"Your Mama's Kitchen" transcript: Episode 23

Your Mama's Kitchen Episode 23: Mark Cuban

Audible Originals presents Your Mama's Kitchen, hosted by Michele Norris.

Mark Cuban Our kitchen looked out into the backyard, and that's where me and my brothers and my friends would always hang out. And so, you know, you're playing with your friends, playing with your friends. And my mom, she'd walk out on the porch, “Mark, time to come home” or “Mark, Brian and Jeff. Come on, let's go. It's dinner time” stuff. You know, that seems stereotypical for the period, but is just really, really cool when you think about it.

Michele Norris Welcome to Your Mama's Kitchen, the podcast that explores how the kitchens and culinary traditions of our youth shape who we become as adults. I'm Michele Norris and my guest today is Mark Cuban.

Businessman, film producer, investor and until recently, the majority stake holder in the Dallas Mavericks NBA team. You may be familiar with him as a fixture on Shark Tank, one of America's most popular reality TV shows, where Mark Cuban has invested in dozens of successful startups. He's the entrepreneur behind innovative companies like Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drugs that seeks to shake up the industry by offering deep discounts on prescription drugs to people who lack insurance or can't otherwise afford them.

Mark prides himself on being a man who sees opportunities where others might see walls. Like the team he once owned, he's a maverick himself, looking for new paths and new ways of approaching the marketplace to solve problems and sometimes improve people's lives.

He comes from a family of Eastern European Jewish refugees. They arrived in America with almost nothing, but they had an abundance of optimism and a do-what-needs-to-be-done work ethic that rubbed off on Mark. And as you will hear in this episode, the other message Mark got from his mama was to never be afraid to shake up the system. From his earliest days growing up in Pittsburgh, Mark has been a rabble rouser and a bit of an outsider, but that attitude helped him get inside some pretty important spaces. He's now worth billions. But he says the things he treasures most are the family values he absorbed as a kid, surrounded by parents and grandparents who were dreamers and strivers.

In this episode, we dig into how Mark got his start in business selling garbage bags door to door as a 12-year-old entrepreneur. You heard that right: He was selling garbage bags and he made a handsome profit. We'll also hear about Mark's mother's culinary journey into macrobiotics, not Mark's favorite period, so he prefers to remember her kitchen by something a little sweeter—noodle raisin kugel. It was so good that he fought his little brothers to get the corners where the sugar and cinnamon would crisp up. It's a dish that still appears in his kitchen today, though we hope for his family's sake that he's gotten a little better at sharing it. That's coming up. Stay tuned.

Michele Norris Mark Cuban, thank you very much for joining us. I have been looking forward to this.

Mark Cuban Me too. Thanks for having me.

Michele Norris This is a podcast, as you know, where we talk about food. We talk about identity. We tell origin stories. You grew up in Pittsburgh.

Mark Cuban Pittsburgh, PA, yes I did.

Michele Norris You're a Texan now, but by birth, you're from Pennsylvania. Can you tell me a little bit about the Pittsburgh that you grew up in and the neighborhood you grew up in? And then take me inside the house that you grew up in.

Mark Cuban Oh my goodness. So I was born in Squirrel Hill, which is at that point in time, the Jewish part of town on Hobart Street. And it was a small apartment that I know of from pictures. And it's my earliest memories of going to preschool. And my mom walked me there and then my dad did upholstery on cars, and so he worked on West Liberty Avenue, and that's where he really started his career. And we lived there probably till I was five years old. And then my dad wanted to move to the quote-unquote-suburbs, as he tells it to me. And so then we moved to Birdland, which is in the South Hills of Pittsburgh, and I went from being a Jewish part of town to being one of two Jews in the whole area. So from there we lived on Meadowlark Drive, 1134 Meadowlark Drive. And that's really where I grew up, where I found my love for sports, met lifelong friends. Went to Samuel S. Nixon elementary school. You name it. That's my story up until I'm about 12 years old.

Michele Norris And then what happened when you were 12?

Mark Cuban When we were 12, we moved less than a mile away to the good school district, Mount Lebanon. So I moved from Meadowlark Drive to Bower Hill Road, 1223 Bower Hill Road, and moved from John Dewey Junior High, which was one of the nastiest places you could ever possibly go to school, to Jefferson Junior High, which was, relatively speaking, a much nicer place to go to school, which put me on a path to go to Mount Lebanon High School.

