. >> i would shriek if i saw you walking down the street and i didn't know you. >> there you are like some sort of latter day james bond. sports car. shades. >> let's not pretend she's my wife though. we had dinner last week. we get along fabulously. all three of us were together with the kids. we had a blast. home, whatever, what message do you give them, someone who has come from nothing to achieve what you have achieved, what do you tell these people? >> i say the best way to do it is at least 20% of the time, try to find a way to do something for somebody else who hasn't asked to you do it, because that build yours carlic account. but keep your head down and keep in the game and don't be daunted by what seems to be a really long-term setback when, in fact, if you are carefulful and can pay attention to it, it might be a short-term setback. we are in tough economic times, a lot of people may need to kind of re-evaluate what it is they are going to do for the next 20 years and maybe being had in the banking industry or something that hasn't worked in the industrial production business may not work but as i can see from just looking at it, the auto industry has come back from the brink of disaster and now wrangled production back into american hands. we are really good at doing stuff. it is when we kind of launch ourselves only into the service industry that we would slowly fade away. we have too many people here to be all service people, we need to produce things and make things here. >> piers: take a break and come back and talk to you about your book "simple family meals," because i can only cook one thing, spaghetti boll lon nation kind it brilliantly and i want to expand my repertoire. >> if you have an already great dirk the second one is minutes away. [ male announcer ] it's true... consumers er wanchai ferry orange chicken... over p.f. chang's home menu orange chicken women men and uh pandas... elbows mmm [ male announcer ] wanchai ferry, try it yourself. eating delicious fish courses made by the best local chefs. each with a glass of the local wine. this could take years. >> i want to come with you. >> you can. >> that's your new show, "the chew." that's why i want to -- how i want to die. a multiorgasmic food orgy. what's been the best meal you've ever had? the one if i said right, you have four hours to live, you can have one meal again? >> i would say i had a remarkable meal at the sushi stand at the market in tokyo that was so remarkable in that it was everything fresh that i had just seen. it was served at 4:45 or 5:00 in the morning. the only thing missing was my family. i'd have to have my family there and we'd be in great shape. that remarkable procession, remarkable flavors that so spoke of everything his just seen and how remarkably they put it together in the simplest way and it came together on the tongue. >> cooking is -- you don't have to go for the fancy gastronomy. i don't know if that's right -- but if i could go anyplace, simple is -- what's the concept of this? >> there's two concepts going at the same time. the most person is that people sit down at the table as often as they can. and in this hectic time with text messages and voice mails and emails and 1,000 ways not to pay attention to the people, even the ones that you're in the same room as, the idea that americans are moving away from each other at quantum rates is because they don't spend any time where they remove all of that electronics and just have a conversation. when you talk about what builds confidence in your children, when you have regular meals with them, you're allowed to share both your success and your lack of success on certain things in a way that allows you to know that you're empowered to move forward even in lack of success. and the meal is the most logical and normal time to get people together. this book breaks the seasons as opposed to four into 12. it's -- every month has a different mantra. every one has a main course, three pastas, five vegetable dishes, and a dessert and a soup. if you think about it, you don't have to make all those at once. sometimes the way to lure people in your family back to the table is by creating something that they really relish or love. create a family dish and create a kind of tradition. instead maybe of going seven nights which i like, maybe sunday or monday or whatever day. choose a day when you open up the table, everyone gets something they really like, and they spend time. perhaps even more significant than that is when the dishes are dirty and you finish, instead of rushing to get on to the next thing, make sure everyone sits there for 15 minutes and just languishes over each other's company without necessarily having anything to do. >> i don't want to offend you, but are you half the man you used to be. aren't you? what's happening -- >> 20%, i believe. >> disappearing. how much have you lost? >> i lost about 50 pounds from the time that we worked on the spain series, which i believe i was at my biggest -- >> was it too much paella? >> in general too much of everything. >> did you have a moment where you woke up and said "enough"? >> i saw the first screening of the show and said, i can't believe how big i look. i'm not done yet, but my trick has been to eat almost the same things, try to eat more responsibly but more significantly cut the portions in half. >> you should lose much more, mario. >> i'd love to lose another 30 -- >> i am terrified when i see a skinny chef. it doesn't look right to me. >> i still won't be skinny, don't worry. >> a size zero is like a size zero opera singer, it's not right. there's something comforting