Maybe just summarize briefly for our listeners so they'll have some sense of who they're listening to.

Well, my name is Steven Raichlen again.

I, uh, broke into the barbecue scene many years ago with a book called The Barbecue Bible, which quite amazingly is still, 28 years later, still in print.

That was followed by books like BBQ USA, which is a James Beard Award winner; How to Grill, which, uh, was an international bestseller with 17 translations in different, uh, languages.

More recently, books have included Project Smoke, Project Fire, Project Griddle, and The Brisket Chronicles.

Some of you may know me, uh, for my TV shows, uh, and those include Barbecue University, Primal Grill, Project Smoke, Project Fire, and most recently, Planet Barbecue.

So, um, barbecue has been my beat, uh, global grilling is my territory, and I've done that for the last 25 years.

Maybe just briefly tell listeners what happened when you went there, and why were you there doing this in the first place?

Stephen, when you're on the road, and you said when you're home you like to be outside grilling as much as possible, but when you're on the road, what kind of fare are you taking in? Are you a guy, and I guess I'm kind of guessing here at this, but you seem to be, if you're in a city, you might do some research on where you're going and maybe go around the normal hot spots and find a little bit more of the intricacies of the cities that you're in.

Well, one of the great things about traveling so much is the opportunity to see and meet and experience new flavors, new restaurants.

That doesn't mean that all I eat is barbecue.

I'm also curious and fascinated about restaurant food, food trends.

But I get a lot of ideas, even if it's not a barbecue joint.

I'm speaking to you now from Berkeley, California.

And this is the epicenter of the wood grill in California.

Yes, please.

find it offensive that AI is out there and writing for people?

Yeah, first of all, I think you can tell when something's written by AI.

And second of all, I mean, I'm a writer.

It's like that would take the meaning of my life away.

I like writing, but I will say that I use AI for research, and AI is a terrific tool for research.

In Man on Fire, I kind of talk about the history of barbecue, I talk about the history of cookbooks, to find out when Guillaume Tyrel, the French author of a book called Le Viandier, which is the most successful, Cookbook in history in terms of longevity.

It first appeared around 1375.

Outside of the cooking portion, which anybody that's going specifically for BBQU is most looking forward to, what are your other favorite things to do there?

What one moment that might have been edited out of the book would you go back and put in if you could?

Well, that's very interesting.

So when I first started in my book-writing career, uh, my first major successful book was a book called High Flavor, Low-Fat Cooking, and at the time, I had been a restaurant critic for Boston Magazine.

I developed a cholesterol problem.

This was back before Lipitor and all the, uh, the cholesterol-lowering drugs, and I developed this method of cooking that involved on using spices and flavorings instead of fat to make food taste delicious.

So I actually wrote eight books in that series, many of them, uh, uh, James Beard Award winners.

Um, but I felt like that chapter was, like, eh, you know, do...

So what does writing Man on Fire mean for you?