Michele Norris A high school known around the world. Very good high school.

Mark Cuban Yeah, it is a good high school. And that's what my dad would tell me. You know, the place we could afford in the nicest school district we can get into.

Michele Norris Yeah, I recognize that. My parents did the same thing. Bought the best house they could in the best school district. I think that was an aspirational wish for parents of our generation. So we normally begin this podcast with a simple question, but we dove into your background because I wanted to know a little bit about the Pittsburg that you remember. And I always ask the simple question, tell me about your mama's kitchen. But you have lived in so many different houses, in so many different neighborhoods. When I ask that question, where does your mind go?

Mark Cuban Probably both houses on Bower Hill Road and in Birdland, where there were just small kitchens. There was nothing busy or exciting or fancy about them. It was just the smell and the meals and the competition between my brothers to get to dessert first.

Michele Norris Who could eat fastest?

Mark Cuban Right? Yeah, because we're all big guys. And so I think that's the most overwhelming memory of popsicles and ice cream and whatever it was after dinner and then watching TV with my parents.

Michele Norris Tell me about your mom. And was she a good cook?

Mark Cuban Yeah, she was a relatively good cook when she was younger. It got worse as she got older because she got into macrobiotics and that was just brutal.

Michele Norris Oh, wait. Macrobiotics. So what was she serving, like brown rice? Every meal?

Mark Cuban Hard rocks.

Michele Norris Oh, no. Oh, no.

Mark Cuban I'll never forget in college she sent me a cake for my birthday. And she—you know, our family wasn't big on holidays or birthdays. It was just really simple stuff. And she decided to go big time and make me a cake and have it shipped, Fedex or whatever, to me. And I pulled it out. And I have my buddies here. I'm like, let's taste this cake and it had a little note: Hey, you know this is healthy for you, so eat up. Oh my God, my buddies still give me a hard time about that. It was disgusting. And you got to realize, like, I don't even know how old I was. When I finally did the math, my mom was only 20 when I was born, and just had turned 20. And she's just my mom, you don't think about it when you're young. So we hate what she could make. Yeah, but my dad, I think I remember more in what he would eat because he used to make these salads. He'd get a big bowl and he put in lettuce, and he'd put in all the things he likes, and he'd mix ketchup and mayonnaise to make his version of Russian dressing. And it was great. And he would eat a whole bowl, and I do the exact same thing, I do the exact same thing. And the funny thing is—

Michele Norris You do this today!?

Mark Cuban I do it all the time, 2 or 3 times a week. I just take pre-bagged lettuce. I put all the stuff I like to put in it, and then I'll either put some light ranch dressing or—this sounds crazy, but—honey brown mustard I'll use as the dressing because it's sweet tasty, not a lot of calories. And I'll mix it all together. And my kids, as they got older, were like, dad, that's disgusting. Da da da da da. And you know, then I'm like, but you got to understand the golden rule of food. The golden rule of food is if you like one thing and you like another thing, if you mix them together, it's going to be amazing. And I live by that rule. And they just get disgusted, like, why are you put—yeah. So from my father, I picked that up. And my kids now rue the day that I gave them that rule. But if you like one thing and you like another thing and you mix them together, it's going to be amazing.

Michele Norris That's a pretty good rule. That's a pretty good rule. So I want to hear more about your mom, but I think I want to skip past, reaching backward, the macrobiotic experimental period and maybe go to that period when she was cooking food that you really liked and got excited about.

Mark Cuban Yeah. At that point in time, it was just the stuff that she learned from her mom, right. So there was a lot of Jewish type foods from borscht, which actually I liked a little bit, which in hindsight I don't like anymore.

Michele Norris Cabbage soup.

Mark Cuban Yeah. Cabbage soup, stuffed cabbage, noodle kugel. That was one of my favorites. Baked potatoes and stuff with everything. Cabbage and coleslaw and lox bagels. I mean, that was a big Sunday experience for us, going with my dad to go pick up some lox and bagels at Weinstein's bakery, which was a big deal in Pittsburgh at that point in time. Creamed herring, which he loved, which even I thought was disgusting. But I came to like it a little bit. And then I decided it was disgusting, you know, your taste…

Michele Norris Like pickled fish for people who don't know it's pickled fish and sort of this creamy dill kind of sauce, yes.

