How Prison Ramen Saved My Life (Reheat)

When Gustavo “Goose” Alvarez was 18, he was sent to prison for the first time. When he arrived, the other incarcerated men wanted to know if they could trust him — so they handed him a plate of cheesy tacos, and got to know him over that shared meal. From there, Goose learned all kinds of prison cooking tips, including how to use razor blades to boil water and the recipe for a coffee drink called a “Cadillac.”

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dan Pashman?

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• 0:45Dan Pashman?

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• 1:41Dan Pashman?

  Hey, everyone, Dan here with another reheat. And this one is one that, you know, even all the years since this episode came out, people still come up to me and ask me about it. They tell me that it's one of their all-time favorites. So, I'm really excited to share it with you today. It's my conversation with Gustavo Alvarez. He's the author of the cookbook, Prison Ramen: Recipes and Stories from Behind Bars. Now, when we spoke, Gustavo told me about how he connected with people over food during his time as an inmate, first as a teenager, then again in his 30s. Gustavo also explains how to make teriyaki sauce using commissary ingredients. And he tells an incredible story about a riot that broke out when he was in prison and the role that food played in a pivotal moment in that very scary situation.

• 2:25Dan Pashman?

  Remember, if there's an older episode of The Sporkful you want us to reheat, drop me a line. We take requests. I'm at [email protected]. Thanks so much and enjoy.

• 2:36Dan Pashman?

  When Gustavo Alvarez was 18, he was convicted of assault with a firearm and sent to prison for the first time. On the day he arrived, he was met by a group of guys like him, Hispanic men from West LA. They took him to a common area and sat him down at a table.

• 2:51Speaker 01

  My heart is pounding through my chest. I just turned 18. I was just, you know, peach fuzz on the lip. I was a kid, you know, and these dudes were grown men, killers. And what they do is they have a spread, which is just like a meal, potluck or whatnot. And in that meal is where they're gonna get to know you. They're gonna get to read you. They're gonna get to figure out who you are.

• 3:14Dan Pashman?

  Gustavo, or Goose as he's known, was served a plate of makeshift cheesy tacos. And the older guys at this meal were trying to answer one question. Can we trust this kid?

• 3:24Speaker 01

  They already know if you're a snitch. They'll know that because you'll never make it to the table. You feel me? They'll have somebody stab you before you get there. And of course, they questioned me to see if I'm honest. And of course, 100% honest. And, you know, that causes them to say, okay, he's good. And once you have that blessing, he's good, then the schooling begins.

• 3:45Dan Pashman?

  The first lesson Goose learned? Prison is tribal.

• 3:48Speaker 01

  A lot of people say, oh, well, I'm not racist. Yeah, neither am I. But guess what? If you want to survive, you have to run with your people, man. You have to take care of your own. And it's sad because, you know, I have a lot of brothers and friends and, you know, they're obviously not my race, but they're my family. But when it comes down to prison, all that is left at the door. And it's a sad experience because you're bred to hate. And that hate is what protects you in there. And it saved my life many times.

• 4:22Dan Pashman?

  The older guys in the West LA crew taught Goose more specific survival skills.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  If you're not a good fighter, you better use some steel or weapon. And in most cases, they teach you how to, first of all, how to cut the weapon, sharpen the weapon. They physically train you. You do these crazy routines. You get involved with stuff that you've never thought you'd ever do.

• 4:44Dan Pashman?

  There's one more lesson Goose learned pretty quickly: how to put together a decent meal.

• 4:49Speaker 01

  You know, back and forth, you create this community of cooks. God, I learned so many, so many ways. For example, to make teriyaki, we'd get some strawberry jam and some soy sauce, mix it together, and a little garlic powder on there. Boom, you have some type of teriyaki that you could put on some chicken from dinner and mix it up with a ramen. And there you go, you got a meal. You know what I mean?

• 5:13Dan Pashman?

  In prison, food is a big deal.

• 5:16Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. Well, it's everything.

• 5:18Dan Pashman?

  Today on The Sporkful, I talk with Goose Alvarez about cooking and eating in prison, including the meal there that changed his life forever.

• 5:35Dan Pashman?

  This is The Sporkful. It's not for foodies, it's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people. Goose Alvarez has served two major prison sentences. There was that first one you heard about at the start of this show. That was for assault with a firearm. He was locked up from age 18 to 23. When he got out, he started making a life for himself. He got married, he had three kids. But Goose says he still felt he had to carry a gun around to protect himself and his family. When he was 33, he was busted for possession of a firearm. While he was in prison the second time, he began mentoring at-risk kids, went through a 12-step recovery program, and he started writing his first book, Prison Ramen: Recipes and Stories from Behind Bars.

