Andrew Zimmern

And lucky for me, instead of them saying, have you thought about it?

What's your idea?

In which case I would have said, I have nothing.

Pat Young, the head of Travel Channel, threw me a laser pointer, hit a button, a map of the world came up on the wall in the Discovery boardroom.

There were 20 different executives there at the time and me alone at the other end.

And he said, take me through episode one and then season one.

And I just saw all I saw because I was standing there.

on the North American side of the map, and I could see the Philippines straight ahead of me, I just hit the laser pointer.

I said, well, we would go to the Philippines and try Balut, which is a fertilized duck egg.

And then I just made my way around the world.

And I realized I was

About two, three examples in, I realized I had mentioned foods that for those people in the room were new.

They hadn't heard of them.

And they were exotic and different and unique.

And I was getting quite a reaction from them.

And the only thing, one of the few smart things I've ever done in my whole life was I read that room the right way.

And I just kept going.

And I put the pointer down.

And I think I named 30 foods in 30 countries.

And they were like, OK, go find a production company and let's make this show.