Mark Cuban Yes. And then chopped liver which I loved in my kids. Like look at me like I'm insane. My wife made me promise never to bring it into the house again.

Michele Norris Really? She doesn't like chopped liver?

Mark Cuban Oh, she hates—because of the smell.

Michele Norris Oh, yeah. But chopped liver. Oh, with the little chopped onions. Yeah, that's good stuff.

Mark Cuban Yes, it is awesome. And so you know those are the things that I grew up with in my childhood that I can't help but every time I see them it just brings me back.

Michele Norris There's a great story I read about where you were lacking confidence at one point and you asked, I don't know if you asked or if your mom asked, but there's this, I have the picture in my head and I'd love for you to describe it when your mom is teaching you how to dance. 

Mark Cuban Yeah [laughs], I was about 12. To draw you a picture of me, I was shorter than I am now and weighed more than I do now. I had caps on my front two teeth, but they weren't the color of my other teeth. They were aluminum caps because that's what my parents could afford. So every time I smiled, if there was a reflection, people used to cover their eyes. I had glasses. Yeah, it wasn't like I was this big, confident guy, right? That was the cool kids at school. Definitely not. But my mom and my dad liked to dance. I remember it vividly. They would dance in the house and they would go and they would take us sometimes to where they were dancing. And my mom decided, she's going to teach me the box step. And she did: one two, side two, forward two, side two, back two, you know. But when it came time to dance, I don't know if I ever used the box step per se, but it gave me rhythm. Like my dad had great rhythm and my mom had good rhythm too. And so I think they really enjoyed music and dancing. And as I started to mature and grow into my body and get taller and thinner, that paid off big dividends for me.

Michele Norris What were you listening to when you were dancing?

Mark Cuban Back then, Tom Jones, my mom was into Tom Jones. “It's not unusual to be loved by you”... I can name you the words to all the songs by Tom Jones.

Michele Norris Oh, yeah. The ladies in that time, they loved them some Tom Jones.

Mark Cuban Loved Tom Jones.

Michele Norris The way he would move those hips around and, yeah.

Mark Cuban Oh yeah.

Michele Norris My mom was into Tom Jones also. Were you in the kitchen when you were dancing?

Mark Cuban Oh, yeah. I mean, just wherever. I remember being in the kitchen because my mom smoked when I was young and just trying to steal her cigarettes and hide them and getting her mad. She'd be in the kitchen when I'd get home from school, and I'd try singing or putting on music or whatever in the kitchen, because back then it wasn't unusual for people to smoke. It wasn't unusual for them to smoke in a kitchen and to have a cigarette in your mouth while you're cooking. And fortunately, she stopped smoking a few years later. But yeah, vivid memories of that. And the other side of it was our kitchen looked out into the backyard, and that's where me and my brothers and my friends would always hang out. And so, you're playing with your friends, and she'd walk out on the porch, “Mark, time to come home” or “Mark, Brian and Jeff, come on, let's go. It's dinner time” stuff. You know, that seems stereotypical for the period, but is just really, really cool when you think about it.

Michele Norris So I've been to Pittsburgh before. It is a city of fiefdoms and a city of bridges.

Mark Cuban Yep.

Michele Norris Hills and valleys and bridges connect all of it. And it sounds like you were crossing a lot of those bridges as you moved from one neighborhood to another neighborhood, to another neighborhood in search of stability and better schooling. How has that affected you today as a leader, as a businessman, and what did you learn about your parents as they were crossing those bridges to go to work and then taking you as a family to get to new neighborhoods and better opportunities?

Mark Cuban You know, it's a fascinating and great question because, you know, literally we would cross bridges as we'd go visit my grandparents who stayed in Squirrel Hill. And at that point in time, the steel mills were everything. And I vividly remember driving to see them and the whole place smelling like rotten eggs. And I knew when I was getting close to my grandparents’ house because I could smell it. And then there were so many other different elements that went into my childhood connecting to my grandparents, which gave me probably the greatest sense of my identity. Neither one of my parents went to college. My dad did upholstery, as I said, but just worked all kinds of hours and I got to be close to my grandparents. I would literally would take the 41B bus from out front of my house from the time I was 13, 14 years old, down through to Squirrel Hill to go visit them. And I always put an emphasis on, you know, having them tell me stories about the Old World as much as they could. And between Yiddish and, you know, messed up English, trying to convey to me the lives they lived. And it really was like listening to an original script reading of Fiddler on the Roof. That was my identity growing up.