• 6:17Dan Pashman?

  He got out in 2013, the book came out, and Goose hasn't looked back. Today, he's 47 and lives in Tijuana, Mexico. The success of his book has led him to pursue a career as a writer and producer on several TV shows and movies.

• 6:32Speaker 01

  Testing. Thumbs up.

• 6:34Dan Pashman?

  All right, cool. As you might guess, the food served in prison is pretty bad. So, the men pocket food in the mess hall, steal ingredients from kitchen storage, then bring them back to their cells and get creative. If you have money, you can buy some basic items at the commissary: canned goods, hot sauce, ramen. Mayo is key because it's one of the few ways you can get your hands on fat. There's a lot of bartering. And like with just about every other place on the planet, food is a big part of gatherings and special occasions.

• 7:03Speaker 01

  Oh, Johnny Boy is parolee today. Okay, you know, we're gonna throw him a little party before he leaves. So, who's involved? Okay, well, these people are involved. And then what are we gonna cook? We're just gonna cook. Who's gonna be the cook? I'm gonna be the cook. Okay, well, this is what I'm gonna need from each and every one of you. You can assign one person to get all the summer sausages, one person to get all the ramens, you know, and everybody has their responsibility. Whatever they bring to the table, they leave it there and just let one cook do his job. And, you know, you literally cook in buckets for about thirty men. And everybody helps you clean, obviously, everybody helps you prepare, you know, but it's usually one person that's driving, you know what I mean? And birthdays, sometimes,

• 7:47Speaker 01

  for example, I know of an older retiree who was in prison already like forty years, and it was his birthday, and you know, we all wanted to do something nice for the old dirtbag, you know? So, we all bought a bunch of Hostess chocolate cupcakes, and we all put it together in a circle, and we make a cake for this guy. And then we smother it with peanut butter and jelly, believe it or not, and get some cocoa from the kitchen and sprinkle it on top and create a little cake for the old man. You know, and somebody might throw a little ornament on there to just tease him. You know, I'm not gonna get into that little ornament, but, you know? And he'll have a good time, have a good laugh, and we'll all enjoy a little birthday party for the old man, you know?

• 8:28Dan Pashman?

  What's a Cadillac?

• 8:29Speaker 01

  Oh, the coffee. Um, a Cadillac is a basically cream and sugar. However, the way we make it in there is we use a Milky Way bar. And we put it inside the coffee with the cream and sugar. The coffee has to be nice and scorching hot in order for the Milky Way to dissolve. And you stir it till it dissolves to a foamy kind of espresso or cappuccino kind of way is so good.

• 8:57Dan Pashman?

  That sounds really good. I gotta tell you Goose, there are like fancy fancy schmancy hipster cafes in Brooklyn and San Francisco. They're probably charged, you know, eight dollars for what they call like a Mexican hot chocolate or something. And I'll, I'll bet that a Cadillac runs circles around whatever those people are selling.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  You would love it. You would love it.

• 9:20Dan Pashman?

  The Cadillac does sound amazing, but of all the foods you find in prison, one reigns supreme. Ramen. That's why Goose's book is called Prison Ramen. In fact, a 2016 study looked at the bartering economy in prison and found that ramen is more valuable than cigarettes.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  Ramen goes for about a doll. Well, last time I was there was a dollar. I'm hearing it's starting to go up even more to like the two to three. So you could imagine people have walls and walls of ramen in their, in their cell. And they use it to barter. They use it to buy things, pay things. And those are what we call the ballers. Those are the guys that, you know, got a little money.

• 9:56Dan Pashman?

  According to that study, the rise in ramen's value is largely due to budget cuts that have reduced not only the quality, but also the quantity of food available. There's not always enough for incarcerated people to eat. So once you get the ramen, how do you cook it? In a maximum security prison like Goose was in, you don't have access to a microwave. So you make something called a stinger.

• 10:18Speaker 01

  For example, you'll cut a cord out from an old radio or whatnot. And you keep the mail plug and the opposite end, you, you disconnect the wires and, and connect them to two brand new razor blades. Put the razor blades inside a cup of water and then connect it to the wall. Within about 30 seconds, you got boiling water and there you go, you know?

