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Just a reminder that Big M. Little Mood with Daniel M. Lavery happens twice a week.

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Sign up now to listen at slate.com slash mood. Hello and welcome back to Big Mood Little Mood.

I am your host, Danny Mlavery, and with me in the studio this week is Kat Kinsman,

the executive features editor at Food and Wine, author of high anxiety, life with a bad case of nerves,

and founder of chefs with issues and ever-evolving project that addresses the mental health crisis in the

hospitality industry. Kat, welcome to the show. Oh, Danny, I am so delighted to be here.

I am so delighted. The last time you and I collaborated on anything, we produced a real fun

article about the food at medieval times. And so I'm excited to see what we can do today. And I just want to say first, like, I love the story that you wrote. And I would love for everybody to go and see it, because who doesn't want to go to medieval times? And you were so, so gleeful about it. And this is the experience that I need as an adult. And I can't even imagine how you must have upped their bottom line from people needing to rush there immediately. I don't know about that. I mean,

I don't know that I want to get in bed with corporate medieval times. But it is amazing to me how it's like, you know how at different stages of like embryonic development? Humans will have like vestigial stages.

There's a moment in embryonic development where you have a tail.

And it does feel like midi... like vestigial stages. There's a moment in embryonic development where you have like a tail.

And it does feel like medieval times is that.

Like it is a vestigial remnant of like the 80s heyday of theme restaurants.

And like all of the context that made it make sense is gone.

And all we have left is like some lore about like what dinner theater briefly

evolved into before vanishing back into the millennia but medieval time still stands and it somehow

still taps into that primordial stable ooze I was in a van full of chefs this weekend and somehow it came up. I was in Houston and I believe

there's probably one near there. I should check your exhaustive list of locations there.

And everybody in the car said, ooh, medieval times is that still around it and had some sort

of really visceral memory of either wanting to go or having been and nod on giant joints of

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