Michele Norris What did you learn from that and what kind of imprint did that leave on you?

Mark Cuban Oh, it's huge. My parents were kids of the depression, particularly my dad, who was, you know, a couple years older than my mom and listening to his stories about having to work a paper route and then going to school and then having to work another job in an ice cream factory and different things just to help his parents. Hearing the stories about my grandfathers on my dad's side, jobs as a waiter for a long time in a relatively nice restaurant, and then deciding to start his own grocery store, and it going well until Kristallnacht hit in 1938 and it got broken into and burned down and torn apart. And so that definitely starts to define your identity, mine as a Jew and just as a person, because nothing was ever taken for granted. And the best was yet to come. And I think that was a big part of what has driven me as a person, because my grandparents came over with nothing, not speaking the language, you know, Yiddish and anything else, and they just got whatever jobs they could live with, whoever they could, moved around, and they wanted better for their sons. And my dad, like I said, didn't go to college but enlisted in the Navy, actually was in the Seabees. And, you know, I heard story after story there. So it just all these things just define me because my parents just wanted better for me, and their parents wanted better for them. And it was always, okay, Mark, you're not going to be us. We'll do everything we can to put you and my younger brothers, Brian and Jeff, with a better life. And, you know, I have stuff around my house and, you know, genealogy reports that I subscribe to, just to be reminded of it every week.

Michele Norris Every so often in this podcast, I hear something from someone that I want to put on a tapestry pillow or something, have it embroidered on a pillow or affix it to the wall on some kind of poster and you just said, “Nothing is taken for granted, the best is yet to come.” That's a pretty good mantra for life.

Mark Cuban Yeah it is. And, you know, we question that all the time. I think every generation does, but not my grandparents’ generation and not my parents’ generation, because we didn't have a lot. We weren't poor, but we didn't have a lot. But my dad had nothing and his parents had less, and my mom was in the same situation. My grandfather, my mom's side was a schmatta sales person. He had a briefcase and he would have samples of pants and shirts and he literally, on the same street my dad worked on, he would literally start at the bottom of the hill and work his way up and go building to building to building, car dealership to car dealership to car dealership, selling whatever he could sell to make whatever money he could make. And again, working all hours. My grandmother, my mom said his wife didn't really work. She had all kinds of issues, physical issues. And so he was a grinder in every sense of the word. And I just remember sitting with him and listening to him tell stories and what we like to do. He liked to like, turn cards and see how fast I can multiply them or add them in. Challenge me. And again, the whole element being, We don't want you to go through what we've gone through. It's really crazy when I think back on it. The people I would spend time with had to flee because of their religion, or they would die and their children, my parents, didn't have the benefit of anything. You know, my grandparents weren't in a position to do anything for them. And they were able to put together a middle-class life and put me in the house that they couldn't afford to put me in, in a school district they wanted me to be in. And the rest is history.

Michele Norris It sounds like you marched to your own drum in lots of ways, and you were describing your uncle. And I don't speak Yiddish, so I'm probably going to not say this right. But you said he was a “schmutza” salesman? Was I close?

Mark Cuban No, my grandfather was a schmatta —clothing sales.

Michele Norris And it sounds like you must have watched carefully because again, in reading about you, you were selling all kinds of things at an early age.

Mark Cuban Everything. Yeah, everything I could.

Michele Norris What was that about?

Mark Cuban You know, my dad was always really clear: If you want something, you're going to have to earn that money yourself. There's things that I can afford and things I can't afford. If I took a shower too long, my dad would be like, bam, bam, bam on the door, you know? Come on, we're not eating everything. Or someone left a door open in the summer. We're not trying to air condition the entire neighborhood. Close the door. It was just how we were, right? It was just the way it was.

Michele Norris So what did you start selling? You were selling just about everything.