• 10:36Dan Pashman?

  So you basically like cut open an electrical cord and stick it, attach it to metal and stick it into water.

• 10:43Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:43Dan Pashman?

  So that's not.

• 10:44Speaker 01

  Some razor blades work best.

• 10:45Dan Pashman?

  We should probably tell the young listeners out there not to try that at home.

• 10:48Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, don't, don't. Please, please do not try that at home. Do not try that at home.

• 10:54Dan Pashman?

  But uh, but if it doesn't kill you, it'll heat up your water. Is that what you're telling me Goose?

• 10:58Speaker 01

  Definitely. If it doesn't explode, it'll definitely heat up your, your water.

• 11:02Dan Pashman?

  What was your experience with ramen before you went to prison?

• 11:05Speaker 01

  Never touched it. Never liked it. Maybe a couple of noodles every now and then, you know, but I've never, I've seen it all the time at the stores or when I never bought it.

• 11:15Dan Pashman?

  And do you remember the first time you had it?

• 11:17Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, it was, it was like the best thing ever because uh, you know, we hadn't been eating for a while and we were able to go to the store, which is commissary and I bought me a couple and I made me a nice little hot soup and it just brought some comforts from home, you know, like I felt, but anything nice and warm in a rough place, it gives you some type of comfort and ramen did that for me.

• 11:39Dan Pashman?

  What was your favorite way to have ramen when you were in prison?

• 11:43Speaker 01

  You know what, my, I would say, obviously eating with the fellas in a nice big spread where everybody can eat and contribute. But I have my own special recipe that I don't even, it's not even on, on prison ramen. It's an oyster, smoked oysters.

• 11:58Dan Pashman?

  Can smoked oysters.

• 11:59Speaker 01

  Yes, in, in ramen, cilantro, a little bit of, of chili pepper and, and some mayonnaise. For me, that's, that's the lick right there. That's, that's my thing, you know?

• 12:12Dan Pashman?

  So now you're, you're out of prison, you can make ramen however you want.

• 12:16Speaker 01

  Oh yeah.

• 12:17Dan Pashman?

  Do you, do you ever still make it the way you made it when you were in prison?

• 12:22Speaker 01

  I actually do. I'm not gonna lie. I actually do. Um, I cook it for, you know, family, friends and you know, they always wanna try them and then, yeah, I do it. It, it doesn't taste the same. I don't know why and a lot of ex-con could probably relate to this. You know, I tried to ask some, you know, uh, friends of mine, ex-con friends of mine who are authors as well and they're like, yep, I just can't get that flavor for some reason. I don't know if it was because of the utensils we used in there, cause sometimes we'd cook in plastic bags, to be honest with you, in a bucket. So I don't know, I just, I can't pinpoint why it doesn't taste the same.

• 12:57Dan Pashman?

  But I, I wonder Goose, if maybe it's not an issue of not having the right equipment or not having the right technique, maybe it's something about just the way you feel. When you're in prison, about the comfort that that provides.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  Preach, damn, preach. Wow. I, I actually, you know what, I think you're right because of the atmosphere. You got a bunch of hungry men that have one thing in common, that their stomach's growliness, so whatever they're gonna eat, it's gonna be good.

• 13:22Dan Pashman?

  It's interesting to me that that you would still have a food that you kind of miss and wish you could recreate. That there's a part of the experience that you wish you could re-experience.

• 13:31Speaker 01

  Wow, there is, there's, wow, you touched me on that one. There's, um, we would have this certain lunch every Saturday, you know, Hitman burritos. We would sit there and have these burritos with this older gangster dude. And he was like grandpa, you know, he had stories for us. He would, you know, discipline us, talk to us like, you know, like we're his kids. But at the same time, you know, this guy murdered so many people, you know, and it was hard to register that, to fit those two pieces together. But it touched me because, you know, that was a father figure that some of us youngsters didn't have, and we drew to him, you know, because he was that cool, you know, slicked

• 14:12Speaker 01

  back hair, older, you know, real in shape, veterano, as we called it, an OG. And, um, he, he was the person that we looked up to. And it's sad, you know, when you get transferred and you're never gonna see these people again. And, and I miss that because that was a genuine experience and conversation with a killer that actually cared, believe it or not.

• 14:39Dan Pashman?

