Pizza Talk, Season Two, Episode 11: Nathan Myhrvold and Modernist Pizza

Welcome back to Pizza Talk!

So, who gets to coin a new culinary term, create his own publishing house, and travel the world taking gallery worthy photos in exotic places, eating the best food ever made, and hiring talented chefs and writers to create a whole new category of food literature? Nathan Myhrvold is who.

After the international success of the five volume Modernist Cuisine (now in 12 language translations), followed a few years later by the equally large and impressive Modernist Bread, author/publisher/genius Nathan Myhrvold, and his talented team of other food geniuses, are back with the eye-popping, four-volume boxed set, Modernist Pizza. It has everything you could possibly want to know about pizza and more, accompanied by the always spectacular in-your-face photography for which the Modernist books are known. In this lively conversation, Nathan tells us all about his early days as an assistant to Stephen Hawking (yes!!), his role as chief technology officer and Bill Gates “whisperer” at Microsoft, his work as technical advisor to Steven Spielberg for the Jurassic Park films, founder of Intellectual Ventures, where he invests in world changing inventions, and how all of this intersects with his lifelong passion for food, cooking and, now and always, pizza. It’s quite a journey, and you’ll hear all about it in this episode of Pizza Talk.