Mark Cuban Well, I started with garbage bags, door to door. And so my dad and his buddies were playing poker. They played all the time on Thursday nights. And I'd walk in and say hi, grab a donut because they'd have donuts there. I remember asking my dad for a new pair of basketball shoes because then, like now, I was really into basketball. And he looks me, he goes, you see those shoes on your feet? They work. And if you want, if you want something, you know, when you when you get a job and you can afford to buy them, go for it. And I'm like, dad, I'm 12. How am I going to get a job? And then one of his buddies was probably plastered because they all got plastered when they were playing poker. It was like, I got something you can sell. I've got these boxes of garbage bags, 100 garbage bags in a box, and I'll never forget them because they weren't great garbage bags now, in hindsight, but they were 100 garbage bags in a box. My cost was $3 and I sold them for six and I would go down the street. This is when we lived in Birdland on Meadowlark, and I'd go to our neighbors and be like, hi, my name is Mark. Do you use garbage bags? And it was the easiest sale ever. I mean, who's going to say no to a 12-year-old kid? Somebody who needs garbage bags for six bucks. You deliver them, you don't have to carry them. So it was an easy sell, and that gave me a ton of confidence to be able to sell.

Michele Norris And what did you with your profits?

Mark Cuban I don't remember, I wish I did.

Michele Norris And you graduated from selling garbage bags to what?

Mark Cuban Oh my goodness. You name it, I sold magazines door to door. Another great experience. Sold candy with a crew of kids going door to door. I worked as a stocking clerk in a pharmacy that wasn't sales. That got me through high school—oh, and I bought and sold stamps too. So I became a stamp collector and I learned a lot about markets. Then I would go to these stamp shows and I would go with $0.50, a dollar, and I'd find a stamp that I knew was valuable, because I would study all the values of all these different American stamps. I'll go to like one booth and look through the stamps, see what they got, realize somebody misidentified a stamp, take it to another stamp dealer somewhere else and show him why it was this was the right stamp identification and sell it for more. And, you know, I made, over the course of a school year, 50, 100 bucks, which for a 15-, 16-year-old kid is pretty good.

Michele Norris Well, it sounds like you were very good at sales. And at some point you decided, enough with high school, I'm going to night school and you started—you enrolled in college early?

Mark Cuban Yeah. So my junior year of high school at Mount Lebanon High School, I asked if I could take the economics class that was only for seniors, and they said no. I said, well, that's insane, right? I'm trying to challenge myself and dadadada, me challenging the bureaucracy. And so I said, you know, I'm going to prove to you that I'm smart enough to do these things and prove to myself, actually. So I registered for a psychology class at the University of Pittsburgh, and I also registered for a graduate level class in Russian education. I'm like, I don't know, I'm going to challenge myself. I'll see how smart I really am. And I didn't last a week in that class. But the psychology class I did well. And then I'd said, well, okay, now I can go to the University of Pittsburgh. I'm not going back to high school. And so I went to Pitt for what would have been my senior year of high school.

Michele Norris And everything transferred. I mean, you didn't have to, like, do the college essay. You didn't have to fill out all those forms or anything. You just kind of took yourself to college in an interesting way.

Mark Cuban Well, yeah, because once I took the night classes, I was enrolled, right. So I just enrolled for more classes. But to get to Indiana after Pitt, yeah, I had to go through all that, but that's a whole ’nother story.

Michele Norris And how did you get to Indiana?

Mark Cuban Pitt didn't have an undergraduate business school. And so while I spent the one year at Pitt, it was just taking basic classes and I wasn't very serious about it honestly. But business was still my mission where I wanted to do. And I saw a list of the top ten business schools, and I read “The Insider's Guide to Partying.” And Indiana was a top ten undergrad business school and top three in partying. So I'm like, that's the combo I need. Out of that top ten of business schools, I picked out the cheapest one. It was Indiana, and I applied. Got in and showed up on campus my freshman year there. Sight unseen.

Michele Norris So that's an interesting equation. Top business school, big party campus at University of Indiana. How much partying did you actually do? Did you change your ways and focus primarily on business, or did you figure out how to balance both those things?