  Tell me about those burritos he made, the Hitman burritos.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  He, he had a way of, of making it work with mayonnaise, okay? I don't know if that was his thing, but they're awesome. He would get this roast beef packets and shred the roast beef. He, he put a lot of love into them, you know, and of course, it, it, it made him feel good to know that we enjoyed them, you know, it's like, we're his kids. He's like, yeah, you know, my, you know, I'm cooking for my sons, you know, and, and that right there was everything.

• 15:12Dan Pashman?

  Coming up, more with Goose Alvarez. We'll hear about the prison meal that set his life on a totally different course.

• 15:18Speaker 01

  I actually thought I was gonna die, you know? This is where the road stops for me.

• 15:24Dan Pashman?

  Stick around.

• 15:35Speaker 02

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• 16:26Dan Pashman?

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• 18:24Dan Pashman?

  Welcome back to A Sporkful Reheat. I'm Dan Pashman. Hey, if you're not already following The Sporkful in your podcasting app, what are you waiting for? In Apple Podcasts and Spotify, go to our show page and click Follow. In other apps, it might be like a plus sign, or a subscribe button, or a heart. Whatever it is in your podcasting app, please do that thing. It's the best way to ensure you'll never miss an episode, and it's good for our show. So please, go ahead and do it right now while you're listening. Thank you. Now, let's get back to my conversation with Gustavo Alvarez, aka Goose, author of Prison Ramen: Recipes and Stories from Behind Bars. As you heard, Goose has a lot of memories about connecting with people over food during his time in prison. But there was one meal that really changed him, that changed the whole way he looked at prison.

• 19:09Dan Pashman?

  Before we get to that meal, though, you have to understand the events that led up to it. It was Goose's second stint in prison, so he was in his 30s. He'd had a good behavior record, so he was able to get a menial job. And he lived in a dorm-type of setup with other incarcerated men who also worked at the prison. Although it was a mixed group, Black and Hispanic men, there was an understanding. "We're all older guys. None of us wants any trouble, because we don't want our sentences extended." But the men in the other parts of the prison, they were a different story.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  When you walk on a prison yard... You sense to feel a tension. You could feel it. It's in the air and it's hard to explain it unless you've been through it. I've been through a lot of riots, you know, and I know before one starts, you have that aroma, you feel it. When I came home from work, I noticed the grouping, all the blacks on one side, all the Hispanics on the other. And immediately my spider senses kicked in. I go, oh, it's on, something's about to jump off. And, you know, I go to my area where my people are at. And of course, they're like, hey, you know, something's in the air. Before we can even think, you just hear rumbling, like a bunch of rhinos running in this van. Just this rumbling noise.

• 20:23Speaker 01

  It's every black against Hispanic stabbing, killing one dorm after the other. Just ignited.

• 20:31Dan Pashman?

  One of the doors to Goose's barracks opened to a small courtyard, a grassy square surrounded on all sides by other buildings. In the building across the courtyard, there were a bunch of young black prisoners who were involved in the riot. Then they were trying to escape it. Dozens of them poured out into the courtyard.

• 20:46Speaker 01

  They looked into our barrack and saw there was a bunch of Hispanic, you know, bald headed guys in there just, you know, looking at them. And they somehow picked up this pipe and started smashing a door, an emergency door that's in the back of our dorm, which is right in our bed area. It reminded me like of a medieval times where they have this huge log and they're ramming it against the fortress to break the door down, right? But in this case, it was a humongous pipe against the door hinges and broke them. And so then they just started bending the door inwards, you know, so that they could fit in there to do their damage.

• 21:25Dan Pashman?

  The building next door was on fire. Goose says you could feel the heat through the wall. The men in the courtyard had almost bent the door back enough to get through. Goose and his crew began getting ready for a fight. They put on all the jackets they had to protect against stabbing, tied towels around their necks to cover their jugulars. Some of them did try to escape out the back, but not Goose.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  I already know that I'm not gonna be able to leave with them because in my little area, all I have that's valuable to me was pictures of my kids. That's all I had. That was everything to me and I wasn't about to sit there and take down eighty pictures from my wall, one by one, without ripping them.

• 22:03Dan Pashman?

  Goose says, "Looking back on it now, maybe it would have made more sense to just try to get out of there, save his own life, forget the photos." But when he went to prison that second time, he became estranged from his wife and children. Those pictures were his only connection to his kids. So in that moment, it felt like the photos were all that mattered.

• 22:22Speaker 01

  This is it, guys. This is where I'm gonna stay and I'm just gonna stay here with my kids. I actually thought I was gonna die, you know? This is where the road stops for me.