Mark Cuban My first two years, I decided I was going to reinvent myself. I lived on this dorm, room B 109 and Foster Quad, Indiana University, ran for floor president. This is going to be the new Mark Cuban and won. And so for the first semester I was the floor president. But I also decided that even though I drank when I was at the University of Pittsburgh, I'm like, okay, I'm not going to drink my freshman and hopefully my sophomore year because I'm going to take hard classes. I'm going to do everything back-ass-half-wards. I'm going to take the hardest classes I can. My freshman and sophomore year what would be my junior and senior classes, and then my actual junior and senior year, I'm going to take the freshman classes because they'll be easier and I can party like a rock star. And that's what I did.

Michele Norris And did that work out?

Mark Cuban It worked out great. You know, and—

Michele Norris Young people take note.

Mark Cuban Right. And to continue the story. Back then, you didn't register, it wasn't a digital registration. You would have these computer cards and you'd stand in line to register for class. And I was getting ready to register for my hard classes, but there was a line there for MBA graduate-level statistics, K 501, and I stood in line and they didn't challenge me. I got into the class, took the class graduate-level statistics and got an A in it. And I'm like, okay, this is an MBA class. Statistics. Are you kidding me? I just got an A in it. This stuff's going to be easy.

Michele Norris Now an observation. You have amazing recall for numbers. Course K 501, dorm number B109, 1223 Bower Hill Road, 1134 Meadowlark Drive. You remember all this? I'm going to have to go play the numbers when I leave here and go buy a lotto ticket with some of these numbers. Have you always had a head for numbers?

Mark Cuban Yeah, yeah. It's always been really easy for me on Shark Tank. Barbara Corcoran just, like, calls me the human computer. And so she can't do math at all. So when she sits next to me, I do all of her math for her. It's not that I'm great at math, it's just that I process things really quickly.

Michele Norris I read a lot about you in preparation for this interview.

Mark Cuban I'm sorry.

Michele Norris And your mom—no, I loved it. I love getting to know you. Your mom sounds like a very special person, and it sounds like a lot of the confidence that we see in your ownership of the Mavericks, in your role in Shark Tank and your leadership throughout all the things that you do, it seems like a lot of that came from your mom.

Mark Cuban It really did. It really, really did, more of my mom than my dad. My mom taught me to question everything, and my mom taught me that when you challenge things, there's going to be consequences. But as long as you know they're coming, then that's the way it goes. I mean, with teachers, I remember I don't like this teacher because da da da da da. She's like, Mark, they've got the pen and the paper and the grade book. You better be willing to accept the consequences if you're going to challenge them. And I did, and I remember her reading me stories even when I was younger, and me driving her crazy with the why, why, why, why, why, and her not flinching. It's okay to ask why. I remember when I was in high school, I decided to wear a shirt that said “bullshit” on it, and she's like, you're going to get suspended. I'm like, yeah, maybe, but it'll be fun. I didn't make it for an hour.

Michele Norris So you were back home again?

Mark Cuban Yeah, I was back home. She taught me to test boundaries, and I think that that's really been important to me and both my parents, again, because they didn't go to college, didn't really have an education. Then it was like, go do what you're doing. Don't be afraid to fail. Don't worry if things don't go exactly the way you want initially, because what's the worst thing that can happen? What have you got to lose? And you know when you got nothing to lose, there's only one direction you can go.

Michele Norris That's some special parenting, though, because many parents would say, get back upstairs and take that T-shirt off but your mom let you go, because she thought, well, he's going to have to figure this out for himself. And you learned the lesson.

Mark Cuban Yep. You're going to have to deal with the consequences.

Michele Norris You seem to see yourself as a bit of an outsider, and I wonder if there's some benefit to that.

Mark Cuban Oh, yeah.

Michele Norris You know, you had to move lots of times. You were always a new kid. You went from being in a Jewish community to being one of only two families. I think about that in the way that you that you run your own business. When we were talking as we got started, we noted that we have a friend in common. Your GM, Cynt Marshall, is an African-American woman. Aren’t a lot of those running things in the NBA. When you are an outsider, is it easier to reach outside to look for talent? Is it easier to reach outside to look for new thinking in new pathways?

Mark Cuban Absolutely. Positively. Because, you know, the system never worked for me, and the system doesn't work for a lot of people. But some people are forced to work within the system and find their answers in their whatever it is they need there. And some of us thrive by working outside the system, knowing that when everybody's doing it the same way, the greatest opportunities come outside that. And you can find the nuggets that other people never look for. Whenever I started something that was disruptive or new, it was always because this was the habits they were in, and if you just look a little bit closer and look on the outside like, what are the things we can do to accomplish what we need to accomplish without first thinking, here's the way it's supposed to be done. And whenever I hear somebody say, here's the way it's supposed to be done, I already know that's the wrong way to do it. Now that's got me in trouble working in jobs, but it's worked out for me as an entrepreneur.

Michele Norris What do you do in your household now with your kids, in your home, particularly in your kitchen, to honor your family and especially your mother?

Mark Cuban Not as much as we probably should, because that's my wife's area and my kids prefer it that way.

Michele Norris Oh, you don't, you don't cook.

Mark Cuban No, I don't cook. Except for myself and my wife. I'm like, baby, if you make something in the microwave, that's cooking. She's like, that's not cooking. If you're using a microwave that is not cooking and, you know, we just laugh and argue about it. And my kids are like, no, dad, that's not cooking. Stay away. And so my wife typically makes the stuff for herself and the kids. And because I'm vegetarian and they're young and growing, we tend to eat differently. Except if she has to make something that, just by chance, is vegetarian.

Michele Norris When did you become a vegetarian?

Mark Cuban About four years ago. And the why? As you get older. My body is an orthopedic mess. I mean, both hips replaced, you know, herniated disc, torn rotator cuffs. And so in the morning, I'd be sore. And I still try to work out and compete and all that kind of stuff. Play basketball, lift. And I read, read, read, read, read up, and everywhere I read about being a vegetarian, it was good for reducing inflammation in my body. I tried it and I felt better. So I've stuck with it. And look, I cheat definitely, because if we're out to dinner and there's nothing vegetarian, I'll eat fish or whatever. So I guess you can say by definition I'm a pescatarian, but for the most part I stick to being a vegetarian.

Michele Norris You're a flexitarian.

Mark Cuban A flexitarian, yeah, but I try to stick to it because it's better for my health.

Michele Norris Did you ever try the macrobiotic diet that your mother introduced at some point?

Mark Cuban Hellll no. I was so scarred off of that. So scarred! Just the word macro—this is no lie. The word macrobiotics, whenever it comes up, I get the heebie jeebies.

Michele Norris It was that bad?

Michele Norris It was horrible!

Mark Cuban I mean, I still I can feel how hard that cake was and how awful. And the sound of my buddies laughing at me.

Michele Norris And especially when it's a care package, because when you're in college and you get a care package, you're so excited that you might get a taste of home.

Mark Cuban I mean, how can you even mess up the icing?

Michele Norris Oh no—I’m surprised there was icing.

Mark Cuban No, there was icing and it was just awful. And literally, I'd have to say no, mom, you know, go back to the old basics if you're going to send me something.

Michele Norris So when you get a craving for a taste of home, now, at this point in your life, what is that? What's a recipe that that is really special to you, that makes you think of the old days back in Pittsburgh?

Mark Cuban Noodle kugel, for sure. That that's my go-to. That's literally after my mom's macrobiotic phase. I was like, if you're going to send me anything, please send me some of your noodle kugel. Raisin noodle kugel. That was my all-time favorite then, it's my all-time favorite now. That's my go-to.

Michele Norris What's special about it?

Mark Cuban I mean, just the memories. And the taste brings back a flood of amazing family memories. And again, racing my brothers to see who can get the biggest squares of the kugel. And the best part of raisin noodle kugel is the edges, because the edges are a little bit burned and, you know, that's where all the flavor comes from. And so it just that is everything.

Michele Norris Was that a weeknight dish or was that a special?

Mark Cuban No, that was a special right. Because that meant my mom really had to cook. And, you know, it takes a couple hours or whatever to cook. And so you could smell it the whole day, and we'd push her to put more raisins in there and some cinnamon on some time. So, yeah, it was a special event.

Michele Norris You know, kugel is not just a dish. It's kind of like a genre or a category because it's so different depending on who's making it. How did your mom make it?

Mark Cuban The old-fashioned Jewish way, yeah. Regular noodles? It means—

Michele Norris Egg noodles?