• 22:41Speaker 01

  I'm looking at their pictures as I'm standing in my cubicle area and just sad that I'd never got the opportu-- you know, thinking, "I'm never gonna have the opportunity to, you know, to have their daughter dance or do what I needed to do for my sons," you know? And it hurt me because I was like, "Wow, you know, it's all my fault, but this is it. I gotta just accept it." And I was ready, you know? I looked like an idiot with my neck tied with towels and three different jackets and boots and a makeshift weapon, but I had to go out swinging, you know? That was just, that was my law, you know? I had to stick with it to the end.

• 23:23Speaker 01

  But in the midst of all this, what I didn't know, what I couldn't see was, an older black gangster was watching all this in our dorm. Never talked to us, always kept to himself. When he saw this, he took it upon himself to walk up to a hundred inmates. They could have told him, "Move out the way, yo, battle cat," you know, and did something to him and hurt us anyway, but he had some type of respect. Wherever he was, he had a lot of respect. And just, "Hey, check this out, you guys aren't coming in here. You know, I'm such and such, there's no way you're gonna go through me." And then the argument began for about forty-five minutes and we just sat there, ready, like, "It's gonna happen, guys, you know? He's not gonna be able to stop him." But sure enough, he did and they just walked away.

• 24:06Speaker 01

  We all looked at each other dumb, found like, what happened? You know, I thought this was our demise. And no, it wasn't. It was actually a beginning of something, something amazing, you know?

• 24:18Dan Pashman?

  By now, it was the middle of the night. The prison guards were still somewhere else, just trying to get control of the place. All these men were left standing around outside in the courtyard. They couldn't get back into the building they had come out of, and they hadn't fully broken down the door to Goose's dorm. So they were basically trapped, and it was getting cold out there. The older guy, who had calmed the situation, was still talking to some of these young men through the crack in the half-broken down door.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  And started handing them a little bit of coffee and whatever goodies he had in his commissary, which wasn't much. I noticed, you know what? This is, this is an opportunity right here, and I'm not gonna miss it. And so I gathered the homies. I said, you know what? Gather up all the ramens, everything you have in your locker, whatever you find in other people's locker, we're making a spread. And they're like, what are you talking about? I go, just cook.

• 25:05Speaker 01

  Canned oysters, canned tuna, every seafood that we could find, with every chips, every, everything. I mean, I even seen some guy bringing out some beef sticks and some chicharrones. And we did it in this humongous plastic trash bag and poured all the ramens in there first, and then boiled them, and then drained the water, and then started adding the seasonings, the mayonnaise, and all the cans, and then with this huge spoon, just mixed it all up, tied the bag in a big balloon, so to speak, and just shook it around, and pop, cut a little hole at one end, and just used it as a thing to squeeze in the ramen in every bowl. And we're just passing it out, passing it out.

• 25:46Dan Pashman?

  So full bowls of ramen are going out through the crack in the door, and empty bowls are coming back to be refilled and sent back out.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  My god, the guys on our end, they looked at me like, what are you crazy? And then the guys that we were feeding looked at us like, what are you crazy? But I'm like, hey, you know what? This guy took a stand for us, and we thought, what are you crazy? And so, you know, some people were using the same bowl, some people took the bag and ate out of the bag. I mean, whatever, just to feed them, you know, and give them some sense of, it's gonna be okay.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  We finally getting to know each other and we realized dude, we're the same. We're the exact same. And at that point, I started, you know, having second thoughts about a lot of things and, you know, we were helping these guys make phone calls because some of the phones we had access to were on. So we called their families. Hey, they're okay. They're fine, you know? Took us a few hours of that until the National Guard came in there, stomping everybody out and taking us out of there.

• 26:46Dan Pashman?

  What was it that you saw in those younger prisoners out in that courtyard in that moment that made you?

• 26:53Speaker 01

  Me. I saw me. I saw my little 18-year-old stubborn, but I saw it. I saw exactly where I was at. I said, wow, I go, maybe somebody back then would have intervened at that age, you know? It would have prevented a lot. He's just misled. He's just a misled kid. That's all it is. And he could be led the right way by showing love and that's what I thought we did.

• 27:22Dan Pashman?

  I asked Goose if he ever talked to the older guy who calmed the prisoners in the courtyard that night.