Mark Cuban Yeah. Egg noodles, yeah. Egg noodles. Raisins. Hopefully. Cinnamon, eggs, butter, tons of butter. And just mixing it all together and putting together and then baking it for however long she needed to. And then just smelling it on its way out and then just having to push my brother since they were younger and smaller away so I could get the most of it, and then at times putting ice cream on it. If we had vanilla ice cream and making the combo work.

Michele Norris And served warm usually?

Mark Cuban Oh yeah, it's got to be warm, melting the ice cream, and it's soft and it's sweet and it doesn't feel like a noodle dish, right? It feels more like a cake. It's just, yeah, it was something special.

Michele Norris So do you ever go back to Squirrel Hill now? Ever get back to Pittsburgh? I just wonder what your family thinks. They must be tremendously proud.

Mark Cuban My high school friends, a couple of them live there now, and so my high school friends are still my best friends. And so going back to see them and Zooming with them all the time. Yeah, I will go back and go to the JCC, the Jewish Community Center, and shoot hoops still. Taking a walk on Forbes Avenue, Murray Avenue. I took my kids and took the whole family there three years ago and had them walk by Carnegie Mellon and in Shadyside and by Schenley Park. And it was too many hills for them. But it was all home for me.

Michele Norris And Pittsburgh is a hilly city, you want to get comfortable shoes when you go there. Mark Cuban, I have love talking to you. This has been a lot of fun.

Mark Cuban This has really been fun. I appreciate the questions. You really made me think about things I haven't thought of in a long, long time. So thanks.

Michele Norris That's great. That's what we try to do. We have to get the recipe for the noodle kugel so we can share that with our listeners. That's hard to say. Noodle kugel. Say that fast five times in a row.

Mark Cuban That's why I put the raisin in there, noodle raisin kugel.

Michele Norris Okay. That makes it easier. Noodle raisin kugel. We'll get the recipe and we will share it with our listeners. All the best to you.

Mark Cuban Thank you so much, Michele.

Michele Norris What a storyteller. Mark Cuban's story is inspiring and entertaining. His optimism is contagious. You can see how he moves people from skepticism to enthusiasm and knowing where he came from, it's easier to understand how he sees the world and tries to seize opportunities to create new ways of doing things. Mark's family taught him to take nothing for granted. That hard work, taking chances, and an open mind can pay dividends, and that true confidence comes not from what you own, but from who you are deep down inside.

I don't think I will ever forget the picture of a young Mark Cuban with the silver caps on his teeth, learning how to dance from his mother, knowing that one day he would step into some space somewhere and impress everybody. He sure did that. I so enjoyed getting to know Mark better in our conversation, and I'm really looking forward to getting to know his mother's noodle raisin kugel, because I plan to try this out in my kitchen.

We will share that recipe with you on our website, your MamasKitchen.com and on my Instagram at Michele underscore underscore Norris. That's two underscores between Michele and Norris. And we're not done yet. We want to hear from you. We're opening up our inbox for you to record yourself and tell us about your mama's recipes, some memories from your kitchen growing up. We want to hear about your mama's kitchens, so make sure to send us a voice memo at ymk@highergroundproductions.com for a chance to be featured in a future episode. Thanks again to Mark Cuban. Thanks to all of you for joining us. Make sure you come back next week and until then, be bountiful.

This has been a Higher Ground and Audible Original produced by Higher Ground Studios. Senior producer Natalie Rinn. Producer Sonia Htoon. Additional production support by Misha Jones. Sound design and engineering from Andrew Eapen and Ryan Kozlowski. Higher Ground Audio editorial assistant is Camilla Thur de Koos. Executive producers for Higher Ground are Nick white, Mukta Mohan, Dan Fierman and me, Michele Norris. Executive producers for Audible are Nick D'Angelo and Anne Hepperman. The show's closing song is 504 by the Soul Rebels. Editorial and web support from Melissa Bear and Say what media talent booker Angela Peluso. Special thanks this week to Clean Cuts in Washington, D.C. and Luminous Sound in Dallas, Texas. Chief content officer for audible, Rachel Ghiazza. And that's it. Goodbye, everybody.

Copyright 2023 by Higher Ground Audio, LLC. Sound recording. Copyright 2023 by Higher Ground Audio, LLC.