• 27:27Speaker 01

  No, it's funny. We never saw him again. I never saw him again up till maybe what, three, four years ago, I found him on Facebook. And I touched base with him. His name is Phil. I touched base with him and I thanked him. And I thanked him and I told him that, you know, my kids, they thank you, you know? And he's like, nah, no problem, man. And then I wanted to keep a dialogue with him. And then a few days went by. I looked back. He was gone. No more Facebook, no more nothing. He's just, I tried to ask friends about him and nobody knows where he's at. So I'm praying that he's okay somewhere, you know, safe, you know? But I owe a great deal to that man.

• 28:06Dan Pashman?

  What was the first meal you ate when you got out of jail?

• 28:09Speaker 01

  Oh my God, which time?

• 28:12Speaker 01

  You're gonna laugh, you're gonna laugh, but the most recent, and people say, you're disgusting. Why do you do that? I'm not trying to knock this franchise, but I ate a Big Mac. I'm not gonna lie. I had a Big Mac. For some apparent reason, I just craved it because of years of never eating it for so long, you know? As a kid growing up, McDonald's was a thing. Ah, where are we going? McDonald's? Cool. And I just thought, you know what? I'm craving a Big Mac. And I went and ate me a Big Mac.

• 28:39Dan Pashman?

  How did it taste?

• 28:40Speaker 01

  Awful, but you know, hey, don't tell McDonald's that.

• 28:46Speaker 01

  But I needed it, you know, I wanted to, you know, capture some of my youth again, which obviously is long gone, but it was just, it wasn't the same Big Mac as I ate back as a kid, you know?

• 29:15Dan Pashman?

  That's Gustavo Alvarez. He's the author of Prison Ramen: Recipes and Stories From Behind Bars. These days Goose tells us he's still cooking. He's making his prison ramen, but with some new innovations, like octopus. And he's still writing. Last year, he self-published his first novel, The Pawn. We'll have a link to it at sporkful.com. The original version of this episode was produced by me along with senior producer Anne Sannie. This update was produced by me along with senior producer- Emma Morgenstern. And producer-

• 29:43Speaker 04

  Andres O'Hara.

• 29:44Dan Pashman?

  The show is mixed by-

• 29:45Speaker 05

  Jared O'Connell.

• 29:46Dan Pashman?

  Music help from Black Label Music. The Sporkful is a production of Stitcher. Our executive producers are Peter Clowney and Daisy Rosario. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.

• 29:55Speaker 06

  It's Tiana from Seattle, reminding you to eat more, eat better, and eat more better.

• 30:11Dan Pashman?

  This reheat was produced by- Gianna Palmer. The team that produces The Sporkful today includes me along with managing producer- Emma Morgenstern. And senior producer-

• 30:20Speaker 04

  Andres O'Hara.

• 30:21Dan Pashman?

  Our engineer is-

• 30:22Speaker 05

  Jared O'Connell.

• 30:23Dan Pashman?

  Music help from Black Label Music. The Sporkful is a production of SiriusXM Podcasts. Our executive producer is Camille Stanley. And hey, did you know you can listen to The Sporkful on the SiriusXM app? Yes, the SiriusXM app, it has all your favorite podcasts, plus over 200 ad-free music channels curated by genre and era. Plus, live sports coverage. Does your podcasting app have that? And there's interviews with A-list stars and so much more. It's everything you want in a podcast app and music app, all rolled into one. And right now, Sporkful listeners can get three months free of the SiriusXM app by going to siriusxm.com/sporkful. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.

• 31:06Speaker 07

  The right tools aren't optional. They're essential. That's why pros trust NAPA for the equipment that gets the job done right. From Milwaukee Fuel Sets, sockets and impacts that deliver power when you need it, to Carlisle hand tools and sets built for precision and durability. NAPA stocks the professional-grade tools that keep your base productive and your business moving. Find what you're looking for right now at NAPA. Available in-store or napaonline.com.

• 31:34Dan Pashman?

  Mr. Monopoly here. Miss me? Monopoly is back at McDonald's with millions of prizes. A 2027 Jeep Cherokee, a Carnival Cruise Vacation, gift cards from DoorDash, and Best Buy. Feel the play in the McDonald's app. Get your bag.

• 31:52Speaker 05

  No purchase necessary. 50 U.S. and D.C. age 18+. See playatmcd.com for rules and playatmcd.com/amoe for info and playing without purchase by mail by November 2. Chance card game ends November 8. Game ends November 22, 2026. See rules for prize details. Monopoly is a registered trademark of Hasbro.